Some cook, I sew and write: creativity brings joy

When I got married, I had a new set of white stoneware dishes.  I think it's a complete 12-place setting suite of beautiful best ware.  My mother always emphasized that it was important for children to learn to handle beautiful things carefully.  I would note that she had two daughters. Her message is important though--even with sons.  It just requires a few more precautions like a sturdy cabinet door protecting said dishes!  I had some porcelain figurines, a few of which have survived children and 4 moves.  Most of which are out for display except when we lived in apartments.  Things were too tight then. Back to the dishes: You'll notice two types of dishes in the dishwasher this morning.  Stoneware and Corelle ware. Up to now, the Corelle ware had far more use.  I have dishes from two other sets as well.  Those include a few of my mother-in-law's Stengel ware and some special occasion (Thanksgiving) plates. The questio...

Okay.  I'm starting to own the problem.  While we're at it, here's another way I'm dealing with my fabric stash.  More postcards!

This one hurts.  Displaying my problem.

Three posts in and I've only begun! Do you see yourself in my experience?  Do you tend to accumulate in spite of yourself? I remember a speaker, Bob Proctor, teaching that we have to create space for what we really want.  He talked about a woman who told him she wanted new drapes.  She had visualized new drapes, but she still didn't have new drapes although months had passed. Bob looked around at her windows which were blocked from view by, you guessed it, drapes. He asked, "Where are you going to PUT new drapes?" The woman looked astonished and said, "Right there," waving her hand at the already draped window. Bob said, "You haven't made room for them.  Take those drapes that you hate down.  Right now." The woman protested because she would have no privacy without something at the windows.  He shrugged at her remarks and said, "I guess you don't really want new drapes." He said she took them down that night, and ...

I started on one track in my last post and wound up somewhere else. Somewhere else important.  Somewhere else that is driving my reason why. Two posts ago, I talked about our attempts to minimize our lifestyle in order to maximize our lives. Because, really, stuff weighs us down. I remember many years ago when we went to Miami, Florida, on a job assignment.  We left everything inside our house for a caretaker to watch over while we put everything we could fit inside our Dodge Grand Caravan.  I wish I had a picture!  I put my kitchen appliances and a few toys along with clothing in with our kids.  We removed one of the captains chairs and moved the bench seat from the back to the middle row and the other captain chair into the back in order to maximize the amount of space we had for our stuff.  Our three kids sat on the bench seat, buckled into the three seat belts, while our dog found just enough space on the floor between their backpacks.  Sh...

Did you know that Robert E. Lee, general of the Confederate army, may well have been a savior of the Constitution of the United States? Huh?! You read that right. Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia wasn't the first defeated.  In fact, it could have kept on going.  Other confederate commanders had been defeated but they hadn't ended the war. Robert E. Lee was key. Let's back up though.  Did Lee hate the Constitution?  No.  In fact, he was invited to become the commander over the Union forces.  Abraham Lincoln knew he needed Lee's military genius.  Lee actually was pro-Constitution.  There were a lot of factors at play in his life, however, and a primary virtue he valued was honor.  His family honor was ripped away from him because of his Revolutionary War hero father's post-war habits of gambling and drunkenness. Robert E. Lee could not strip away his family's honor by leaving his homeland (Virginia) in her tim...

Recently I had a soul defining moment that I've been dodging for YEARS. It's called RETIREMENT, and it's LOOMING over us like someone else's nightmare. And it has another name:  DEBT.  I finally had enough about a year ago.  Jim quit his job and went to the more risky venture of contracting his services.  In the process, he finally started getting paid closer to what he is worth. And nothing changed.  Okay, his diet plan got easier to pay for.  But that was it. How did that happen?  I know because I've always kept track of our money, but I didn't control it.  We simply responded to need and concerns.  We've tried very hard to teach our kids to avoid some common mistakes, mistakes that are labeled as DEBT.  Both of our sons have bought their cars with cash. And then one son wrecked his car.  Yucky lesson.  It doesn't look too bad, does it?  But you can't see the underside. You can see the flat tire but you...

Have you ever reached that point that you realized that you were working like crazy and getting behinder by the minute?  Have you reached that point of having four or five quilt tops that are ready to be sandwiched and quilted but no funds to pay someone else to quilt them?  Or realized that you don't have anyone that really needs them? Or have you heard the word MINIMALIST so many times that it's starting to wear on you about how much you AREN'T living that reality? Or maybe TAX time slaps you in the face and you realize that later is now? That happened here. So my frenzied reaction to having a federal tax bill is this: And you are saying, "HUH?" But some of you may recognize this as a small, comfort sized quilt.  This one is actually going to somebody my friend knows, but I have a duplicate headed to the Ronald McDonald House.   How is that going to help? Simple.  It's a tax write off using fabric I already own, already bought....