Welcome 2017!

I always feel a bit ambivalent about a New Year starting. On one hand I look back at the year past and feel that I could have done so much better, so much more. This past year has been a particularly difficult year for our family. I have battled with health issues which exhaust me emotionally more than anything else. My uncle died last December following a very short illness, which meant my aunt has had to move back to South Africa. My dad started the year off with a triple bypass followed by complications and two return trips to ICU. God has graciously spared him and we are so grateful but it has been a stressful time for our family.

I lost my job and had to take a much lower paying job. While we have battled financially as a result, I am also much happier and calmer in my new job and for the first time in years actually look forward to going to work. This loss of income has meant that we have had to take my daughter out of her expensive private school, which for those of you who live in South Africa or know anything about our public school system know that it has been a big blow to our family, particularly my daughter. We are also in the process of selling our house as we are no longer able to pay our bond and at the moment face a very uncertain future in terms of where we are going to live and how we are going to cover expenses. This financial stress has also brought me closer to some dear friends who have let me cry on shoulders when needed and prayed with and for me when I feel weak and afraid. I thank God for this family He has given to believers.

We have also lost a number of friends this year to illness and accidents, some younger than we are. This brought great sadness but also helped me to remember that this life has no guarantees and that only God know when our time is up, so I need to live my life to the full while I can because there may be no tomorrow. It has also inspired me to stop putting off the things I fear or the things that want to do “one day” when I have the time. These include losing a LOT of weight that is literally holding me back from living my best life. It also means finishing a degree that I have wanted to complete for years but was held back by fear. It means connecting with friends round a cup of coffee and not just on Facebook. And putting paint brush to paper and ink on a page. You get the idea.

I do not know what 2017 holds and I have no guarantee that I will be here to greet the New Year and see in 2018. What I do have in hope and a faithful God to cling to in all things. May your 2017 be full of God’s blessings and may you experience all His goodness.

A small aside. I have a friend, Dalene Reyburn who is a brilliant writer and she just published a book of devotions called Walking in Grace which is coming out in January 2017. Please go to her blog for a free copy of the first chapter of her book and grab a copy of, in fact grab several copies for friends and family. Dalene has been given the gift of writing and touching our souls where they need it most. I am getting nothing from this promotion except the knowledge that you will be supporting a friend and will be blessed by what she has to say.

When mom's collide

I have been really struggling to juggle all the pressures of motherhood this new school year. I have been sick, there has been huge financial upheaval as my work contract ends in March and I am battling to find other work, I have one child starting BIG school and the other starting a new school and having to leave her friends behind. My dad is in hospital facing bypass surgery and I feel as if I am being torn in ten different directions, trying to be a good mom, wife ,daughter,employee.

So often I look at other moms and think that they have it so together or I judge them for choices that they make that are so foreign to my own. Today I came across an advert about the Sisterhood of Motherhood that shows so clearly what it means to be a mom and why, despite our differences we are all just trying to do the best we know how as parents for the most precious people in our lives. Please take a few minutes to watch and share this video.

A year of living dangerously

Danger means many different things to different people. For some it is the adrenaline rush you get from leaping out of a plane. Others get a rush from chemicals or alcohol or even new relationship. For others it is their career. My dangerous looks a little different.

Relection

I have a whole box full of patterns I want to try, cookbooks I would love to experiment with, a bag of polymer clay with a head full of ideas of what I would love to create, two easels and a drawer full of art materials. My dangerous is picking up the paintbrush, opening a new Word document, adding the first stitch to needle or material, buying the ingredients for a new recipe. The blank canvas, in whichever form it comes terrifies me, yet I have this desperate desire to create. It fills me to the point where I cannot not create.

Perfectionism and creativity are not happy bed companions. The very nature of creativity is wrought with failure. I am so scared of this. Ruining a canvas, writing a post no-one will read terrifies me to the point of immobility. So this year I have promised myself I WILL create, regardless of the outcome. I have given myself permission to fail because I realise that without this permission I will stagnate and die a little more inside each day.

Letting go

My God did not create me for this. He is the first creator and has made me in His image, which means that my creativity is given as a gift from my Father, to enjoy and to give pleasure to others.

So here is to a year (... and a future) of leaping off cliffs and living dangerously.

Yarn along

I have decided to join Ginny from Small Things over at her Yarn Along on Wednesdays. Why don't you join me. Although I am busy with my Granny Stripe blanket at the moment, I tend to have more than one project going at any given time, so I will share what I am busy with at the moment. I just love the colours I have chosen for my blanket and it is going to be a total indulgence for the girls in the family with our favourites of pink, lavender and purple.

The blanket is going to be a long term project so I will share here what progress I am making as I go along but in between I know there will be other projects. I have found a gorgeous knitted strawberry and apple pattern by Linda at Natural Suburbia. It is my daughter's birthday soon and her uncle has revamped a small wooden stove for her as a birthday gift. I think I am going to add some apples and strawberries to her toy kitchen as part of her birthday present.

While crochet is definitely my first love when it comes to handwork, I cannot resist yarn and material. I have a small sea shell cross stitch, an applique cat and a dress to finish as well a two quiet books. I find that doing handwork helps keep me sane and after a hectic day at work it is great to relax with a cup of tea, a good TV programme and something to make keeping my hands busy.



Happy creating!

Creative sparks 2015

 The ATC on the left was made for an ATC swap at Very Berry handmade entitled Home. I got my inspiration from the picture of this beautiful door on the right ( I cannot remember where I found it, so if this is your photo please contact me so that I can acknowledge it).

I have a kitchen full of random plastic bags and they seem to get everywhere. I decided to make a pretty bag to keep them in. I used a piece of material I had and sewed up the side. I then added a seam on the top and the bottom and threaded some elastic though the seams to close them up a bit and prevent the bags from falling out. Finally I crocheted a short chain and sewed it to the top of the bag. Voila! One plastic bag holder.

 I know that strictly speaking I did not make this. I have wanted to try to plant bulbs in a vase for quite a while and this spring decided to give it a try. It worked really well but unfortunately I was bedridden shortly after this for a couple of weeks and no-one watered the plants so they died. I will give it a try again this year.

A bookmark I made for a swap

 My daughter is crazy about Frozen and I got the instruction to make her a Frozen cake for her birthday. I found the decorations at a party store. The cake itself is covered with condensed milk icing and pretty sugar crystals.

 A pretty bead necklace my daughter and I made using a mixture o plastic and glass beads. It was more a fun exercise in beading for her but we really enjoyed making this and I think it turned out quite well.

The pattern for this  lovely flower cushion comes form one of my favourite blogger, Lucy, over at Attic24. I was bedridden for two months after surgery to my Achilles tendon last year and spent about 6 weeks working on the cushion. Lucy's patterns are very easy to follow and I really love how my cushion turned out

This rather sinister looking shack was made for my son after he received some pirate Lego for Christmas and had nowhere to land his ship.I found this over at Papermau, a website with dozens of free paper diorama's to download and build.

I made this Christmas advent garland this year from a pattern I found at Ravelry  by Frankie Brown. It is the first successful knitted project I have completed.  It was quite a difficult project but one that I am quite proud of.

The cake above was for my son's birthday. He is crazy about dinosaurs, so I decided to make him a cake with a whole lot of different dinosaurs.

I made this snake for my daughter after her having seen a similar toy at a friends house. It is made strips of material sewn together and then stuffed. She loves the snake and it sleeps on her bed every night. It was such a hit that her brother persuaded my mom to make him one as well.

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Finally this crocheted strawberry hat was made by knitting rounds similar to the flower cushion above. When it was large enough I stopped adding stitches. The edging was crocheted in a matching green and I added a flower and leaves to the crown.

All in all I have had a busy creative year. I cannot wait to see what this year holds and have already started on my new project, a granny stripe crochet queen size bed blanket.

BIG SCHOOL

I am officially the parent of a First grader.

When I started this blog in 2011 my son was nearly three years old and my daughter 15 months old. This week, with a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat I sent my babies off to big school. They were both so delighted and over excited, dressed in too big, brand new uniforms and carrying bags that seemed to dwarf them. This letting go process, that starts from the minute the umbilical cord is cut, is so difficult at times.

 I have to let them go, for their sake and mine so that they can gain their independence and one day leave to start their own home and possibly family but it is so difficult to hand them over to another woman to care for. Then going off to work and trying so hard not to think about them every moment of the day and physically holding myself back from phoning the school to see how the day went.

 I am not a working mother by choice and this week has been much harder than I anticipated. I had planned to stay at home until they went to school and then possibly home school them. Life happened and I have worked for nearly all of their short lives, handing them over some mornings with both of us in tears and having to turn my back on the cries of a child who cannot bear that I leave. Then crying most of the way to work because very motherly instinct is telling me to turn the car around and take my child home.

Envy is a very ugly thing but sometimes it overwhelms me when I chat to friends who have been stay at home mom’s or home schooled their children. This week has been so hard, another stepping stone on the road to adulthood. I know I am not the only working mom out there who feels this way, having missed out on large chunks of their children lives. Time spent in meetings when you would rather have been playing in the sandpit. Days at work when you have been forced to send a sick child to school or left them with a granny or a nanny because your leave is up or you have a deadline to meet. Take away dinners instead of home cooked meals, because honestly you do not have the energy left to even think of a meal, much less cook it. Buying their birthday cake because there is no time to make one from scratch.Teacher being the one who gets the hugs and whispered confidences that should have been yours.Missing out on sports days or dance recitals because how can you ask your boss off for that when your work is piled up on your desk?

If you are a working mom I am sure that you can add your own regrets to this list and the time just flies by and before you know it they are wearing uniforms and getting homework and doing team sports.

And it seems like yesterday they were tiny babies in your arms, depending on you for everything.

This new phase is going to take some getting used to. I feel a bit shell shocked but I am so proud of how they have taken to their new school and classes without a fuss, making new friends and seeing this all as adventure. This year I am going to try so much harder to make every moment count, as the years are going far too quickly.