Daffodil Princess Dress: The dress was altered and hemmed in time. Rachel looked so beautiful! Nathaniel was her escort and I was so proud of the two of them working together. Rachel wasn’t selected as Daffodil Princess, but she says she learned a lot about public speaking and the like, and she really enjoyed “princess lessons,” so the net sum of the experience is positive overall.
Penguin Party Quilt: I attached the bottoms sashing to two rows before deciding that I really do need to take some growth/width out of the penguin block rows to get them to fit the sashing strips better. Life has been an absolute carnival with Daffodil Princess prep, the school district K-12 musical, battling COVID for the second time this year, and Thanksgiving, so I’ve not got back to working on this since then.
Rachel’s Gingerbread Christmas Quilt: No progress
Woolly Wee Sheep Ornament(s): I started one! It’s a finicky pattern, but I’d say I’m about 2/3 done with it.
Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler: Haven’t done anything with it since finishing the stitching. I have the frame for it in possession and just need to do all the things you do to frame an embroidery piece.
December 2025 #craftygoals:
Time-Sensitive Things That Need Working on ASAP:
Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler: I blasted through finishing up the stitching for this so I could display it this year, so I better get it framed!
Fair Isle Christmas Balls: I was on a bit of a kick with planning the Wee Woolly Sheep Ornaments and decided to go all in on knitted ornaments, so I bought the books and yarn to make some Fair Isle ornaments, too. Hopefully I can get at least one done!
Things to Work on After the ASAP Projects:
Machine Stitching:
Penguin Party Quilt: Fixing the width of the rows and hopefully finishing this top!
Say-It Sew Along: Lori Holt has designed the cutest seasonal banners to go along with the release of her newest fabric collection, “TYPE/ography,” and I want to sew along! She released the instructions for the “Merry Christmas” and “Let It Snow” banners at the end of November and I’d really like to make them.
English Paper Piecing: No plans for anything this month.
Knitting: The above-mentioned Christmas ornaments.
Embroidery: No plans for anything this month.
There’s so much going on in our lives in December, so I’m not optimistic about how much progress I can make on crafty things, but it’s better to have a plan just in case, rather than finding myself with some free time and no idea what to make when I finally disturb the cobwebs in the craft room!
Happy December to you all, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, and hopefully I’ll be able to report back with some beautiful progress on some feel-good projects that elicit those wonderful Christmas-y heartwarmings that we’re all in search of in the darkest month of the year! Drink your cocoa and play your happy music!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that we’re halfway through the month, but it’s better to do the thing late than to not do the thing at all. And I really do love to read through my #craftygoals posts years later, so here we go.
Debrief: October 2025 #craftygoals:
Penguin Party Quilt: Coming along well. Really thought I’d have the top done by now, but life keeps interrupting. Life be like that.
Rainbow Coin Strip Quilt: Ha ha ha. I think I’m getting too old to have multiple projects in-progress anymore. I don’t think I even literally touched this quilt once.
Peppermint Blossoms EPP quilt: Some progress made, but I need to be honest with myself and admit that I’m just not feeling this anymore, so I should probably set it aside or figure out a way to make something from what I’ve already got prepared, like a pillow or table runner or something like that.
Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler: This was not done at the end of October, but it’s done now!
November 2025 #craftygoals:
Time-Sensitive Things That Need Working on ASAP:
Daffodil Princess Dress: Rachel is running for Daffodil Princess this year, and the selection ceremony is coming up. As such, she needs a dress for it, which we have secured and, SHOCKING, it needs hemming. All I do is hem formal dresses for this kid! Ugh. It’s a very pretty dress, though, so at least I’m working on pretty things. It’d be torture if they were ugly dresses. And this dress doesn’t have five skirts like that one prom dress at one point. That was pretty torturous, that one. So, hemming…STAT.
Things to Work on After the ASAP Projects:
Machine Stitching:
Penguin Party Quilt: So close. Really, really hoping the top is done and I’ve got this bad boy in the mail to the quilter by the end of the month.
Rachel’s Gingerbread Christmas Quilt: Prewash the fabric, maybe get some of the cutting done? I don’t know if I’m going to make it to working on this quilt in November.
Hand Stitching:
English Paper Piecing: I don’t know what I want to do here. I might take a break and focus on knitting instead.
Knitting: I want to knit some Christmas tree ornaments. I cast on a Churchmouse Woolly Wee Sheep today, so I think I’ll focus on making those for the next couple of weeks.
Embroidery: Get the Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler framed.
There’s not a lot of November left, and Christmas prep is surging forward, so we’ll see how much we get done on these goals! Wish me luck!
Following that wild storm that knocked out the power for a bit, these past couple of weeks have continued in the same vein. More storms, more (tiny) power outages, more craziness of getting kids to their activities, more, more, more, more. As the rain pelted me whenever I stepped outside, as the rain drums on the minivan’s roof, as the rain turns every cross-country course into mud soup, as the rain and wind tease my hair into a Halloween-worthy work of art befitting the season. Wind, rain, driving, rushing, tensing at every time the lights flicker. More, more, more, more. The urge to get ready for a fight-or-flight situation has been my constant companion as we steel ourselves against the weather and flurry of events.
And it’s completely the wrong waiting phase for these kinds of moments. Being on edge doesn’t protect against the storms. Hyper-vigilance doesn’t make my kids finish their races faster or score higher games. Stress doesn’t equal success.
Something I figured out when the kids were younger, that still applies today, is this: Slow is fast, and fast is slow. Which I’ve expanded in recent years to: Peaceful is winning, stressful is losing. Which sounds harsh but hear me out: I have always known that I can achieve anything. Doesn’t matter what it is or how impossible it may seem, I can figure it out. When I was considering getting my master’s degree a few years ago, I wasn’t worried about succeeding because I knew I could do it. Full stop. Make a plan and work the plan. It’s not rocket science.
However, as I’ve been getting older, I’ve started to realize that living in a constantly fearful state of hyperarousal isn’t enjoyable. I used to be proud of being super busy and getting lots of stuff done, but the other side of that productivity was that things were almost always stressful in my personal life. Cooking dinner at the end of the day while being overstimulated from doing too much is torturous. Orchestrating a carpool schedule that only has five-minute leniency windows seems impressive until you’re actually living it in real life and get stuck behind a tractor on the highway. Go, go, go, more, more, more, not enough, not enough, not enough.
Which almost always leads to a shortened temper. Snapping at the kids. Rolling my eyes towards the heavens at yet another inconvenience. Numbing out on the couch after dinner because my brain cannot handle computing another thought after feeling like I’ve been doing all the thinking for five people’s welfare, and logistics for various organizations, all day long. Too much, too much, too much. The choices that led to that sort of stress are choices to lose at the experience of life. No one wants those outcomes. Why am I making the choices that regularly result in these stressful moments?
Enter: The Beautiful Side of the Autumn Storm Season.
Enter: Being forced to cancel plans, sit in the darkness, exist without the hum of the millions of appliances in your house (for a little while…), and to exercise patience. That moment when you know there is nothing you can do to change the outcome of the inconvenience in front of you, and you surrender to the moment.
And it’s really nice.
And you wonder why you don’t approach life like this all the time.
The invitation to pause. To wait. To trust the process. The invitation to believe that it’s all going to work out fine in the end and knowing that it’s true because you’ve done this a few times before already.
So, I’ve decided to carry that feeling in my heart a little more consciously, and it has really helped calm that always anxious feeling that is synonymous with what it feels like to be inside my head most days. Maybe it’s a season for patience. You’re doing enough. Sink into what’s already going on and don’t worry about adding more.
With that in mind, I’ve spent some quality time with my holiday hand embroidery project, the Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler, and I’m pleased to report that the stitching is complete! I’m now waiting for the frame to be delivered to my house so I can frame it up. The fate of the timing of this project’s total completion is happily surrendered into the hands of the delivery people who will bring it to my door someday. No amount of worrying and fretting will make that go any faster. Get cozy with this “almost done but not quite yet” feeling, it’s going to be our best friend for the next while.
I’ve also spent time working on my daughter’s Christmas quilt, the Penguin Party quilt, and it’s also getting near completion. The blocks are all completely done and the vertical sashing between them has been attached. I’ve cut all the horizontal sashing and have attached one of them to one row. I have run into more issues with the flannel stretching and it is very frustrating. I think I may have to accept that there will be some gathers in the vertical sashing pieces to get them to fit on the horizontal sashing pieces. Or let the gathers happen on the penguin tummies to give the illusion of fuller bellies? I don’t know, but it’s definitely an issue.
A thought just occurred to me that I could unpick a vertical sashing or two and just turn the penguin parades into less of a grid by eliminating the excess through removal of vertical sashing pieces. I don’t want to do that, but I think it’ll be way better than gathering/pleats in the top. We’ll just call it a design feature. That might be my solution going forward unless some of you have some other ideas. I’m all ears. There is no extra fabric to cut longer horizontal sashing, or I’d just do that.
Regardless of which way I go forward, in the end it will be fine. No need for anxiety.
I talked with Renaissance about whether I should quilt it or if I should send it out and we’ve decided to send it out for quilting. Which means it won’t be finished for this year’s Christmas, but when you zoom out for some perspective, then it isn’t a big concern. By sending it out it will end up with prettier quilting, and I can start working on Rachel’s Christmas quilt this year, too, which will be appreciated. These quilts won’t be done in time for this year, but they’ll be done for the rest of the Christmases. No need for anxiety. It’s enough.
I’m not running a race or trying to win at some game. I’m enjoying my hobby and using my free time to create beautiful things for my children. The timing is fine.
Speaking of timing, I also went to my first quilt guild meeting since the beginning of the pandemic. I was entrenched in grad school craziness when they started meeting again, and then I was busy with the kids being teenagers, so I haven’t had space for that until now. Some of the women even remembered me, so that was nice. It felt good to be in a room with like-minded folks, and I’m looking forward to future meetings. I’m trying to remember patience and actively resist the urge to sign up or volunteer to help with anything until I’ve been going for a few months, or even a year. It’s not a race and there’s no game to win. It all waited for me to be ready to return, and it will keep being available regardless of my role/non-role.
So, I’m just going to hunker down and keep stitching. The quilts will get finished and the embroidery will be framed, and we’ll enjoy them for decades afterwards. It’s all enough. The pace is enough. No need for anxiety. Sit down with that cup of cocoa and listen to the rain and enjoy it. It’s a beautiful season of life if you allow it to be. Storms pass, seeds germinate, beauty blooms…all in their own time.
Let’s decide to enjoy this stormy part for its storms and learn from the lessons that those storms offer. Less is more. Pursue the peaceful options when you can.
This one’s going to take a very long time. I spent some time in the past week figuring out numbers for it and I think I’m going to end up needing 50 full blossoms and 10 half blossoms, plus whatever insane number of background triangles and diamonds that I’ll math out later. As of today, I have 8 red blossoms and 7 green blossoms complete. Only 35 to go…
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This project is my current crafting-in-the-van project that gets worked on whenever I’m waiting for kids’ practices to get over and when I’m sitting at church during Mutual because I don’t want to drive back home just to turn around half an hour later to come back and pick them up. Progress is slow on this, but I can usually knock out a full blossom a week now that I’m working on it during Mutual.
I also need to cut out more white jewel pieces for this quilt—113 more, actually. Yikes.
And here’s the Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler:
The Ziploc bag that it’s stored in says it’s from ~2005, so this project is pretty ancient. I think I bought the pattern shortly after we bought our first home and before I got pregnant with Renaissance. I was leaning towards a primitive and folksy decor look, but decided later that it really wasn’t for me. (That, and my house was decorated in “homeschooling chic” out of necessity for the stage of life we were in, lol.)
I’ve been granting myself some “Whimsical Days” each month to work ahead on upcoming holidays and celebrations when my heart desires it, and I found myself wishing I had a slow stitching Christmas project to pick up on my Christmas days, so I unearthed this and have been putting in work on it while watching movies. I’m not worried about when this will be finished; it’s just fun to work on. Maybe it’ll be ready for this year’s Christmas, maybe it won’t.
But I like to keep track of progress, so this guy is at 12 blocks out of 26, which is ~46%, and we’ll subtract 5% from that to account for the border that will need to be stitched at the end, so 41% done.
And I just noticed that the pattern itself has a 2006 copyright, so I imagine I actually started working on this in 2006. I do love that fabric and yarn will wait for you!
Hopefully you’re able to find some slow stitching time on this beautiful Sunday! The weather is blustery here and so perfect for some down time with needle and thread.
Another Spring Break done and dusted. We had a great week of not having to be anywhere and having the freedom to explore and do what we felt like doing on our own schedule. Reminded me of our homeschooling days. Gosh, I miss those.
Top priorities this past week:
HAVE A GREAT SPRING BREAK
Perhaps get some work done in the garden
Hem Rachel’s prom dress
Caring
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It matters a lot to me that I do some fun things with the kids during their Spring Breaks. I spent some time researching interesting places to go on our side of the state and asked Rachel and Nathaniel if any of them sounded interesting. Nathaniel chose The Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum, which I had never heard of, and Rachel wanted to do a good old-fashioned trip to the zoo. So, we packed up one morning and did a “Seattle Day Trip,” which also included a trip to the Dick Blick store in Seattle, which Rachel’s wanted to visit since we moved here. (I generally avoid Seattle like the plague these days because it is no longer the beautiful place that it was in my youth—makes me too sad to spend much time there anymore.)
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I also wanted to work on hemming Rachel’s prom dress, but never got around to it. Ugh. She ordered a dress that ended up being too long for her, and it has like five skirts, so I’m getting to experience all the worst parts of dressmaking (hemming) without any of the fun parts whatsoever (basically every other part of sewing a dress). Super jazzed. Next week is crazy busy with Easter prep, so I probably won’t get to it until the week after that. It’s a little too close to the deadline for my liking, but it is what it is at this point.
Gardening
Nope. I’m thinking this year is going to be a lean garden year. I just can’t/won’t find the time to get out there and work on it. Which is fine; I just need to wrap my head around the idea of quite possibly letting that slide this year.
Creativity
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We’re in the process of painting some wooden Easter eggs for our Easter table centerpiece. We’ve done pysanky and regular egg dyeing in the past and we’re kind of over putting all that effort into making eggs each year only to eat them or have them break later on. Very few of us like hardboiled eggs, so dyeing up a bunch means a lot of them will go bad over the next weeks. I’d rather make our decorating efforts last, hence the experiment with wooden eggs this year.
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It’s been fun exploring new ways of expressing my creativity lately. Something I’ve noticed over the last few years is that I tend to rotate through my hobbies, and once spring hits I’m not looking forward to more time in the craft room. As of right now, I’m looking forward to pursuing more painting projects and dedicating my focus where I feel it’s needed most, like in the garden or in physical activity.
Final Thoughts
I took the week off from quilting so I could focus on the kids and spring break activities—something I’ve finally felt strong enough to enjoy again, and that in itself has felt like a quiet victory. But as I’ve stepped back to breathe a little, it’s becoming clearer that I can’t keep juggling everything I love with the same intensity. Life is gently nudging me to shift focus for a season, and that might mean sharing less online.
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That said, this moment of pause also reminded me just how much joy and beauty this space has held over the years. I’ve spent some time revisiting old posts and projects that still make my heart sing, and I’d love to share a few of those with you, too:
FACE MASKS. (We’ve been through so much together, friends…)
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I wish a you a lovely upcoming week of spring! Isn’t it just the best season ever?!?! Loving this year’s spring. Thank you so much for being a part of my world.
A task I took on with a frown, To stitch table runners all brown, For the band fundraiser—oh dear! But I’d rather sew Christmas cheer, And can’t wait ’til these projects wind down!
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You have a lot of time to think when you’re doing boring sewing, and sometimes my brain comes up with haphazard limericks. Happily enough, the band fundraiser table runners are close to being completed—I’ve sewn up thirteen of the fifteen as of this morning—and I am that much closer to diving into Christmas sewing!
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I’ll have to take a day or two to do some deep thinking and organizing for my church’s Christmas Sacrament Program and a newly-taken-on public music performance near a local Giving Machine, but after that it’s all the Christmas sewing, all the time!
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I hope your seasonal sewing wishes are coming true! See you next week with, hopefully, something extra fun to show you!
As the band moms and I gear up for the super duper important band fundraiser that will take place in December, multiple comments were made about how the decorations last year were “looking a little tired.” To be fair, they were metallic mesh that had been stored in smashed up positions throughout most of the last three years, only to be brought out to breathe for one evening in December. The tiredness made sense.
The kicker about decorations for a fundraiser is that any money you spend on decorations comes out of the proceeds you earn from the fundraiser; so, even though I loves me an excuse to go wild with decorating, I’ve been very hesitant to upgrade the decor in any meaningful fashion in order to keep the Band Booster coffers filled. However, when multiple people make the same observation that your decorations look just plain sad, you gotta listen and figure something out.
We decided that we’d replace the table runners this year, but keep the mason jars with the sticks and worry about upgrading those next year. Seeing that sewing is my jam, I volunteered for the uncontested honor of sewing up the table runners.
I had a very smart moment and looked for 108-inch wide quilt backing fabric first because you can get six 15-inch wide table runners from one width of it, rather than only two or three from the regular 45-inch wide fabric. AND(!), 45-inch wide fabric costs about twelve dollars a yard, and 108-inch wide fabric costs only slightly more at about twenty dollars a yard. Winning!
That’s what I’m up to this week: Sewing table runners. It’s very boring sewing, but I’m optimistic that it will look nice at the event. I’m hoping to be done by early next week and that I can then devote my attention to some fun Christmas sewing!
The autumn sunshine is perfect right now and accentuates any fabric hanging from my ironing board. It may be boring sewing, but it certainly makes my heart happy to walk into my craft room each morning and be greeted by golden backlit fabric draped and waiting for me. I absolutely love it in this space and feel so much gratitude that I get to spend time doing what I love.
It’s November, and right on schedule, it’s raining like crazy today. It’s pretty rain at this point—the brightness of the colorful leaves creates an impressionistic feel to the landscape, so at least we have that.
Top priorities this past week:
Halloween celebrating & traditions
Band Fundraiser Table Runners
Scheduling special musical performances for November
Finding a pianist for the Christmas program
Make some headway on the secret Christmas knitting
Rest when I’m tired or hurting
Celebrating
Halloween was fun this year. Not a lot of fuss, but Renaissance and I did manage to create our traditional chili in pumpkin bread bowls, which I wasn’t too sure was going to happen. She invited her friends over for another Halloween feast before Trick or Treating started, despite that they’re all adults now that don’t do Trick or Treating, and they hung out afterwards playing video games together and taking breaks to hunt down Rachel and Nathaniel in the neighborhood to jump scare them with light sabers. As one does…
I was a little sad going into Halloween this year because Ren and her friends have grown up and I was worried about Rachel and Nathaniel not having a group to go Trick or Treating with, but they put the word out that we live in a great neighborhood for Trick or Treating and some of their friends decided to come on over to do that here. It was nice. I love the chaos of having a gaggle of teenagers in my house on Halloween night. Absolutely love it—peak motherhood aspirations there.
So Halloween is over, and with that comes Christmas. I absolutely turned on Christmas music this morning as I worked in the craft room!
And spare me your “Christmas shouldn’t start before Thanksgiving” sentiments: I’m Canadian; I grew up with Thanksgiving taking place in early October, so my internal Christmas countdown was programmed in childhood to start once Halloween was over and I’m not going to reset it ever because more time in Christmas Town is AWESOME. I take the requisite days off from Christmas prep to do a proper job on American Thanksgiving, and we are very grateful people who are capable of exuding a thankful attitude even while decorating for Christmas. I know, it may be shocking that such people exist, but we do! Everything is OK, gratitude will continue to exist in our home despite the appearance of red and green before Thanksgiving. If you’re a person who doesn’t do Christmas until after American Thanksgiving, cool. You do you. But do not come in here demanding that the only correct way to celebrate the holidays is how you do it. Because that is blatantly incorrect.
And further more, how do you think Christmas music happens? Do you think musicians wait until after American Thanksgiving to start practicing that stuff? Of course they don’t! Big preparations take time, and there is not a lot of time between American Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sorry/not sorry to pop your bubble on this concept, but many musicians start practicing their Christmas music in October, even September. I started planning and purchasing Christmas sheet music in August. That’s how Christmas music happens—that far in advance. Just be thankful (hey, there’s that gratitude word!) that there are people who want to shower others with so much Christmas cheer that they’ll voluntarily give up their time very early on in order to prepare for Christmas, rather than pointing fingers and snidely alluding that the Early Christmas Cheer people are materialistic gimme pigs. We’re actually spending more time in service to others by getting the Christmas Town Express going early, and that’s…decidedly unmaterialistic, right?
/soapbox (I’m so tired of this argument that, really, shouldn’t even exist.)
Creating
I have found time to start working on the Band Fundraiser table runners this week. I’ve got most of the fabric cut up and I’ve ironed what I have on-hand and have done the first round of sewing on one (1) table runner. I hope the future organizers of this event don’t get tired of the table runners and get rid of them in a few years. They’re turning out quite nice and could potentially last for years if they’re treated well.
I made a little bit of progress on the secret Christmas knitting, too.
Community
I am hitting some major walls with church music. I shall remain optimistic through this weekend and if things don’t sort themselves out I’m going to have to alter my plans. Once again, but for a different crowd this time, how do you think Christmas music happens? A big part of that is people being willing to be a part of church choir. If you’ve ever wondered about joining your church’s choir, stop wondering and just do it. We’re desperate for you. DESPERATE.
Healing
I’m almost there, I can feel it. I yo-yo back and forth between overdoing it and needing to take time to rest from the overdoing, which is always a good sign that points towards a “nearing full recovery” kind of thing. I’m glad I wrote about it this time around so I can look back and see the glacial pace and know that it’s completely normal. Six weeks of inactivity is a really long time. You don’t think it is when people throw that timeline around, but laying around for that long is mind-numbingly boring. I guess I should be thankful that I’m feeling like bursting my prison right as Christmas Season begins. What a glorious reward!
Highlights
Halloween was noisy and fun. I love hosting all these kids at our house.
I made a beautiful pumpkin soup this week that was so delicious.
The best idea came to me at church: At the end of each month, sit down with your spouse and schedule all your weekly date nights for the entire next month. So simple, but it’s literally never occurred to me. When I approached Michael with the idea, he improved it by saying we could align our four dates each month with the four goal-setting areas of the Church’s youth program in order to expand our horizons a little more. So, a date night dedicated to 1) Spiritual, 2) Intellectual, 3) Physical, and 4) Social pursuits each month. In months with five Fridays we’ll have a family date, which are the most expensive dates of them all, but you know, kids deserve some fun times out with their parents, too.
Lowlights
Renaissance got her car stuck in the mud when she went out with friends to a haunted house this last week. Thankfully, Michael came to her rescue. Where would we be without good dads?
I don’t know what it is about summer that makes it difficult to stick to a schedule. Is it the lack of places to be, the pull to dawdle and “waste” time, the fact that I have large chunks of time to work on things without being interrupted, or the heat? All of them? None of them? Perhaps we will never know. Regardless, I have time in my schedule to write two blog posts a week this summer, and I often find myself so busy with other things that I choose to do the other things rather than sit down and write. It won’t hurt much in the long run, but I do enjoy re-reading posts and I’m robbing myself of that future pleasure by putting off the writing each week!
Rather than write a regular end-of-the-week kind of post, I figure I’ll do one big swooping review of summer thus far…
Cooking
I’m doing my best to cook things using stuff from the garden, but we had a ton of leftovers after Renaissance’s graduation party, so we ate leftover for 2-3 weeks. Now that we’ve worked through the leftovers, there’s been more garden cooking. The herbs are really starting to come into their own, so I need to remember that they’re available to use!
Renaissance baked up a ton of stuff for her party, and then made some really cute patriotic cookie arrangements for the Fourth of July.
Clothing
One of my goals is to teach the girls some basic clothing sewing over the summer so they can have a better understanding of how clothing fits them and also because it’s a great skill to know. I just taught Rachel her first lesson today and she seems to understand it pretty good.
Cleaning
Graduation party cleanup is taking forever because I bought serving items that need to be assimilated into our household and it turns out our household is pretty full of pretty serving ware already. I think we’ve officially gotten to the point where we need to do a major house purge. Makes sense; the kids have all graduated to new levels of childhood/adulthood, and the life we are currently living is very different from how things were three to four years ago. I don’t know if I should do a full-on Marie Kondo-esque purge, or just attend to the most troublesome spots and make do…I’m leaning towards the latter because I just don’t want to deal with too much. I feel like I can’t handle a Marie Kondo purge this summer.
I did institute a new thing: Catch-up Fridays: For two hours each Friday afternoon I work on the most overdue tasks on my to-do list app. I finally framed up some prints I bought last autumn and was even set to hang them up, but someone walked off with my nails and picture hanging supplies so I’m stuck until I go on my errand run next week and buy some new nails. Hmph. I think Catch-up Fridays will help me feel way more productive by the end of the summer. Crossing those severely overdue tasks off the to-do list just feels so satisfying!
Caring
The girls cannot find jobs. I have them applying to a bunch everyday and they don’t get any kind of responses from the companies. Emily’s been invited to two interviews that didn’t result in anything, and Ren and Rachel have been on one interview each that didn’t pan out either. A lot of people are saying that teens are having a hard time finding jobs because minimum wage pay is so high here in Washington that adults are staying in minimum wage jobs instead of moving up the career ladder and opening the minimum wage jobs back up for the kids. Maybe that’s what it is, I don’t know. I just know that between college tuition rates being out of control and my teens having a hard time finding any kind of employment, post-high school education is becoming very difficult to fund. Ren is hoping that once she turns eighteen next month she’ll be a better job candidate. Fingers crossed.
Creativity
I altered a flower girl dress for a friend and it went well. Now that it’s done I’m trying to learn tambour beading. It turns out that setting up a slate frame takes forever, so I’m stuck on that step until I’m done with it. And then I don’t know what I’m going to bead after, so I feel like I’m flailing at the moment.
My creativity mojo is kind of non-existent at the moment. My instinct is to freak out when that happens, but I’ve had bouts of no creative mojo and I know all will be eventually be well. It’s just a supremely uncomfortable feeling. I feel like I can’t commit to anything because I’m really anxious about the future and whether or not I’ll actually have time to work on projects. And I have completed quite a few really big projects this year already, so maybe I just need a rest. It’s feeling pretty good to be cleaning up the house and working in the garden, which are both areas I had to neglect over the last two years while I did my master’s degree, so maybe this summer will just be about straightening all the home and garden stuff out?
Also, I was just called to be our ward’s new choir director and I feel like I’m not entirely on top of that just yet. We’ve had a couple rehearsals and we’re working on the newly-released hymns, and I kind of resent that my choir pieces have essentially been chosen for me with all these new hymns coming out and needing to be performed before they can be used as congregational hymns. I need to find time to work on my own piano and vocal practice so I can pitch in some more with church music, but…the fire isn’t there right now. Music just feels so stale right now; just more of the same things I’ve been doing for twenty years. It will be nice when this heavy cloud begins to lift.
Gardening
The garden is a source of joy for me this season. I’ve been really good about consistently maintaining it and the effort is definitely being repaid in terms of produce, flowers and beauty. I harvested the last of the lettuce this week and tore out the spent pea plants. The Napa cabbages are almost ready to harvest, the mini carrots are also getting close to picking, and the rhubarb keeps producing. The squashes are all starting to vine and bloom, which is exciting! I have some corn plants popping up, and my peppers, tomatillos and tomatoes are blossoming a ton as well. There’s a lot of potential brewing in that little space in the backyard!
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I planted green beans and winter squash in the newly-vacated pea plant bed this morning, and planted random sunflowers in any blank spaces that I felt needed something growing in them. Sunflowers have had a tough year contending with the slugs, as the slugs love newly-sprouted sunflower greens. I’m thinking about getting my starter trays out again and starting the rest of my sunflower seeds so that I can put them in once they’re bristly enough to deter slugs and then I can have a plethora of sunflowers for autumn color. I also want to start some broccoli.
The nasturtiums are blooming so wonderfully, the Shasta daisies are starting to bloom, the marigolds are growing leaps and bounds, and the aforementioned herbs are scattered throughout and give off the best scents when you brush by them. Rachel harvested the French Lavender this morning and we’ll make wreaths from them this week for the doors. I love the smell of lavender wafting through the house!
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Celebrating
The Fourth of July came and went. I made patriotic Jell-O and it was wolfed down in a matter of hours. It’s so good! Nom, nom, nom.
As far as celebrating summer goes, we’ve not done much. Maybe I should come up with some ideas.
Community
Renaissance and Nathaniel signed up to be in the orchestra for a production of “Guys & Dolls.” I’m worried that it’s too much for Nathaniel’s ability at this point. Renaissance is straining to keep up, as she’s playing three different instruments for it. I’m hoping that this is a “sweet spot” of difficulty for her that has her coming back for more when it’s all over, and not a “that almost killed me and I’m never doing it again” kind of difficulty that turns her off of musical accompaniment in the future.
Ward Choir is still in its infant days. As always, we have way more women than men, so I think I’m going to have to morph into recruitment mode and stalk dudes, which I really just don’t want to do. Maybe I’ll wait until school starts? Summer is often so hit and miss with families going on vacation anyways. We’ll just plough through new hymns throughout the summer and it’ll be enough. We’ll set our sights on making choir magic in the fall?
I want to start some sort of social group that meets once a month or so. A couples’ potluck group, or a creative women’s group, or something. Or just invite some ladies over one evening. I’m feeling the loss of all the regular socializing at school events and I’m feeling pretty isolated. I feel like friends are a necessary ingredient to an enjoyable summer. Every season, really, but this season–without its enforced socializing that school throws at us in autumn, winter and spring–needs shared laughter and sweet drinks in the sunshine with favorite friends.
Maybe everything is in a “nearly ripe” stage at the moment, and after all the hustle and bustle of school’s end, graduation and Ren’s recital, normal feels a little flat in comparison? I may be feeling a little off-kilter, but the weather is beautiful and we do get a lot of free time for reading, naps, and daydreaming, which ain’t that bad. There’s a couple of things planned in August that should be fun, so I’ll just keep showing up and cleaning up the cobwebs that have formed in the past couple of years and hopefully feel better for it. I would really like the Creative Mojo to come back, though. It’s so unsettling when I’m not up for creativity. It will return, I know that. Maybe I’ll read some more on the hammock in the next week. Chill out some more.
Best wishes to you as you go about your summer experiences and memory-making!
While I am very pleased that I didn’t throw Renaissance’s graduation party until two weeks after graduation, I also feel like our summer vacation didn’t really get to start until now after the party is finished because we were so busy with putting the party together. I spent this past week trying to summon up the will to do anything and then just gave up because I figured it was my body’s way of taking a break after many, many months of non-stop activity. All good things, of course, but it’s been a lot and recovery is an important part of the wellness cycle. I’m hoping I slowed down enough and rested enough that I’ll be good to go for the rest of the summer.
I have missed my little weekly posts to begin and end each week, and I’m hoping I can get back into a routine that includes writing them. The past six weeks were really busy! Here’s the plan for the next week, as we really sink into our true summer schedule:
Wednesday: Cheeseburgers (Because Rachel has been asking for them repeatedly), Shaved Summer Squash & Peas,
Thursday: Hot Dogs, 4th of July Jell-O, etc.
Friday: Ribs, Potato Salad, Corn on the Cob
Saturday: French Bread Pizza, Caesar Salad
Sunday: Panzanella
Clothing
Laundry is pretty caught up on the daily stuff; I still need to fold and figure out some of the other season stuff and do a wardrobe rotation to make sure all the cold weather clothing has been put away and all the summer clothing is out and in use.
I’m altering a flower girl dress for a friend’s daughter and it’s going pretty good thus far. I’ve basted all my alterations into the dress and the girl came over today to make sure everything was fitting correctly before I put in legit stitches, and it looks really good! I just took the very top of the side seam in a little too far and it’s going to rub her underarm too much, so I’ll let the alteration a wee bit there. Time to get going with permanent stitching!
Cleaning
Finish cleaning up the graduation party, which will require:
Decluttering and cleaning the pantry so I can find space to put the new chafing dishes and drink dispensers that I purchased for the grad party.
Let’s be honest here, those two things would be absolutely amazing to accomplish in just one week, so I’m going to keep it at two items on this list.
Caring
Driving lessons for Emily & Rachel, scheduled and everything
Spelling lessons for Rachel & Nathaniel, because that’s what we do in the summer
I’m teaching the lesson tomorrow for Family Home Evening and I’ll be walking the kids through the “Getting Things Done” filing system. I’ve come up with a great way to help them keep track of their incoming mail and schedule their stuff and keep track of their chores. I’ll write a post in a few months if it actually works well.
I need to find out more about the Fife & Drum Corps that I want Renaissance and Nathaniel to join.
Creativity
Much of my creativity time will be taken up by the flower girl dress alterations. I’m glad I’m doing it, but it also reminds of why I generally say no to these requests—I don’t have a lot of creative time and I’d like to use it for myself. No regrets on this particular commission, but it’s a good reminder.
I will be teaching all three girls the basics of garment sewing this summer with the end goal of Rachel being capable of stitching her own homecoming dress. I’m excited about this prospect because…
I am going to be learning a new skill over the next couple of months that should take my dressmaking abilities to new heights: Tambour Beading. Tools arrive today and I’ve made a promise to myself I won’t start playing with them until I’m done with the flower girl dress, so hopefully I can speed through the alterations this week so that I actually get to start learning how to do this beading technique ASAP. I am SO EXCITED!
I need to check in on the various quilt blocks I sent out into the world for Ren’s Signature Graduation Quilt. There were a handful of last-minute cancellations on attending her party as well, so I might reach out and see if they want quilt blocks to sign.
I need a Crafting-in-the-Van project because summer music lessons will be starting up this week or next. Obvious options include: Smitten Quilt, Beehive Embroidery, Roses Hexagon EPP Quilt, and the Star Spangled Diamonds Quilt (I think this is too big for van crafting, though). My heart wants a new project, preferably embroidery and/or historical costuming-related. I am really not in a quilty mood right now, or knitting, either.
Gardening
It is looking so beautiful. I am so glad for every hour I’ve spent out there to get it ready this year because the view is absolutely worth it. I take a thirty minute break every morning after I wake up the kids to sit in the backyard and watch the birds flit about and feel the sun on my face. I love summer mornings.
Keep harvesting the peas, which are coming fast right now. The peas I planted on President’s Day weekend are massively producing, and also starting to fade a bit. The peas I planted near St. Patrick’s Day are ramping up production and will take us through a few more weeks I think. It was a good experiment with those dates. The peas I planted in April haven’t amounted to much at all. I’m not sure if I’ll get any pods off of them.
The lettuces and spinach are producing marvelously right now, but we also have so much cut lettuce left over from Ren’s graduation party that we’re not using the garden lettuces at all. Hopefully we can plough through all the leafy greens before everything goes bad or bolts.
Everything else is in the growing/maturing stages: Zucchini, Summer Squash, Tomatoes, Roma Tomatoes, Cherry Tomatoes, Eggplant, Tomatillos, Hot Peppers, Sweet Peppers, Bush Beans, and lots of herbs.
There’s also some corn coming up, along with some pumpkins. I’m really excited for these two crops. Corn is always fun to grow, and I bought a purple variety this year. Hopefully it’s tasty. And pumpkins are just delightful.
Celebrating
Still cleaning up graduation stuff, but it’s coming along
Happy Canada Day today! I don’t do anything for it anymore because I have a lot to do for the Fourth of July, but I still like to wish people a happy Canada Day when it rolls around.
Fourth of July Jell-O preparations will commence tomorrow. I need to make sure we actually have everything we need, but that’s also something that can be remedied the day of if need be.
Pioneer Day is coming up and I’m not sure if we’re doing anything for it. Church is having a potluck or something and I think I saw something about a pie-making contest, which I’ll need to mention to the girls because they will absolutely commit.
Renaissance’s eighteenth birthday is coming up in a little over a month. No idea what we’re doing, should probably get on that.
Community
Ward Choir is on my mind as we get it started up. I like to have them perform once a month, so we’ll be hitting the rehearsals hard. I’d also like to start figuring out the Christmas program ASAP so I can get music ordered and have everything ready to go in September/October, depending on the difficulty of the pieces.
Hymns have not been chosen for July because sacrament meeting topics weren’t chosen when I was looking yesterday. A reminder text was sent.
Need to do July contacting with ministering sisters. My two companions are both moving out of state this week, so I’m also waiting to hear who my new companions will be. I’ve asked for it to be my own daughters, so we’ll see, I guess.
I have a couple of books about decorating and entertaining that I like to read from time to time, and I just read the summer chapter from The Collected Cottage and I’m all revved up to do some summer entertaining, but I don’t know what to do. That beautiful chapter just makes me want to have friends over and enjoy the beautiful weather while we can, but it’s a leap to invite new people over and everyone is so busy with travel and houseguests during the summer. I guess I just need a mentality of “Just keep asking until someone says yes?”
I’m sure there’s Band Booster stuff I should have my eye on, but I gave myself the last week off and am uninformed at the moment. I’ll have to reacquaint myself and start touching base with the other band moms.
Top priorities this week:
Finish cleaning up the graduation party, which will require:
Decluttering and cleaning the pantry so I can find space to put the new chafing dishes and drink dispensers that I purchased for the grad party.
Flower girl dress alterations.
Fourth of July preparations. Mmmmm, Jell-O.
Ward Choir prep.
It’s the time of year for enjoying the weather, and thankfully, I’m solar-powered so the sunshine helps me get loads of stuff done. Happy North American Country Day that you celebrate, if that pertains to you, and I’ll talk to you again soon!
That Crafty Cara 