Happy New Year....a little late as usual.....

(L) Decorating Christmas Cookies, (RT) Delivering Christmas Eve Goodies, (RC) Gingerbread Cookies, (RB) Sparklers on New Year's Eve

Hello dear sweet friends!  It’s the 7th day of 2017 and an entire week has passed. Can you even believe it?  I know I can’t.  I just cannot believe how quickly 2016 passed for me and my family.  I spent the month of December in a whirlwind of Christmas preparation because honestly even though I say every year I’m going to get an early start on Christmas, I can never get excited until I’ve had my Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is MY holiday.  I love it.  This year like so many others I burned the midnight oil cooking, baking, sewing, wrapping, and generally freaking out because I never think I’ve bought enough or done enough so that on the 24th I’m up at 2:00 am trying to sew a quilt square so I can at least show my husband what his quilt will sort of kind of look like.  (And no I did not get that quilt square even close to finished because at 1:45 my eyes refused to stay in focus what so ever. It’s a strange feeling when your eyes go on strike.)  

(L) New Friends Amos and Smokey the cat, (C) Christmas Eve after Santa, (R) I do believe they like eachother

I hope you’ve all had a great start to your week and I can’t wait to dig in and get some work out on this blog!  Last year I kind of spluttered along but I’m hoping to get back to this space this year.  Honestly I got a little lost.  It’s been a little tough making that adjustment to Allie starting school, trying to lose some weight (as usual), and generally getting myself back organized again.  For so long after I had Allie I was on survival mode - get enough sleep every night, eat something healthy, try not to crash out before 9:00 pm.  But she’s finally big enough now that we’re past just getting by, time to get myself back in gear, shed some pounds, and be a productive human being again.  

Maybe it’s just the January optimism talking.  

(L) Tea and piecing quilt blocks, (C) A little mindless embroidery while I watched movies, (R) New quilt beginnings

I started a bullet journal back the end of September and it has been a God send. I'm late jumping on the bandwagon and after I looked at the website HERE I realized it was just a different variation of the sketchbooks I kept in college. I've tried all kinds of planners and large calendars and the like and cannot stick to them. My brain works like a ball of string not a nice straight line of string. I like that the bullet journal is organic and like I said I already used a system sort of like that in my sketchbooks in college so I know it's something that I will stick with. If you're interested I can show you what mine looks like. I started out with a simple one subject spiral notebook so if I didn't like it or lost interest (like I have in the past with other planners) then I was only out a dollar. I'm telling ya, if you're in the slightest bit a creative thinker it's awesome. I use the super simple layout and don't worry about all the pretty drawings and stickers and the like (no offense if you do but I just don't have the time and energy for that I'm trying to be productive and not cute.)

ALSO I'm going to go ahead and throw this out there. If you follow me on Instagram or facebook you may have already seen this.....

Yes, I'm finally working on an ebook. It seems a shame to have all this written material and not find a way to share it. I've done some blog posts on my newspaper articles for the Macon Beacon but this will be a way for locals and non locals alike to have all the recipes, 22 of them total, that ran in the paper this year. I think I have all the text done now to just work on editing and layout. My goal is to have this done by the end of or before the end of January. The one thing I ask is that yall keep me accountable! I'm going to lay aside self doubt for once and just go for it! Stop worrying about platform and layout and distribution just write the damn thing and make mistakes and use this as a starting off point for other books. Yes, other books. I've worked the last three months on researching ebooks and distribution platforms and the best way to host them and sell them and all that jazz. This is something I've had on my mind for several years now and I'm going to commit myself in 2017 to actually producing them. Even if I don't sell a one at least this will be a goal that I've had set for at least two to three years now that I want to accomplish. So that hopefully lets you know what I've been doing since I have not been posting here on the blog. I also looked at getting a real true big girl blog and honestly I have so much content here, I'm comfortable with blogger, and honestly changing the name of the blog, moving all this content, and trying to make sure that people can still find me makes me want to break out in hives. If I ever become a "big time" blogger I'll cross that bridge, but for right now I'm going to keep it simple and just stay here. And if blogger works for the blog http://malepatternboldness.blogspot.com/ who am I to think that I as a very minuscule bloggers needs the vanity of a .com when this gentleman is sponsored by Mood Fabrics (of Project Runway fame), has been published in several notable large sewing magazines, and has crazy adoring fans that descend to his meetup in New York every year bringing guests from all over the US and Europe. Yea, I think I'll just stay with blogger for now. (As an aside if you've never hear of Peter Lappin from malepatternboldness.blogspot.com please go now and read his blog. The man is the absolute sweetest as I know from emailing him in the past and is hysterical to boot.)

Love all yall and hope you had a great week.  We’ll talk again soon my lovelies!