Kung Hei Fat Choy

Today is the start of Chinese New Year!!

During this 15-day celebration, homes are adorned in red decorations with popular themes of good fortune, happiness, wealth and longevity. Families also exchange money in red-paper envelopes (hung-bohws), wish peace & happiness to each other and reconcile all grudges.

As you can tell, red is an important colour when celebrating Chinese New Year.

For us, an important tradition is to buy something new and preferably in the colour red.  We are all decked out in red today. I will have to take a picture of our 'red' from today... for now, here are two pictures from last year of all of us in our red!!

Ericka looks so young from almost a year ago

My favourite picture from our iMac photo shoot.. funny faces

Chinese New Year never falls on the same day of the year.. Last year it was celebrated on Thursday Febuary 3rd 2011 (which happened to be on Ericka's birthday) and next year, the New Year falls on Sunday Febuary 10, 2013 and the snake will be recognized as the animal sign of the year!  It's all based on the Chinese Lunar Calendar system which you can read about more here.

Wishing you a Happy Chinese New Year from my family to yours!! Kung Hei Fat Choy!