The Year Winds Down...

Well here we are with the year ending in just a few days time.  I have un-decorated the house for the most part and shall finish it off entirely tomorrow.  I have always preferred to come into a New Year with the things of the year past tucked neatly away.   Not exactly a clean slate, since I'll have plenty of my old furnishings and things about, but as near as I can come.  I try to put away the old aggravations and frustrations as well, but it's a little harder to keep those packed safely away, unlike the holiday decorations!  I found this quote just now on Facebook, posted by First For Women magazine:

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year."
-John Foster Dulles

We had a lovely holiday time.  It was a quiet celebration here in our home.  I spoke to Amie early in the weekend, before Katie arrived, then Katie came in the wee hours of Saturday morning, followed by Samuel that afternoon.  We had chili and cornbread for our supper that night with fresh cilantro from my little potted garden.  I ate a salad the night before with my supper that came from there as well.  We opened gifts after we lit the Chanukah candles.  Those two kids of mine made me weep.  Samuel gave me not one but two different copyright issues of my favorite all time cookbook, The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook.  One from 1948 and one from 1964.  The '64 edition is exactly like my first copy from 1959.  Both of the books are in excellent condition and I am pleased as peaches.  Sam said I was to use one and put the other up for a collectible, lol. He thinks he's being witty but I think that sounds rather smart.  I am looking forward to sitting down with the 1964 edition and reading it cover to cover as I used to do 40 years ago when I first discovered it sitting in the back of Mama's cookbook cupboard.

Katie made me a lap quilt and it is the most beautiful thing.  Hers is the gift that brought tears to my eyes. She took a photo of me sitting on the front porch yesterday afternoon while Maddie ate, with my quilt over my lap and one of my 'new' old books in my hand.