Ok, ok, I know you’re like, “It’s been snowing everywhere. We get it, we all know.” Thankfully, this last round of 6″ or so was the powdery kind of snow and that’s much easier to shovel off of our 90° driveway by myself. Did that come across as not bitter? Oh, good, I’ve been practicing.

I stayed home this weekend allllllll weekend—Friday night to Monday morning my friend. Partially the weather, partially the list of things I had to work on, but either way, I’m not really complaining. The day the snow fell was actually really pretty and quiet and the kitties just napped all day while I worked on a few projects. It felt very “Silent Night” if you get what I mean.

I made myself useful by making a pretty tasty brunch on both mornings in (brunch for one is so happy and yet so sad at the same time) and tried a new dot manicure that I’d seen around. I think it’s cute!The boy is gone for another week or so but we did a belated Valentine’s Day dinner at Flame, our fave fancy restaurant in town, before he left last weekend. They are the same place that catered our wedding, so it’s one of our top sentimental spots too. It’s always good, but the steak and lobster mac + cheese was really on point that night. Delish. I see some 50° days in the forecast so I’m hoping I can hang in until then. Hope you’re warm wherever you are!

We’ve (i.e. the kitties and I) have been fortunate enough to have our favorite guy around all month and we are loving it (their second favorite thing is this hamburger catnip toy I made for them this month—they can’t get enough).  Of course, I wish we could be outside and taking lovely walks and going on pic-nics every day, buuuuut I’ll have to settle for it getting dark at 4:00 and watching Netflix all night under a heated blanket. It’s not ideal, but we make the best of it. Actually, we had one of those rare 60 degree January heat waves for a couple of days this weekend and it was marvelous. We even took the Stingray out to the park for a bit and I had a lovely few hours where I remembered what it felt like to be warm and human again. We also rated all the dogs as they went past on a scale of 1-10 points, and let me tell you, that park was full of 3 point dogs that day. Full of them!! I believe full points were awarded to a tiny long haired beagle puppy and a cat that was being pushed in a stroller. Amazing. I heard a guy say after they passed that it was against nature to have a cat out at the park like that, and I almost hurled my hot coffee at him. Cats are people too (#duh).Todd has been really into making soups and sauces lately and I’m not going to be the one to stop him, that’s for sure. Have you ever come home to a cute guy making homemade soup for you on a cold winter’s day??? It’s like crack and I want more. He has also hired a sous chef as you can see. Very good, but he refuses to wear a hair net…We’ve had a few nights now where both kitties will end up on the couch together taking naps nearby and I can’t even tell you how happy that makes me! Of course, Charlie has to already be asleep and Mac has to be pretty gentle about getting near her, but she will usually stay and go back to sleep instead of jumping down and running away like she usually would. Progress!!!                                                             Photo by Janae Hardy

I got to do a Brigitte Bardot hair tutorial this week over on ABM and I love how this shot turned out! I’m pretty much up for anything Bardot themed, so hopefully I can do a few more things inspired by her. Other than that we are just trying to keep our chins up and not let the winter blues get us down! I’m sharing a tour of my home art studio next month on ABM, so I have a few projects on my list to get done and keep me busy in the meantime. Of course, in between projects though I’ll be under a heated blanket…

I did it! I made it to the end! I’m a scrapbooker! I scrapbooked! Man, I have to say this December Daily challenge was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’m actually really glad that I committed to share the finished album over on ABM once it was done because I think that was the kick in the butt I needed to make sure the book was completed in a timely manner. The most time consuming part was definitely all the hours it took to select, edit, resize, print, and cut all the photos before you could even put start putting them in the album. I tried to not let more than a week’s worth of photos pile up so I didn’t get too buried under the weight, and I would definitely suggest doing that to another first timer (or even more often if you can). I love how Elsie sometimes stamps the inside of her albums in a repeating pattern, so I used a Christmas sweater stamp to decorate the inside of mine and I love how that detail turned out.

Todd was recording in TX for one of the weeks, so some of the pages have both of our days side by side and screen shots of funny texts or photos we would send each other throughout the week. Here are some pictures of my most favorite pages from the month…Even though it did take a ton of time and took me a little bit to get the feel of what page layouts I liked the best, I really did enjoy putting this book together. It holds so many special memories that I know I’ll want to remember for a long time to come and it’s really fun to see how the month progresses into each event. I also like that you can keep all the Christmas cards you receive that year in one of the back pockets as well. I think this project is kind of like what some people say having a baby is like—really difficult and painful and you think you’ll never do it again when you’re in the midst of it. Buuuuut, you know, a year or so goes by and you think that maybe it wasn’t so bad and you got a pretty good kid out of it, maybe you could do it again this year?

In addition to chronicling the big moments of the year (like Christmas with my family and New Year’s Eve with old friends) this project also forced me to take photos of events I may not have normally seen as that important but it reminds me that sometimes it’s the little things that really make each day special. My little newborn baby scrapbook is only a few weeks old, but I already think I’ll want to do this again next year !