Yes, it’s still crazy around here.  Two blog posts in a month is pretty bad.  Do I dare make a New Year’s resolution about that?  Nope.  I don’t have a great track record with resolutions.  Let’s just leave it at that I will be trying to get back on a regular blogging schedule.  I really love my blog but the past few months have definitely been out of the ordinary so hopefully we’ll be back to ordinary pretty soon.

In the mean time, Christmas happened and it’s not really over yet here.  We’ve got some celebrating with family tonight and tomorrow.  Altamont had the Victorian Holidays celebration and the Festival of Trees.  The Spinning Room yarn shop came in second place behind a 4th grade class.  Here is the Spinning Room tree:

And here is the local dentist’s tree just because it’s silly:

And here is the Altamont Library’s tree because it is all about a book I want to read:

Lucky me because Paul got that book (The Martian) from my mom for Christmas so I can read it when he’s done!

And here is our tree:

Here is a Christmas present Paul re-finished for my sister:

It used to be all rusty and yellow and peeling vinyl on the seat (we found it at Brimfield for $10).  He sand blasted it, painted it and re-covered the seat and back.  He’s so handy.  If I was more organized and more patient, I’d wait for Paul to come inside and get the before picture from him. (He’s out stacking the rest of the wood. I helped a little bit today but then I had to come inside to dust and clean the bathrooms.  Had to.  And write this blog.  Had to.)

Merry Christmas to us – guess what we got the day after Christmas?….

I love, Love, LOVE stacking wood!  (not)

And wouldn’t you know, Paul happened to have a tarp big enough to cover it up since it got dark and started to rain before we could stack it all:

Seriously, who has a tarp that big???? (Paul)

I made some Christmas cookies:

Salted toffee-chocolate squares; rugelach; oatmeal raisin cinnamon chip bars. The bars and squares were very easy and VERY tasty.  The rugelach was not as easy but VERY tasty.

Remember the Play-Doh fuzzy pumper barber set from waaaaaaay back when?  The Doodlebugs got the today-equivalent:

The loved it sooooooooo much!  Me?  Not so much.  Now, I am not usually one to shy away from crafty things for the doodlebugs to do that are messy.  I’m good with cleaning up messes.  However.  This?  This creates 8 gazillion teeny tiny wee small bits of play doh that go everywhere.  EVERYWHERE!!!  I think we all went to the library, later on, with bits of play doh on our pants and shirts.  I was finding bits all day long.  I’m sure their mom and dad are still finding them.  But, as I said to their mom, they just loved it so much that I will of course take it out for them whenever they ask (but with gritted teeth).

How about some knitting?

I finished this hat for my mom , which was a long time coming:

I brought it to the Christmas Eve family party and promptly forgot to give it to her!

I finished these:

And I’m almost done with these (they just need to be felted):

I also started this scarf for my mother-in-law with some yarn she found for $1.29 a ball and just loved the colors:

And, AND, AND!!!!….. I finished my Baa-ble Sheep Hat and I just love it so much.

I borrowed a pom pom maker which made making one so quick and easy.  Boy was I glad because I was pretty much dreading making one (measuring and cutting out a cardboard template, winding yarn around the flimsy template etc).  I was even contemplating no pom pom because I didn’t want to make one.  But this one was so incredibly handy and easy.  And now I love me hat!!!

And New Year’s is about to happen.  So, Happy New Year!  See you in the hopefully more blog-ful 2016.