a new year

happy new year, everyone! i hope that you all had a nice holiday. i actually had a couple of weeks off from work, which was awesome. i am actually driving back down from my parents' house tomorrow to my place. i am going to be sad to go. it's been nice just hanging out and not doing anything. we had a great first christmas with my niece, who is the cutest thing ever. don't try arguing with me because you won't win. here's a blurry picture of her.

even though this is way out of focus, i think you can tell how adorable she is. :) i also saw a few movies including the hobbit (awesome!), django unchained (thought provoking and over the top), and jack reacher (tom cruise being super intense as always). the weather in norcal has been quite cold and was pretty rainy the first week i was up here. luckily my brother and sister-in-law gifted me with some really cool rain boots.

puddles fear me now. i bought a lot of nail polish which i am not going to show you. though i will show you the mani that i wore for over a week. it was seriously beautiful and wore like iron. 

you can't really tell from this picture but it is seriously sparkly and shiny. it is a pink red with bits of scattered holo glitter in it. seriously one of my favorite polishes that i found this year. 

and i ate. a lot. my mom is a great cook and i eat as much of her food as i can while i am at home. here are just a few of the tasty things i had over the break.

christmas dinner

beef pho

banh xeo

i will definitely miss the cooking when i am gone. that's about it. i read a couple of books but not as many as i'd hoped. i also pulled out my mom's old sewing machine to see if it worked. and it was working right up until it jammed. so now it's at the repair shop. i am hoping it just needs a good tuneup. it's a super old machine and it's not going to be worth putting a lot of money into it to fix it. if the estimate is too high i may just have to purchase a new one. 

since it's a new year, i should probably think about what my crafting goals are for the year. i cleared out my ravelry queue to only be 6 pages long. that took a couple of days. i used to queue everything i liked instead of favoriting it. now i know better. i only kept the things that i would realistically make and the list is still quite long. i do hope to get a lot more knitting done this year and learn to sew. 

and of course i'd like to blog more consistently. i say that all the time and i still haven't quite gotten the hang of it, but i'll keep trying. what are your new year's goals? :)