Happy 2009!

Reality will be setting in too soon! We've been having a lot of fun around here.

Lots of eating, drinking, relaxing. Linds has been here since just before Christmas and my sister and her husband are here from Alaska visiting.

Besides Christmas and New Year's, we've had Greek night Monday-I guess I was too anxious to get at that food and didn't get any photo's. That's really bad because I got a new one of these for Christmas!

Last night was ribs and venison tenderloins, a specialty of Bill's and remember that Mike is the BBQ King of Alaska! Didn't really get any photos of these either. But my mom did. My mom, sister, daughter and I have all decided to do the 365 Challenge on Flickr! We'll see how long that lasts. I'm hoping that there is power in numbers and no one will want to be the one that drops out!

I didn't get a lot of crafting done for Christmas. In October I got this idea that I would learn to knit socks. I've been knitting for a few years and still have a lot to learn! Socks are hard! Well, not really that hard, just time consuming and something you really need to pay attention to while you're doing it! OH, and gauge, that's important too! I found that out after almost completing one whole sock! So, since October, I knitted one and a half pairs of socks!

These are the socks I knitted for my Mom for Christmas! Still working on my sister's pair.

The only other crafty thing I did for Christmas was a case for my friend Kelley's cell phone.

I think she really liked it. I made it from this tutorial and made it to fit her phone.

My sister, the awesome bead maker, made lamp worked silver cored beads that fit Pandora bracelets for all the girls in the family. Not just one bead but enough for 10 for each of us! And there are seven of us! Yes SEVEN! That's 70 beads (I know, my math skills are amazing)!!!!! Really what is amazing are those beads! I will try to get up-close photos because any description I could try to give could not do them justice--they are gorgeous, beautiful, unusual, organic, intricate!

She gave us each a turn to pick a bead and we kept going around until they were gone. She had planned on doing a greed game type thing, but nobody wanted to steal because they didn't want to be stolen from! It was an amazing gift! She is working on a new website for her beads as soon as it's up and running I will have a link to it, it will definitely be worth checking out.

Gotta go get ready for tonight's activity. Dinner at an amazing restaurant and then project day and spaghetti dinner tomorrow! Sad day too, Lindsay is heading back down south. (In the months of no posting--she lost her job, moved to Nashville and is in search of the next great thing! Not sure what that is yet but she'll know it when she sees it I'm sure!)