We had another South Sound Adobe Users’ Group meeting on the 12th, our annual Christmas party, where a lucky member won over $2,000 worth of Adobe products!

On the 15th, the Tacoma City Club held a luncheon I attended featuring a travelogue by Kathleen Merryman and Mike Archbold with slides of their trip to Nepal for Habitat for Humanity. They said the purpose was for hundreds of volunteers from all over the world to join together to “shine a light on the scourge of substandard housing and demonstrate what can be accomplished when families, communities, and nations come together to build a future where every man, woman, and child has a decent place to live.” The presentation was not only highly entertaining but enlightening as well.

That same evening I went to the annual Christmas party for the The Gig Harbor Web Design Meetup Group. More informal but certainly not less informative and entertaining, we discussed each of our Top Ten of 2010 lists, including the top ten tools you use for web design/dev, favorite social networking sites, pet peeves on the web, examples of good design, examples of dastardly design, helpful books, organizations, etc . . . There was also a business card drawing and prize giveaway. I won free web consultation from IvyCat Website Services! I’m very excited about it. Eric Amundson, the owner of IvyCat and the leader of our Web/Dev, is extremely knowledgeable in all things web-related and I expect to have all sorts of questions once I install WordPress on my server.

The weekend before Christmas, I made my annual batches of cookies with my son and his girlfriend. I should have taken a picture! They’re sugar cookies cut out in Christmas shapes, covered in red, green or white butter frosting and decorated with various sprinkles and icing from decorator tubes. We celebrated a wonderful week with family in Walla Walla and then came home to have our own celebration!

Among the many nice gifts I received, my son gave me a Wacom tablet, the ultimate tool for graphic design! Laura, I’m ready for that class in tablet use now!!!