I mentioned that just before New Years, the temps shot up, reaching around 10C/50F. And they stayed there for almost a week.

While it’s not warm enough to get me out for very long, it’s warm enough to get the gardens excited. Dave and I came home from lunch the other day, and I noticed a whole lot going on.

It was actually this Sedum that caught my eye first. Such a vibrant green, with bright yellow tops, just tipped with red. It’s even more eye catching in real life.

That brought me in for a closer look.

Bulbs popping up everywhere! Now the temperature has dropped, but that won’t hurt the bulbs. They will do this over and over again until the weather warms up and stays that way.

Unfortunately, I did notice quite a few bits of green popping up in the pathways. I didn’t plant any bulbs in the pathways, so it can only be the dreaded Star of Bethlehem. I dug so much of it out, but it’s not as surprise I missed some. I’ll be battling it for years to come, I’m sure.

It’s not just the bulbs that perked up.

I love the big Sedum when it first starts growing. They look like mini cabbages, or little rosebuds. I will be adding some new Sedums to the garden in spring. They are great for pollinators and add wonderful colour to the fall garden.

It never takes much to get the poppies (left) and Lupins (right) going. Both will bloom by mid-May. And I’ve learned I can keep the Lupins going longer by deadheading. The poppies go dormant in the heat of summer, but sometimes do a second bloom in fall, if you’re lucky!

Even the Butterfly Bush got excited by the brief warm-up! This really surprised me, because normally, the Butterfly Bush is one of the last plants to come back to life. It’s not unusual to no see signs of life until mid-May here!

I didn’t want to poke around too much, and disturb all the little critters sleeping in the leaves, but it was so nice to see these little bits of green.

It’s back to cold now, and of course, there’s still LOTS of winter left.

But smart little me did an order with a couple of my fave bulb suppliers BEFORE January 1st hit. So now I can sit back, dream, and wait for the sun…

… and dream of all the wonderful blooms to come!

No… it’s not a kitten this time. Or even a newt.

No. He pushed me right off the No-Spenduary wagon.

Because New Year’s Day fell on a Sunday, we still had Monday off. We were just supposed to go out and wash my truck (GPS took us down some dark, scary roads on the trip home from Owen Sound), and get a new juice jug (I’d stolen the other one to propagate some large house plants.)

But Dave decided he wanted to go antiquing. He picked out a place about an hour away called the One of A Kind Antique Mall, which is basically an old factory building filled with three full floors of vendors selling all manner of antiques, vintage finds and all kinds of collectibles.

I told him as we entered that there were really only a couple of things I was looking for. A “hen on nest” dish, a cow creamer (and it couldn’t be any cow creamer, it had to be one that really spoke to me), and a Blue Mountain Pottery angelfish (a very particular piece my Mom used to have that’s pretty hard to find). I didn’t really expect to get any of them, because they are all things that can generally be quite pricey. I wouldn’t pay just any price for them – they had to be reasonable.

But within 10 minutes…

I’d found my hen on nest. Though the one I had pictured in my mind was yellow carnival glass, or olive green glass – this one was just so nice looking, and price so right I had to have it. It’s also quite large. Dave asked me what I was going to keep in it, and honestly… probably nothing. But it’s going to look so darn great on Grandma’s pine buffet.

About 10 minutes later, I was handing the chicken over to Dave to hold because…

There was my cow creamer!!! Now it’s quite small as cow creamers go. But it’s a Holstein!!!!! Most cow creamers I’ve see are plain white, jerseys, or Delft blue patterned. This is the first Holstein I’ve seen. I’m partial to Holsteins – I grew up in the country surrounded by dairy farms, and most had Holsteins.

There was lots of Blue Mountain pottery, but no angelfish. And that wasn’t a big surprise. But since I don’t actually collect it,(I just want that one piece) I didn’t buy any.

So that should have been it for me.

But then….

I found two little Corningware sauce pans in my Spice of Life pattern, complete with lids. And they were so reasonably priced that it would have been silly of me to leave them there.

And any Corningware lover also probably has a thing for Pyrex. I’ve been creeping on several sets/partial sets of Pyrex bowls on Facebook Marketplace for a while. But like everything else, a lot of them are so expensive. But wouldn’t you know it…

A full set of Pyrex Cinderella bowls (the handles are also spouts for pouring) in the Woodland brown pattern – reasonably priced with another 15% off. I almost left it behind, but Dave encouraged me to get it. I mean, it does coordinate with my Spice of Life, so how could I argue?

And you would think that would be all… but then I found a booth that had QUILTING FABRIC???? THAT’S JUST NOT FAIR!!!

Most of the fabric was between $10 and $15 a yard, which is good, but not a super steal, so I was able to resist going completely crazy.

I managed to get away with just six yards of this fun cat fabric, which will be perfect for a quilt back.

Now… I’ve managed to not spend a dime out of line since then… and I’m not going to let Dave talk me into going anywhere for the rest of the month!!!

One of the presents we got this year was a new cube for the cats

You may recall we had one of these back when Peno was alive. In fact, it was one of her favourte places to sleep (it was always beside Dave’s couch so she could be close to him.) When she died, we decided it was time to get rid of it. It was pretty ripped up (she loved to use it as a scratcher).

I was thrilled to get another one, because Peno wasn’t the only one who liked it (though she had definitely claimed it as her territory)

It was no surprise that Burton was the first one in it (even before I got it properly set up. If Peno wasn’t on it, chances were you could find Burton in or on it. I think he was VERY excited to have another one in the house again.

And naturally, Lemmy gave it a thorough inspection.

But the BIG surprise…

Was Relic sauntering in and making himself right at home. Going inside of things is NOT normal Relic behaviour. He’s generally much more comfortable in free and open spaces with lots of options for escape (not surprising given his years as a stray). But he stayed there for quite and while, even having a little cat nap in there.

Not entirely sure how Burton feels about this development. I think he was hoping to have this one all to himself

After completing the two quilt tops, the only quilt I had left in progress was the Sewcialites sew-along quilt. There’s still blocks coming for that, so I decided it was fair to start something new.

A while back, I bought these two batik Jelly rolls on sale, with the intention of making the Jelly Snowflake quilt. Now silly me didn’t actually look at the pattern instructions before I bought, and I actually needed yardage for the background fabric (the black snowflake batik) instead of 2.2 inch strips. Happily, I found some yardage on sale in December!

As you can see, Burton was very excited about starting this one. I was too. So excited that I put the whole thing together in one long day!

It’s a small lap quilt, and I wanted to make a little bigger, so I set it aside and decided to come back to it the next day. Before sitting down to figure out the borders, I pulled it out and spread it on the bed, and went to get some graph paper. When I came back….

Now it’s not unusual to come back and find one cat on my work… but three? There must be something special about this one. (If you are wondering where Lemmy was, he was on a big furry blanket on the box under the window).

Eventually, I got my borders graphed out, blocks sewn, and everything added to the quilt.

Now the quilt is 58″ square. It’s still not huge, but a good size for lap quilt.

I have a lovely blue batik for binding, and a soft, snuggly flannel for the back (which looks black here but is actually navy blue.)

Now I’ve got several quilts to quilt, so it’s time to schedule a trip to Mom’s!

Next up on my end-of-year UFO list was my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.

There were only 10 blocks, and they were big (16 inches), so it went together very quickly. The hardest part was figuring out the size of the setting triangles. I always err on the side of caution and make them a little bigger than they need to be.

But as you can see, once this one was together, it was nice and long, but narrow. Just before Christmas, I’d ordered some fabric for side borders, and happily, it arrived just in time to finish this before the new year.

Like Little Wishes, this is another big quilt, finishing up at 84″ x 92″.

Before I’d even finished all the blocks, I’d got a really cool backing fabric for it on sale.

I forgot to take a picture, but I’ve also got some rainbow stripe for the binding (leftover from my summer gnome quilt). I love it when a rainbow comes together!

One of the things I wanted to do before the old year was out, was clear a few quilting projects off my plate so I could start fresh in the new year.

First up was the Little Wishes quilt. Little Wishes started life as a Leader/Ender project, making scrappy nine-patches from 2.5 inch scraps. Last you saw it, I’d created all the geese I needed, but still needed to trim them up.

There were a lot of them – 116 to be exact – but I managed it with a little help from my friend.

After that, ever the hard worker, he helped me sew all the geese and nine patches into star blocks.

There was 30 in total and at 12″ each, that totals a sizable quilt. But I wanted it a little bit bigger. So the next day, I set to work on making corner star sashing. It took all day, but by the evening, I had the top complete.

Each one of those corner stars is unique – with a scrap pulled from my 3.5″ scrap bin. And it made the quilt nice and big – 78″ x 93″.

Anyway you look at it, Burton say “It’s a win!”

A few days after the Christmas storms the temperature shot up, the rain moved in, and all the snow melted. It made it clear sailing for a trip north, to finally celebrate Christmas with the family. Which we did on New Year’s Day!

We were having such a good time, I totally forgot to take pictures until it was all over!

All I got was a picture of poor Jem tuckered out from all the excitement! (She got a present to open too!).

I took a picture of these crazy shark pool slides I got the girls. These are Rowan’s. Paisley got a blue pair.

And speaking of those girls…

How and when did they get so freakin’ tall? I’m 5’7’… and both of them have at least 4-5 inches on me!

The day was a great start to the new year and I hope is the harbinger of many good things to come!

You know what they say.. .man plans, God laughs.

Looking back to last January, I’d say I accomplished about 50% of the things I’d hoped to.

• We didn’t finish the living room/studio as we wanted, but that involved putting in new windows. EVERY window in the house needs to be replaced, so I want to do it all at once (for time/savings/etc.) We didn’t have the money in 2022, but we have it set aside now, so come spring 2023, that will be put into motion. Ideally we will also start renovating the upstairs, but we’ll see how far we can get after the windows are done.
• I accomplished all I wanted to last year with the gardens, and then some. This year, I want to put in the veg beds, and move the fence by the maple and create my “woodland” garden at the side of the house.
• We got the sun porch leveled and repainted on the outside. As soon as it’s warm enough, I’ll be painting the inside.
• Dave didn’t do much with the garage other than add some much needed storage. If there’s any money left after getting windows, we will look into getting new doors, as they are in pretty rough shape.
• We did explore the area quite a bit, though mostly by car. One of these days I’m going to get Dave out hiking!
• Financially, I didn’t managed to pay my credit cards off, but I almost did! If I can keep from going crazy with the spending, I should be able to do that by June. To that respect… both Mom and I have agreed to a No-Spenduary. You’ve heard it here before – no spending on anything but the essentials! I did several big fabric orders, and a Knit Picks order in December, and the garden stuff doesn’t start hitting the stores for a couple months, so it shouldn’t be too hard… in theory, lol.
• I didn’t craft as much as I wanted to, so I’d like to spend more time doing that this year. There’s definitely lots to keep me going!

As always, I just hope for health and happiness and time to do the things I love. May 2023 bring you all you wish!

Looking back, I’d say 2022 was not a bad year. But it wasn’t a GREAT year either. It was a pretty mixed bag.

There wasn’t enough time to do the things I really loved, but there were no real hardships either.

Of course, the toughest part oof 2022 was the loss of Dave’s Grandma. But she was 93 (almost 94), and her passing, though emotional, relieved Dave of a very large burden, which had been made more difficult by the distance of the move. It’s been a big adjustment for him, but he’s done very well. He knows she was proud of him.

But 2022 also brought the reunion of Big Red and the Great White Whale.

A lot of work went into Red this year, and hopefully 2023 will afford him plenty of time to enjoy her out on the roads.

We didn’t tackle any huge house projects this year – just a lot of little, somewhat invisible things that add up to a much nicer space. Two of the most visible projects were revamping the shed, and the sun porch.

It’s truly amazing what a lick of paint can do!

The big accomplishment of this year was the kick off of the gardens.

Spring was small, but we still had many blooms to bring a smile and get us revved up.

Early summer brought more excitement as plants I’d brought from the townhouse really started to take off and thrive in their new home.

And of course, the catio got a proper makeover

And was transformed from a barren mudhole to a lush, beautiful playground for felines and humans alike.

I’m absolutely thrilled with how much I was able to get out of the gardens in just one year.

Next year will see those gardens get more established, and hopefully the addition of a woodland garden under the maple, and the addition of veg beds in the back yard.

Of course, all that time in the garden meant making lots of new friends…

And we couldn’t let 2022 end without the best part….

Our newest family members…

Newt Scamander

And…

Lemmy Purrmister! I certainly didn’t enter 2022 expecting either of these little blessings!

I’m excited to see what 2023 has in store for us!

For ages, I’ve been meaning to get a body pillow to sleep with to help with my back pain. I finally remembered a few weeks ago, and ordered the perfect one off of Amazon. It arrived just before Christmas

So when I say perfect, I really mean… PURRFECT.

The day it came, I fluffed it up and tossed it on the bed so it could puff our some more (it came vacuum sealed and all squished flat).

A few hours later, I came back upstairs to find this…

Do you think he thinks I adopted another ginger kitten he needs to make friends with???