Happy New Year!

Hello! Happy New Year! I hope you are having a nice New Year's Day, wherever you are. If you're here for a stampy post, stamping references will be thin on the ground. Feel free to click my sidebar to greener stamping pastures. Otherwise, get yourself a cup of tea and settle in for a nice fireside chat.

We've been having a great Christmas. Here are some highlights:
- lots of family time, with cousins, grandparents (my parents), my brother and his family, and friends over
- great food, from family favourites to several marvellous recipes from British celebrity chefs (Jamie Oliver's greens with flavoured butter must be tried - fantastic! and his festive strudel was a wonderful way to use up the leftover Christmas pudding and well worth the trip to the produce market for a quince, though an apple would be fine instead - I just wanted to try a quince; lots of great Nigella recipes)
- pyjama days
- the new Maeve Binchy
- the new Jack Whyte
- Playmobil (the kids LOVE it, we are all converts. It's great stuff, fantastic play value and very good quality)
- great Christmas CDs (faves are Barenaked Ladies, the new Bob Dylan, Maddie Prior and the Carnival Band, the Irish Tenors, John Denver and the Muppets
- picnics in forts with the cousins
- Church on Christmas Eve
- listening to DH play his guitar
- tobogganing
- lots and lots of other great things!

Since it's New Year's Day, I thought I would mention resolutions. I don't normally make a lot since I am not very good at keeping them. I more take a day-to-day approach since trying to be perfect for a whole year at a time seems doomed to failure since I can't make it through even one day without some sort of lapse of character, if not several lapses on many dimensions throughout the day. Still, I did try to think of some goals. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Eat more fruits and vegetables.
2. Put laundry away when it's done in the dryer/off the line.
3. Be more patient with the children.
4. Use my bread machine.
5. Hang out at airports and train stations in effort to see real-life flash mob.
6. Go to bed before midnight.
7. Send some of the cards I make.
8. Have friends over more often.

Well, that's it for blogging this evening. My first post of 2011. Here's to many more, hopefully more with stamping in them! Happy New Year! May it be a good one for you.