Keep Calm, Craft On

My helper. 

Don't you love my chipped, dirty floor?!  I knew you did.

Crafting: 

How interesting that Keep Calm, Craft On can imply that crafting is a means of keeping calm for crafty individuals OR it could be a call to arms to crafty procrastinators' to just buck up and get 'er done.

I'd say this week, for me, I am in the latter camp.

Tomorrow is Uncle Nathan and Almost-Aunt Leia's wedding (Matt's brother) and I am scurrying about making a few dresses. 

Because Hobby Lobby had beautiful swan fabric on sale for $3.00 a yard, I got the patterns for $1.00 and it just screamed MAKE ME.  

Originally, I was going to make Easter dresses from this fabric (ahem) but when that deadline came and went, I justified the procrastination as the wedding would be a better time to wear the dresses.  That is, if that deadline doesn't come and go too.

Leave it to me to wait until a day or two beforehand.

Thankfully, Corynn is out of the sweet little fabrics phase of Mama-made dresses and has her own dress picked out so that is one less dress to make.   I was going to sew myself a dress (not from swan fabric, mind you) but I have nixed that idea.  I know my limitations.

 I am not insane.

Not THAT insane anyway.

Also this week I crocheted a cowl for a friend.  Just have to add the button and get that mailed out.

Reading: 

Dabbling between Baptism is Not Enough by John G. Crawford and The Deluded Athiest by Douglas Wilson.  Probably should stick to one or the other because I feel like I am retaining very little from either since my attentions are split.  

In audiobook form, I've been listening to Seven Men by Eric Metaxas

The Month That Was: June

When the girl skeefs my McDonalds tea and she sees me looking, she puts on her doe eyes.

and when I ask "Did Mama say you could have some tea?", knowing full well I most certainly did not, she gives me that grin, knowing full well that it most certainly will win me over anyway.

an empty canvas

The very day we were discharged from the hospital for Judah's broken arm, and just hours after he was expressly told NOT to climb things for a while, I look up from planting to find this.

Turning this

to this.

There was quite a lot of wondering how I would get everything planted in time...

a new disguise for Corynn

I love when flowers are so abundant, I can use them as thank you notes and well wishes.

Andrew's first time in the dunking booth- and as his mother, I felt that I should be the one to help ease him in to such an endeavor.

He was a trash-talker, but he underestimated his mother.  

Corynn's first dunking booth experience too...

and two little toddlers took her out.  

My brown baby and I and our matching tootsies.

After several days of weather like this- the house got crazy hot.  Bedrooms were well in the 90's- and with no air conditioning, I had a terrible time not drowning in my own sweat.

In which Adele' gets bit by a snapping turtle.

Just kidding.

We had to get creative with Judah's broken arm and water this summer.  Cow Breeder gloves (that go from hand to armpit) with a bit of ducktape wound up doing the trick quite nicely.  I got him a floaty with a handle and he had to keep his arm up on the floaty the whole time but he was able to enjoy the water as much and as often as everyone else.  

Never mind that July is almost over too.  

Pretty much the entirety of June was a blur of sweat, dirt and THINGS on the calendar, many of which were doctor appointments for Judah's broken arm.  Going up town (when you live so far from it) takes such a chunk out of your day it often feels impossible to get anything done at all. 

But the garden eventually got in, the portfolios eventually got done, homeschooling paperwork eventually arrived at the school, Judah's cast eventually came off.  

The garden is not as great as I had hoped it would be.  My beets hardly came up.  I devoted almost 1/4 of my garden to corn and only 8 or so stalks actually grew.  Entire spots of basil/chamomile/cilantro were overrun with weeds before anything good could be established.  The swiss chard has been eaten several times and replanted.  The entire front row of the garden drowned in spring rains because it is in a low spot.  I never even got a chance to plant sunflowers!  But the tomatoes look good and we finally harvested our first squash last week and the kale is doing amazingly.  Truly, I am grateful for anything this years' garden will provide us with.  I've never felt more tardy with the gardens, or as harried as I put it in, so that affords me an interested perspective of "Whatever grows will be more than I figured would happen."  It's kind of liberating.   I don't know how long that 'liberation' will last- but for now, I am totally okay with anything at all. 

This entire week it has been raining buckets so I know the weeds are going to be going crazy soon and the plants will be half-drowned again.  But for now I am enjoying the opportunity to be inside listening to the comforting drum of the raindrops on our roof, knowing there is not a bit of garden work that I can do right now.   That, too, is pretty liberating.