Welcome to 2008 - Hope it's a great year

We have survived the holidays and are pretty much back to normal again. The freeways starting this week made that abundantly clear - gridlock has fully returned. It was nice for the past two weeks to only take 30 minutes to get to and from work instead of the usual 1 hr. and 15 min. Urghhh

The kids in Seattle and Bellingham had really nice Christmas days - with little ones around, the spirit of the holiday really blooms. Elsie Quinn was totally amazed when she came downstairs and saw the tree had exploded with presents. She got lots of goodies - Santa thought she had been a very good girl her first year. He gave her a baby doll and stroller, a huge Elmo and small Grover, a vacuum cleaner so she can clean when Mommy does, and daddy gave her a computer (of course). She got crayons and loves to sit at the dining room table drawing. I guess she's become quite the little Mommy with her baby doll and carries the moses basket and strolls with her baby all through the house. With a new baby brother coming this month those skills will come in very handy!

Santa was good to me too this year. I have struggled along using a very worn Singer sewing machine which for basic hemming and scrapbooking worked fine, but for anything more than that it would fizzle. Santa brought me a wonderful new one - top of the line computerized Singer that sews, hems, button holes, sews on buttons and self-threads! Wow - have I been having fun. I had planned to make a flannel quilt for Atticus with a pirate theme and did it over the weekend in less than 2 days. I am now making 'tag-blankets' with cowboys and indians in a retro print. I have lots of material so plan on making extras and selling them on my Etsy shop site.

I will be heading to Seattle on the 25th to help out when Atticus joins the family. It should be fun. I miss Reyna so much and enjoy just having her in the same house with me.

I guess the other big news would be the elections going on in Iowa and New Hampshire. I was really not concentrating on the candidates very much - Louie watches Fox News every day he's home so I had seen a few of the Republican debates but none of the candidates spoke to me and how I felt about things. I knew Hillary wasn't my type either. One day I heard a bit of a speech Obama gave and it stopped me in my tracks. I knew of him but not where he stood on any issues. I didn't like that Oprah was so involved and had ignored him up until I heard that speech. I checked his website and fell in love with his honesty and "upfrontness" (new word) about every issue imaginable. It was awesome. I pledged some pocket change to his cause and volunteered for the Arizona Obama Coalition and that gets us to today. I am hoping the trend continues for him and he has a big win in New Hampshire today. It sounds good so far.

Hope you have a great month.

Hannah

DreamingInColors.etsy.com

September is here...almost Halloween

As I am told daily - Halloween is almost here. According to my daughter Halloween should be as big or bigger than Christmas. I spend almost as much on candy each year as I do on Christmas so I figure it's almost what she's wishing it were. We live in a development that fringes agriculteral land, and truckloads for farm kids come by each year and it lasts for 4 hours and I always run out of candy. I may conplain but I love it. Some towns and cities don't have that kind of neighborhood traffic anymore which I find so sad. Another thing from my and my children's childhood that is disappearing. (Please vote in the poll that follows this posting)

I am really getting into Etsy and my journals. Never being a marketing genious has proven the difficult part of all of it. How to get the word out and spread it coast to coast is hard. There are so many great things to see on Etsy that the down side is you get lost in the shuffle.

I'm getting better at doing digital papers. It's still takes me time to narrow down what I want to use and what it should look like, but the actual task is faster than I thought it ever would be.

My daughter is coming to town from Seattle to celebrate her birthday this weekend. (The BIG 30) We always do the CKC Show in Sept. and that and a group night at Recollections (crop night) headlines our list of to-do's this weekend. She coming alone for the first time since becoming a mother about a year ago, and I can't wait to see how things go back at her home with Daddy in charge for 3 days with an 11 month old.That will be a full blog unto itself I bet.

Anyway, we plan on cropping, shopping and eating our way from one side of town to the other. I can't wait.

Thanks for checking in!

Hannah
DreaminginColors.etsy.com