Do Something Nice for Yourself

One of the ways I like to rejuvenate myself is to treat myself as if I were company.

Due to my husband's recent motorcycle accident and subsequent broken leg, we've had to change our routine in a major way.  For the first six weeks of his recovery he had to work from home and was confined either to a wheelchair or using a walker...no crutches for this guy!  The trick is that he must keep all weight off his leg.  You could lose balance a little with crutches...

...I told him he's the bionic man, but he doesn't seem to feel much like one.  He doesn't remember the real bionic man taking 3 months to heal enough to put weight on his limbs.  Maybe we watched different shows.

Anyway, this is his first week back to work, mostly part-time, but back to work.  Again, I'm alone during the day, and today I turned on music that I love, prepared a wonderful meal of leftovers (stuffed shells with marinara sauce...OMG do I love that!) and read for half an hour.

While I was eating I realized that I was feeding myself in two ways: spiritually and physically.  I haven't been feeding myself spiritually for a while.  It's time to break out the china tea cups and treat myself the way I want to be treated.

I many need to pull out my favorite scone recipe and show you how to make that!

Midnight Musings

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts God gives mothers is the inability to always sleep through the night.

I used to consider this to be the bane of my existence, because insomnia seems to run in my family, and I would resent the lack of sleep, the gritty eyes the next morning, the frustration of tossing and turning...for HOURS!

...until it dawned on me that some of my most creative ideas occurred in the wee hours of the morning...

Did I really want to stop this flow of creative juices?  Wasn't it worth the gritty eyes and stumbling feet to be able to look at something I had written, worked on, or "tweaked" during the night was suddenly, simply brilliant?

I figured out how to create a quilting hoop for my quilting doll...in the middle of the night...

This middle of the night breakthrough was to make the perfect mob-cap for my quilting doll.

Yes, I'll admit, some things that seem brilliant during those hours between waking and dawn, don't quite stand up to the light of day.  But on the other hand, many problems I've been struggling with go with me to bed, and in my dreams I come up with a solution.  When I wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning, I have no choice.  I have to see if my solution was right.

And I'm here to tell you that YES, it often is.

That's the best reason for insomnia...the other reason is that it gives me a couple of uninterrupted hours of working on something that I wouldn't normally get during the day. It doesn't matter if I'm working on an article, a book, a doll, a quilt...having that uninterrupted time is priceless.

It took me a lot of years to realize how precious that time really is.  Having homeschooled for so many years, and working from home for 23 years, I'm not alone very often.  In fact, I'm not even alone now.  All the cats and the dog think that my nighttime excursions are pretty exciting.  Until they realize that I'm not doing anything interesting, like going for a walk, or fixing food.  Once they express their disappointment, they all go back to sleep, and it is peaceful once again...

...until 5 am when my daughters have to get up to get ready for work.  Guess it's time for me to go back to bed and catch a couple hours of shut-eye.

Isn't it fun that we had this talk?

Getting Started

Every project has to have a beginning point...and today's just as good as any to begin...

...actually this journey began a few years back.  It all started when I became acquainted with a group of women who were also homeschooling their kids.  This particular group of women started a reading group for the school-aged girls, to read the book Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott.

I only knew one of the mothers of the group, but my two daughters were interested in getting together with other girls, and my description of the book led them to believe that they wanted to read it too.  (Be careful here, moms, if you didn't read Little Women when you were 9, chances are good, your 9-year-old isn't going to understand all the finer points of that story...just a suggestion.)

One of the ladies in the group came well prepared.  She and her two daughters had 3-ring binders that had a clear piece of plastic that allowed them to slip a paper inside the front and back covers and a more narrow one along the spine.  They had put their names on these papers, and decorated them in such a nice way that I knew I was destined to make friends with this mom.  Her name is Trish, and we did, indeed, become friends.

I'll have to see if I still have a picture of that notebook.  Even if I don't I'll be posting pics of similar notebooks, because I became a 3-ring binder nut!  I have dozens of them around holding projects, recipes, patterns, plans, planting guides, you name it, I've got it organized and in a binder.  All thanks to this little group of Little Women who changed my life.

Here's my very first decorated notebook.  I've gone on to make a multitude of 3-ring binders in this manner ever since, but you DO have to start somewhere, don't you?

And I'm off and running...no 3-ring binder will ever be boring or naked again!

More later...

Hugs,

Auntie Kit