No, it's not Valentine's Day (yet) but here's to ringing in the new year with luck and prosperity - paint the town RED.  A powerful, bold color, red is also associated with good fortune in Chinese tradition. It wards off bad spirits and it's associated with celebrations of great joy. So for the first post of the new year, the Magpie says, ring it in with red. 

I love big holiday traditions as much as the next gal, but it's the little, personal ones I appreciate the most. Over the last several years, a good friend of mine always gets together to admire the holiday decorations -- it used to be around the Kirkland waterfront, where she used to live, and they had the crazy strings of lights in a mad tangle. We loved it. Over the last few years, we've moved our tree-spotting to downtown Seattle, for a yearly trek to the Fairmont Olympic, to gaze upon their holiday trees and window-gaze at the nearby Luly Yang boutique.