Under a Blue Moon

I'm having a delightfully lazy vacation.  Staying up late, sleeping late.  Nothing more taxing than catching up with DVR'd episodes of Grey's Anatomy.

That closet in my office/studio/dining room is still as messy and disorganized as it was last week.  So no progress there. 

One semi-productive thing I did was throw together some invitations for my nephew's graduation from Cal Poly.  We are quite proud of him. 

His family has all kinds of fabulous things going on – his sister, the lovely Sara, just had a pretty exciting announcement of her own.  Look at the adorable way she shared the news with her mother (who is just a wee bit excited).

I think today I will take down the Christmas tree.  Having it up on the 28th is a record for me.  Usually before the last present is unwrapped I'm making people move out of the way so I can undecorate it.  There is nothing more tired looking to me than Christmas decorations after Christmas. 

Hope everyone is enjoying the last week of the year. 

(Oh by the way – thanks for all the feed back on the new design.  Blue wins out.  For now.)

Happy day after Christmas.  I hope everyone had a splendid holiday.  It was quite the whirlwind for us.  We left at the crack of dawn and headed down to my Dad's house where we opened gifts with our sons, my dad and my sister. 

In the evening the entire family (minus a few that had been felled by Winter colds) got together for more gift opening and a huge dinner. 

I am looking forward to another nine (!) days off before I have to return to work.  I fully intend to relax every single day. 

As you may have noticed I have done a little redecorating around here.  Not sure if I am done yet.  I wanted something soothing and simple.  I am going back and forth between two layouts and I decided to let you vote.  Which do you prefer:

All flax back ground –

Or the added touch of pale blue for the side bars –

Yep those are the big decisions I am making this week.  That is as taxing as it will get. 

I may clean out the closet in my office/studio/dining room.  But we'll see.  It is a hot mess and I'm not sure if I have the fortitude to tackle it right now.  I would love to turn it into strictly sewing related storage but we'll see.  Right now it is the closet equivalent of a junk drawer.

Okay not a very festive picture.  This is one of the bridges on our property that criss-cross the Miner's Ravine Creek.  It has a very abandoned air about it right now.

I went out, just before dusk tonight, with my camera to see what the creek was up to.  Literally.  It was threatening to go over the banks on Sunday but we have had a bit of a respite from all the rain the past two days and it has receded a little bit. 

I think I've mentioned this before but the man that built our house also built four bridges on the property. Two proper suspension bridges over the creek, a covered bridge over the pond and small bridge over a little gulch. 

Our property is bisected by the Miner's Ravine Creek.  It is a year round creek and in the ten years we've lived here it has only flooded once.  That was pretty spectacular.  Our house is well above it so it was never in any danger. 

Normally the creek is about 15 feet across but one New Year's Eve day we awoke to a 100 foot river coursing through our back yard. 

Here is a little video of how it looked today – if you want the experience of walking on the bridge.