Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Merry Christmas!


For it is in giving that we receive.”-Francis of Assisi 

“Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.”- Calvin Coolidge

“Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.”- Charles Schultz

“Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart…filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.” – Bess Streeter Aldrich, Song of Years

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

“We are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.” ―Laura Ingalls Wilder

“At Christmas, all roads lead home.” ―Marjorie Holmes

“Christmas will always be as long as we stand heart to heart and hand in hand.” – Dr. Suess

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.” – Shirley Temple

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

“I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.” – Fred Rogers

“Books don’t only furnish a room: they also make the best holiday gifts.”         – Michael Dirda

“Nothing says holidays, like a cheese log.” – Ellen DeGeneres

“If it’s not messy and it doesn’t drip over the sides, it’s not a holiday hot chocolate -it’s just an average hot chocolate.” – Alex Guarnaschelli



Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

“As important as it is to have a plan for doing work, it is perhaps more important to have a plan for rest, relaxation, self-care, and sleep.” 
― Akiroq Brost

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” 
― Chinese Proverb

“To amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously.” 
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“When Geoffrey’s not anxious, he radiates calmness, which probably means he sees more things and finds more things than other people do. It makes him open to new things too.” 
― Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd’s Crown

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Star Trek

“Things are only impossible until they’re not.” — Captain Jean-Luc Picard

“I am pleased to see that we have differences. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.”             — Surak

“Without freedom of choice there is no creativity.” — Captain James T. Kirk

“Live now; make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.”
— Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.” 
― James Herriot, James Herriot’s Cat Stories

“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.”

[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]” 
― E.B. White


“When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.” 
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows


“Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort – these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work.” – Joyce Carol Oates

Simple Sundays

A Playful Simple Sunday

“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” – Carl Jung

“When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.” – Fred Rogers

“Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.”- Henri Matisse

“Play is hard to maintain as you get older. You get less playful. You shouldn’t, of course.” – Richard Feynman

“As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal.” – Gretchen Owocki

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Dog Edition

“My fashion philosophy is, if you’re not covered in dog hair, your life is empty.” – Elayne Boosler

“Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?” ― Mary OliverDog Songs


“The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.” – Samuel Butler


“Nothing is so lovely as a quietly snoring dog and some evening Brahms, as you sit in a comfortably overstuffed chair with your feet on the footstool.” 
― Ann Beattie

Sewing · Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

“A good use for me is to let me go away with my sewing machine and come back with some really new stuff.” – Betsey Johnson

“People who assume my books are only about quilts obviously haven’t read them! I’ve always known that my books are about quilters – in other words, people – rather than quilts or quilting.” – Jennifer Chiaverini

“I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“All creative people want to do the unexpected.” – Hedy Lamarr

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

“If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become part of someone else’s story.” – Terry Pratchett

“Creativity is an act of defiance.” ― Twyla Tharp

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” ― Maya Angelou

“Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts…”
― Madeleine L’EngleWalking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art