2017 in review

It is the 30th of December...almost the end of 2017. This year hasn't been bad. We welcomed my handsome grandson, Isaiah Robert Rubright. He was born on my birthday which was special. I had major surgery on June 7th. I was off work 8 weeks. The recovery was harder than I thought, but my back is much better now. I also finally got my feet back in shape. Went through several weeks of intense physical therapy.

We saw 26 movies
I took several classes - fabric painting and another wet felted hat with Tone, quilting classes with Cynthia England, Kaye England and Pat Delaney, wet felted vessels with Geri Forkner, crochet socks with Jonee Davis and Nantucket basket with Robin Goatey, a hawaiian quilting with Patty Ashworth and a paper piecing class with Pat Pagni.
The only trip I went on this year was to Savannah, GA for the Modern Quilt Show
I saw 14 Plays
Only 2 concerts and they were both the Black Jacket Symphony

Now to my books for the year. I think I have a best ever year. I read 59,838 pages across 179 books.
Shortest - 102 pages "When We Touch" by Brenda Novak
Longest - 928 pages "A Woman of Substance" by Barbara Taylor Bradford
Average length - 340 pages
Most Popular - "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins
Least Popular - "Cottage on Crystal Creek" by Julie Gaskill

New writers I started reading - Isabel Wolff, Diane Chamberlain, Curtis Sittenfeld, Molly MacRae, Liz Trenow, Julie Gaskill and Alyssa Maxwell

I started another book club. This is with my quilt guild. Not many members but I have read some wonderful books through it.

I was elected President of my guild in December. I hope I'm a good one.

For 2018 - I hope to do better about eating well, get more exercise and take at least one day trip a month. I want to visit some of the small towns that are within driving distance of Knoxville.

Christmas with Stitch and Bitch ladies

 This year for Christmas, my friend Mary got everyone in the Stitch and Bitch group a wet felted scarf kit. We spent Wednesday eating good food and making scarfs. We had a blast. Mary's kitchen was a perfect place to make the scarves. Which was good cause it was cold outside. We got great gifts. Marian got us each a beautiful miniature piece of original art from a Tennessee artist. Gina got us a beautiful measuring tape in leather. Nancy made us a storage bag with a Sue Spargo piece she made on the front. Such great friends!

2017 Holiday Cookie Weekend

Taylor insisted Josh take a picture of us in our new aprons. This was taken late on Saturday afternoon. We had a great time. Friday we made up all of our refrigerated dough and we probably should have gone ahead and baked some. Instead we went to Red Robin for a burger. It was a fantastic burger. It has brown sugar, candied bacon, cheddar cheese and BBQ sauce on it. Yummy! On Saturday, we took a detour from baking - went and had breakfast, then tried to find some silk chiffon fabric at a fabric store in Nashville, near the fairgrounds. No luck. So we didn't actually start baking until noonish. We baked until about 9:30. We were so exhausted. We had two failures - our fudge recipe wasn't good and Christmas marbles. One recipe of those only made a sandwich bag full of cookies and they weren't that good. So we need a new fudge recipe for next year. Otherwise things went well. I love this weekend and getting to spend so much time with my sweet daughter.

I loved these Molasses cookies!

This was a new recipe. 

Grinch cookies waiting to be baked.

Mine and Taylor's favorite. I forgot to get the red hots for their eyes though.

These turned out much better this year since we got the correct size of Reese's peanut butter cups.

Full refrigerator

Table full of cookie supplies