The worst thing about winter for me is the shorter days and long, cold nights. It is dark when I wake up in the morning and it’s also dark when I leave work and drive home. If it is raining or snowing, the drive home takes 3-4 times as long and can be a gridlocked nightmare.

Tonight was like that – raining a cold rain that made the roads slick, so people who were going too fast for road conditions were spinning out and ending up in ditches. Thankfully, I know to slow down and, more importantly, watch out for the idiots and give them plenty of room to wreck their own cars and not take me with them.

I got home and made a bowl of beef stew and then surfed the cable channels – nothing good on. Surprise, surprise. So, instead of spending the evening sitting on the couch, I’ll be sitting at the kitchen table and working on some crafts. The first project I want to tackle is covering old cans with plastic lids and making them decorative. I’ll be wrapping the can with yard, spray painting the can lids to coordinate, and then gluing embellishments around both the can and lid with a glue gun.

After I decorate a few cans that will become gifts, then I will make a batch of craft dough and cut out some interesting shapes to get ready for Valentine’s Day. I have cookie cutters in a variety of heart shapes and sizes, and I will be baking the dough ornaments, then painting and embellishing them to give away as gifts next week.

What do you do on a cold, rainy winter night when there is nothing on TV?