Happy New Year!!



And Christmas just continues on, here in Southeastern Wisconsin we finally got some measureable snow... our first real storm this year was the Monday after Christmas.  Miss A could hardly wait to get out into it... here's the happiest person in Wisconsin on December 27, 2015:

 

 

And here's the reality of Wisconsin on January 7, 2016:

 

 

The snow is already gray in places and black in others!  Ugh!  Winter...

 

Normally when I think of Christmas gifts my mind goes right to kids.  The years before the grands came, the holiday was kind of boring for DH and me.  The challenge was always what kind of gift to give my adult kids or the hubster that would enliven an otherwise quiet celebration. 

 

And gifts from the office?  Ha ha!  Either non-existant, or odd.  One year we did a Secret Santa exchange, and my SS turned out to be the creepy guy who was later discovered to be a stalker to some of the younger ladies -- but that's a whole other story!  And my previous boss used to show up with a box of Frango mints. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I love Frango mints, but seriously?  For a year's worth of awesome service??  And EVERY SINGLE YEAR??  No kidding, I worked for the guy for 17 years and every year it was the SAME THING...  No imagination I guess.  Or maybe he was Ebeneezer's descendent.  :-(

 

This year I got some nice Christmas presents that just keep on giving.  My current boss (or more precisely ONE of my current bosses) gave me a BIG Amazon gift card.  Big enough that there's still some left after several purchases!  Plus he sent me a lovely flower arrangement in Mid-December...

 

I got some books that I've been lusting after -- Sue Grafton's latest, called X, the new Anne Perry William Monk novel, and several used books including the Anne Perry Thomas Pitt book I missed when I read the series out of sequence!

 

I got a kids learn to crochet book because Miss A wants to learn that.  And I picked up books by Sara Paretsky and Reed Farrell Coleman to add to the pile.  But my favorite is the latest Louise Penny Inspector Gamache novel, The Nature of the Beast.

 

Additional finds (not from Amazon) included two Bonnie Hunter books and the compilation of the first ten 100 Blocks magazines, made into one massively heavy volume called, interestingly enough, 1,000 Blocks.  As in quilt blocks.  I had missed a couple of the volumes so I got the whole magilla now:

 

 

Last but not least, I got a GC for Joann's and with free shipping during the new years' sales, I got myself a Sizzix cutter!  I'm still reading up on how to use this and watching copious YouTube videos from the company but it looks like fun.   

 

 



I'll let you know if the fun continues!!

 

Craft on... Read on... and Happy New Year...