Year of the.... Beaver?

Though our celebration won't be as grand or authentic as Lexi's (she is, after all, living in China these days) we will nevertheless observe Chinese New Year. Today we say good-bye to the year of the snake (Eleanor's year) and hello to the year of the horse. Coincidentally, I recently made a snake for our friend Tommy's first Christmas (sort of a Fiori theme),

and we meant to refinish a rocking horse for Eleanor's first Christmas but ran out of time. This is the year; the Chinese zodiac says so!

It also says that the year of the rabbit will come around again in 2023. Let's hope it doesn't take me that long to cross-stitch Eleanor's nutbrown hares. I made Emilia's for her first birthday: 

On this (Chinese) New Year's Day I would also like to wish a very happy seventeenth birthday to my little brother (by symbolic surrogacy) Adam. 

And finally, I am elated to announce that this year will (hopefully) be my personal year of the beaver. No, don't bother consulting the zodiac; I'm being silly. I just received a summons from Citizenship and Immigration Canada to write my citizenship exam in less than a month -- hooray!