I’ve been busy in the craft room preparing for Rachel’s Senior Night for bowling. There were two seniors on the team this year, so I was able to do a little bit of extra special stuff because I only had to produce two of each thing. Rachel is such a princess girly-girl who likes to sparkle, so I decided to just run with it and hit ‘em with the full princess treatment for Senior Night: Tiaras, sashes, and everything personalized and sparkly!
I’m not a regular user of my Silhouette cutter so I always feel like I’m discovering how to even use the thing beyond its most basic of functions, but I saw some really cute examples of senior sashes on the internet and decided to give it my best try. Now I can proudly say I understand what “offset cutting” is and how to apply it! I love how the sashes turned out!
I also put the Silhouette cutter to use for the tags for the signed bowling pins and the name plates for the gift baskets.
The mom of the other senior supplied the flowers and balloons and it all looked so, so cute!
Senior Year feels like it’s officially underway with this event done and dusted. It’s just going to be a flurry of senior events from here on out, I think. Sigh, another baby bird getting ready to leave the nest. It’s good, but tugs at the heart pretty hard.
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!
We made it! She’s a full-fledged high school graduate!
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I’m just so proud of her. She’s always been a hard worker and these past two years have seen her working harder than ever, which has been awesome to witness. She’s ready for the real world with a plan and a work ethic that will bring her success. I just love these milestone moments; these chapter endings. She’s done with being a child, which is bittersweet; but she’s got a whole blank canvas of adulthood ahead of her, which is so exciting. I am so glad to be a mother and to have done the work of mothering this sweet girl. She’s been such a joy to raise and I can’t wait to see what she does in the next chapter of her life.
Big week ahead! I’m starting to feel really worn out by everything, but I’m trying to ignore the feeling and just enjoy everything that’s going on. Next week will be much less busy and I’ll make sure to take some time to rest and recover, but until then I just gotta keep going!
Cooking
This week’s meal plan: Don’t judge me, it’s going to be an extremely busy week where I’ll only have about thirty minutes to throw dinners together.
Monday: Costco Chicken Alfredo & Mac ‘n Cheese, Green Goddess Salad, French Bread
I cannot find Michael’s khakis, which he needs for graduation. Where could they have possibly gone? Super annoying. I’ve looked in all the places they should be and in places they could be and nope.
Continually monitor the wrinkly-ness of Renaissance’s graduation robe after each thing she needs to wear it to this week and re-iron as needed.
Cleaning
I didn’t even get to the toaster last week, so…don’t hold your breath on any of the other things!
Caring
All eyes are on graduation this week, so everything that isn’t that has been rescheduled for dealing with next week. Oh! Michael and Nathaniel needs haircuts before graduation. They look like shaggy dogs right now.
Creativity
The graduation signature quilt blocks are halfway assembled and they may stay that way through the graduation party. What’s done so far is enough for them to be serviceable at the party, so I’m going to spend my time on more pressing things and circle back to finishing these blocks when I have time, which may not be until after the party.
I need to start sewing up the bunting for the grad party decorations. I just think it will add the nicest touch.
Other grad party decoration preparations will probably wait until next week when I have more time.
Gardening
I need to kill some slugs. As predicted, they’re gobbling up the petunias. If I could just remember to buy slug killer at the store, I could easily move this problem to a much more positive outcome.
Still need to get the Three Sisters planted, but we’ve got an atmospheric river pouring on us right now and the weather’s not set to clear up until graduation ceremony day and I will be beyond busy during that time. Maybe I can get to this on the weekend? Same to the front porch plantings and figuring out what the heck I want to do with the front yard plantings.
Celebrating
There’s so much going on this week—Baccalaureate ceremony, a choir concert, and graduation! There’s still a lot that needs to be done for some of these things, but we should be OK.
Community
I can push most of this stuff to next week and I am actively trying to do so. I did reach out to my ministering companions to try to set something up for next week and one of them has gotten back to me, so that’s a start.
With the release of the thirteen new hymns I have some work to do on the music front at church and I got a bit of a start on it yesterday with good outcomes. Someone recommended that I join the “Music Callings Resources” Facebook group for good ideas, but so far it’s only seemed to be a big bunch of squabbling complainers who are personally offended that the Church didn’t pick their favorite song for release, and if it’s not that kind of person, it’s the super annoying “I know more about music than you do” people who enjoy flaunting their musical knowledge and elevated opinions. I’m hoping it’s just a little agitated over there because of the announcement, but I’ll leave the group if, after my 30 day snooze wears off, it’s still a lot of the same a month from now. What an absolute downer of an experience.
Top priorities this week:
Graduation and all of its associated events
Keep everyday life afloat in the midst of all the graduation stuff
Graduation is really here! I remember my mom friends being all “it’s going to go by so fast!” at the beginning of the school year, and while I think we kept so, so busy this year with all the fun that a senior year brings, it is weird that graduation is actually here. I think I’m still recovering from the epic prom dresses, so graduation feels like it popped up out of nowhere! I was telling Michael this morning that I’m so glad there’s all these graduation warm-up events before actual graduation because, based on how much I’m tearing up at these pre-graduation events, I don’t think I’d make it through the actual graduation ceremony with any sort of composure if I was just thrown into it without any of this other stuff happening first. Emily’s graduation was a big deal, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t really involved with her activities and peer group because we were still kind of new to the area, COVID was still impacting things a bit, and she wasn’t involved in as many things as Renaissance is. Graduation feels so much bigger when you actually know the kids who are graduating and have a lot of memories with them. My cup runneth over…see you on the other side of this week!
This week was full of fun activities—the end of year film festival for Rachel, Nathaniel’s final middle school band concert, and the senior honors night for Renaissance. It’s so much fun to see the culmination of everyone’s hard work at the end of the year, and, in Ren’s case, at the end of her K-12 school career.
Top priorities this week:
Graduation & recital clothing
Graduation quilt progress
Party decorations & ordering progress
Planting last of plants in garden
June’s hymns
Celebrate
Graduation party preparations are going well. My credit card fraud department gave me a call this week to make sure my card hadn’t been stolen because I’m ordering large quantities of things from businesses that I don’t normally do business with, so that was a funny little moment. We will have shelter from the weather and ways to keep the food warm. Excellent party prepping.
I made a lot of progress on the signature quilt as well; all pieces have their top and bottom borders. I’ve had a number of requests to mail blocks to people who will be unable to attend the party, and I need to get those out in the mail. I ordered more of the white fabric because I think I’m going to have to either make a bigger quilt or incorporate some signatures blocks into the backing, which is an awesome “problem” to have. It’s so nice that people want to share their good memories and well wishes with Renaissance. She’s such a kind soul.
We went to a graduation party for Renaissance’s friend Riley on Saturday. We’re really there! Graduation things are happening! It was such a nice event; there were all sorts of band families there and lots of great people who are involved with the school in some fashion. Riley’s mother, Chrissy, has been involved with everything forever and wow, does that ever create a fantastic village for your kid when you do that. Good food, good friends, and the best picture wall I’ve ever seen done. It was lovely.
Gardening
I haven’t planted my remaining plants in the garden yet because budgetary constraints dictated that I wait until next week to purchase the planting containers and extra potting soil. It’ll be fine. Nathaniel is so pleased that we’re going to have raspberries and Rachel is really looking forward to her strawberries. It makes me so happy to stoke their interests in gardening; it’s such a great hobby and skill to develop for their adult years.
It’s rained a lot this week, so the plants are well-watered and I haven’t been out to check on anything too much. From my kitchen window it doesn’t look like the slugs have been getting to anything, so I’m optimistic that we got the majority of them killed whilst weeding over Memorial Day weekend. Fingers crossed!
Community
I haven’t touched anything church music this week, which is OK because I always post a month’s hymns through the next month’s Fast Sunday, so we’re fine. I’ll get June’s hymns finalized and posted during church on Sunday.
Highlights
Nathaniel’s concert was so great. I am just so impressed with our music programs in our school district. Proud to be a part of it all. Nathaniel had a big part in one of the songs they played where it looked like his arms weren’t even connected to his body because he was drumming so fast. So proud of him.
Renaissance participated in the elementary school walk through this week where the seniors go to their old elementary schools in their caps and gowns and parade about and talk to their old teachers, which I think is the cutest idea ever. Since she didn’t attend elementary school here she decided to go to the elementary school where she volunteered and read to children last year, so some of the teachers knew her anyway. It was even topped off with the PE parachute being brought out for the seniors to play with one last time. Because honestly, gym parachute was peak elementary school enjoyment. What a fun week for her.
At the Honors Award Ceremony Renaissance was awarded cords for a high GPA and having 50+ hours of community service, and she received her stole for National Honor Society. A wonderful surprise that evening was the announcement that she’d been awarded two $1,000 scholarships from our community’s scholarship foundation! Those scholarships will cover her expenses for her first quarter of pastry school! We are so grateful for our community’s contribution to her post-high school education, and proud of her for doing all the work to earn those awards.
Renaissance will be playing her flute during Baccalaureate next week, and so she was flipping through our church’s hymn book and all the flute books for church and asking me if specific hymns were LDS-oriented only or if they were well-known in other denominations, and it was nice way to spend an hour together. I was pressing quilt blocks and making my guesses and she was confirming with some internet research, and we learned a lot about different songs, some that I would have guessed were only known to the LDS church and then we’d find out that it’s been around since the 1600s and we’d laugh at our silliness. I’ve missed doing church music stuff with my kids—I’m proud of their work in the school bands and choirs, but church music was where they started and I’ve always enjoyed doing that with them. We figured out which hymns would be recognizable to people of other Christian faiths as well and she created her program from those choices.
Lowlights
I have a smattering of ant bites on my left wrist and hand from a Memorial Day gardening mishap and they have swelled up angry and red and they’ve itched and ached all week long. I look like I have some sort of communicable disease.
Rachel asked that her final film project NOT be shown at the film festival. She was heartbroken over how all it shook out. She loves making films, but this was a group project gone sour. Thankfully, her teacher respected her wishes and didn’t show the film.
The five-year-old dishwasher developed a hole in one of its hoses and leaked all over the kitchen and ruined the wood floor we had installed just a few years ago from when the fridge developed a leak and ruined the wood floors. This is bad for three reasons: 1) The floor is warped and absolutely ruined, 2) We’re hesitant to make another claim on our homeowner’s insurance and risk our rates going through the roof, and 3) Our family must handwash the dishes until the replacement dishwasher shows up next week, and a family of six creates a lot of dirty dishes. It’s been a moderate source of stress. One of my work arounds has been to have whoever is on dish duty to start working while I prepare dinner. I like the results so much that I may keep this arrangement going in the future. *silver linings*
Another week done and dusted! Oh, next week will see me on the verge of tears pretty much every day…I’m so proud of my girl, but so sad that her little childhood is ending. I have absolutely loved being a mama to these sweet people. I’m excited to see where adulthood will take them, but do I ever miss pigtails and brown paper bag puppets. There will be new cool things! I just don’t know what they are yet, and that’s ok.
That Crafty Cara 