You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day - unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour. ~ Sukhraj S. Dhillon

Well, today has been a relaxing day off.  Really relaxing.  Really off.  I slept in.  The first two Christmas cards came in today's mail, Mom's and Aunt Heidi's.  Mike had the day off too but went out to breakfast alone and then ran a few errands downtown, so I had most of six hours to myself.  I added the miniature pink gingham wreath to my little cottage planter, per somewhat new tradition.  I thought of one last little gift for my older brother and his family and ordered it with just enough time left for it to arrive by next weekend's early Christmas.  While watching The Shawshank Redemption, I touched up a few Christmas tree ornaments with some fresh paint, glue, and faux snow before rehanging them.  I made this year's batch of salt-dough ornaments while watching About a Boy, another of my favorite movies (and books).  (And let us pause here to admire the colorful holiday table-scene here:

Ah!  Love!  Every time I watch this--and it's become another Christmastime tradition for me--I remember that I want to look for a simple candelabra like that one, and then forget until the following Christmas.  Maybe 2018 will be Candelabra Year.)  I had made my last big bunch of salt-dough ornaments in 2011--

--but decorated the tree this year in just pink and white so wanted some pink candy canes and hearts instead of all these rainbow-hued ones.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand just now taken out of the oven and cooling a bit before I add them to the tree, then, is this afternoon's batch, along with a couple hearts formed from the last little scraps of dough.  (Salt-dough:  1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup water, 1 cup flour-plus-more-mixed-in-as-needed. . .baked at 250°-ish for about four hours.  Katy Elliot's recipe--and are the snowflake ornaments in her post not the loveliest!--is the one I started with in 2011.  I usually need more flour than her recipe calls for, and I bake mine at a higher temp, but my recipe is otherwise her recipe--and a good one it is.)  Quite soon, then, the new candy canes and hearts will get hooked onto tree boughs and I'll loop some green thread or fishing line through the hearts to hang them and will declare the tree done. 

I'm off tomorrow too and am trying to talk Mike into a game of Trivial Pursuit.  No takers yet, but I got a "We'll see" upon last mention, at least.  'Am at some point re-hanging the gingham apron "curtain" that has a home over the air conditioner now that winter's here. 

I still have my cards to get ready to mail, despite Wednesday night's best intentions, but returning to my book sounds better than cards and envelopes.  Sometime this weekend, I'll take some Christmas tree pictures.  Ahhh, well, one picture for now, because I just added the salt-dough pieces and this is all making me very happy.

Sweet little tree.  ♥  After all the stress and chaos this week, this Christmas tree is actually my favorite one ever.  Go figure.  Thank you all for your kind words on the ol' balancing act.  Maybe everything just had to get worse here before I could figure out how to make it better. 

The Patchwork Cupboards Project

One of my favorite little projects in our new apartment (or new-to-us-since-summer-2011, but it's still so much a work-in-progress that I'll think of it as our "new" apartment awhile longer) has been dolling up the two small cupboards we use for dish storage. The cupboards mark the entry to our tiny kitchen, and I wanted them to pop with color.

This is what the cupboards looked like when we moved in:

For the first six months or so, I left the cupboards "bare" so that the dishes were visible in each of the wood-framed panes, thinking that since our dishes are all pretty colorful and since I had lined the cupboards' inner shelves with green contact paper, the effect would be pretty, but instead, we could only see the dishes that were right along the front of the shelves and it just didn't thrill me.  Next I attached just big rectangles of pink strawberry-themed oilcloth behind the cupboards' doors so that every pane of both cupboards showed the pink strawberry print.  "Blah!" to that too, but I lived with it until I figured out what I wanted to do.  And the answer should have been obvious to "Pretty Little Rough Patches" herself, of course, but it took another few months for me to think of it:  I finally used a bunch of different colors and patterns of oilcloth to create patchwork cupboards.  ♥

I had already had the green and blue ginghams and the pink strawberry oilcloths, so I looked on etsy for a few more prints, hoping to find a sample/lot-style listing so as not to have to pay separately for a bunch of pieces, and the ModernJune shop came through:  For only two dollars, I got a wide variety (of my choosing) of colors and patterns for my project:  Pink roses on white, yellow gingham, red cherries on yellow, pink and white polka dot, yellow orchids on black, red gingham, dahlias on orange. . . .Awesome variety at a great price. 

I attached each piece of oilcloth to the back of the wood frames with little dabs of hot glue.  I tested a corner a small scrap of oilcloth first to make sure it wouldn't damage the wood, and it peeled right off after it had dried, so no worries.  After an hour or so of arranging, cutting, and hot gluing, I had finally finished the cupboard project, shaking my head at myself the whole time as I wondered this hadn't been the obvious choice all along. 

The small two-tiered shelf on top of the cupboard at left had been a happy three-dollar Goodwill find in 2010, and I recently finished redoing it too.  When we moved here, I decided to keep it on the kitchen counter and sawed off half of the top shelf to make it fit around the window, but then I realized the cupboard door above it wouln't open if we stored things on the top shelf.  Measure twice, cut once.  :)  I moved it to the top of one of the now-patchwork cupboards and covered the front, back, and right side with green gingham oilcloth and the left side with black gingham oilcloth.  It now holds a few flowers and cookbooks.  The space left by having sawed off part of the top shelf perfectly fits my beloved vintage Daffodil vase (another great Goodwill find) too, so it all worked out.  

I still need to find artwork for the side of the cupboard at left, opposite the die-cut coffee, iced tea, and chocolate milk (the three things Mike and I drink the most) signs, and I want one more drink-themed sign (and have one in-mind) for the open space under the milk and tea ones, but that's piddly.  That, then, at long last, concludes the Patchwork Cupboards Project.  ♥

I Wish Her the Shire

Mom's birthday was yesterday, and our phone call left me wishing I could send her some carefree days with her beloved hobbits: Frequent tea and snack breaks, warm sunshine and flower gardens, long visits with good friends. . . .Mom has been battling Lyme Disease since last summer, and although she and Dad went out for supper and a movie last night, her tremors were quite severe throughout, making it a little less enjoyable. "I was glad I was in a dark theater!" she reported today. Another doctor appointment this morning and yet another in three weeks. It could be worse, and we all know that, but I'd take away the past six months of stress and illness for her if I could, no matter what it may be teaching all of us. I'm only human, and she's my mama: I just wish her happy days.

In the package I mailed her Tuesday, I included along with the cuddly floor-length blue gingham robe, gluten-free and dairy-free chocolate chip cookies, and other goodies, my latest salt dough ornament, a birthday gnome. :) I added a Daisy, Mom's favorite flower, to his hat, and made him a card to hold, and she oohed and ahhed over it when we talked. It was the smallest thing in her package but also what she got the biggest kick out of, as I'd expected. And that made me quite happy. 

Maybe by next January, Mom's illness will all be but a memory, and maybe it will go on for years. No one knows, of course. In the meantime, I send her hopes and prayers, cookies and tea bags, blue checkered bath robes and well-wishing gnomes. I send her love.