TO START THE NEW YEAR:

One of the first things I did in this New Year was to sew 2 fabric panels for our chancel area for Lent. Did you know there are only 3 Sundays in Ordinary time, 1 Transfiguration Sunday and it's Lent?!!!? This is a extremely short season.
Anyhow, the fabric panels are done and ready to be hung at the proper time. I also happened to find a pastel tie-dye print for the Easter season. It looks like the paper towel used to wipe the egg dipper after dipping/turning eggs in different colored dyes. The colors just bleed into each other in a beautiful pastel rainbow.
So, that will be the next big sewing project (actually the big part of it is the measuring, marking and pinning! The sewing is the easy part!)
Today, I will be making mini-cheddar meat loaves for 18-20 (actually the recipe makes 24) for the Rotary Dinner at the church tonight. The Confirmation class will be serving and cleaning up the dinner which each parent making one dish for the dinner. Yours truly, of course, felt compelled to do the meat entree. (With only 5 confirmands and 2 from the same family - it just didn't seem fair to ask them to do the main meat dish). So, there you go. What a fun way to spend the first Monday of the New Year - making 24 little meat loaves and obsessing over the dinner. This is from someone who usually only cooks for 2, sometimes for 4-5 and never more than 8.
My prayer is that all will be well and dinner will be served on time. I've lost sleep over this already.
Perhaps, I should merely focus on the opportunity to provide hospitality, food in the eating place and drink in the drinking place and let God take my worry about the rest.
I had this winter theme all selected for the table decorations: blue votive candles holders with snowflakes and winter snow sparkles on them, fake snow, glass
ice cubes and frosty snowflakes. The placemats are white with blue napkins that have a snowflake on them. Only problem is that it's over 60 degrees here today!!!!
Oh well...winter theme it will remain!
Happy first Monday of the New Year to you!