Misha and myself would like to wish all of you lovely people a really happy New Year’s Eve, and a truly outstanding new year. I think I’ve already mentioned it last year that my Mum and I have a sort of mini New Year’s tradition that we like to wish each other that we may discover lots of new, interesting things in the coming year. Because we both love discovering new things, it’s so thrilling. Just thinking about all the things that are waiting out there for me in the new year, to be discovered and learnt, makes me feel thrilled. So many new books, beautiful words in various languages, baby names, pieces of music, gems, foods, fun rabbit holes etc.! I can’t wait. I think it might be a difficult year for many of us, for all sorts of reasons (I mean, which one isn’t? 😀 ) but I wish all of you, and myself, that even if it will be difficult and shitty, there will still be lots of interesting and beautiful and weird and fascinating and cute and brain-stimulating and uplifting things for us to discover out there. That is the main thing I want to wish you. I also wish you all that you wish yourselves for this coming year, and may it be a good year for you in the end, even if certainly not all aspects of it and not every single day will be good. If you have any resolutions, goals, or anything else, I wish you best of luck and all the determination in the world to accomplish them. And Misha wishes all of you, peeps and pets alike, that you get lots of healthy, long sleep in the new year. He thinks most troubles in the world, big and small, come from the fact that so many of us go round chronically “under-sleeped”, and I think I agree. We say in Polish, and apparently in many other languages as well, that “like New Year, like the whole year”, so I think people should be more mindful of their sleep on New Year’s in particular. I certainly will, as I’m not going anywhere and have to be up early tomorrow for church anyway.
As you may know, every year I make Spotify playlists of songs that have been featured in the song of the day series on my blog throughout the year, so that it’s like an archive of sorts. And it’s a bit of a tradition already on here that every New Year’s Eve, I share a new playlist, for the year that has just passed. It’s no different this year, so below is the playlist for 2023. You can also check out all of the playlists so far on this page.
Even though it’s still only a day left until Christmas, as always, here in Poland as well as some other European countries, we start our Christmas celebrations already on Christmas Eve, so it feels very much like Christmas by now for me. Therefore, I’d like to wish all of my readers who celebrate, a very happy Christmas. 🙂
I bet you’ll all soon become drowned under an avalanche of Christmas wishes, and everyone will wish you all the best, and I thought that it’s actually a little pointless to just keep repeating the same things and phrases over and over, every year, because if you keep repeating yourself like that annually, or repeating what others have already said, the risk of it all sounding empty and cliche is huge, even if you come up with something that still manages to sound reasonably fresh and original in your own opinion. And I’m finding that my tolerance for all the Christmas cliche is steadily diminishing every year, so I would really like to contribute as little as possible to it. So instead of writing all that I wrote in my Christmas post last year, and the year before, and what countless other people will be wishing you this Christmas, I’ll just say that I wish you all of that good stuff people will be wishing you, and all of what you wish for yourselves this Christmas, except I wish it for y’all even more strongly. 😀 Please do let me know what you’re doing for Christmas this year if you feel like sharing, and if it’s anything different than usual.
As for me, we’re very literally conservative people here so we’re not doing much different than last year. And, as far as I am concerned, that’s great. When I was a kid, we often celebrated Christmas Eve at my Mum’s family and it was always so crowdy and lasted so long, because someone would usually be late and we’d have to wait for them with all the food getting cold and everyone growing more impatient by the minute. Now, we celebrate at our own house and it’s just my parents, my siblings and myself. And Misha and Jocky. 😀 It may feel a bit awkward and quiet in comparison, but we all seem to like it better this way. This year was originally supposed to be a bit different because Olek said he’d come with his girlfriend, but in the end she’s had to change her plans, which I can’t help but feel massively relieved about (not that I have any issues with her personally). We have mostly the same food as we always do, and we’ll be going to midnight Mass, and then visiting extended family tomorrow or on second Christmas.
Traditionally, I’d like to share with you some additional, Christmassy song of the day. I had already planned what Christmassy song I wanted to share today at the beginning of Advent, but then when I actually looked for it yesterday in preparation for this post, to my huge disappointment, I realised that it must have been taken down from YouTube since last year! I do have it in my personal collection but I guess it wouldn’t be okay to share it like that. So I suddenly found myself in quite a conundrum as for what to share! Of course, there are many Christmas songs and carols that I like, but on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas, I usually like to share something that I not just like, but actually love. And I guess by now I’ve shared most of those. But, finally, I was reminded about a beautiful album that came out just this month. It’s Welsh, and it’s a collaboration between jazz pianist Huw Warren and Angharad Jenkins, who has been featured many many times before on this blog, as part of the DNA duo together with her harpist mother – Delyth Jenkins. – I think of Angharad primarily as a fiddle player, but on this album, we also hear her sing.
The album is called Calennig, which refers to the traditional Welsh celebration of the new year. People, I think especially children, go around all the houses and sing verses, in exchange for little gifts (which are also called calennig), such as money or a special kind of calennig apple, or other such. The whole album is a very interesting mix of traditional and jazz influences and there are many gems on it, but it also includes one Christmas carol that I think I can call my favourite Welsh Christmas carol, because I don’t know a more beautiful one.
For one thing, it has such a majestic, intriguing, archaic-sounding melody. A lot of Welsh carols sound very simple to me, so when I first heard this one earlier this year, I found it quite striking. And the other thing is that, from what I’ve heard, this is the only pre-reformation Welsh carol that has survived to our times. So yeah, it is actually Catholic. And this warm, jazzy, slightly experimental I’d say, given that this is a hymn, arrangement of it further intensifies this song’s own, natural flavour.
I couldn’t find a literal translation of it, and didn’t dare try to do one myself, but I can at least tell you a little bit about what it says. Generally from what I understand it focuses on the sacrifices that our Lord has made for our sake during His life on earth. The first verse says that on Christmas morning, the Virgin gave birth to our Blessed Saviour, in the town of Bethlehem. The second verse talks about His Passion and how He was killed for the sake of people and then buried, but rose from the dead on the third day. The third verse is a prayer to the Virgin Mary asking Her to intercede for us in heaven. I’ve heard that a lot of Welsh carols have loads of verses that detail the whole life of Christ, and our Polish ones can be very long as well if you’d want to sing all the verses, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this one had more as well, but here we have three and I haven’t heard any more in other renditions that I’ve listened to so far.
Hope you enjoy, and, again, that you have a very happy and peaceful Christmas. 🙂
It’s Christmas Eve, so, as regular peeps on here will know, it’s the time for Christmas wishes here on My Inner Mishmash. Because in Poland, as in many other European countries, we actually start celebrating Christmas today already. In fact, this is in practice the most festive day of Christmas over here, at least when it comes to the external festivities. We eat a big, festive, meatless Christmas Eve supper, and then later on go to the Midnight Mass. Most people also open their presents on Christmas Eve, but since a couple years, we decided to change that in our household and we only do it after we come back from the Midnight Mass, so that’s practically Christmas Day already.
But, regardless of when exactly each of you, lovely people, starts your celebrations, I would like to wish you a very happy Christmas. Not necessarily merry, because, in my view, this word is a little superficial and not everyone can force themselves to be merry just because it’s Christmas time, for example if you have depression or something difficult is going on in your life at the moment, and Christmas isn’t exactly about being merry (though if you do feel merry, that’s amazing, I think I do too this year, for once 😀 ). Generally though, I wish you more of a joyous, innerly peaceful, thankful kind of happy Christmas. Or if even that is hard to achieve for you and where you’re at in life, a very hopeful one, at the very least. That’s a must, or else it’s hardly Christmas. I wish you to remember what Christmas is actually celebrated for and why it’s called Christmas and not Wintermas or Snowmas or Loads-of-Yummy-Food-mas. I talk about this every year on here, but I really do think it’s so sad that it’s Jesus’ birthday, and so many people want to celebrate it, yet a lot of them seem to totally ignore the birthday boy.
Whether you’ll be celebrating alone or with family or friends or whatever other company, I wish your Christmas not to be lonely, neither in a alone and lonely way, nor in a lonely in a crowd way. And I really hope it won’t be boring or overwhelming or under-/over-stimulating, or stressful, or all those other things that we know Christmases and other such holidays can very often be.
I also wish you a cosy Christmas, loads of yummy food, and that you can give and receive some cool presents. Who wouldn’t like that?
To all the non-Christian people who are also celebrating something, be it Christmas without the Christ- part, or having time off work, or some other religious holiday, I also want to wish you a happy, cosy, and memorable holidays.
And for all those who aren’t celebrating anything, I wish you hope and inner peace as well, and that you have a cool weekend.
Misha wants to wish all pets and peeps the best food in their lives, and hopes you can all catch up on sleep and keep warm, either inside your own fur, or some fluffy clothes, and that it’s not gonna be too noisy in your house and that you can spend a bit of time just with yourself.
And, yeah, traditionally, I’ve got to share some Christmas song! Last year I thought I’d ran out of all my favourite Christmas songs to share, but over the course of this year I remembered about a few that I’ve never shared on here and heard some new beautiful Christmas pieces. The one I’m sharing with you today belongs to the latter category.
This is a Welsh Christmas carol called “Ar Gyfer Heddiw’r Bore” (On This Day in the Morning), written by David Hughes in 19th century. It seems to be very popular at what is called Plygain in Wales – a traditional Christmas service held either at night or early in the morning where people gather to sing carols, of course in harmony since that’s the only way Welsh people can sing. 😀 – This tradition has been apparently going through a bit of a renaissance lately and it sounds really cool.
However, the version of this song that I want to share with you is a little different. It is sung by Gwilym Bowen Rhys (yeah, one of my faza people and yeah, that renewed October peak is still going strong and I’m really glad that my faza life seems to have gone back to normal after like two years of weird chaos) as part of a project called Celtic Beethoven initiated by the Galician musician Carlos Núñez (I believe largely online-based), which involved a lot of musicians from Celtic countries and regions performing Celtic songs arranged by Ludwig van Beethoven. This carol is usually sung to a different tune, but in the recording below, Gwilym sings it to the tune of a Welsh song called The Vale of Clwyd, arranged by Beethoven. And I think this is absolutely stunning, and gives this carol more of a soul! Personally, the original melody makes me think of the Pentre Llanfihangel song, which is the first thing that I ever heard sung to this tune (by Plethyn), and Gwilym’s version sounds so much more like what I think an old-ish, Christian piece like this should actually sound.
If you’d like to know what this carol is about and find out more about Plygain as such, or hear a version of this carol in its original melody, I recommend you visit this blog.
I am writing this post in memory of Ashley Leia whose family shared the above post on her blog and which I have just found out. I don’t even know what to say, because I feel utterly shocked and can’t think, but I really wanted to mention this on here because not only was she a great and very competent blogger in her niche of mental health, but also was a regular on My Inner MishMash and a twotimes (that is every single time, so far) MIMRA winner.
Ashley had been MIA for several weeks, which I had a very bad feeling about, so finally wrote to her a few days ago. Turns out I was way too late…
I can’t imagine what her family must be going through.
I hope you are at peace, Ashley… I miss you and will be praying for you a lot.
Just wanted to let you know that Bibielz will be MIA for the next couple of days, not sure how long exactly, but most likely from tomorrow until Tuesday. My Dad’s on holiday from Monday, and he actually wanted to go to Sweden once again (didn’t realise he liked it so much the last time we were there). Except we’ll go to Warsaw rather than Sweden after all. It’s because Sofi’s going to have some model casting there. Last year when she was out shopping with Mum they were approached by a scout who says that Sofi has a potential for a model and gave her his business card. Mum didn’t feel for a long time like getting Sofi into that sort of thing, even though Sofi was all for it, and we were worried if it could be a scam. But the guy was called Jacek, so he gave me good vibes and I looked him up and it seems to be a legit agency, but my Mum still wouldn’t want to hear about it. Only recently, almost a year later, she changed her mind for some reason and they contacted him and he said he’d be happy to see Sofi next week Tuesday at 2 PM, and that agency is in Warsaw. My Mum is still a bit of a chicken for driving such long-distance (it’s 4-5 hours from us), even though she rode there a lot back when I was at the boarding school because it’s near Warsaw, so since my Dad is on leave they decided it would just be a camper trip and meanwhile Sofi would have her casting. I’m curious how it goes for her. We’re also likely going to stop by some lake in Masuria which is an ever so popular region with my family, because it’s been roasting hot all over the country.
But you’ll probably be thrilled to hear that Bibielz aren’t so cruel as to leave my readers completely lonely, because Bibielz have scheduled posts for the next three days in both of the daily series (yay! 😀 ), so hopefully that’ll be enough until I’m back, and if not, perhaps I’ll be able to write something on the go but generally would rather not, because I only take my iPhone and Bluetooth keyboard with me and that’s not fun for writing longer or even medium things.
Until then, I hope y’all will be doing well, and lemme know if you’re also going for some trips or other stuff like that soon. 🙂
As this current year is about to vanish into the past very soon, I wish all of you, my lovely readers, a very happy new year. Not necessarily happy as in that you should actually be super happy all the time, as that’s hardly realistic, but hopefully happier than this past year, and simply filled with moments, events and things that you’ll appreciate and enjoy. May you learn a lot of new things this coming year and make loads of fascinating discoveries. This is what my Mum and me always wish each other for new year, because it’s such a fab feeling when you discover something absolutely fascinating and possibly even life-changing in a good way. May it also give you plenty of opportunities for development in areas in which you need it, and maybe even in some in which you don’t yet know that you need to develop. 🙂 I hope it’ll be an interesting year for you, but also peaceful at the same time, as peaceful as it can be in our current external circumstances, pandemic and all. If you’re making some resolutions, or perhaps goals or anything like that, I am hopeful that you’ll be able to stick to them. And also, I wish you a lovely New Year’s Eve, regardless how you’re spending it, and a fabulous New Year, because apparently what your New Year is like says what the entire year will be like for you. 😀
Misha is wishing all the pets and peeps alike, as well as himself, some exciting adventures this coming year.
On my blog, New Year’s Eve is also the time for officially sharing my playlist with songs that have been featured in my song of the day series in the past year. So the playlist for this year is now ready and you can see it below. Also if you want to see the previous playlists, you can go to my
It’s Christmas Eve, so while a lot of people in a lot of countries aren’t celebrating Christmas just yet, for those who do celebrate it at all I’m sure the atmosphere is already very Christmassy anyway. If you’re a regular on my blog, you know that here in Poland we start our Christmas celebrations on Christmas Eve afternoon/evening with a very festive supper, and then a lot of people go to Midnight Mass, particularly if they have young children. In fact, it’s fair to say that in the whole Christmas period, it’s Christmas Eve that is most celebrated and festive here when it comes to traditions and the like. So I always like to send people Christmas wishes on Christmas Eve already.
I wish you all a very joyous and peaceful Christmas. May it be a blessed time for you, filled with a bit of everything good – prayer and true joy because of Christ’s coming, beautiful Christmas music, time with your loved ones if you have them around this Christmas, whether in person or perhaps only virtually, time alone, God’s presence in your life and thoughts, yummy food, amazing presents, joy from giving something to others, love, fun, rest, laughter, relax, sleep, snow, cosiness, some funn book or film etc. etc. – And please, I’ve already mentioned Him, but don’t forget whose birthday we’re actually celebrating. I think it would feel very rude for most if not all people if like a half of the world declared they celebrated someone’s birthday and yelled about it for a month in advance, but the person in question wouldn’t even get any attention from most of the birthday guests on the actual day but instead people would just give presents to each other and consistently ignore the birthday boy/girl.
For those of you who aren’t Christians but are also going to have some relaxing, festive sort of time, or for whom it’s going to be life as normal, may it also be a really good time for you and may you find something in it that will fill your heart with joy.
For those who identify with some other religions and perhaps celebrate some other holidays soon, or those who celebrate Christmas a bit later on, may you have just as peaceful and joyous and fun-filled holidays.
And for those for whom this Christmas season will be difficult for some reason, whether they do celebrate it or not, because they’ve lost someone, or because they can’t be with their family, or because it’s a very difficult time for you every year for whatever reason, I wish you hope, strength, and that despite the difficult time, you may also find a bit of comfort in it. At this time of the year there’s a lot of mostly very superficial, sickly sweet and toxically positive talk about how “magical” and merry it is, but it’s totally okay if you do not feel on cloud nine if for you this happens to be a time of grieving, or bad mental or physical health, or loneliness, or exhaustion/overwhelm due too many people around and perhaps also needing to cook for them or something.
Misha doesn’t really care about Christmas as such very much, but he likes all the comotion around it, especially wrapping presents and Christmas decorations, and the Christmas Eve supper because there’s a lot of fish, and a lot of good food for him throughout the Christmas period. So he’d like to wish all the pets a happy Christmas time, hoping that they’ll also get a lot of yummy food and maybe some nice presents and that they’ll have a lot of fun.
Since our actual song of the day today wasn’t Christmassy, I thought I’d do the same thing as last year and share a bonus Christmassy song in the Christmas wishes post. I had a bit of a problem choosing one though, because it seems like I’ve shared all of my absolute most favourite Christmas songs in the previous years. Finally I decided on a song that perhaps isn’t among my absolute favourites, but that I really like to listen to around Christmas ever since I first heard it on BBC Radio Cymru. And unlike last year, it’s not a carol but just a lay Christmas-themed pop song about snow and how beautiful/unusual Christmas time is, although I don’t understand it in its entirety so it’s a very generalised summary of it I suppose haha. Since it’s from BBC Radio Cymru, you’re right to assume that it’s in Welsh. It’s called “Nadolig Oer” (A Cold Christmas) and is sung by Ifan Siôn Davies, who is most known as vocalist in the Welsh indie rock band Swnami which I really like and whose music I’ve shared a few times before. The Christmas music period on my blog is really long though (goes from the beginning of Advent all the way to Candlemas) so maybe I’ll still fall in love with some new to me Christmas carol or song and share it.
Today I have the more general kinda question for you guys that I like to ask on here once in a while:
Is there something on your mind that you’d like to share, or something that’s been going on for you or that you need to get off your chest? Alternatively, do you have any questions you’d like to ask me? 🙂
I’m just writing this very quick post to let you all know that, after a lot of thinking, and now also discussing it with my Mum, I decided that I won’t be sending out My Inner Mishmash Readership Award packages this year. My Mum helps me a lot with the whole process of preparing and organising MIMRAs, coming up with ideas for their contents, finding them, and in particular with sending them out, but because this year has been quite difficult for her health-wise due to yucky menopause and now also her episodic asthma flaring up, I feel it isn’t fair to pressure her with MIMRA on top of that, though I was really looking forward to this as I was in the two previous years and it feels sad that this year will be without MIMRAs, as I find making them very exciting even if there’s a fair bit of pressure involved and a lot of things to do. Unfortunately I am not able to do all about MIMRAs without my Mum’s help, and have no one else who could help me with this here , so this is how I feel it has to be at the moment. Hopefully MIMRAs will be back next year. 🙂
At the end of this weird, and very difficult for many, year, I’d like to wish all of you a fun New Year’s Eve – regardless whether you’re doing something to celebrate it or not really. – If you are like my Sofi and really love celebrating occasions like New Year’s Eve, but aren’t able to do so the way you normally do, or perhaps at all, because of a lockdown or some other restrictions that are currently in place where you are, I hope you can still have a great time. Regardless of what this day is going to look like for you, hope it’ll be enjoyable and pleasant. 🙂
And of course me and Misha would both like to wish you a happier, better new year. May it be peaceful, regardless or how much or little you have been affected by various difficult things going on for people around the world this year, and may it bring something good, new and exciting into your lives. 🙂 May you all be healthy and have helpful, loving people around you who care about you, or even just one such person. 🙂 And if you’re a blogger, may it be a good year for the development of your blog and may all your blogging plans work out. Thank you for your presence in my little Mishmashy world this year. 🙂
And now for the other New Year “something”. 😀
I’ve got a spontaneous idea a few months ago that I’d like if all that song of the day archive that has grown on my blog over the last three years could be organised. If not for any other reason then at least just for myself so that I could have it all in one place rather than just scattered all around the blog. And some of you who perhaps like this series could benefit from it too. So I thought it would be fun to make some sort of a playlist with all that music. And now that I’ve got my iPhone, I finally learned how to make Spotify playlists quite effortlessly. 😀 Yes, I’ve been using Spotify for years with very little idea about how to make playlists. That’s because in the desktop app, using my screen reader, adding songs to playlists is quite cumbersome. On iPhone this is much easier.
And so, I’ve created playlists with all the music that I’ve shared in the song of the day series, obviously except for what is not available on Spotify, and thought I’d share with you in case this would be fun for someone. I’ll be sharing a new playlist at the end of each year, or the beginning of a new year, once it is completed.
Apologies for those who like the idea but don’t use Spotify, I do not use other streaming services so wasn’t able to create them elsewhere. Aside from this post, you can always find the playlists in the Blog Playlists page, which is where I’ll be adding a new one every year.
My Inner Mishmash 2018:
My Inner Mishmash 2019:
My Inner Mishmash 2020:
Additionally, I’ve made a HUGE playlist for myself which I thought I’d share with you too in case anyone would be interested in such a thing. It is very raw, very huge and very disorganised but who cares. I called it originally Bibiel’s Playlist For Sleep, although I don’t really use it for sleep as it’s too varied for that, but the title kinda stuck and I don’t have a better idea. It contains all the music created by my faza subjects (Enya, Declan Galbraith, Cornelis Vreeswijk, Gwilym Bowen Rhys and all the bands with which he collaborated) that I like (for example you won’t find Enya’s Orinoco Flow because this is the only song by her which I dislike), all the music that I like from artists that are somehow related to my faza subjects – like their family members, so there’s for example Clannad because I like most of their music and because they’re Enya’s family and she had collaborated with them for a while, or a Welsh band Y Trwynau Coch in which Gwilym’s dad was the vocalist – various covers/interpretations of their songs that I like, or even other versions of some traditional songs they have interpreted in other interpretations that I also like, plus lots and lots and lots of harp music, because harp is my favourite instrument, with particular emphasis on Celtic harp, but there’s also orchestral harp, or even autoharp or Finnish harp aka kantele, and also there is some music from people who are harpists but that doesn’t feature harp. So the criteria for something to get into this playlist are rather lax. It just has to have something to do either with my fazas, or harp and harpists/harpers, and I have to like it. At this point there are some things in there that I don’t like all that much because I was adding a lot of things collectively and haven’t yet sifted through all of that, but generally I love most of it. It has no specific order but it doesn’t have to have because I listen to it in shuffle mode anyway. It is still under construction and will probably always be. So if you’re interested in that sorta raw, wild mix of music, come along! 🙂
This is Misha. I am soon going to sleep because all my peeps are soon going to sleep, but before I do that I wanted to wish all of you, on behalf of the Emisha team – that is Mila and me – a very happy happy happy Easter. I hope it will be a very joyful time for you if you are Christians and if you are not and are just celebrating for the fun of celebrating something I hope you will be able to have as much chocolate as you can keep in. And if you are not celebrating I hope you have a lovely, beautiful Sunday and won’t be stressing too much about that human plague thing. If you are a pet like me I hope it will also be as happy day for you as it’s going to be for me and that your peeps will stay at home even though it is a holiday and spend some more time with you, but hopefully they won’t be too noisy and intrusive and will let you have a bit of time for yourself too. Happy Easter to all our readers. 😻
Christmas has come, and with it, FINALLY! the third MIMRA – for Meg! – I’m so happy that all the packages are now with the winners. It was real fun and exciting to make it and make them happy and I’ll be extremely to make the second edition of MIMRA next year.
So, the time has come. The time to reveal the winners of my brand new conception which is My Inner MishMash Readership Award (or MIMRA).
My Inner MishMash is an award that is planned to be confered every year before Christmas, to the three most involved, insightful and engaged readers of My Inner MishMash as a way of expressing my gratitude and appreciation for their presence on My Inner MishMash, and also simply as a way to have some more fun on here.
I’m super excited to officially announce to all the people reading this blog that this year’s winners are… *fanfares and drumrolls*
Thanks so very much to all three of you for sticking by, it’s hugely appreciated! 🙂 Also thanks to all the other involved readers of my blog, who I wasn’t able to award, as of course I can’t award everyone, but I hope you too do feel no less welcome at My Inner MishMash. 🙂
The awards have been sent out earlier today, and should actually be with you in 3 days (much earlier than I supposed, they’ll be travellin by plane, just like VIP’s should 😀 I just hope the packages didn’t get mixed up at the post office, haha). I really hope you’ll find your awards enjoyable.
Some people like surprises, some don’t, but I figured I’ll give you all a peep into what our winners are getting this year as part of their award, since my Mum took pics anyway.
Misha is not included in the award, 😀 he goes to me as My Inner MishMash Authorship Award. Mum wanted me to stress, to make sure that you won’t have to face too much of a disappointment, that the small carrier bags you’ll find at the top of the packages aren’t part of the award either, they’re just a filler, but I guess why not, it could be part of the award, especially that it contains some excerpts of a very weird Polish magazine, so, who knows, maybe you’ll find it interesting. 😛
As you can notice, the award is very much Mish-themed, and so are even the chocolates, in a way, although that was actually a pure coincidence. Their name is Michałki (Michałek is a diminutive of a Polish male name Michał, Michałki is the plural form, and Misha, well, after all Misha is a Russian nickname of Michael). 😀
Ashley, I’m sorry but your T-shirt is going to be white in the end, not black. I hope that is not a problem? Oh and I hope they will fit you guys well.
Also, last, but not least, HUUUGE thanks to my Mum for helping me materialise this crazy idea of mine, it couldn’t happen without her dedication, and she spent a lot of time running around getting things I needed for it.
I hope it will be at least as much fun for you, Meg, Ashley, and Carol Anne, as making those awards was for me, and thank you once again for being part of My Inner MishMash! ❤
So finally, it’s 2019. How do you feel about it? As for me, my feelings are kind of mixed, but because last year was sort of rubbishy for me, especially the first half of it, I’m trying to be hopeful that this year will be better and more positive, although we have a proverb in Polish that says basically that what the first day of a new year will be like for you, the whole year will be like this. And if this is true, I shouldn’t expect too much good. I’ve been feeling very anxious lately, and today I’m not only more anxious than in the last couple days, feeling sort of hypervigilant and jittery, but I also feel much more down and like drained of all energy, which is a bit of an exhausting combination. It sucks, but I’m normally not overly superstitious if at all, so I’m going to try to hope it’s not going to be like this for the whole year as much as I can in my current mindset.
Anyway, I would like to wish you all the best in this brand new year. I hope lots of good things will happen to you this year, and I wish it could be one of the best years for all of you my readers, I have an impression that for many people in the blogosphere, at least those that I follow, last year wasn’t too good. If you’re making any long term resolutions, I wish you lots of strength, willpower, perseverance and energy to fulfill them and be happy about it, and proud of yourselves. And if you don’t have any particular resolutions, like me, and are more focused on short term goals or maybe just the present moment, I still hope it’s going to be a productive and fulfilling time for you, be proud and grateful for any achievements you make, and don’t be too hard on yourself if something doesn’t go as you wanted it to go, maybe that’s how it was meant to be, and this way it’s going to be better for you in the end, sometimes good things come out even from our apparent failures, or at least we can learn something new about ourselves from them and know what we are good at and at what we are not. And may all that you wish yourselves for this year come true. 🙂
So, how is your new year going so far? Hopefully not as lousy as mine. 😀
I wanted to send you my Christmas wishes already yesterday, after sharing Enya’s beautiful Christmas song with you and before our Christmas Eve dinner, but it seemed like all the people in my area decided they’d rather spend Christmas Eve sitting with their smartphones or computers or whatever and overload the connection, because the Internet was just so slow I couldn’t do virtually anything without waiting like 5 minutes for a single thing to open or be done. And since then I’ve been of course mostly with my family, so I’m sorry that my wishes are a bit belated, but I didn’t want to write them in a hurry and I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas anyway.
So, I’m wishing all of you – those who celebrate Christmas, those who don’t celebrate Christmas, those who celebrate whatever else, those who celebrate Christ’s birth or just being with their families and having lots of food and exchanging presents, all of you – lots of peace in your minds and hearts, as well as lots of hope. May you have many kind and caring people around you with whom you don’t feel lonely but who make you feel loved and accepted, or if you don’t have any people around you, may you not feel alone. Have lots of yummy food to eat and enjoyable things to do, and may it be a very happy time for you. And may at least one of your dreams, even the smallest, come true. And for those of you who are Christians, please, in all the festivities, don’t forget what the true nature of this holiday is, and don’t let it be something secondary and of less importance than anything else. Oh, wishing you some snow as well, if you want it, we did have some at Christmas Eve and it was quite a surprise.
My Inner MishMash 