Christmas is next week! But do you have all the presents prepared? Sometimes it may happen that we forget about this one present which we decided to be the last to be done. I need to confess that it happened to me in the past, even twice, and in that moment I rescued myself with a list of last minute presents! In today’s blogpost I’m going to share with you some ideas that are quite simple to do but are also really effective!

Jams, confitures, granola, hummus, cookies, lemon curd – there are a lot of possibilities! Packed in a jar, decorated with a ribbon and a small label. Really easy to prepare, you just need to find a recipe on the internet and then go through it (or be a little bit crazy and spontaneous!) and in couple steps your preserve is ready. Actually cooking with love is the best present you can ever make, am I right?

Hand-written and decorated carts with personal wishes created just for this person can be very beautiful and meaningful for the addressee. You can also make some Christmas decorations – scented balls made with oranges and cloves put on the radiator can spread a wonderful flavour in the house. Another option are cookies made with salt mass, which can be painted after being baked, or left white. The last option I want to show you is a paper chain for the Christmas tree, which refers to an old tradition of making those kind of decorations with the whole family. My mom told me that her grandma used to have ab annual meeting to create those chains with every member of the family. I think that this present can be very meaningful, especially for those ones who remember the old times.

The situation we live right now is quite difficult when it comes to meetings in restaurants and coffee dates in cafés, so this kind of voucher can be a nice idea, especially if we prepare this meal on our own! As I mentioned before, cooking with love is a very beautiful present – no matter if it is a breakfast, colourful lunch or a dinner, it cam bring a lot of joy to the addressee of the voucher but also to you as a cooker!

I hope that today’s blogpost is going to be an inspiration for you and that it will come in handy if you are in a tough present situation!

And also I would like to wish you a merry and beautiful Christmas – let it be warm, cosy, spent with family or your besties, full of closeness despite the distance and full of love and health!

with love

Basia

PS There won’t be a blogpost next week – I’ll be concentrated on Christmas ambience and family time!

For as long as I remember I always loved handwriting and writing in general – in notebooks, in journals, diaries, calendars… I could give you a lot of more examples. I always prefered fountain pen then just a pen and every single time when I had to change the pen refill I did it with patience and solemnity, as if I carried a pen made with glass. This love for fountain pens I got after my father who was a huge pen lover and he had a great collection of them with a beautiful Mont Blanc which I use only for special occasions like wish cards or letters.

I have the feeling that handwriting is less and less popular and it disappears with the development of the new technologies. The whole world gets digital – our grocery list is written on our phones, instead of writing a letter we write a message, instead of having a notebook for university we have our laptop to write notes on it. I’m not saying that everybody does this but this change to more digital world can be easily noticed.

Mam wrażenie, że pisanie ręczne powoli zanika, jako że cały świat staje się coraz bardziej zdigitalizowany – listę zakupów zapiszemy w notatkach w telefonie, zamiast listu wyślemy maila albo napiszemy smsa, zamiast ręcznych notatek mamy plik na laptopie. Nie mówię, że wszyscy tak robimy, jednak można zauważyć te zmiany w społeczeństwie.



Ja natomiast nadal mam sentyment do ręcznego pisania, wysyłania listów i pocztówek, prowadzenia dziennika, czy robienia notatek na studia w zeszycie, dlatego postanowiłam rozwijać się w tym kierunku i zapisać na warsztaty z kaligrafii organizowane przez Paperiadę w Poznaniu. Paperiada jest studiem graficznym prowadzonym przez Adę, która zaraziła mnie swoją miłością do pięknego pisania i kaligrafii. Swoją drogą, z tymi warsztatami wiąże się śmieszna historia, bo wybierałam się na nie od dwóch lat i za każdym razem, kiedy Ada je organizowała, ja akurat nie mogłam wziąć w nich udziału, aż do teraz!

For four hours of said workshop I realized that calligraphy is not just a beautiful lettering but also a huge school of patience and perseverance – not every letter is easy to be written and an expression practice makes you master is really true here. I also thought about calligrapher profession that was never really popular but how precious it was and still can be! When I got back home after this workshop my mom told me that my great grandfather had been a professional calligrapher so now I’m continuing a family tradition with calligraphy and something that I’m treating as a new form of meditation and a passion was his profession.

Przez cztery godziny trwania warsztatów i nauki pisania każdej litery uświadomiłam sobie, że kaligrafia to nie tylko piękne literki, ale też ogromna szkoła cierpliwości i wytrwałości – nie każda literka była łatwa do napisania, a dojście do perfekcji wymaga dużo czasu i praktyki. Pomyślałam o zawodzie kaligrafa, który może nigdy nie był wielce popularny, ale jaki musiał być cenny!
Po powrocie dowiedziałam się, że nieświadomie kontynuuję tradycję rodzinną, bo mój pradziadek był kaligrafem i to, czym zajmował się na co dzień, ja traktuję jako nową pasję i formę medytacji.


I think that all of those craft professions are coming back because something which is handmade and not in bulk is much more precious and you can really see that work and a heart of creator in it. One of my visions for future is having a small business with handmade wish cards, in which I will use my new skills, I mean calligraphy. Maybe this idea is quite crazy but why not? As I wrote before – society changes and of course it uses a lot of new technologies on a daily basis but on the other hand I’m really motivated to learn more and one day write a wish card for my customer.

Myślę, że takie rzemieślnicze, tradycyjne zawody wracają powoli na rynek pracy, bo coś, co jest robione ręcznie, pojedynczo, a nie hurtowo, jest moim zdaniem cenniejsze i widać w tym pracę i serce twórcy. Jedną z moich wizji na przyszłość jest założenie działalności zajmującej się tworzeniem kartek okolicznościowych na zamówienie i wykorzystanie w niej mojej nowej umiejętności, czyli pisania kaligraficznie. Pomysł jest dość szalony i trochę niepewny, bo tak jak pisałam wcześniej – społeczeństwo się zmienia i korzysta głównie z form elektronicznych, ale z drugiej strony jestem zmotywowana do tego, by ćwiczyć kaligrafię i pewnego dnia wypisać urodzinową kartkę na zamówienie.

PS Special thanks to J. who is the author of all of those beautiful photos, check out her instagram!