It’s the first Monday of 2018!

Happy new year, everyone! I loved this artist’s cartoon for last year re: flowers, so here’s his latest. Full tweet available so we can see the translation:

So good. My friend did tell me that a more accurate translation is “And if 2018 is a dark year” because it has to do with color.

I am still at my friend’s house, so we spent most of yesterday hanging out, reading, and doing puzzles. I made a cake for us to eat at midnight after we rang in the new year, but my friend’s husband wants to cut down in sugar during 2018, so we had to eat it at 11:30. It was delicious. (I made a churro cake with dairy-free buttercream icing [subbed in Smart Balance for the butter] because their daughter-in-law is allergic to dairy. She was so happy because she said no one ever makes her delicious desserts, and she’s been getting her sweets fix by basically eating soy ice cream.)

Then, we watched Mariah Carey’s redemption performance on ABC, toasted to the ball dropping/new year, and then did karaoke until about 4 in the morning. It was pretty great.

Today was more of the same with a trip to Best Buy because my daughter’s laptop broke so I bought her a new one.

I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but I definitely did not meet my Goodreads goal for the year. However, I did finish some one more book last week:

Trade Me by Courtney Milan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was delightful. I really enjoyed the characters here, and while there are some sex scenes, every time I would think, “yeah, that’s enough,” they would be over. So no complaints there. Also, while the basics of a romance plot are there, there were some nice and unexpected bits throughout. I also didn’t figure out Blake’s problem, though it made sense once revealed, so kudos for that as well. Also, it must be said that Tina’s dad is the best. And while the fake dating wasn’t as fraught as I like my fake dating to be (er, in very specific ways–Tina and Blake’s fake dating was fraught for other reasons), it still worked for me.

View all my reviews

And I, of course, posted some stuff:

• Final #MustReadin2017 Check-In
• #AMonthofFaves: Fave Book Covers and Top Reads of 2017
• 2017 End of Year Book Survey

For the past few days, I’ve been reading Big Magic: Creative Living by Elizabeth Gilbert, so I anticipate that will be my first book read in 2018.

It’s a good note to start on since one of my goals for 2018 is to do more creative writing, especially after I committed to so much blog writing this past year. I know I can do it, basically. Anyway, I’ll be posting more about my goals for the year in an upcoming post.

Until then, have a great week and paint the new year in the best colors you can.