Hello January! Hello New Year! I always get bit by the Resolution Goal Fairy this time of year. How exciting to have a fresh page of life to look forward to! I would like to write a 2026 Goals post, but it’s been busy like always and I haven’t gotten to it yet. So, we’ll make do with just January’s goals for the moment.
Debrief: December 2025 #craftygoals:
Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler
Wee Woolly Sheep Ornament(s)
Fair Isle Christmas Balls
Penguin Party Quilt
Say-It Sew Along
Rachel’s Gingerbread Christmas Quilt
I’m just going to make this easy and tell you that I did NOTHING on any of these. December was a rough month and I’m just glad I got the Christmas stuff done that got done. And I think I’ll set aside all the Christmas projects until later in the year; it’s one thing if they just need a little bit of work to finish, but these projects are not in that place. Well…the embroidery only needs framing…
I did do a tiny bit of work on the Penguin quilt in this last week.
January 2026 #craftygoals:
Time-Sensitive Things That Need Working on ASAP:
Bowling Senior Night Stuff: Senior Night is this month and, as the resident Crafty Mom™, there’s some stuff I’ve been asked to do to make it a little more special and pretty. Time to bust out the Silhouette Cameo!
Lori Holt Say-It Sew Along: I really want to make that Valentine’s Day banner.
Rainbow Coin Strip Quilt: I rejoined my local quilt guild; one of the reasons being they have a Show & Tell at each month’s meeting, and I’m setting the goal to show a completed quilt at each meeting. I want to present a completely finished Rainbow Coin Strip quilt at February’s meeting.
Things to Work on After the ASAP Projects:
Machine Stitching:
Penguin Party Quilt: Call me delusional all you want, but I keep hoping to finish this quilt!
Hand Stitching:
English Paper Piecing: I’m hoping to work on Smitten a little bit this month.
Knitting: I’ve cast on for a new pair of Christmas socks for myself! When I was reading through last year’s blog posts I remembered how much I liked making my Stripey Christmas Socks, so I decided to order another self-striping Christmas colorway and do it again! I think I’ll call this new pair my Jingle Bell Socks. #newyearnewsocks
Embroidery: Try to frame up the Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler.
As always, a big list of to-dos! But I prefer to have too much to do rather than too little. Let’s see what we can do in this joyful January month! (If I tell myself it’s destined to be a joyful month, maybe it will happen! #positivemindset)
I’m not sure I ever posted about this, but it happened. Rachel was helping me declutter my craft room and she came across my tattered collection of friendship bracelet instructions from my middle school days. As she flipped through them she saw the fish pattern and commented that it’d be cool to have, so I made one for her for her birthday. Not a big deal, project-wise, but it was fun to dust off that very, very old skillset.
Star Climber Scrap Quilt
This is still a project-in-progress, but I’m loving it. Star Climber is another free pattern from Fat Quarter Shop, created especially for scrap-busting.
Stripey Christmas Socks
Started in 2024, but not finished in time for last year’s Christmas, so I got them done in February. I loved wearing these fabulous Christmas socks this Christmas season! I’m on the hunt for all the different Christmas colorways of this West Yorkshire Spinners’ Signature 4-ply yarn so I can own the entire holiday rainbow!
Layer Cake Crêpe Quilt for Fat Quarter Shop
You never saw this, and neither did the rest of the quilting world because I shut down my blog in from May through September of this year, with the full intention of never coming back. I had a stalker in the last part of 2024 and was granted a restraining order that forbade him from making any contact with me for an entire year. However, in the spring I started seeing some activity in my analytics that suggested he might be checking up on me via the blog and it spooked me, so I made the decision to stop feeding the monster and walk away.
But it turns out that I really love blogging and sharing my creative endeavors on social media, and I resented that I had been forced out of the things I loved by that dude. After some serious therapeutic work, I made the decision to come back online in September because I don’t think it’s fair that I be expected to abandon what I love because of someone else’s poor behavior. It’s definitely a personal, multi-faceted choice, and I do worry that it might be a foolish one, but I don’t want to spend my life hiding my talents under a bush just because someone got weird about it all. How do you continue going on if, every time you get good at something, someone behaves dumb about it and you’re expected to quit your hobby because of their choices? It’s crazy. Nope, no thanks.
I used the “A Very Sweet Christmas” collection by Bunny Hill Designs, along with Moda Bella Solids in Baby Pink (#9900-30). It’s a super fast pattern to put together because the blocks are HUGE. It’s available for free over on Fat Quarter Shop’s website. Thank you, Fat Quarter Shop, for our ten years (!) of working together on projects like this. I’ve really enjoyed it all.
Hemming Rachel’s Prom Dress
I know that hemming isn’t an interesting “project,” but I have to include it on my list of projects because SO MUCH OF MY CRAFTING TIME is taken up with hemming formal dresses for Rachel, and I forget that I did the hemming and then wonder what was up with my time management skills because I don’t seem to get any projects done these days. Except I do; it’s just that it’s tailoring and hemming ballgowns for my daughter.
Marching Band Uniform Repair
I just want an excuse to share this picture with you because I absolutely love it:
One of the drum majors’ pants split right before a parade, so they were tossed to me in the back of the band trailer truck bed and I sewed as fast as I could as we travelled down the back streets of whatever town we were in to get to our starting location for the parade. Ha ha ha, another mom snapped this photo and I was very quick to ask them to share it with me because I knew I’d love it. (Pants were completed just in-time!)
Patriotic Graduation Lei
I made a bunch of music-themed graduation leis in 2024 for my daughter and her band friends, and one of the parents reached out to me this year and asked if I could make one for her graduating daughter, but with American Flag ribbon. I was pleased with how it turned out.
Smitten Quilt
All the individual blocks are pieced! I think I started this during 2020 Lockdown, so it’s been a slow and steady work. I started attaching the blocks into rows this summer, but it will probably take a long while before this quilt is actually done. I tend to only work on it in the summer.
Fourth of July Pennant Banner
I’m realizing, between the patriotic graduation lei, my husband’s Christmas socks, and now this little banner, that I’ve done a lot of Americana-themed stuff this year. I threw this together one day in June because I was decorating for the upcoming holiday and wanted my mantel to be a little cuter, so it happened.
Reading Nook Cottage Quilt
I briefly mentioned this as a possible crafty goal in 2024. I ordered the fabric while I was completing my Master’s degree back in…2023(?), promising myself that I’d make something nice for myself with it once I graduated. Well, I was busy when I graduated and then everything went crazy, so I didn’t get to actually working on it until the summer of 2025. It’s a pattern of my own design, but nothing special; anyone could reverse-engineer it pretty fast. It’s still a work-in-progress; I decided to set it aside so I could resume working on Ren’s Penguin quilt.
Penguin Parade Quilt
This is the quilt that never ends. I really thought 2025 was going to be the year, but alas, it was not. Fingers crossed for 2026!
Hemming Rachel’s Homecoming Dress
Such a pretty dress, but I was sick while I hemmed it and when she went off to the dance, so I don’t really have any photos of it.
Oh my gosh, I am sick of hemming formal dresses. I would so much rather make the entire dress than hem a store-bought one. Hemming the dress is the worst part, and Rachel does not enjoy the process of being fitted for a handmade dress, so I no longer get to experience the exciting parts of dressmaking, just the worst parts. Boo. (She did look so pretty in this dress at the Daffodil Princess Selection Ceremony, though! Still proud of her!)
Christmas Alphabet Embroidery Sampler
I really enjoyed working on this. It is FINISHED, but awaiting framing. The frame has even been purchased, but between the Thanksgiving bout of COVID, the Montana funeral chaos and all the schedule upsets that accompanied the Epic Washington State Flooding in December, I haven’t yet gotten to framing it.
Peppermint Blossoms EPP
I think I’m going to scale down this project. I’m tired of it. It’s cute-ish, but I’m just not seeing a vision for it anymore.
Hubby’s Christmas Gift Socks: American Flag Socks
They turned out pretty amazing. He loves them! Such a fun yarn colorway, and I’m really enjoying throwing contrasting heels and toes onto self-striping yarn socks. If only I could remember to also do the cuff/ribbing in the contrasting color as well! It makes my heart happy to see another set of socks in his growing pile of gifted Christmas socks.
I am really hoping to do more creating in 2026. 2025 was a tough year that was spent in a quasi-paralysis as I recovered from the complications of my 2024 surgery, the trauma of the stalker, and adjusting to some big life changes. I have high hopes for 2026 because, really, things should definitely trend upwards after all the weird upsets we’ve experienced recently. The law of averages works that way, right?
So, hopefully, part of the reason that 2026 will be better than 2025 is that I’ll do more creating in the craft room. Fingers crossed!
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?
That Crafty Cara 