It's New Year's Eve 2008....

....and what am I doing at 9:55 pm? Updating my blog after working until 7pm. As everyone knows, I'm NOT a party girl so why not try and get some stuff done???? I finally finished addressing Christmas cards this morning before going to work but need to get some more stamps on Friday since some are taking more than one. Thought I'd share some holiday photos: These are from Fellowship Alliance's Christmas cantata (also known as Marathon week). We sing Tuesday through Friday night to a packed house of about 650 per night. The choir also serves desserts and beverages before we go on to sing. For me, it's work all day, take my concert clothes with me, stop and get dinner for Sandy and I, eat dinner in her office at church, change to concert clothes, do the cantata, go home. Repeat 3 more times. It's a blast but exhausting!! Sandy shot the one of me with the dessert tray; the gentleman in the lower right is our choir director.

Some decoration shots. I built two really cool outdoor shelves that mount on our railings. I'll have to take some outdoor shots or wait till Sandy downloads hers. We also created a Christmas tree farm of 3 trees that we're really happy with. (Becca is rubbing off.) The "Seasons Greetings" is over the main street here in town. Our manger set is one that we bought in Israel about 15 years ago and is made of olive wood.

Some other December memories: "Oscar" --Sandy's Harrods 2008 Christmas bear, afternoon tea at the Mulberry Tea House, a shot of some of the hundreds of Angel Tree gifts waiting to be distributed at church, The Cookie Files, and some of the many stockings I made to use as containers for homemade goodies. They were very well received!

Now it's on to new projects and new goals for 2009! Have a wonderful and blessed year!

Enjoy,

Janet

Black and White and Grey All Over

.... we have finally done it. Made all the arrangements and paid the deposit and now our house is a beautiful shade of granite grey with white trim and black shutters. And it's almost done. We contacted with a local company to have the house covered in vinyl siding---in the long run, definitely the smartest thing to do. Maintenance free, energy efficient, and a great curb appeal investment. Actually a single contractor is working on our house and he lives about two blocks down our street! His craftsmanship and attention to detail is superb. We'll still have some work to do when he's finished like painting the doors, the basement window frames and the ornamental trimwork (which is staying pink) and replacing the porch railings with vinyl coated ones. But all that will probably have to wait until it gets warm again since the paint won't cure properly in these temperatures. Some photos of the house in progress.

In other news, it's December and that means Shimelle's "Journal Your Christmas". OK so I'm still working on Christmas 2007. I'm beginning again with 2008. Hopefully I'll get some pages done to share BEFORE the temperature reaches 80.

Wishing I could have been in Omaha for the past 10 days or so--wanted so badly to be there for Becca and the emotional roller coaster she and Scott have been on and to share Katie and Garrett's joy as they became husband and wife! But for Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and absolutely rotten airfares we were SO there!

Off to the studio to work for a while. I'm tired of cleaning in preparation for decorating!

Enjoy,

Janet