Happy 2010 and a little bit of the year in review!

Well, this blog post has been a wee bit longer in coming than I originally said in my last post, oy, so sorry! With the holidays, being sick, and working blogging took a backseat this week! I'm hoping to be much better about this in the coming months.

And, just in case you wanted to know (warning: may be a tad TMI) I'm currently covered in hives from the waist up; Alex and I think I may be having some sort of allergic reaction to our Christmas tree. We took it down today and within half an hour of taking it outside I started breaking out. I have been itchy and red for about 5 hours now - I've tried taking a shower, dousing myself in calamine lotion, and I just took an antihistamine. We'll see what happens, I really just don't want to be itchy like this when I go into work tomorrow.

So, I wanted to (finally) share with you all the large project that has been taking up my time over the past few months before Christmas, but...my camera batteries died just as I was about to transfer the pictures to my computer. They are now in the charger and I promise I will finally unveil the super-secret project in my next post! I'll give you a hint though...I finally used the fabrics shown in the second picture from this post.

I will, however, fill you all in on the super-awesome presents I got for Hanukkah and Christmas. We went to Alex's parents on the second night of Hanukkah and had a great dinner. Alex gave me two Black Apple prints for Hanukkah, unfortunately I can't link to them in her shop right now because she's on holidays, but trust me - they're awesome! I will share them either when she reopens, or when I can take a picture of them. Alex's parents gave me a bracelet, the new Lucy Maud Montgomery book The Blythes are Quoted (which I've already finished and let me tell you it was fantastic), the new biography on Lucy Maud Montgomery by Jane Urquhart (which I'm reading right now), a pair of slipper socks, some gingerbread body lotion, and an immersion blender. Pretty great, eh?

For Christmas we went to my Mum's (and then to my grandparent's on Boxing Day); we have a tradition of eating junk food (no dinner) and watching White Christmas (my favourite!) on Christmas Eve. My Mum bought me two sewing books: Home Sewn, and Weekend Sewing. She actually bought me One Yard Wonders too, but then my grandparents stole it from her and gave it to me for Christmas, haha! She also gave me some fabric, a couple of acrylic rulers, food, a whole bunch of other sewing notions (marking pencils, bobbins, pins, etc), The Bay's charity bear (which I get every year), and a bunch of other stuff. One of the neatest things actually was that she ordered me a manual for Genevieve, my Janome (yay Cathi!) and I've learned some new things from it already.

Alex got me some bubble bath, a soup cookbook (I love soup!), The Bay's Olympic mittens, and...wait for it...a KitchenAid Accolade stand mixer! We will not go into all of the drama surrounding the mixer (let's just say it didn't work when I plugged it in and I'm getting a new one), but I love this boy! I can't wait to use it for the first time!

All in all, it was a pretty good holiday season. If I hadn't been sick and been so exhausted it would have been a little cheerier, but it was really nice to have the time to relax and just hang out. We didn't do much of anything on Christmas day except watch movies and play Clue (yay!). Alex and I also went for a drive to test out the new GPS my Mum gave him - he really likes it.

Alex and I decided to stay in on New Year's - we cooked ourselves a nice dinner (lamb chops on a bed of couscous and arugala), drank a bottle of champagne, and fell asleep before midnight! I go back to school on Monday for the new semester, I really hope that it's much less dramatic than the last.

So that this post isn't completely devoid of pretty pictures, here's a little montage of the projects I've completed this year (really, that I've completed since June since that's when I really started sewing again) minus the aforementioned super-secret project:

1. Lucy's Quilt, 2. Madeleine the Monkey, 3. Joshua's t-shirts, 4. Jenna and Joel's quilt, 5. Mo's Independence Day cuff, 6. Alex's owl pin, 7. Felt Bird Pillow (commonly known as Walter), 8. The owls, Ollie and Hemingway, 9. Buttons, 10. Pillows for our living room, 11. My first bag pattern, 12. Fabric bracelet and button earrings, 13. Mo's Buttercup bag, 14. Patchwork Scarflette, 15. Viliya's Quilt, 16. Embroidery (the tree was turned into an ornament), 17. Tote bag, 18. Irish Flood Relief blocks

There were other things made this year (including a whole slew of little things for Dionne) which I don't have pictures of. Hopefully I will get even more completed this year! One of my big goals for 2010, other than doing well in both school and work and just generally being happy, is opening up my Etsy shop. Alex has suggested that I schedule time throughout the week for just shop sewing and I think this would be a really great idea. I have so many patterns, ideas, and beautiful things running through my brain and I'd really like to put them out there.

Happy 2010 everyone! I will be back soon (I really believe this will happen) to share the super-secret project with you all!