Busy with Harvesting

October 23, 2024October 30, 2024Leave a comment

Last week’s decision to have little goals to work towards each day was a great success! I felt like I was going to be physically ill at the end of Monday and Tuesday from the effort, but by Wednesday I could do each thing each day with relative ease. Unfortunately, I caught a cold from one of the kids and the symptoms began manifesting on Thursday evening, so I didn’t get much more done after that point. I felt much better by this last Monday and have been slowly ramping up efforts yet again. It’s nice to actually do stuff again!

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

Monday: Pizza (Michael)
Tuesday: Corn & Zucchini Soup, Whole Wheat Rolls
Wednesday: Beef & Pumpkin Stew that turned out terrible, so I converted it into a Beef & Pumpkin Curry that was more than decent
Thursday: Pork & Tomatillo Stew
Friday: TBD
Saturday: Marry Me Pasta, Salad
Sunday: TBD

Clothing

Just trying to get strong enough to handle doing laundry again. The goal is one load a day and I’ve met that goal once thus far this week.

Cleaning

Cleaning is still a little strenuous for me, so I’m doing light tidying. The kids don’t like that I’m noticing messes now and I’m coherent enough to keep on top of them to clean up after themselves. They’re good kids, but geez, if they aren’t going to be nagged to clean, they are not going to do it. I could worry unnecessarily about this, but I was the same way when I was their ages, and I got my act together at some point. I’ll just keep nagging and hope they sort themselves out in the future.

Caring

When I was cutting up garden vegetables for freezing, I took the time to dice up some of the green peppers, and added some onion and garlic to the bag so Michael could have a ready-to-go bag of diced veggies for when he makes roasted potatoes for breakfast on the weekends. It’s a little thing, but I hope it makes him feel loved. He hates chopping things because his hands are better suited for brute strength activities and not so much for fine motor things like dicing vegetables.

Creativity

I did not finish a penguin block last week because I got sick. I also realized that I’ve been having a hard time with this quilt because I’m making it out of flannel, which I’m not enjoying piecing with at all. I’d like to sit down and calculate whether or not it’s feasible to finish this quilt before Christmas decorating season this year—if it’s not feasible I might move onto something else for the time being.

Oh…I will need to move onto something else for a little while. The decorations for the band’s big fundraiser are looking more than tired and we’ve decided to replace the table runners this year, which I’ll be sewing up. I ordered the fabric today, so I don’t know when it will get here, but I’ll start working on those once the fabric arrives.

I also need to keep going on the secret Christmas knitting. I was supposed to be 50% done with one project last weekend, but I’m only at the 25% mark. Eek. I do have a fabulous excuse, but still…I like to finish my projects no matter what.

Gardening

There was a Freeze Warning issued yesterday and I made the decision to just harvest everything in the garden, ripe or not, seeing that it’s the end of October and true freezes can legitimately start happening now. I had hoped to focus on getting caught up on office type things this week, but Mother Nature forced my hand and I’ve been processing produce for storage. Mostly chopping and freezing things because canning feels like it would be too much at the moment. I think I will try to can up some Green Tomato Mincemeat tomorrow, though. I’ve read good things about the recipe, and there’s a lot of green tomatoes sitting on my counter. I’m absolutely chuffed over the garden’s output this year. It’s easily my best year of gardening ever; I just wish I had been strong enough to can a lot of the veggies because that’s one of my goals in life. I aspire to have the pantry full of jewel-toned jars of homemade yumminess lining the walls. It’s always such a beautiful sight.

See that huge zucchini in the box? It yielded twenty-two cups of shredded zucchini! That’s a lot of future zucchini bread!

Celebrating

The girls are helping with the church Halloween party and Renaissance cut down my corn stalks after we harvested the corn and she’s planning to tie them up nice so they can be placed on the front porch as decorations. Rachel ordered herself a costume from Amazon and Nathaniel has come up with the laziest costume that will still work for him, so we’re covered on costumes. Yay, Halloween. Should probably buy some candy to hand out.

Community

Ward Choir: We’re changing our meeting time and I’m meeting with my pianist this week to discuss Christmas music. I was not able to attend our last/first rehearsal because I wasn’t feeling well, so a friend ran the rehearsal, for which I’m very thankful. I am really hoping to be done with feeling poorly and get these Christmas rehearsals going!

Band Boosters: We had another fundraiser planning meeting this week and made a lot of decisions. So much work to do! Music programs in our schools do not happen on their own, folks! I am thisclose to creating vinyl lettering for my van’s rear window that has a Venmo QR code for people to donate to for the band. People donate to bachelorette parties, why not music in our schools? I truly wonder if that would work…?

Top priorities this week:

Processing the garden harvest. Ren and I have ploughed through a lot of it already, but still need to figure out what to do with the tomatoes that are over-ripe, under-ripe, and green. We also need to puree a pumpkin, and I want to oven-roast the green cherry tomatoes to have on-hand for adding a handful to soups for extra flavor, etc.
Ward Choir logistics.
Band Booster everythings.
Walks. They stopped happening while I was feeling unwell, so I need to get back in the habit.
Secret Christmas knitting, because I’m behind on it, but also because it forces me to take a break during the day and I can feel that I’m sometimes a little more tired than I should be due to the harvest processing.

I wish you all a happy and productive week! It’s so nice how good you feel when you’re able to dig in and just get some work done! Ren and I worked hard this morning in the kitchen and while we were eating lunch she sighed and said, “It’s just a good day. I did work that matters and that I like doing, and I’m eating a lunch that tastes good. That’s a good day.” I just looked at her and felt so proud. She gets it. Life is a lot of work, but a lot of the work is really enjoyable if you let it be enjoyable. Hopefully this beautiful time of year brings you numerous opportunities to enjoy the work that’s being asked of you!

Inching Along

October 14, 2024October 15, 2024Leave a comment

I’m still recuperating from surgery, but starting to feel like I might just live after all. It’s been four weeks since my first procedure, and two and a half weeks since the second. I have to keep reminding myself of that second date because I can easily remember the first date and I get discouraged that I’m not further along in my recovery, but then I remember the second date and I feel better about where I am.

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:
Monday: Orange Chicken Bowls (Renaissance)
Tuesday: Beef & Pumpkin Stew, if I have the energy. If not, quesadillas made by someone else.
Wednesday: Beefy Pasta (Ren or Emily)
Thursday: Pizza
Friday: TBD (Michael)
Saturday: TBD (Michael)
Sunday: TBD (Michael)

Clothing

We’ll see if I can handle doing any laundry this week. I tried a week or two ago and could load clothes in the washer, but that was about it. Michael’s been good about keeping the laundry caught up, but it’ll be good to take over that task from him so he has less to worry about. Trying to fold and put away clothing will once again be a focus.

Cleaning

I’m still restricted quite a bit in my activity, so I shouldn’t be doing much cleaning. If I have the energy for it I try to wipe down the kitchen table and counters after breakfast. At some point that should become an easy task again, right? I’ve also been puttering around in my craft room, putting away a thing here and a thing there. I tire extremely easily, so there’s not a lot getting done, but every little bit helps. Maybe I can aim to clean the kitchen surfaces each morning, put away a certain number of things in the craft room each day, and spend a set amount of time (5-10 minutes) each day unearthing my office desk from beneath the mountain of paperwork that is currently camouflaging its existence?

Caring

I’m still healing, but also trying to regain energy, which is a tricky balance to strike. I’m trying to walk further distances and/or go on more walks each day, and that’s going relatively well. I’ve added in Stretchy Calf Raises to the end of all my walks in an attempt to fend off any plantar fasciitis that may be brewing as I’m sure my muscles have atrophied everywhere and I do not want to have to deal with plantar fasciitis on top of everything else.

I complained to my doctor about being bored out of my skull at my last check-up and he suggested I allow myself to read as much as my heart desired. I think I read nine books and seventeen magazines last week. I’m getting tired of reading. Kristin Hannah’s The Women is excellent. I can’t read anything else by her while I’m recovering though—she writes the most heartbreaking stories and I feel like I need to avoid the downers right now while my body is trying to manufacture warmth and light and healing vibes. It’s hard to convince your cells to rejuvenate when you’re feeding your mind and heart a bunch of tension and sorrow.

I don’t have any extra space to care for others right now. Which is ok. Stinky, but ok. I do need to remember to reach out to my brother on his birthday. Which reminds me that I should get back into the habit of checking my To-Do List app each morning, if only to make sure I’m not missing any important reminders.

Creativity

I’d like to start doing some creative things each day. I’ve got the time, and it would require me to sit and stand up, which is good for helping me regain my strength. Major Post-Back Surgery of 2015 vibes going on here, but hey, that’s how I ended up making my Farm Girl Vintage quilt! I would almost start another Farm Girl Vintage quilt now, but there’s a lot of other projects that I really should work on instead.

Complete a penguin block for Renaissance’s Christmas quilt
Spend 30 minutes each day doing some Christmas knitting

Gardening

There’s not a lot that I can do in the garden, which is so beautifully overgrown and ripe that it hurts. Michael and Renaissance are doing their best to use up what we’ve got out there, for which I’m profoundly grateful. Renaissance has processed two of the pumpkins into puree and Michael has been picking my tomatoes and peppers and cramming them into everything he cooks for us these past few weeks. I grew a boatload of beautiful San Marconi peppers—they’re about ten inches long each and a vibrant red that just makes you happy to look at them. We ate the purple corn I grew and it was really good—when you cook it, the purple turns black and grey, which made for excellent Halloween-ish corn on the cob. Renaissance called up a friend who really likes making salsa and gave him four pounds of our tomatillos, which he was really jazzed about.

This may not be a great food storage year for us, but we had fun in the garden throughout the summer and we’re doing the best we can with the harvest. Hopefully this surgery solves all the problems that have made it difficult for me to process harvests and spend extended time in the kitchen to do canning and preserving. Losing out on this harvest is worth it if I can do the work in years to come.

Celebrating

I’m not sure what my kids are doing for Halloween. I think Michael’s taking care of it? And, honestly, the kids are set up with their teen accounts on Amazon and can just order a costume if they want one and I’d approve it. They know this, so I’m not going to worry about it. If they forget, they can throw something together from what we already have around the house. I’m not going to stress about Halloween this year.

Community

I was supposed to resume ward choir practice this week. I pushed it out another week because I knew I didn’t have the strength. We’ll be starting up this Sunday. It’s going to be rough. I need music for them to practice, especially Christmas music. My contact in the bishopric was released and now I need to go through whoever the new guy is. It takes a while to figure things out. I had hoped to do a big Christmas program this year, but I’m now leaning towards a more simplified one because I know I’m stretched too thin. Getting caught up with life is going to take a while.

Band Boosters are chugging along without me. Sigh. I mean, it’s what you want to happen, and they are all exceedingly capable women, so everything is good. I’m just sad that I’m not there with them. I get extremely bummed out about missing out on it all, but so very thankful that they’re handling everything just fine.

Top priorities this week:

Complete 2 walks a day, with 10 Stretchy Calf Raises at the end of each of the walks
Wipe kitchen surfaces after breakfast each day
Clean up 10 things in craft room each day
Spend 10 minutes clearing off office desk each day
Spend 30 minutes doing Christmas knitting each day
Finish 1 penguin block by the end of Sunday
Fold and put away 1 load of laundry each day

So that’s me. Just trying to get up and moving again. There’s a lot of hope and a little bit of budding excitement that this surgery may have drastically improved my quality of life, given that my back doesn’t hurt anything like it used to and I’ve now gone a full four weeks without a pain flare-up. I just need to be careful with my recovery and find that delicate balance between enough rest and enough activity. Patience, patience…

Surgery Update

October 5, 2024October 5, 20241 Comment

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear my friends, there’s been a lot that’s happened in the past couple months. I mentioned “flare-ups” quite often in my Domestic Diary posts—flare-ups that started up two or three years ago and would sometimes land me in the emergency room because the pain was so intense. At first they were every few months, then every other month, every month, every three weeks…it’s been truly awful.

We started to get the ball rolling in March to get me in for a surgery to make the flare-ups stop, but my insurance denied the surgery until I’d tried alternative methods to manage the condition. Three months later, the alternative methods hadn’t made a dent AND I’d racked up two more ER visits, so they finally approved the surgery.

Which led to the next problem of trying to find someone to perform the surgery. There’s a doctor shortage here in Washington, and also a huge backlog when it comes to surgery because there’s not enough surgeons and their calendars are so full that they’re scheduling procedures two to four months out. Michael got sick of the wait-and-see and took a day off of work in July to phone every surgeon within twenty-five minutes of us to try to get an appointment with them. He phoned thirty-something offices, left messages with each one, and only one office got back to us. (I am amazed at the level of unprofessionalism that exists here in Washington State; it’s not just the medical industry that acts like that, it’s almost everyone.)

However, as luck would have it, the one doctor that phoned us back was the doctor that was #1 on Michael’s research list of surgeons, so we were pleased to go meet them and get things moving forward. It turned out to be a great decision: While the surgeon I was already working with was predicting a surgery date of late October through early December, the new surgeon said they’d definitely get me in by mid-October. Then their secretary called me up in early September and said that something had come up and a spot had opened up in mid-September and did I want it? I enthusiastically said, “YES,” and our family launched into surgery prep mode with about a week’s notice. We were too excited to care about the condensed timeline. Mom might be able to function as a normal human being soon? We were all in! Yay!

My surgery date came and went with all the normal happenings. Getting cut, removing things from your body, and getting stitches hurts, so I was in a normal amount of pain as I set off to recuperate at home. Most of my friends who have had this sort of procedure said they were feeling pretty normal again with a week or two, so I set my sights on feeling more like myself in that time. Unfortunately, I started feeling a little worse on Day 5 of post-op, and then worse every day after that until I was just lying around feeling lethargic and nauseous. On Day 9 of post-op I finally spiked a fever that necessitated a trip to the ER, where we discovered that one of my organs had exploded. I was taken into surgery to do what could be done to clean up the damage.

I started my healing process again, only to go back to the ER four days later with early signs of sepsis. (That was a scary experience that I might talk about later, or I might not.) I was pumped full of antibiotics, watched over carefully through the night, and released in the morning to once again recuperate at home.

So I’m on Day 19 & 10 of post-op, and Day 5/6 since the mini sepsis scare. As we were driving home from the last ER visit I received a spiritual prompting, weirdly, to not recuperate in my bedroom because the stairs would be too much for me. So we’ve set me up in the front room on our hideaway bed and I’ve spent the last week watching movies and desperately trying to rally the strength to do, well, anything. I’ve never been this tired and worn-out in all of my life: On top of everything else, I’ve become severely anemic, which has me feeling like I just don’t have any gas in my tank to do anything.

But as always, there’s glimmers of beauty and love amongst the pain and despair. Michael has turned himself inside out on a daily basis with caring for me. I’ve no shortage of snacks, drive-thru runs, clean clothes and all the needed supplies to help me heal. He’s taken over my carpool duties as best he can while still going to work, with other members of the carpools unhesitatingly covering any leftover deficits. He’s set up the projector to cast my movies onto the ceiling so I can still watch something when I’m too tired to sit up enough to watch a normal TV screen. The kids love the whole “TV on the ceiling” experience, so you’ll find us laying on our backs on the front room couches most evenings to continue working our way through the “White Collar” television series. There’s been such sweetness amongst all the bitter.

Friends have come out of the woodwork to help with everything. And goodness, when did everyone get so good at cooking? We have eaten like kings as dear friends have dropped off dinners and treats. Our refrigerator (cup) overfloweth…what a wonderful problem to have. I’ve had visitors to help pass my very empty time, and I just feel so loved and seen.

Even the prompting to set myself up on the couch bed has paid off, too: I simply don’t have the energy to go up and down the stairs multiple times a day, so it was a very good decision to set me up downstairs. An extra bonus is that, from my couch bed, I have a view of my garden. My garden may not end up being processed into food storage this year, but goodness me, does it bring me joy, and it continues to bring me joy as I gaze out upon it longingly as it flourishes and ripens in the golden autumn sunshine.

With me being situated near the front door, the kids are able to interact with me a whole lot more as well. I was feeling rather lonely during my time recuperating in my bedroom. It’s nice that your kids will figure out how to solve their problems on their own while you’re healing, but lack of human connection can really make a person feel down. It’s nice to be right there when they get home from work and school; they’ll sit down and talk with me for a few minutes as they take off their shoes and it lifts my spirits to connect and know what’s going on in their little worlds even while I’m not involved in my normal capacity.

And now my medication is kicking in and it’s becoming a little difficult to piece words into sentences, so I’ll end here for now with the hope that I can write some more in the upcoming weeks as I (hopefully) continue to heal through completion without any interfering events.

Evidence of Life

October 21, 2022Leave a comment

The weather has done its thing where it finally shifts from dragged-out summer to definitely autumn, and that always puts me into a reflective mood. Another year is beginning its spiral towards completion, while at the same time being in full-on chaotic upswing due to the steady hum of a new school year and the holiday season sneaking up behind us. It’s a weird little time in the calendar year: A constant pull between calming down and ramping up.

I’ve not posted much this year. I made a decision, many years ago, to not post while feeling overly emotional or snarky, and every time I’ve broken that rule, I’ve regretted it. So I heeded the wisdom of a lesson learned the hard way, multiple times, and kept myself to myself and focused on my children. It seems to be the most winning of strategies when I’m working through difficult phases of life. We had a quiet spring, a quiet summer, and were ready and refreshed to tackle what autumn had in store for us, and wow, autumn has not held back on amazing moments. I’m so glad we were in prime form to go with its energetic current of events.

But then the rain (mercifully) started up this morning, and I decided to take a pause on this Friday and still myself after so much rushing. The kids are doing so good right no; it’s so great to watch them blossom. That blossoming comes with a lot of driving them around and last-minute schedule changes, but remember how two years ago there was nothing for them to go to? This frenzy is evidence of life being lived. I’m so grateful that we’re in this moment of time, moving on from what was a very difficult couple of years.

I don’t write a lot here because I’m not creating a whole lot of stuff these days. I don’t know what to write about to you all anymore. I struggled with this same conundrum years ago when I shifted out of homeschooling–what do you write about on a homeschooling blog when you’re not homeschooling anymore? I tried to morph into a homemaking blog, but readers abandoned me in droves, so I packed it up and called it good. Thankfully, I was getting going with the crafty stuff, and that created this blog. But here we are again, with no crafting happening, and me wondering about what to write about now?

I am busy with my children. I am busy with cooking, laundry, and cleaning. There are blogs enough out there that talk about those topics, and they’re not really topics I feel like I have much to write about–we all need to eat, we all need to not be naked, and we need to keep ourselves and our homes clean enough to stay healthy. It’s not a calling in life–it’s just life, regardless of your relationship and parental status. Everyone eats, everyone wears clothes, everyone cleans. I don’t know how to craft essays about those topics that will make us feel better about them.

But maybe I’ll try. It’s nice to have a written record to read in future years. (I go back and read through my homeschooling blog once or twice a year because I dearly love reminding myself of the cute things the Brookelets were doing during their elementary years!)

And maybe I’ll find time to craft again in the future, but it’s not looking like my time will open up anytime soon. I knit a little when I watch TV, and I have a knitting bag in the van for when I’m waiting to pick up kids, but it’s slow progress and nothing like when I was actively trying to create content for this blog and Instagram. (It’s so nice to take a break!) Most of my favorite craft bloggers admit they now have teams helping them produce content, and I refuse to try to keep up with it all. We have so many quilts in our house, and the kids no longer want new winter hats each year–there’s just no demand in our home for most of what I craft anymore, and that’s ok…it was fun while it was desired. What is needed from me right now are the basics and the logistics and they are all-time-consuming. We are making hay while the sun shines on these awesome teenage years!

It’s a great time of parenthood, and I do not resent how much of my time it is taking to help my kids flourish. This is what we’ve been working towards all these years and it is Go Time now. All the preparation, all the lessons, all the learning…it’s all coming into play as they start taking their very own footsteps out into the world and start showing up for themselves at the things they’re choosing to continue…and I am the woman behind the curtain, making sure they show up on time in a clean, healthy, and calm state. It’s just so much fun to watch it all come together in these precious moments.

So that’s what’s going on here, and I’ll share what I’m comfortable sharing when I have the time, but it’s hardcore busy around these parts right now, and I have very little knitting to show for it.

I hope you are all having a fantastic autumn season (spring for you southern hemisphere folks!) and I wish you a beautiful season of joy and contentment to help refill our precariously-drained wells after so many years of isolation and suffering. Enjoy living life again!

December Morning in the Garden: Thoughts on Resting

December 9, 2021December 5, 2021Leave a comment

I should have cleaned out my garden back in October, but I was still healing from foot surgery. Now that my foot is technically well enough to handle yard work it’s been raining or super cold. But all that leftover foliage mixed with a cold and misty morning sure makes for some lovely photos.

I love noticing the flow of nature, and for the last few years I’ve tried to emulate its rhythms in my own life. Winter is such an interesting idea–time to rest. In a society where we’re all working and recreating non-stop and trying to launch a side hustle at the same time, rest can be an elusive concept.

I’ve always appreciated the concept of the Sabbath Day and its insistence on slowing down once a week, but I’ve always had music callings at church, which meant Sunday was one of my most busy and dreaded days of the week. Yes, I love music; but that doesn’t downplay the stress and anxiety that comes with organizing and performing said music. I stepped away from and declined all the holiday music commitments this year, and I’m so glad I did. No rehearsals, no dealing with sore throats, no pounding heartbeat before a performance…just calm appreciation of the season.

I was sick last week with some little thing that is now creeping through the entire family. As much as I resent the missed opportunities to get ahead on the Christmas crafting, it sure was nice to Netflix and Nap during daylight hours. I’m reminded of the 12 Week Year insistence of including free time in your schedule (Breakout Blocks), and I’m realizing that I’ve forgotten to do that since my foot surgery. (Sitting around for six weeks straight will make you feel like you’ve had ENOUGH free time, thankyouverymuch.) I suppose I should make a note to include a block of free time in my week. It’d be nice to do some Christmas baking.

But, ugh, the guilt that comes with resting and doing something just for the enjoyment of it. There’s always more I think I should be doing! Unfortunately, I’ve learned over and over again that if you don’t make time to rest and heal, your body will force you into it with sickness or injury. I’m finally accepting this universal truth and making room for it in my own life. The earth rests every winter and the moon wanes every month–why do I think I need less rest than them?

I like the idea of taking a break in the winter to rest and nurture myself and my family. Christmas festivities infringe on that a bit, but the weeks after Christmas are beautifully quiet. The new year invites reflection and planning while wearing snuggly socks and sweaters. We dream up our vision for the coming year while nurturing our bodies with hearty soups, like we’re infusing ourselves for the work ahead. I love the winter months when they’re spent in quiet activities. Taking a break in the winter is such a lovely ritual.

Because March and April will roll around soon enough and next year’s garden will need planting. It’s a lot easier to do when you’re excited about it because you’ve had a break.

(It’s also a lot easier to do if you’ve cleaned up the last year’s garden before your break…my fingers are still crossed that I can get to it…wish me luck!)

Nature Trail Quilt for Blank Quilting

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020Leave a comment

I was beyond thrilled to open my July box from Blank Quilting and find the Nature Trail fabric collection within! It’s a woodsy collection filled with all the cute, scurrying things in the forest, along with colorful mushrooms and bugs. I’d been stalking the potential choices for July, and had already decided that if I received Nature Trail I’d use it to make some sort of quilt that featured Maple Leaf blocks. Because, hello, Canadian.

You know how you get about halfway through a project and start to second-guess yourself like crazy? I did that with this quilt so hard, and now, as I look at it in its completed form, I have no idea why that even happened. I absolutely love it, and it’s going to look fantastic with my autumn decor, which is super heavy on aqua and teal. (Well, let’s be honest, almost everything in my house is heavy on aqua and teal. Why would autumn be an exception?)

The collection is designed by Ingrid Slyder of Nutshell Designs and it’s a lovely mix of forest things. The scraps are dear to me and will be used very carefully because I love them so. There’s also two panels that come with this collection, and I have an idea stewing in my mind for one of them, and a general idea with no specifics for the other. Maybe I can get to those after I get through with mask-sewing. Because, hello, masks. *grumble, grumble*

Thank you again to Blank Quilting Corporation for this truly enjoyable opportunity to make beautiful things from fun collections.

A quick internet search shows that you can pre-order this fabric from Bug Fabrics here in Washington State (who I’ve ordered from in the past and they’re quick with shipping!), and it looks like Eclectic Maker in the UK will also carry the collection at some point.

Autumn Update

November 11, 2018November 11, 20182 Comments

Hello friends!

Because I’m quite sure you wouldn’t get all giddy over a post that chronicled which boxes I unpacked and where I put the stuff that was in them, I figured it was better to not update you until I had something creative to show you.

I’ve had no inclination to sew, knit, whatever, AT ALL, and I’ve been OK with it because the more I look back on the past twelve months, the more I realize that we went through A LOT of stressful stuff, and it takes energy to deal with all that stress, which came from my creative reserves. Happy moment, though: This last week I had a brilliant little moment where I wanted to make something. That feeling has been absent for months, so I’m grateful that things are calming down enough that my interest in crafting is starting to come back.

201811117370910250702226081 I did grit my teeth and make my youngest daughter a Little Red Riding Hood costume for Halloween because I did have time for it, and her little brother decided to be a wolf so he could match her, and I think they were adorable! Her costume was an exercise in frustration–I could not locate the pattern in her size ANYWHERE. And my best friend rode in for the rescue and bought the pattern* at her local JoAnn Store, not realizing that it came in adult OR child size, and sent me the adult size. (Oh gosh, we laughed…) So the costume ended up being the Adult Small skirt, minus five inches around the waist; a plain white t-shirt with aspects of the original costume appliqued onto the shirt; and I tracked down a different pattern** for the cape/hood. She was so pleased with it all, and totally didn’t care that it was a crazy hodge-podge costume. A woman stopped me at the school Halloween party to liberally compliment me on the costume, so I’m pretty pleased with the experiment. (And totally want to make more things edged with eyelet lace! Such a sweet look!)

20181103_145518-01 And right now I am eyeballs-deep in making linen napkins for my Thanksgiving table because I’ve always wanted linen napkins and I have no crafty deadlines on my plate at the moment. It’s been so. much. fun. researching hemstitching and heirloom sewing, and oh my goodness, do I love me some beautiful heirloom sewing. So much drooling.

BUT…I massively underestimated how long these napkins were going to take, mostly because I didn’t think ironing the hem allowances was going to take twenty minutes PER NAPKIN. Four more napkins to press before I actually get to meet needle to fabric! Ugh!

But look at this gorgeous view from my new craft room’s window…it’s so nice to have something besides a window well to look at!

The napkins are going to be lovely, with mitered corners and hemstitching. I’m seriously in love with them. That bit of brown fabric and thread in my craft-room-view photo is the start of one of them. It’s a gorgeous chocolate brown. So pleased!

And then it’s on to Christmas crafting, which I was really hoping to not do this year, but something went wonky with my bank transfers to my Christmas savings account when we moved, and there is much less in that account than there should be, so I’ma gonna have to get creative with supplies already on-hand. Boo/yay

I’ll probably start writing a bit more, now that things have started to settle. It was such a mistake to think I’d be able to paint everything upon moving in–I’ve come to the decision that I’m going to tackle the house room-by-room, because it’s driving me batty to not have a single “finished” room in this house. I’ve been working on my youngest daughter’s room, and it’s looking pretty cute. I’m excited to share that when we finally reach the finish line! (You can have a housewarming party five years after you move in, right?) 😉

But I am hosting Thanksgiving this year, and there could be as many as twenty people attending, so it’s all about the napkins and the cleaning and the cooking for the next two weeks. (And my dining room table that was supposed to be delivered in August? And then October? They changed the delivery date AGAIN…to December. Fan-freakin’-tastic. We’re eating Thanksgiving dinner on folding tables this year. So classy.)

I hope the onslaught of the holiday season is treating you all well! I look forward to seeing your posts and photos of what you’re working on in these next weeks!