Catching up

I've spent the week working and finishing Christmas projects. Janice, your last two napkins were finished quickly and will be in your mailbox soon.

I can't say the same for a few other projects, which should be going quickly, but aren't. And, then there are those Christmas cards . . . .

I'm also thinking through some goals for the year and getting my house back in order and, maybe, redecorated a little. For the last many years, I've had a couple of pink and green quilts that I rotated on my bed, but I had this red one in the guest bedroom at Christmas and remembered how much I liked it. I like red almost any time, anyway, so I'll try it one my bed for awhile. When I moved into my house, I planned for a red living and dining area and at the last minute chickened out and went with a very pale pink. I was really pleased with that for the first few months, then started wondering if I should have stayed with the red. We'll see how I like this and go from there.

It was a good New Years Eve. Because I worked until 6, I didn't make the trip to Ashland, KY, like I usually do, and I went to Steph's instead. The food was ever so delicious. Helen and Jack brought trout and green beans, Bridget brought bread stuffed with mushrooms, cheese, and butter, Steph made a tossed salad with goat cheese, walnuts, and pears. I brought homemade applesauce and a pumpkin cheesecake from Kroger's. Except for that cheesecake, everything looked and tasted fabulous.

Here are Aunt Tina and Bridget playing with Aaron, who had a big evening showing off his talking skills.

Nora asked to have her picture taken with her new doll from Aunt Tina. She's often a little leary of my camera, but I guess she felt this was important.

I wish I'd taken a picture of the entire group, which leads me to my first New Year's resolution, to take better pictures. I was doing ok until I started working, then things got a little sloppy. I'm not happy about that, so that's goal one.

I try to have a few goals that are long term throughout the year and some that can be accomplished fairly quickly and easily. I like to feel like I'm getting somewhere. Looking through last year's, though, I noticed that a couple of the easy ones didn't weren't done. Rather than feeling bad about that, I'll just recycle those. One was to mount a small quilts on canvas and one was to mount a small quilt on plexiglass. And now we have goals two and three.