My neighbors (lady on the left and her husband in the middle) always host a New Years' Eve party just perfect for seniors. It starts at 6pm and ends just after 10pm when the ball drops in Times Square (and her big screen TV). Everyone drags out their sparkly clothes which have been sitting in the back of the closet for a year. Since we don't go on cruises anymore, there aren't any other opportunities to wear them. The nice thing about sparkly party clothes is they never seem to go out of style.
The next day, Bruce, Charlie, and I celebrated with a First Day Hike - a big tradition in Colorado. We went to Bluffs Regional Park which has 2 overlooks high enough that you can see all the way to downtown Denver.
Charlie absolutely loved the hike but hated the group photo - he just wouldn't sit still. So, Bruce finally scooped him up onto his lap - not easy to do with a 30-pound wriggly dog.
The day after New Year's the club meetings started right back up again at the clubhouse. I went to the Quilt Club meeting where they discussed plans for making a group quilt they could raffle off in the spring. The president brought several sample blocks that she thought would make good starting points, BUT, let me tell you... you put 16 different women into a room together and you're going to get 16 different opinions on what you should do. They argued over size, color, fabric, style, pattern... you name it. We finally ended the meeting with no decisions made, but a group of ladies headed off to the fabric store hoping to find some inspiration. I hope they didn't kill each other while they were there.
On Friday, our temperature jumped into the 60's, so my friend and I biked over to Winchell's Donuts. That's only about 13 miles round trip, but I was still huffing and puffing the whole way (too many Christmas cookies I need to work off - it didn't stop me from getting a cream-filled long john, though).
For my January Something Old, Something New challenge I bought a watercolor book. This book is unique in that it is made out of watercolor paper. On the left-hand side of each page, you get a tutorial with some suggested paint colors (they give you a color "recipe" to mix them from basic pigments). Then you paint right in the book on the right-hand side. They even have the item sketched out lightly in gray, so you don't have to draw it yourself (though they recommend recopying it with a black pen). It's probably not quite as rewarding as doing the whole sketch myself, but I figure it will come in handy when there's 6 inches of snow on the ground,
Janet and I decided to start off the year with a fitness challenge. So, for January, she's going to try to walk 300,000 steps. I'm hoping I can get outside and do some biking, so I'm only going to walk 150,000 steps and bike 500 minutes (I'm doing minutes instead of miles just in case there's snow and I need to use my stationary bike trainer in the basement). We'll see if we both stick with it.
