Thoughts for New Year's Eve

I won't say "resolutions" because I think calling them that just sets a person up for disappointment. After all, we may set out with great intentions, but you know what they say is paved with those! Still, I think it is a good time of the year to take a stock of where we are and where we would like to aim for, if not actually reach. I want to continue to eat more and more sensibly, keeping down fat and too many empty carbs, but I won't restrict myself so much that I feel deprived of all good things. Much as I like salads, we can't live on them alone, so I'll aim for a good diet, with the occasional close encounter of the french-fry kind. Can't be helped! Somewhere in there I hope to lose a little (or a lot of) weight.

I also want to try more ethnic cooking, especially Indian and other Asian, as well as Mexican/Southwest. I have the cookbooks, I even have some of the ingredients, now all I have to do is cook them and convince other family members to eat them. Wish me luck on that last part! My dd Renee gave us a lovely basket filled with all kinds of goodies including kits to make chicken tikka and butter chicken, so that will be my starting point I think. Dd Nicole gave me a great flat-bottomed wok, which will work on my new stove (the old one wouldn't), so that will be great for my Asian cooking.

Okay, so that was all about food! I also want to do more scrapbooking and especially to do more work on my old pictures (those of my childhood and the even older ones of various ancesters and mystery people). I want to also keep up with the current batch of photos and stories to tell., the trips, the day to day stuff... ooo, there's a lot of it! I have made a check-sheet with weeks down the side and various albums listed across the top, and I hope to do a little on each album every week. We'll see how that goes, but I have done the check-sheet thing before and it's great to see the accumulating marks as pages are done. Luckily I don't do a lot of techniquie, complicated scrapping. And here is where I thank Becky Higgins, Becky Fleck, the people at Simple Scrapbooks, and Scrap Maps, and all the other wonderful designers of sketches so that people like me have a starting point to work from for at least some of our layouts. What would I do without them!

What else? Well I hope I can keep up writing in this blog as well as keep up with my friends from CKMB and in their blogs. I hope I will find the time and energy to post a few of the layouts I want to make, on my "sister" blog ("My Layouts", which is currently layout-less) or elsewhere, something I find immensely time-consuming, I'm afraid. I'm looking forward to seeing some friends on a scrapbook cruise in April, at a scrapbook convention in Machester, NH in May and hopefully at CKU-M in Boston in August. There will no doubt be trips with my husband, and maybe with one or more of my daughters, but they haven't been planned yet. There will be lots of hockey games to attend, lots of choir practices and church services, and lots of unknown things to come. Hope this year brings each of you new challenges and joys. Happy New Year!
Pam

Time for a barbecue!

Why let winter slow you down? Get out the old BBQ, the lawn chair, and a nice cooler of your favorite beveridge.

Winter

My husband took these pictures out by our cottage today. He went to check on it because there had been a storm surge (high water and ice) and he wanted to make sure there was no damage. Everything was just fine except there was a lot of ice covering everything. Winter can be very beautiful I think, as well as cold and dangerous at times.

Weather Pixie

As you can see I have a brand-new weather pixie to show you what it is like in my part of the world. This is thanks to my dear friend Kip who (unlike me) understands things like HTML and who put it there. I did have to make a change in it and I finally figured out where to go to do it. I'm slow Kip, but I get there eventually! How can we get along without a little help from our friends? What the pixie isn't really letting on is that the world is very white outside now and in fact when I looked out the window earlier I couldn't see our car at all. I thought it was gone! I could see the Jeep but not the Volvo wagon, which was totally covered in snow. Considering that is poured rain last night it was quite a surprise. Winter has hit and I hope people travelling will take it easy and be safe. Glad I don't have to go anywhere today!

The stockings were hung...

I thought this was quite funny...here are our stockings, including all the little ones for cats and dogs, hung over the fireplace, with the fire "blazing" away on top of them, on the TV! We got this flat-screen TV this year and put it on the wall over the (rarely-used) fireplace and all day on Christmas, the local cable company broadcasts this fire.

Merry Christmas!

We had a lovely Christmas. Christmas Eve we had our church service which was lovely and daughter Nicole, I , and the rest of the choir managed to light everyone's candles at the end of it without lighting anyone else on fire and/or burning each other's hair and/or dripping hot wax on ourselves. You know, those who are choir members and have the bigger candles don't get the little paper collars that keep the wax from dripping on our hands like all the rest of the people do, and if the wax drips you just accept it silently and carry on! Ah, the price of service! Never mind, it was all good, and we sang our carols well, and the musicians (flute, vioin, bassoon) were glorious. Afterwards we took some pictures back at the house, and gave out the traditional Christmas pyjamas to the girls, got ready for bed and put out the presents. The next morning, everyone was happy with their gifts and we had a nice relaxing day with the girls playing some board games and trying to work their new iPods, until it was time to go to my Brother-in-law's for Christmas dinner. Fun times again with the extended family. The pictures for the evening are all on film, so I can't post them yet until they are printed and scanned, but here are afew from Christmas Eve, the girls and I and some cats. One thing that I din;t mention about Christmas morning was the fun scavenger hunt that daughter Alix had us do to retrieve the gifts that she had bought for us. Each of us had a series of rhyming clues which led to the next clue and ultimately to the gift. It was so much fun! My gift from her was a bowl and a mug that had been made by her art teacher who does wonderful ceramic work.

pictures

OK Worked this time. I couldn't get them to load before.

The problem with being ready for Christmas

I'm bored! I have done all my buying and crafting and wrapping and baking (which is pretty minimal really). I have my tree decorated and my house is decorated in a pretty minimal fashion this year, with bowls of red and gold Christmas tree balls and I like it like that! I usually put a garland all up my stair railing but I didn't do that this year. We have had the required choir practice for Christmas eve, where the most time was taken up in figuring out what order everyone should sit in the back pews during the prelude so we could get up and neatly form a line to process up to the choir loft during the first hymn. The second most amount of time seemed to be required for figuring out how we were going to stand later on in the service to light candles in the congregation. Oh yes, we did sing some too! My daughter Nicole is joining us for Christmas Eve. She sang in Junior Choir and then in Senior Choir all through high school and whenever she could when home from college and it is so nice to have her beside me in the choir loft again! Another choir member's daughter is also with us and another one's daughter AND grandaughter, so it is lovely to have these extra voices. Here's another picture of the church and one of one of my bowls of balls. The church picture, of course, is from the Moncton Chorale performance of Messiah.

hmmm...

Well I just discovered that the order of the pictures changes when the post is published. Live and learn! Obviously NZ Santa is now #1!
Pam

More Christmas

Time for the Christmas dance! Here is my daughter, then her with a friend after getting all dressed up at our place. Note her lovely straight hair: I tried curling it and it was such a disaster that she had to wet it down again, dry it and straighten it. There goes my career as a hairdresser! (LOL) The third picture is NZ Santa which came all the way from NZ and is now finally residing on my tree. One of the wonderful things about getting to know people all over the world through a scrapbooking message board is the very real friendship that can form over such long distances. I have the great joy and priviledge to count people in Australia, New Zealand, England, all across the US and Canada as my friends and just one example among many of the ways these friendships can manifest themselves is this NZ Santa sent to me this Christmas. Thanks Clare! I didn't send much out this year but I have a plan for next year - are you all worried yet?
Pam

Handel's Messiah

At the end of November, beginning of December, the choir I am a member of (The Greater Moncton Chorale) performed Handel's Messiah along with Symphony New Brunswick, under the direction of guest conductor Howard Dyck. It was a lot of work preparing for it and doing the three concerts in Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John, but SO worthwhile and it has really put me in the Christmas spirit ever since. Here's a picture of our church, Central United, and the choir and orchestra.

Well here I am!

I didn't think I would do this blogging thing but it seems like I had to join in if I wanted to post to a few friends' blogs , so here I am! I don't imagine I'll write too often, but I hope this is a place I can post a few pictures and keep in touch with a few friends. Hope it works! Guess I'll have to try it to find out!
Pam