Last day of the year.....

.... and we're ending with warm temperatures--- gorgeous outside, like a tropical spring day. (My kind of "winter.") It was warm yesterday also, and I took down the outside Christmas lights and put the lighted reindeer into the garage--- the last bits of holiday decorations around here.

I spent nearly four hours the other day dusting and rearranging my bookshelves. Every book came off of the built-in shelf units surrounding the living room fireplace. I dusted all the shelves, then got to making a little more sense of my books. My set of Dickens volumes went into a glass-fronted curio cabinet in my sitting room. That set is so beautiful that I really should have had them behind glass all along. They just looked so pretty on the living room shelves, but now they're looking just as pretty and they're more protected. The covers are leather, the page edges are gold, and it's my favorite collection of books. I've read my way through half of the volumes so far. Love that set....... I found the volumes on eBay for a tenth of what the set is worth because the seller listed the books without a photo. Luckily, the seller was in Houston, and I got to see the set before paying for it. Gorgeous books.

As for my other books..... on one side of the fireplace, I have all the fiction, decorating books, and travel books. The shelves on the other side holds the non-fiction, biographies, the Christmas books, and the books on the Royal Family. So much easier to find books now when I'm looking for them. And with all the Dickens' books in the sitting room, I have more room on the living room shelves.

Books..... books....... I used to love working in the library when I lived in NY. All those new books coming in..... we got to see everything before the books went out to the public shelves. I think if I had to have a business again, I would want to run a bookshop. One of those quiet little shops like we had seen up in Maine..... selling books and serving tea and cookies. That would be the perfect job for me, if I wanted to have a job. (This is where I look up towards the sky and thank my stars for a blessed life.)

Right now, the Pajama Program is my "job." Since the segment on the PJ Program was re-run on the Oprah show, I've gotten some eMails from volunteers who want to collect pajamas and books for me. Hopefully, these volunteers will follow through and I will have lots of pajamas in January and February to deliver to the children's shelters. After all the PJ collections in December, I was hoping that the donations wouldn't just disappear.

Quiet New Year's Eve tonight........ no party, no company. With everything that we've done since Halloween, I am all partied out for the moment. For the next couple of weeks anyway, and then I will have to get busy planning our Valentine's party. Then the St. Patty's Day lunch in March..... and is Easter in April this year? Always something coming up, it seems...... and I still have everything I need for our Ice Cream Sundae Sunday lunch in my holiday closet. Everything except the ice cream, that is. Details... details.......

This year is the 100th anniversary of the New Year's Eve celebration in NY's Time Square. I'm hoping that Dick Clark will be part of the festivities in NY... it will be a nice way to celebrate the beginning of 2008.

As for 2008........ my wish is that everyone have a most happy, blessedly healthy, bright year filled with serenity, peace of mind, promise and hope.