Sunday, January 02, 2011

I've moved! Blogs, that is.

New year, new decade, new thoughts and plans, it seemed a new blog was in order. Please come visit me in my new home, where things are bigger and brighter, still in the works, and with room to grow. I'm loving it there!

CLICK HERE FOR LAINI'S NEW BLOG.

Saturday, January 01, 2011

Home at last, and: HAPPY NEW YEAR!


Well, hello there. If you are seeing this, thank you for stopping by after my mysterious disappearance! I meant to post that I would be traveling in December, but the post never got written, and I can count the minutes I've been near a computer in the past month on one hand! But I am back! Back from, to be specific, Morocco and Italy.

Morocco:









Italy:









More on that to come. Much more! But right now It is 1-1-11. New Year's Day. I love me a new year. I like to think of New Year's as the "Emperor of Mondays." Mondays, I know, are not everyone's favorite day of the week, but I love Mondays. For some reason, Mondays have always felt like clean slates to me, like . . . new notebooks. You know? Like a fresh etch-n-sketch screen. The feeling is: begin now.

Whatever it is, BEGIN IT NOW.

On New Year's, that feeling amplifies a millionfold. I am massively excited about 2011, for many reasons. 2010 was oh so good to me, a life-changing year, a holler-with-joy kind of year, a pinch-me-I'm-dreaming year. What will 2011 hold? Many more firsts for Clementine. Talking! Wanting to pick out her own wonderful mismatch outfits. Continuing to become her little-person-self. A new book to write! And one to shepherd to the shelves, a process filled with anxiety and glee. Jim's and my 10th wedding anniversary, this June. Ten years of marriage, the very best of marriages. From art school parking lot to a gondola in Venice, up to Portland, Oregon and creating our little Pie, not to mention our books, and more on the way.

Gratitude. Looking back, looking ahead, I am filled with it. I love New Year's. Clementine is napping now, hopefully getting over jet lag (we were all up in the middle of the night eating pancakes, which -- hey! -- was not so terrible!), and enabling me to crack open my computer for the first time in a month. I haven't gotten to email yet. Oy, how I hate the junk that daily clogs my inbox. Will tackle that next.

I am feeling an urge to totally overhaul this blog and really dig into it this year. It has become a bit ... thin ... of late, and I don't just mean this month. I have ideas of how I'd like it to be, and I think I might begin again, a whole new address, a fresh sidebar and banner, a clean start. Maybe. If Clementine naps a while longer :-)

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I am so happy to be back home!