Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all! I hope that you had a great Christmas and managed to relax and recharge over the holidays. I also hope that you are managing to stay warm and dry during this weather. I'd really like to know why the heavens always seem to spill their worst just as I'm taking the boys to and from school!

It's been a busy few weeks, so here's a quick random rundown....

I would have had a birthday picture of Ben as well if he'd kept still long enough!

• Ben turned 8 just before Christmas and Jamie was 3 yesterday - queue lots of comments from friends and family (and me!) on how fast time flies! This year was the first that Jamie has had a 'proper' birthday party and he had a wonderful time. T and I, however, are still recovering.
• We had both sets of Grandparents over for Christmas and then visited friends in deepest darkest Wales for New Year. No internet access or working phone (trouble with landline and no mobile phone signal without going for a walk!) was lovely and relaxing until Ben tripped over and cut his head open on the piano stool! 40 minute drive to Aberystwyth and 3 stitches later and he was fine! We then went and played on the beach – the same beach that the storms have now all but washed away sadly. Despite Ben's mishap we had a great time, and we've invited ourselves back in the summer!
• I listed new tuition dates on the website yesterday, sent out a newsletter and within 48 hours they have all gone! I'm sorry if you were interested but missed out, but there will be more dates available for the Spring. I didn't even get a chance to post about them on here as blogger was playing up. Again. Which leads me to...
• I haven't been able to get into the studio much over the holidays but I have been writing out lots of plans including plans for moving my blog over to Wordpress. It won't be for a month or so yet as I want to get it right before I press 'publish', but I've started putting the plans into action!
• I've also been planning and drafting out a couple of ebooks and also an ecourse on stonesetting. I've wanted to do these for a while, and the time has finally come!
• I've been sketching and writing notes for new designs like crazy and my fingers are itching to put them into practise! Many of them are ideas for building a collection around my Wise Owl, Rabbit, Lovebird and Butterfly pendants and I'm really excited. Not all of them will make it into the final collection, but they'll be fun to experiment with along the way.

I've got my first full day back in the studio tomorrow. As I say every year, the holidays have been great, and it has been especially wonderful this year with Jamie being old enough to really enjoy Christmas, but it's always equally great to get back into the studio!

If you did miss out on the private tuition I'm teaching two workshops over the next couple of months. I'll post more details tomorrow rather than make this post too long, but you can find more information on the website here.