we have a family tradition of a meal for new year where we look back over the previous year and what has been bitter and sweet and then look forward to share hopes and dreams for the year ahead. i really can't remember when we started it… the food is usually themed in some way in with bittersweet and this year the cocktails were too with harry mixing up some whisky sours. in sharing for the year ahead one of the themes was making space for a good balance between work and play, between woork and family, between commercial work and art. joel summarised this nicely when he said that in their graphic design business they say we need to do more cool shit! i was given a light box for christmas so that is now written and glowing in our kitchen on the shelf. there weren't enough 'o's so the o is improvised from a couple of 'u's.

we always offer up some prayers and i have to say my favourite prayer for the year ahead which i will remind myself of was "help us to do more cool shit!' – in other words to make enough space for those things that often get squeezed out. amen to that! i hope i'll do a bit better at blogging in that direction this year…