Did you ever have hermit crabs while growing up? We did. Their names were Twinkie and Betty Boop (cue weird childhood pet names in the comments starting. . .now). When you would startle them they would jet inside their shells and then slowly creep back out, timidly testing the environment. Anyways. . . that whole strange description was simply so that I can say that that is how I feel after the holidays. Like. . .they're over? It's safe to return to normal activities (like blogging)? That's not to say I'm hiding from the holidays, but rather in the holidays. The holidays were great, I recieved wonderful and thoughtful gifts including my own canning kit (mom and dad, you can have yours back now), two great books: 1, 2, and a Little Martin guitar, from Alan, which was backordered but should be here sometime this month, and when it comes will give me no excuse but to start actually practicing (did you get anything good?), and we got to spend wonderful time with both my and Alan's family laughing and eating good food, enjoying Christmas and ringing in the New Year. 

Speaking of the New Year, I feel the burden to offer up resolutions, but as of now, and sort of always, my resolutions and goals are more of a feeling or state of mind, even a pull or emotion, with sort of pictures and inklings floating around in there. Hard to pin down, completely, though it would probably help me accomplish more if I took the time to try. Anyways, I can say, at least, that part of that "pull" included a desire to start building a creative space, so I organized the craft closet, and then on Friday we went to Ikea and picked out some desk parts and now I have THIS in the guest/craft room:

I think any creative person knows that getting yourself to just get started on a project is the hardest part, and lugging all my heavy sewing stuff in and out of closets and cabinets was definitely impeding me. It's so nice to have that all out and accessible, and to also have a place to sit and write.

There is still work to be done to make it a visually inspiring place for me, but it's such a good start. Indy just enjoys spending time in a new room of the apartment. . .