Happy New Year! I know, we’re already a week and a half in. I was lucky enough to ring in the new year with my sister and Mr. P, who we’re in town last week. It’s always fun to be a tourist in your home town once in a while. I’ll have a seperate post with all the touristy things we did. There are lots of pictures of pandas and fish, since we went to the zoo and Sea World.

Now that I’m recovered from that little adventure, I’ve been busy, busy, busy. So, it’s time for a little catch up I think. I have a few projects in the works, and lots has been happening. First of all, there was the Third Annual Christmas Swap with Yvonne, who made me the cutest apron. It was just meant for hook number two. I wore it the day we cooked a turkey while my sister was here. It’s so very perfect, I love the little pleats on the bottom, and it’s super long, it went below my knees, which is quite a feat for my 6 foot tall self.

One day I will take a picture of myself while wearing it. Which brings me to the New Year’s Resolutions section of this post. Historically, I’m not a huge fan of making resolutions. I did, however, make some progress last year on my plan to take better care of myself. I made a few changes to my diet, and without realizing it, lost a few pounds. So now I’m more motivated than ever to make even more healthy changes. I checked this book out of the library, and am finding it very helpful. It’s not a ‘diet’ book, exactly, and there are no eating plans or suggested foods, it’s more about changing the way you think about food and eating. So far it’s helped me stay very motivated, and I’ve already lost nearly 4 pounds this week. There are several exercises you do, so of course I needed a special book for writing down and completing those exercises, so I made myself a couple pamphlets along with a special paper folder to protect them. I used more of that lovely Amy Butler paper. I love how they are all double sided and coordinate so nicely.

I also recently added to my bento box collection, and I’ve been filling this little box with vegetables to dip in hummus for an afternoon snack.


I love the quirky translations.

And the biggest news of all:

Sally laid her first egg yesterday. I’m not sure if we’ll be brave enough to eat it.

I’m used to green (and yellow) Christmases.

Here’s another picture from today that I really like:


I hope your day was merry, whether it was green or white or cloudy and grey!

I decided to join the Project 365 group on Flickr, in hopes that forcing myself to take at least one photo every day will improve my skills. Here are days one and two:




I’m pretty sure that animals will often be featured. I can’t help myself, they’re so darn cute.
If I don’t have a chance to post again before Tuesday, Merry Christmas! Thank you so much for stopping by and for leaving all the nice comments. If you only knew how very exciting it is that people actually take the time to say nice things, and you’re not even all related to me, well, just Wow!

I had to stay home this morning to wait for the plumber, and there was lots of sunshine, so I took more pictures. I’m still in auto mode, but I’m watching my Nikon School DVD, and reading my user manual, so eventually I’ll actually change a setting and see what happens. There are a lot of buttons and dials, so it may take me awhile just to learn what they all do. Typepad reduces the image size quite a bit, so I added these pictures to my Flickr account too, if you’d like to look at them a little bigger.

The cats love the new bathroom almost as much as I do. Lucy sits and looks at the spout on the tub, until I turn it on for her, so she can get a drink.

I got a pretty good close-up of our Christmas tree. You can see a couple of my glittery nests, and a pair of wings.

I finished up my gift-wrapping while waiting for the plumber this morning too. This idea I blantently stole from Kathleen. I’ve had the same Amy Butler paper for quite a while, and this was a very good use for some of it.

My sister and Mr. P will be in town for New Year’s, and she’ll be bringing her camera along, so we can go on some photo adventures out and about in San Diego. Fun!

Santa came early, and I must have been really really good this year, because I got something I’ve been wanting for a very long time. Santa also said that I could start playing with my new toy right away, so I have been. So far, I’ve just been using the auto settings, but the results are pretty darn good. My little Olympus point-and-shoot has served me well the past four years, but this little baby is just amazing. I took some pictures last night, which I never would have attempted before, and then this morning, it was grey and drizzly, but I still couldn’t stop myself from snapping away. I can’t wait to try it in full daylight. Click on all the pictures to see them big!

This is a cross-stitch I did years ago, and always pull out for Christmas.

A light supper last night, under the Christmas tree. I got my swap package from Yvonne yesterday, and did I rip open the caramel-ly stroopwafels? The spicy-sweet speculaas cookies? Oh no sir-ree, it was the beautiful wedge of cheese that I had to dig into right away! When Yvonne asked if I had any special requests, I jokingly told her Leidsekaas, please! And she sent a nice big chunk of a similar cheese from her home town. It is so good! There was much more in that pretty pink box, but it will have to wait until I can take some daylight pictures to truly do it all justice.

Today is our secret Santa gift exchange at work, and I was lucky enough to draw the name of a fellow knitter, so I made her a needle roll, the first one I’ve ever made. It came out pretty cute, I think. I hope she likes it. There’s also a yarn store gift certificate, so even if she hates the needle roll, she should be pretty happy with the rest of the gift.

Last week I picked up a frame at Ikea for my poster from Victoria. I was going to hang it in my laundry room, because I could use a little reminder not to get all worked up when I have to spend my Saturday doing five loads of laundry, but it looked so good in the guest room, that I think I’ll leave it in there. I do need to take it in and get the mat trimmed down a bit.

And one last picture. Every time it rains, the logs from the tree we cut down a couple months ago get all mossy and green. I love that color.

It snowed this weekend, so it was a perfect oppurtunity to turn on the Hallmark channel, watch sappy Christmas movies (my guilty pleasure this time of year), and decorate! Please ignore the unpainted walls, and just be glad the duck wallpaper is gone. Now that the bathroom is pretty much done, I’ll be moving on to the living room, but I’m a little busy at the moment.

I never thought it would happen, but I actually got a fake tree this year. First of all, it’s hard to find narrow trees to fit in our little house. Second of all, I like having the tree up for a good long time, and by the time I get the tree down, it’s an extreme fire hazard. And third of all, I’m the one that has to water the tree and clean up the needles, and I just didn’t want to have to deal with all that this year. So, I found this skinny tree a couple weeks ago, and now that it’s up, I actually really just love it. I love the way it looks, and I love that it doesn’t make a mess, and I love that I can leave it up until New Year’s, and I won’t have to worry about it drying out. I think I’ll go collect some branches from the pine trees in our yard, though, so we can still have that nice pine smell in the house.

It’s a cloudy day, so this is the best I could do for now. Lucy loves the Christmas tree. I’ve even caught her sitting in the middle of it, reaching for the ornaments from inside the tree. It will be a miracle if it doesn’t get knocked over. She also likes to just sit underneath it, especially when it’s all lit up. Both cats loved the lights as I was arranging them on the tree, and I had a hard time convincing them that electrical wiring is, in fact, not a good thing to chew on. That particular window sill is Petey’s favorite place to hang out and enjoy the sun and the view of the chickens under the lilac bushes. Now it’s even better, since there’s a pretty tree to look at too.

This year I decorated the tree with lots of vintage ball ornaments, birds nests that I caked with glitter, and gold angel wings. The garland is actually a gold and green mesh floral wrap, I just sort of shove in the branches. If I get ambitious, I want to make a felt bird for the top, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen before this Christmas. I found a little gold butterfly in with all my decorations, I think I should get more and put them all over the tree too. Wouldn’t that be pretty?

I added a few pretty decorations to my kitchen too.

The stocking is from last year’s Annual Christmas Swap with Yvonne. We’ve both just sent our packages for this year’s swap, and I can’t wait. I’m such a lucky duck that we have this tradition! The gumdrop wreath I made a few years ago, and it’s survived quite well. Also, when hungry husbands say, "oh, is that a candy wreath?" all I have to do is remind him that those gumdrops have been in a box in the shed since 2003, and he’s suddenly less inclined to pluck off a gumdrop and pop it in his mouth.

There’ll be more decorations soon, but for the next couple days I’ll be hanging out with one of my brothers, who is in town for a show. I have the next couple days off and we’re going fishing and Christmas shopping! Speaking of family, a couple more members have joined blogland, so check out the links to my other sister-in-law, where you can see pretty pictures of my brother and cute nephew in the snow, and my very hilarious cousin, who thinks she is a hick.

I’m starting to decorate for Christmas. Just a little felt tree, with some of my vintage pearl buttons to get things kicked off on this cloudy morning. I haven’t done a lot of decorating the last couple years, which just makes me sad. It seems that there is never enough time, but if I do a little here, and a little there, we should have a festive little house in a couple weeks.

I think I’ll hang up the wreath on the front of the house tonight…