Good morning! I hope everyone is doing well in this new year.

Meadow, captured with Nikon D90

I first would like to thank everyone that has checked in with the blog over the last year. I haven’t had time to post a lot, but I hope that when I did post, it made a little bright spot in your day.

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This new year is bringing new possibilities to our lives. Right after Christmas we hit our goal for a down payment for another house and right after the New Year we were pre-approved for a mortgage. So – YAY – we are officially in the market to get another house! Just to get this far is super exciting for us – it has been our dream for a long time now to own some land out in the country. What’s even nicer is that we don’t have to rush. Every house we have purchased has been because we had to – we don’t have to get a house – we want to. And since we are looking for this to be the place we finish our lives in, I am being picky.

Other than that, our lives are pretty much the same. My husband and I are working full time, we are homeschooling still, the dogs are lounging on the couch and our quacky little ducks, are still quacky!

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Other than a new job last year, I was asked to be a guest designer for SplitCoast Stampers. If you don’t know what it is, it is a place for papercrafters and cardmakers to share their projects. I was part of the Dirty Dozen for 6 months – It was really fun – and even though I was stressed from learning a new job – It was great to stretch my creativity. And since my time is up on it, I am now free to post my projects. There are a lot 6 cards/projects per month – for a grand total of 36 cards/projects. Which I am hoping to start posting next month.

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This year so far is a complete change from last year weather wise for us. The tap turned off in December and we haven’t had any rain or snow in weeks. We hit 50 degrees last week right before we went into a bit of a cold snap, that we are in right now, but that is due to change this weekend, and we will be back in the 40’s (Definitely not January in Montana weather!). Unfortunately, the nice weather has decided to make everything decide it was spring. My spring bulbs are pushing thru – I even pulled some up and potted them. They now are enjoying a sunny spot in the corner of our enclosed deck. We have noticed that a lot of the migratory birds that we usually start seeing in March have decided to come back early, and my most frustrating issue – our drakes, Rock and Gus, have decided that they need to jump on the back of any female with 10 feet. Which led me to separate them early due to an eye injury that Betsey, one of the girls, had received from them and their… uh…friendliness…boys…

I hope you have a great day!

Dawn