If you google tree fort D.I.Y., you won’t find many inspiring images. I created a Pinterest board of the few I found over here, but I was surprised by the lack of doable, simple, cool, and artful tree forts when I was designing this one. There are some crazy fancy and expensive ones, to be sure.
The Great #Unplug of 2013
or The Relative Merits and Discomforts of a Social Media Fast
or The Extrovert’s Dilemma
or I Feel it All (Feist)
I unplugged from all social media for exactly one month, after being inspired by this summer’s article in Fast Company by Baratunde Thurston here. Thurston describes himself as the world’s most connected man. I am so not, but I am managing a family and wearing a lot of hats including social media marketing for my little creativity brand.
I am gonna go #UNPLUG now. No social media for a few weeks. No Instagram. No Facebook. No Pinterest. No blogging. No compulsive checking. No dopamine uptake in my brain for a thumb or a like. No public sharing of private moments. No voyeuristic peering into the private moments of everyone else’s not-so-private lives. I’m just going to go be in my life like it was 1999… for at least three weeks. 🙂 Then I’ll be back, because I like social media.
Ooooooh, I just love this season! Our whole tree is filled with homemade ornaments and this year we are making salt dough ornaments. It is so easy and satifying to make this dough (especially if you have a stand mixer). I googled it and found this recipe here.
Can you imagine throwing out your child’s art? I can. I am not a particularly nostalgic person. If you couple that with a virulent anti-hoarding gene and then add the fact that I am a professional artist, well–you know–I chuck stuff. Toss it. Recycle it. All the time. But not everything. Just some of the flotsam that churns out of our every day.
Teacher gifts are always fun to give. Thanksgiving seems like a perfect excuse to make a little craft for giving thanks and expressing gratitude for the wonderful people who help nurture our kids. Today we made lavender sachets for the kids’ teachers. They were super easy and the kids helped out. I often want to help my children to do more to express their gratitude. I was hoping that we’d do some hand sewing for these, but that was a lofty goal. I’d rather them do a little with joy, than a lot with whining 🙂 So my wee one filled the sachets and the big kiddo wrote “Gratitude” and “Luve.”
Today was the first backyard day in the desert. Fall is finally here. We cleaned all day–removed a zillion spider webs, trimmed everything in sight, and hosed it all down. The inside of our house is now fragrant and full of eucalyptus branches in vases. We even made this impromptu outdoor living room. Isn’t that metal gate awesome? I can’t remember the artist’s name—I think he’s from Utah.
My birthday is this week and it has got me thinking—really thinking.
On March 15, 2010, when I began this blog with a post about my sewing machine, it was a bold move to make a beginning. It was a tiny speck of dust, a squeak, a throat-clearing, spoken into the immensity of the internet. I didn’t know where it would take me, but it was a start. At its conception, it was just like what blogger, Herriott Grace calls, “a savings account for things I like.” Pretty simple—just my favorite stuff from the web and the things I was sewing. I was a beginner at both sewing and blogging, and I was healing some stuff so I was following my bliss.
One of the bestest parts about having a sewing studio is that it seems to beckon all children who visit and eventually we end up wandering in to sew something. I just luh-uve these spontaneous sewing encounters. It is fun for me to facilitate plans the kiddos dream up. On a recent play date, our friend decided she’d like to make a pillow. She drew this sketch:
