Happy New Year!

I know, not the most imaginative of titles for a post at this time of year is it? The sentiment is true though, I wish each and everyone of you a very happy and healthy New Year. Did you stay up to see the New Year in? If any of you have read far enough back in my blog to reach this time three years ago, to this post, you'll know that I tend to find New Year's Eve a bit of an anti climax and my favourite way to spend the evening is to invite some friends over, cook them some good food, open a few bottles of wine and have a great evening of chat and silly games. This year my friend Kate and her family came to visit us from Suffolk and our friends from across the road came over too. The children were great - Jamie and Kate's Emma settled down really well and the three older boys were settled down with a Scooby Doo video and snacks for a sleepover.

No resolutions this year (there's no point, I always get stressed about them and then break them!) but lots of aims. The main aim for the house/family is to finish the work on the sitting room. We've painted, got new sofas, bought a new rug, and the room loks completely different and much bigger, but the new shelving needs finishing before I show you what we've done. I've got lots of aims for the business, but the three I'm going to concentrate on for now are getting the ideas I've got sketched out into my etsy shop, getting my jewellery into three more galleries by the end of this year and spending more time working on one-off pieces of jewellery. This last one is partly because I absolutely love making one-off pieces, and also because I have so many lovely stones and lampwork beads that I really must use!

The ones I've bought most recently are below. The lampwork is, of course, from Mindy Macgregor. I had thought that her poppy beads were my favourites of all time, that she would be hard pressed to improve on those, but these beauties are just amazing! The colours are absolutely gorgeous, so jewel like. I can't quite decide which out of the three beads I've shown closeups of are my favourite of the set. These are big beads too - nearly 2.5cm in diameter. They're destined for long necklaces, hopefully before the end of the week.

And these are the stones I bought from my friend Brenda when I saw her just before Christmas. I had promised myself that I wouldn't buy anymore, but I couldn't resist! Afterall, they are unique - once they're gone, they're gone! the labradorite pear is my favourite - the electric blue flashes are some of the best I've seen, and I'm so pleased I could get them in the photo. I haven't decided what I'm going to make with these stones yet, but I do know that I'm going to set the emerald-cut green onyx upside down. The faceting on the back is too good to hide and I just like the idea of setting it in a different way than might be expected.

deep purply blue iolite, an amazingly flashy labradorite, rose-cut black onyx and emerald-cut green onyx

Well, those should keep me busy for a while! What are your hopes and plans for the New Year?