Another year over... almost

And so the holiday season ends, more or less. New Year's is still lurking, but that one has never really been a big thrill for me. Don't get me wrong, I love a party as much as the next girl, but I've just never gotten that into the New Year's festivities. I'm more of a Thanksgiving kind of gal... I need a big meal with my holidays, snacking just doesn't cut it. Plus I have to work again on new year's day this year.

Christmas went well. We had a very nice time at Mr. Z's family Christmas, though admittedly I was a little sad since it's the first Christmas that I don't get to see my family at all. But my mood was substantially lightened today when we picked up our pair of tickets to the National Championship game. Those babies are going for a whole lot more than we paid for them...

I got lots of gift cards and a copy of Holiday Handknits. I've already picked out a few projects in there I would like to make next year. Including the Aran Tree Skirt for myself and some other projects as gifts. The Barnes and Noble gift card went towards some sewing books to help brush up on my skills with the sewing machine.

I took my nice camera in the hopes that we would get some lovely snow in NY and i could get some holiday-ish pictures, but no such luck. So the only picture I have to share from the trip is one I snapped of Brandi, Ken's parents' miniature poodle who thinks she owns the furniture. This seems to be one of her favorite spots.


Back in wedding craft mode, there has been much progress on the second wrap. And, while shopping, I picked up some pretty cream ribbon that was on sale for 70 cents a spool at JoAnns. It was in the holiday ribbon but it matches my colors so I bought a bunch. Its got the wire edges so it should be good for bows or something. And I hit the jackpot at Goodwill last week with Ashley! There were two baskets that were the perfect size for flower girl baskets. They weren't as dark as I would have liked, but at least they weren't white, which is apparently what all flower girl baskets generally are. One is just slightly smaller than the other but they are otherwise identical. I've been trying an assortment of treatments to make them more attractive, with little success thus far... Here is one pre-treatment.


It actually doesn't look too bad there, but its a little more yellowish than this shows. I tried a coffee staining I found online... it didn't really make any difference. So I tried staining them today. I had slightly more success with the smaller of the two because it seems to lack the sort of coating that the larger one has. It may come down to some straight up painting in the next few days if they continue to look heinous. Maybe some ribbon can spruce them up a little, I don't know. I guess if they end up getting ruined, I only paid 59 cents apiece for them.