Happy, healthy, hopeful new year to you, !

Last night, Mr. Bloom and I were in bed and asleep before 9:30pm... I even slept through the fireworks and all the hoot'n and holler'n at midnight. I only know it happened since the Mister said it woke him up. And I call that a win—a good night's sleep trumps any party, any day!

I'm not a total celebration scrooge though. It's 11:30am and I'm drinking our traditional new year's morning champagne and orange juice. Back in the day, we'd have a full bottle—this year we opted for one of the mini bottles with just enough champagne for a splash in two flutes of orange juice.

I've been thinking about new years' eves of past. I think the best ones—at least that I can remember—were when my son was small and we'd have a house party with a few friends who also had little kids.

We'd start by rolling all the clocks back three hours—this was before kids had cellphones, mind you!

Then, since we lived on the West coast, we'd turn on the New York City NYE countdown at about 8:45 and ring in the new year at exactly 9:00pm PST... which of course is midnight on the East coast. The kids got tot blow horns and bang pots and yell loudly outside at "midnight" and think they'd stayed up late (which they had, but only by an hour!)

Once the minis were tucked away, we adults would play board games like Pictionary, Scattegories, and Jenga. It was all very low-key, civilized, and loads of fun.

I think my sweet son was eight, the year he figured out the ruse. It was our neighbours who ruined it by shooting off fireworks that woke him at the actual change-over of years. Oh boy, was he mad! He still talks about how we lied to him... oddly, the lies about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy don't bother him...

Did you do anything special for new year's eve? Do you have any traditions that you look forward to as a way to ring in the new year?

Brilliant rom com - FREE this weekend!

Losing Manhattan by Peyton James is free on Amazon this weekend. It's also available in Audible!

It all started with an innocent rant about my boss...

A private tirade about Henry Sloane’s exclusive high-end clothing line that was designed for the rich and model thin.

But now, a video recording of my impassioned rant is making headlines. Amidst news of a national boycott, the company’s stocks have plunged, and protesters are flocking to Sloane’s Fifth Avenue store, demanding change, demanding his head. All because of me.

Sloane is pissed. He wants revenge—retribution on the person responsible for damaging his brand.

He has no idea that person is me. Whoever leaked the video had the decency to blur my face—only now that they know I work for Henry Sloane, they want big bucks to keep my face concealed.

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More free books for you

Romance reader coloring book

The free, downloadable PDF version of the Romance Lovers Coloring Book will be ending soon. If you color, I would love, love, love to see how you treat one of the pages in this book. There are 30 different images and, if you like a reader challenge, a book recommendation that goes with each coloring page.

You can download the book and only print the one page you want to color... I did a few before Christmas—they were a ton of fun even though I only had seven or eight marker colors when I started! You can see when I got new colors below - pink and purple - my favorites!

If you prefer actual coloring books, it's also available with 46 coloring pages from Amazon.

New year, same old me...

We have friends who have a new year's tradition of deep cleaning their home in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. The idea is that they want to ring in the new year without any clutter or mess from the previous year.

It's something I've wanted to accomplish for at least a decade ... but every year I fail to do more than the usual... vacuum the dog hair once the tumblefurs start to look like little white mice, free the kitchen counters of piles of papers, organize containers around the bathroom sink, put away all the folded laundry that normally lives on top of dressers, instead of inside them...

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call myself an 'old dog' but it does seem that teaching me new tricks — at least with respect to housekeeping— is a door that closed long ago...

So this year, instead of berating myself for having failed, yet again, at welcoming the new year into a shiny clean home, I'm welcoming it into a home that is comfortable and relaxed and doesn't mind if you wear your boots past the rug at the door.

I've decided to accept that a happy home is a lot like love—sometimes messy but always a joy to stumble into.

Wishing you all that brings you joy in the coming year,

Love&sappystuff,

Danika

xo

And... the requisite post script... what, if any, new year traditions do you look forward to? My birthday is in a month and I always consider February a second new year for me - you might give me a great idea to start my personal new year!