weekending

Have you ever had one of those organizational projects that spirals out of control? Where you think that you are going to tackle a nagging project, but that leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another… Well that is what happened around here recently.  Since Boy 2 got an electronic drum set for his birthday, we cleared some space in the living room for it. I was not happy. We had moved my favorite chair, by my favorite window – my favorite place to read. Not working for me. So I decided it was time for the lego table to go. This is one of those train tables that Boy 1 got when he was 3. It has long since been covered with what is probably thousands of dollars of lego kits gone wild. Sadly, it is the first thing you see when you walk into our house (sigh). Now the first thing you see when you walk into our house is a drum kit (sigh).

So, sorting through the legos and giving them a new home, meant cleaning out the game cabinet, which lead to clearing out all the homeschool shelves (we homeschooled for 4 years), which led to cleaning out all the art supplies in the laundry room cabinets. Whew! Now we are lean and mean with some really tidy cabinets. It was actually a very emotional experience, remembering back to when the kids were little and we sat around making fabric collages, playing with Playdoh, and making little bugs out of pipe cleaners. I had to sort of admit that those years were behind us.

Of course, this spurred a whole morning of playing with all the forgotten legos. Always a bonus.

The Girls has started fencing again, which is always fun to watch, because, you know, it’s sword fighting- how cool is that?

I was inspired by this, which I found on Facebook, posted by Danielle at the It Starts with Me blog:

Since plastic spoons (and water bottles) are not a problem in this house, this reminder sent me to the sewing machine with a long overdue project of making reuseable produce bags. Most of our produce comes in a CSA box, with very minimal packaging, but there are always those odds and ends that you pick up at the store and put in plastic bags: onions, apples, oranges, etc. I had already purchased some tulle just for this purpose. I made up a few in slightly different sizes, just to play around with what will be the most useful.

I had imagined making up some of these for my Etsy shop, but man oh man, I do not enjoy sewing tulle! It is very hard to make it look neat and keep it from getting bunchy. I also made a stronger version out of muslin and a little muslin storage pouch for all the bags. I will let you know how it all works out after my shopping this week.

And, finally, much to Boy 1’s delight, I quilted his quilt. I just did a very large meandering pattern, as per his request. It only took a couple of hours, so, spurred on by my accomplishment, I whipped up the binding and sewed it on. It is now waiting for me to curl up with a good Netflix movie to finish it off. Actually, I’m thinking of Downton Abbey. Frances and Tanesha have both said good things about this show on their podcasts. It sounds like it is right up my alley. It just might be the perfect way to finish off this weekend.