Friday & New Year's Eve

I spent WAY TOO MUCH time Friday morning (12/30) working on Christmas card labels…why can’t mail merge ever work for me? Why don’t my box of labels show up under the choices in WORD? Why can’t I be thin no matter what I eat? These and other questions continue to confound me :~).

I was finally finished in the early afternoon and got one more row of quilting done before starting to put sashing between my 4 patch blocks. I can’t remember what we had for dinner….but we spent the night in front of the TV, writing notes in our Christmas cards.

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I stayed in bed extra long on Saturday morning (12/31)…Cookie would come and visit, then go away, then come and visit, then go away….finally at 9 AM I decided I had better get up! Michael left before 10 AM, praying that the rain wouldn’t start until the afternoon, while I headed to the studio to finish up quilting:

There was a lot of negative space on this quilt and I think the design looks terrific!

My honey came home around 1…he got in 10 holes before the rain really started, and I finished up quilting by 1:30 PM. I dropped back after that to adding sashing to my 4 patches and by dinnertime I had all of my rows done:

I am really liking the brown sashing….I think it just makes the 4 patches look sharper.

Michael and I headed to the kitchen, to work on killer pecan sticky buns (which rise overnight in the fridge):

-start with a gorgeous, enriched dough

-lave it with a butter/brown sugar/cinnamon mixture

-add in dried apricots which have been soaked in apricot brandy

-roll it up

-slice into rounds, using my trusty 18'' ruler to make sure eventhing is even

-and place in a casserole dish which already has a topping of pecans/brown sugar/honey

-and the next morning....voila:

And Michael got all of the broccoli cleaned and chopped for our egg casserole (he doesn't look very happy...does he?):

Since it was New Year’s Eve, we had champagne and puffy things for dinner:

before settling in to watch WHITE CHRISTMAS.

*** I never thought I’d be the kind of person who’d wake up early in the morning to exercise…..and I was right! ***

*** It's the end of the holiday season...this certainly seemed appropriate....for me anyway...

When what to my wondering eyes should appear

But 10 extra pounds on my hips, thighs and rear! ***