Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Welcome fire rooster.

Hello and Happy Chinese New Year everyone.I'm so over the Year of the Monkey.How about you? Was the monkey good to you?OMG! Trying to out monkey the monkey last year was so difficult for me. I'm so ready for the rooster.We've had a wonderful day today, made even better by my middle child, Kerstin, bringing my three granddaughters Ever, Isla and Zoe for a weekend visit.Our day started with a trip to visit our friend Dalyce at her lovely shop Booklovers.We got so many beautiful books! I think we bought about 15 children's and 10 adult books, and at Booklovers it just so affordable. For me, second-hand books are always the way to go. Reuse and recycle and save the world.My granddaughters love books to the max.And they love art! We sat round the dining room table making beautiful art.They have such fantastic imaginations.Hope they, like my daughters, always keep that sense of creativity. I think they will.We also took some time to play on the local school yard.We have a lot of local schools and parks here so it's lots of fun exploring.Then home for lunch. The other day, we stopped at the local thrift store and found these lovely salt and pepper shakers to add to our Chinese New Year table, plus the girls made these beautiful flowers for the vase from their toys.Our lunch was a big salad Nicoise (our version), smoked salmon and baguette.We love simple lunches.Evening came too soon again, as it almost always does these mid-winter days, and we got ready for our New Year festival. With us is our friend Ruka, who helped us fold all sorts of beautiful origami......while we made supper.We made potato pancakes with green onion, dumplings and pot stickers, and we made a vegetarian lettuce wrap of all sorts of veggies including mushrooms and black beans. Oh it was delicious.And then we had sparklers on a couple slices of matcha and azuki bean paste cake.We ended the evening with red envelopes and chocolate coins.A fun time.Do you like to celebrate when you can? We do. :DKung Hei Fat Choi everyone. I hope the rooster is good to you. :D