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!