Progress and a puppy

We have a winner!

Beverly, whose birthday mojo is already clearly working, is the winner of the rubber stamps. The next item I am giving away is the book Seasons of the Heart and Home; Quilts for a Winter's Day which you may check out at Amazon and then come back and leave me a comment on this post by 5 p.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 7 if you'd like to be included in the drawing.

Fabric. Oh, fabric. Fabric will be coming -- both in terms of pictures of the bins of it all over my house, and in terms of some that I will give away in the spirit of cleaning up. I am proud to be able to report that I AM making interim progress and will have narrowed down at least somewhat my to-do list for next Saturday's transatlantic clean-a-thon.

Meanwhile, well, we got a puppy. We won't be bringing him home until the 15th; that's the start of 10 days at home for us. (New England schools typically get the third week in February off as "winter break" and then a week again in April for "spring break." Crazy, but we'll take it.) We've got about a million Legos to get up off the floor before the puppy comes home. We've been talking for the last few years about getting a dog, and Dean's upcoming 10th birthday (in April) was the incentive to go ahead. We all put a lot of effort into researching breeds and options, and settled on an Irish Jack Russell, which is the smaller, less hyperactive, less yappy and non-hunting relative of the Parsons or standard Jack Russell. It's one of those decisions that I know I will spend some time regretting, but the regret will be outweighed by loving the new member of the family. A dog changes everything, including the boy who grows up with one.