PROMPT from Monday Mugshots Collaboration April 30: Must HAVE IT? Take it, or LEAVE IT? Are you a MUST HAVE MY COFFEE (or tea or whatever your poison is…) kind of person, or an “I am able to start my day with it or not” kind of person?
SHOOTERS: Take a picture of your coffee near a visual indication of your time line. (calendar, clock, newspaper, lunch)

I’m actually glad it’s Monday, and right now this morning the house is was quiet.

In the morning, I come down those stairs in the picture (sometimes slow and bleary-eyed, sometimes hurried) and make some coffee for my husband and myself. So, to answer the Monday Mugshot prompt – Yes. I gotta have it. Like my LinkedIn Profile says, “Blogger|Freelance writer|Fascinated with Business & Marketing|Former Construction Professional|Addicted to Hot Beverages”

Why am I glad it’s Monday? Busy weekend. At least the weather was nice! Soccer, t-ball, friends over for dinner (lots of wine – awesome pic above), Church, brunch at Church, Sunday school, soccer, soccer… I’m not complaining. I know there are people busier than me and our little family. It’s all relative and it’s tiring. That’s why on Mondays, I can chill out a little. Spent all afternoon in the garden, digging up the worst clay bed. Okay, maybe that’s not your idea of chilling out.

Nice weather for a few days – I’ll be in the garden (and finishing up I hope.).

And, oh, don’t forget to thank your teachers! Happy Teachers Appreciation Week! (Heartfelt teacher gift idea from last year.)

I do so love this season though – when the leaves are all popping yellow-green, and like, overnight even! This is also the one week in the year that I think the front of our house looks the loveliest. It’s tough choice – enjoy the weather because we have so few perfect days, or work? I just keep trying to do both.

Current projects I’m juggling

Paper medallions for lapel pins, except that the pin part didn’t work as well as I wanted. I’m thinking pop dots (sticky dots) might suffice. It’s only going on top of regular name badges for this brunch I’m going to on Sunday. Lots of paper medallion tutorials around the internet like the one I used from How About Orange. It’s a great way to use up some paper scraps.

My mushroom print quilt strips in progress too. The inspiration for this is from The Cottage Home’s review of “Quilts from the House of Tula Pink” and the Totally Tubular Stacked Block Quilt.

Behind all this craftiness, I have a penchant for business development. Not so much running my own business (that’s still a dream!) but I help out at our church as a publicity chair – so, for those of you who follow the Facebook page, you’ve had a sighting of my other writing.

(You might ask, when do I sleep? I get anywhere between 5-7 hours of sleep.)

Have a great rest of your week! Follow me on Instagram since I might not be writing so much… but I’m always up to something.

Happy MAY!!

It’s a “two-fer” Mugshot Monday (yes, on Tuesday, again). Last week, we were recovering from the flu or some crazy virus that decided to infest my house. Luckily, it was just my little guy and I who were hit hard. My daughter had a sore throat, and my husband had his own issues… which we’re afraid came from bad food? All you need to know is that we were on. the. couch. sick. Nothing got done in this house. Nothing. Then I had to play catch up with our taxes, ugh. I was one of those people at the post office at the very last minute. Maybe next year I’ll hire someone. I don’t know why I punish myself like that.

Last week’s Mugshot Monday prompt was “What’s Your Story”. Like my husband says – I like reminiscing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that as long as you’re not living in the past. My t-shirt quilt sort of says it all, and this morning’s mug (actually, my daughter’s) is resting on my high school yearbook. You’ve seen the t-shirt quilt before… Esprit was big in high school, and there are plenty of engineering shirts from college.

There is one shirt that belonged to my husband which he gifted for the quilt – his Les Miserables tee. Les Mis was our “official” first date. Oh, that quilt is so 80s and 90s, I love it! So does my son. At bedtime, he likes to pick a square, and I tell him a story about it. The poetic part of all of this is that I made the t-shirt quilt by myself… after all the technical schooling and time in the corporate world it comes back to handcrafting and making things with my own hands. My story in fabric.

So, this is what we’ve had to look at for a long time. Just as everyone was feeling better, school was cancelled due to torrential rain and flooding in our area. Thankfully, we only had a little seepage in one corner of our house, and nothing was really damaged. But yesterday the sun came out after days of gloom… and today we’re back to rain. I’m starting to think we live in the Pacific Northwest.

But here is what my tabletop looks like right now. I’m all edgy with craft “withdrawal”. These will turn into little medallions to decorate name tags for a church brunch. Hope everyone likes them. Crossing my fingers that they turn out as cute as I imagine them to be, and that I can share them with you on Thursday or Friday of this week.

Thanks to all of our friends who were wishing us well over the last few weeks… we’re finally healthy again.

After a fabulous Easter week (including getting back on my bike), I was down for the count today. Camped out on the couch, did absolutely nothing but sniffle, cough, and whine about how achy I am. Yep, not pretty. And the world housework came to a halt. Also not pretty. Life goes on – hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Today’s mugshot is my little concoction for when I’m sick: hot water, lemon slice, ginger, and honey. It’s soothing. If my sinuses are acting up, I’ll steep a cinnamon stick, ginger, and a few whole black pepper. Let that cool a bit and add honey. You better sit with a box of tissue because your nose will start draining like crazy.

Have a great week everyone! (And go, Michigan!)

Years ago, I wanted to make a memory quilt with prayers and well-wishes for my aunt and uncle. At the time, my uncle was battling an illness. Thankfully, he recovered – and then the project lay in my “to-do” pile. Fast forward to this year. We celebrated his 60th birthday. (Time has been very good to him. He stays active, keeps good company, and stays youthful with his 20-something-year-old kids.)

I resurrected the gift idea. You know, something thoughtful… but I downsized it to something manageable, like a pillow. A pillow cover, I could do; this time I added a zipper instead of doing an envelope enclosure.

Materials used: 20 in. square pillow form, fabric, iron-on sheets for an ink-jet printer, 22 in. all-purpose zipper

Wish I could say I documented all the steps, but this was really a free-flow, stream of consciousness project. No definite measurements, but I could probably go back and figure it out. Should I?

The front and back of the pillow cover are giant quilt squares. 20-1/2” square, to be exact. Something so heartfelt about handwriting on fabric. And, then to pair it with printed text… Kinda wonky, kinda cool. I worked out our family and friends’ names on wordle.net, and while I love color, I just ran out of colored ink for our printer. So black and white, it was.

(This zipper tutorial was really helpful.)

Hooray, it worked!

This is why you unzip before sewing

Another thoughtful project completed. On to the next one…