I hope your New Years celebrations were great... and safe!
Mine was great, with a nice and mellow holiday weekend. I was able to take a couple of vacation days for an extra-long holiday weekend!
*Dec. 29th, I got most of the errand-running done that I needed to do.
*Dec. 30th, I finished painting my kitchen to prepare for a peg-board to hang coffee cups on. Then I hung up my
wine rack (holds 8 bottles of wine & 12 wine glasses) from the ceiling, over the sink. Gracious! That was hard to do all by myself... to make sure the hooks would be evenly spaced and straight and all. I'd advise at lease having a second set of hands to hold stuff while you step back and look... and to help with measuring. Yikes! This was tough, but I got impatient with waiting for assistance. Bad me! I'd had the darned thing just over a month and I wanted it UP! But it turned out great!*Dec. 31st in the morning, I cooked the Christmas ham-bone down to get the meat off of it and added that meat to a pot of pinto beans I cooked up in the crock pot. In the afternoon, I went over to my mom & step-dad’s house to get some assistance with my peg-board project... I needed some miter cuts and then I finished the last of the painting on the frame. The frame paint was not yet dry when I needed to leave (after dinner) . . . I wanted to get home before all the crazies got out on the roads. So I left the project there to dry and I went home. I did a few things around the house and watched a bit of television. I stayed up 'til midnight to ring in the new year . . . I heard lots of fireworks, gunfire and I'd swear I heard a couple of machine guns and bombs!! Spooky!! I went to sleep shortly after that.
*January 1st, I finished up cooking the pinto beans and prepared some beer bread (I added some green chili, sun-dried tomato, and cheese to that). While the crock pot cooked the beans, I put together a metal-grid, shelving unit for the corner of my dining room. I was then able to reorganize some of my kitchen and dining room. Looks much nicer now! Around 2pm, my mom & step-dad came over and brought my framed peg-board. (That's when I put the bread in to bake.) My step-dad hung the board up for me (nice, then I didn't have to struggle with it by myself). I hung my cups on the new board. Looks nice! Then we had some pinto beans (with ham) and a few slices of the beer bread for dinner . . . Happy New Year! The NM version of the Black-eyed peas tradition, I suppose! Haha
Here are a couple of photos of my kitchen . . . One before and one after the cup board went up on the wall (next
to my green, herb shelves under the window) . . . You can see the new wine-rack installed above the sink. Also, you'll be able to see the pot-rack that my friend Greg helped me put up right after Thanksgiving. It's SO much easier to hang those things when you have help!! Next . . . I'll be getting some light green mini-blinds for that window so the brown curtain will be gone! 
*January 2nd, I got my new weather station up and working . . . Got the anenometer (wind meter) up on a mast above my house. Got that and the rain gauge connected to the thermo-hygrometer (thermometer & barometric pressure sensor) –which sends a radio a signal to the display unit in my house! Cool, huh? I also installed the corresponding computer software, which ties into the weather station display. Now . . . To read all the instructions on how to e-mail and post the info!! Haha
That will be a learning curve, on the software!!
Have a good one!
~Paulena
