Almost Gone

This is the same post I make at the end of each year with a few changes here and there to suit the time of my life. It may get old to some but it works for me.

A New Year is right around the corner! A brand new clean calendar! It's up to each one of us what we do with it. Each year I make the same goals with a possible extra or two tossed in for good measure. I prefer to use "goals" instead of "resolutions" because I feel that I am taking already important things in my life and putting my focus on strengthening them.

1. To make an effort to learn something new every day. The joy of knowledge is indeed a blessing no matter what you choose to learn.

2. To make time for myself. It's amazing what 15 minutes sitting on the deck with a hot cup of coffee and watching the birds can do for my soul. A little time each day to refresh my spirit is all it takes.

3. To take time to appreciate each day. Too often we forget to see the beauty around us and take the simple things in life for granted. My continued goal is to look with my eyes but to see with my heart. To simply enjoy life and all that is a part of it.

4. To enjoy my family and friends. I am lucky to have each and every one of them in my life. I have been blessed with so many online friends and each day I am grateful for each one of you! My online stitching and blogging friends are a very important part of my life!

5. Organize and Simplify! Two key words I always yearn to make a part of my everyday routine but often lose focus on. Organize doesn't mean I have to go on a cleaning rampage each day. It just means I need to get my life and things that are a part of my life in some of manageable order so that I feel comfortable instead of constantly overwhelmed. Not putting things off until the last minute can contribute greatly to this cause! Simplify! Just what it means - plain and simple! Stop making a mountain out of a mole hill, do what I can and leave the rest, don't volunteer for more than I feel I can handle or feel will stress me out!

6. To Remember. So many people have come and gone from my life over the recent years and I want to keep their memory alive.
7. To keep my faith alive and strong.

And of course the New Year just wouldn't be complete without a few just plain fun goals!

1. Take more trips. Even day trips can be fun.

2. No pressure. Keep the fun and joy in stitching. This is why I started in the first place! I actually have several special projects planned for this year but will keep them a secret until I start.

3. Take more pictures.

4. Continue to have blog give a ways

5. Get back into life! Period. Plain and simple.

6. Work on home improvements. We have plenty to choose from!

Have a safe New Year's Eve! Thanks for stopping by! Until next time, may you have simple days and an uncluttered heart.

Remember to leave a comment on December 28 post if you are interesting in entering the giveaway!

The Day After

Once again, I want to say thank you to all my blogging, stitching and scrapping friends. This has been a rough year for me and to know that all of you have been there to support me has meant more than I can possibly put into words. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. You are definitely special people in my book!

The Hospice House where my Dad passed away is planning to start a memorial walkway. They have asked families of those who have passed away here to make a donation and in return a brick will be placed with the loved one's name in the walkway. I am thrilled to announce that my Dad will have a brick in this special memorial. It means a lot to me because my Dad loved this area. He lived here for over 50 years. Worked here, raised a family here and had a life. He is not buried here though and I have wanted to do something to say "yes, he was here and he placed his mark on this city". Now there will be.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. It was raining all day here so we all stayed indoors playing with our gifts and watching movies all day. I got up early Christmas morning to make sure that Harold's stocking got filled nice and full! He seemed to like everything he got whether it was wrapped or pulled from his stocking.

As for me, I got some of the gifts I had asked for then Santa surprised me with the Christmas at Hawk Run Hollow pattern! Oh my gosh! I know I said I wouldn't buy any more and I didn't! Santa got it for me! Maybe I need to get busy on these HRH designs I have sitting around because I know I will want Autumn when it is released!

Not much planned for today. I may venture out later today to pick up some floss. Until next time, may you have simple days and an uncluttered heart.

Have a Merry Christmas

My turkey is in the fridge thawing out. I usually get a great big tray of BBQ from my favorite place to last from Christmas Eve all through Christmas Day. For several days, everyone can make a BBQ sandwich or have a nice BBQ plate with fixings. It gives me a time out from all the holiday cooking too but to my surprise this year when I went to place my order, the one really good BBQ place (in my opinion) around here that I enjoy had closed down! AGH! No BBQ this Christmas because I just don't like the other places that much. I'll cook.



Here is a progress picture of my stitching. I only have several flowers left on this section before I can move on to the last section of the design and then I will finished! Also, I got a wonderful tin of goodies from Edgar! How sweet of him to do this and they were delicious! I say "were" because what the boys didn't finish off, I did! I called dibs on the wonderful white chocolate bark with nuts and dried cranberries! Yum!



This will probably be my last post of the week. Tomorrow I will be getting an early start on some things for Christmas Eve dinner. Christmas Eve, I will be cooking and Christmas Day I plan to rest up and let everyone eat left overs.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday. Until next time may you have simple days and an uncluttered heart. I am already working on several more challenge scrapbooking layouts for the holidays. I am so glad I got back into this! I love the inspiration! Be on the look out soon for another giveaway, too!

Christmas Week Begins

The ice was gone early in the weekend. The temps didn't warm up much but the sun did it's job getting rid of it. Yea. I love snow but ice is totally different story. No thanks, I'll pass on that.

I read a wonderful article from about grieving during the holidays and how to keep Christmas alive during this sad time for so many. I even shared it with DH since he has lost both parents within the past 5 years and now both my parents are gone as well. The article first stated that often you have re-route Christmas traditions after the loss of a loved one and many people even feel this type of lose when moving away from family or experiencing the empty nest syndrome. The article suggested that you and your spouse (or a good friend) start a new holiday tradition. A day trip, a day with a movie and dinner. It could be something silly or something traditional but let it become a tradition and it will be meaningful. You could also start a new tradition all by your little ol' lonesome such as taking a class of some kind, a quite lunch out, a new project. The traditions you had with your missing loved ones can never be replaced but starting a new one can often help ease the hurt you feel from their loss. Harold and I discussed it and we both like the idea. We are going to start with one new tradition this year and add several more to the list next year.

For more than several years I have been thinking that I would really like to get new Christmas stockings for me and Harold. I have always looked while out shopping during the season but never found what I wanted until this year! I just love them! They are smaller than our old ones but look how fun they are compared to our old plain and boring ones! These are up and ready for Santa to fill.

Back and Cold!

I am back. I have been in a bad funk since the summer months with all that has been happening. I really haven't even been in much of Christmasy mood so far. This past week was pretty quite. I spent time reflecting on a lot of things and people. I took time to visit the blogs I enjoy reading so much. I had a quite birthday several days ago. It hurt to know I wouldn't be getting my Dad's usual call with a big boisterous version of Happy Birthday on the other end but I was happy to hear from several other loved ones. Harold surprised me by coming home early, we went out to eat some good comfort food then came back home and I climbed into my new snuggly jammies for the rest of the evening.

I worked on my stitching some over this past week and it is slowly moving along. I have promised myself that I will not be getting any new designs for awhile. I have 3 boxes of kitted up charts just waiting for their turn at the needle. I am still enjoying getting back into my scrapbooking / journaling / photography. It is good to get these thoughts and feelings down.

No snow in our weather yet but we have been having some mighty cold days and nights. I don't think my poor ol' nose has unthawed completely in a full week! The forecast is calling was calling for a winter mix in our area yesterday. We saw some snow and sleet while we were running some errands yesterday but this morning we woke up to see this. We had alot of ice last night while we slept. Ugh!

Everyone has blogging dry spells and I hope to be better about blogging now. Until next time, may you have simple days and uncluttered heart.

Anything Christmas

Yes, I am still working on my stitching. Just taking it slow. For my hand's sake and because of other things keeping me busy right now. I do manage to put a couple stitches in a day though. Life is finally showing some signs of turning around and letting us get back our normal routines.

I admit it. I want it all. I want time to do it all. I want all the walls in my home to be over flowing with stitched pieces. I want our beds and closets to be full of loving quilts I have made. I want to scrapbook and journal our lives, our memories and what everyday means to me. I want a garden that makes you want to pitch a tent and live outdoors among it all. I want a magazine Christmas. You know the perfect tree with everyone all cozied up and happy. Not to mention that the house just looks perfect while doing it all on a budget! LOL. Now I will take a moment for a *big sigh* while reality moves back into place. It's frustrating but it keeps me moving.

This mini album is for a challenge over at Practical Scrappers. It will be a good place to keep photo and memories of Christmas needle arts I make or gifts.

Challenge Layout - Workout #9

I have enjoyed scrapping all these challenge layouts this month. There are even more I hope to get done. This one was done for Workout #9 over at ScrapFit. The layout was to use 1 picture, 1 word, some glitter and have plenty of white space. I journaled on the back that this was a picture of my moma taken during her last Christmas season before she passed away. She is playing with my dog (which was also a Christmas present one year).

Challenge is Good

I did this layout for the current challenge over at the All About Me blog. As soon as I read the challenge, I knew it was for me. After all that has happened this year and this being the first Christmas since my Dad passed away there will be alot of emotions running helter skelter. I hope that journaling them will help. You can click on the photo to see it better.

Thanks AAM!

Mid Week

This is layout is from a challenge over at The Good Grief Blog. I really enjoyed doing this one. I don't know if you can read the journaling or not but this one is very special to me.

Our weather has gone back and forth lately from very chilly to nice no sweater needed days and from sunny to yucky won't stop raining for a moment days! That's how it usually is around here from December all the way through the mid part of February!

Have a wonderful day! Until next time may you have simple days and an uncluttered heart!

December is Here!

I have been gone from my blog way too long! I have been around but life has sort been upside down for the present. It happens. Not often, thank goodness but when it does happen I wait for it to flip back around and give my life a bit of normalcy. Right now, I am waiting.

Wow! It's December already! I missed my November goal of finishing up MHIBIG but I did work on it some. I can always give myself till the end of December to finish it up. It has been awhile since I posted any progress pictures so I will do that today! I did get some greenery done and a few flowers started since last time.

During December I want to work on some layouts from the challenge blogs at the right. During the month there are all types of classes for mini books for documenting up until Christmas or even the entire month. I have chosen to do the entire month of December. I did this once before and really enjoyed it. Who knows, maybe next year I will start at Thanksgiving and go all the way through.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I haven't pulled out any of our Christmas yet which is very unlike me. I usually get it all out and start putting things up on Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe soon.

Thanks so much for stopping by to visit and thank you to all my readers who stick by me during these off moments when I don't blog quite as regularly as I would like.

Until next time, may you have simple days and an uncluttered heart.