January

January is treating me well so far. Work is good and we are starting to pick up on the number of samples coming in. This is nice, since it means I don't have to sit around bored out of my mind all day long. :) I know...it sounds good, but trust me...eight hours of nothing to do is not fun for very long.

My family is well...at least mostly. Shane hurt his back Friday morning while he was still in Philadelphia. Poor thing had a day of class and then no sleep and then had to fly home. He is feeling better now, but I am not sure how much skiing he will be able to do next week. We are still excited about going though. He says that it will be nice, even if we spend the week with a nice bottle of something and a stack of movies. :) Which is all we did after he got home yesterday...sans bottle...but the movies were fun. I think we watched four or five movies before we finally went to sleep.

The other reason the ski trip will be fun is that my mother-in-law and I are going to get to work on the embroidery for the quilt we are making together. I am excited! Also, I plan to take a cross-stitch project that I have been working on and some knitting. Lots of crafting and cooking and having fun...yay!

I am still reading my way through my stack of library books and I am being good. I have not checked out any more yet. I need to finish the three I am reading first. And maybe the other two as well, we'll see. I did take a picture of the big one I told you about last time.

The book is titles 30,000 Years of Art and weighs 12 pounds. It's dimensions are 12" x 12" x 3". Lovely book! Full color photos of each piece of art on each page with descriptions, etc. I really would love to have this one. And it is pretty cheap. Only $32.97 on Amazon. I was so surprised. I assumed it would be priced like a textbook...around $100.00. Yay. Maybe I can get it soon. :)

Let's see...what else. My diet is going well. I have lost about 4 pounds this week. Don't worry, that is normal for South Beach. It will slow down. I fudged a little bit this weekend, but I will be good again all week so I can move onto Phase 2 in time for our trip. It is hard to have fun and eat yummy things on Phase 1.

I will take tons of pictures during our trip and post about it. Also, I hope to take some pictures of our quilt project to show our progress...or lack thereof...whatever happens. Pictures from our garden should be in the offing. The bulbs should be sprouting anytime now and I will be taking pictures regularly to show you all the prettiness. Shane and I also picked out the plants for my planted boxes and started a list for the vegetable garden. I can not wait for spring!

One last thing...a nifty blog. I am kinda behind the times, but for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, A Year of Crockpotting is the best. Last year she cooked every day with her crock pot. I wish I had known about it when she started, but Stephanie has archives of every post and every recipe is complete with pictures and instructions for the things she made, as well as review from her and her family. So many wonderful things to eat!