Boy oh boy, sometimes I don't know where the heck the days... weeks... months go, but life just seems to be rushing by, LOL. I'm always really busy, but I'm not sure what the heck I've been doing! Of course Christmas and New Years were full of activities with family and friends... and there's always year end business stuff that needs to be done (closing off old files / accounts, setting up new ones). I still seem to be coming across things I forgot about.

We've also taken some time to get together with family and friends we didn't have time to see over the holidays, and spent a lovely (but long!) day, driving out to see one of my BFF's from high school, then stopping for dinner with my DH's cousins in Smith Falls on the way home. We made a pit stop at Tim Horton's in our travels, and I discovered a sea salt donut that is just yummy! Fortunately they don't have them at my local Timmy's or my diet would be shot every time I went to town, LOL.

I try not to talk shop here, but I will mention that I have been busy lining up the events we're going to participate in this year... and boy, am I going to be busy! Here's a peek at the list so far... 4 On-Line Shows; 2 Creativ Festivals (these include classes and / or lectures and Make-It-Take-Its); a guild event in Muskoka; Quilt Canada; our Studio Tour; another guild event in Kingston; ANOTHER guild event in Toronto, LOL... and that's just what I've confirmed so far! Details will be posted in my newsletter as they become available...Whew, LOL... I'm tired just thinking about all that work!

Of course we're still piddling away at the house (sigh). Not much got done over Christmas, but while he was home in January, Bill did cut temporary wood countertop for the latest version of our kitchen, and we're going to live with that until the summer to be sure we're finally settled on how we're going to keep the kitchen! I need to get a plumber in to install the sink counter, then all our lower cabinets are installed. We're looking for some black "floating shelves" for down either side of the cabinet above the countertop stove (Ikea has the ones we want, but were out of stock when we were in Toronto, so we'll probably order them on line, now that we've seen exactly what we want).

Hey while we were in Toronto (attending POTTED POTTER, a theatre production I gave Bill tickets for at Christmas), we also did some shopping, and I found the most adorable whimsical reindeer to stand at the top of my stairs, LOL. His legs are extendable, so you can pose him short, or tall, or short in the front with his butt in the air, ROFLOL. Too cute - and half price!

We went down the day before, as it was an early matinee performance, so had lots of time to stop as the fancy hit us, and browse. You can spend a whole day just at Ikea - it's huge, and easy to get lost in there too! We do enjoy theatre, and also have tickets for a Murder Mystery Dinner closer to home, for Valentine's day, so next month I'll tell you how it was!

And I just spent some money at Amazon, ordering in some of the books we didn't receive or find over Christmas - Bill and I don't always have the same taste in books, but are both reading J. D. Robb's IN DEATH series (you won't believe it, but there are 56 books (including a few novelettes) in this series - so far!). She is SUCH a prolific writer, and her stories are so hard to put down! I'll find myself staying up to 3 a.m. because I'm almost done, LOL. As one of his Christmas gifts, I gave Bill 7-8 of the ones we were missing from near the beginning of the series, and just ordered a few we were missing to give us the first 20 (we have about half the rest, but there are gaps, so every month I'll order in a few more). I even managed to find one at our local secondhand bookstore before Bill left to go back to work last week, and he picked up the latest one while he was travelling, so we're getting there, ROFLOL.

Did I tell you Bill gave me $100 gift certificate to the bookstore as one of my Christmas presents? It's about half gone already - so you can see why we need a 2-storey library (wink). He also gave me some lovely jewelry, the entire DOWNTON ABBEY series, the first 3 seasons of the original MISSION IMPOSSIBLE series (funnily enough, I gave him all 5 of the new MI movies, with Tom Cruise, LOL), and the first season of CALL THE MIDWIFE (which I adore - makes me cry almost every week), among other goodies. As you can tell, I am very spoiled, LOL, and I adore books and movies!

Well, I want to start telling you about all the great designs I have in the works for this year, so I better close (wink)... However, I DO think it's a good idea to start telling you what my personal stitching project each month is, and we can compare our progress, LOL. I'm currently finishing up the miniature plaid chair (to go with my miniature table topper / rug), which I had the stitcher return, as I just couldn't wait any longer to see it. My progress report for January is that all the basic stitching is done (the stitcher did have all but one piece stitched), and now I'm going back and doing all the backstitching, as she left it all to the end, so none of the stitched pieces is backstitched. It's going faster than I expected - the final piece is stitched, and I would say the backstitching is about half done. I'm actually looking forward to the assembly part, as that's always a lot of fun for me - although a LOT of stitching on this one, so could take me a while to assemble...

talk to you next month, and happy stitching!