I love fresh beginnings, and a new year is one of the freshest of them all.  Making plans, setting new goals, dreaming new dreams – all of these things fill me with optimism and energy.  Our new Occasions Mini catalog is full of exciting new images and products that have my mojo doing the happy dance!  One of my favorite new stamp sets is Just My Type:

• Just My Type stamp set
• Basic Black Craft Ink
• Calypso Coral Classic Ink
• Very Vanilla, Calypso Coral and Basic Black card stock
• First Edition Specialty Designer Series Paper
• Big Shot and Framelits Labels
• Black 1/8 inch taffeta Ribbon
• Where did that BRAD come from???

Ah, the priveledges of being a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator…hat brad is one of the new Sale-a-bration offerings that will be available the 24th of January – and there’s much, much more!  You’ll notice I stamped the typewriter in craft ink – that’s because I wanted a good, solid, bold black image.  Black Staz-on would work the same way.

My grandfather used a typewriter much like this one – in fact, I have it.  It’s in a travel case, and  he used to take it with him on the train from Redwood City to San Francisco every morning and afternoon….the original laptop, if you will.  I have fond memories of sitting at the station in the afternoon with my grandmother, waiting for Gramps to arrive on the train.  He’d installed a special bell on the driver’s side of the car, and she could press a button with her foot and it would ring – ding, dong! – and he could find her in the crowded parking lot.

You may know that my family spent Christmas and New Year’s in Perth, Australia.  Our oldest daughter and her fiance live there, and so it was a little bit of tourism, a little bit of family celebration, and a whole lot of eating!  We spent a few days in Margaret River between Christmas and New Year’s where the wildlife was abundant.  Margaret River is best known for wineries, breweries, cheese, olive oil and chocolate manufacture – I think that’s the 5 basic food groups, isn’t it?  We were able to get quite close to kangaroos and a variety of birds:

These roos knew I was there but they didn’t much care.  They were often in the field just behind our little cottage, and we’d see them relaxing in the shade under the trees during the heat of the day.  We even saw a couple of different pairs “boxing” – I guess it’s a guy-roo thing. One morning I was the first one up and went into the kitchen to make coffee.  There was a mama and a joey less than 8 feet from the kitchen window – she looked me in the eye for nearly two minutes before hopping leisurely away.

Another afternoon I went for a walk through the preserve where our cottage was and encountered this mama:

I’ve gotta tell you, if I had to carry my kids around like this I would be a big fan of early independence.   She was about 8 feet from me, but she stayed a long time.   She must have felt my empathy.

The birds were amazing, and in the mornings I took my coffee on the covered lanai (I know, they probably don’t call it a lanai in Australia but that’s what it was.)  There was a little container of bird seed in our cottage at Bussels Bushland Cottages so that we could encourage visitors.  There were a couple of Port Lincoln Ringneck parrots that were regulars, and they were not at all shy:

Finally, what trip to Australia would be complete without the Kookaburra?  We heard them most often early and late in the day.  Carol’s fiance said they are territorial, and you could certainly believe that from the discussions they had regarding the trees.  Occupy Eucalyptus, if you ask me!