Sunday Stitches & Stuff – Spring Quilt, 15 Minutes, Valentines, & Spring Tree

The theme of this week seems to be getting stuff done, together, while waiting for Spring. We’ve had a great time enjoying the sun, when it peeks out, and I’ve been slowly but steadily getting the house in better shape, from an organization & minimalist perspective. This past week I have also been able to find consistent time to read, stitch, and scrapbook (i.e. Project Life). Additionally, hubby & I were able to find time to just hang out together, both on Valentine’s Day and during the weekend, which can be difficult some weeks with his schedule and my never ending To Do list. Anyway, here are some of the highlights from this week.

Spring Seasonal Quilt

This week I’ve been stitching on the Spring Quilt from the Five Seasons of Quilts by Leisure Arts pattern book. As I’ve said before, my plan is to stitch each season and hang them over the door to my porch seasonally. When kitting up this project, I decided to stitch each season of quilts on a different hand dyed fabric that coordinates with or compliments the season. For Spring, I chose a 28 count Cashel fabric in Bashful from Picture This Plus, which is a light pinkish color, and reminded me of spring time. Well here is my starting point from Monday and where I’m at currently:

I had hoped to finish this small quilt section before rotating, but I discovered an entire block of stitching that was off by one row and had to frog it! Next up in the rotation is the Happily Ever After SAL! Truly, I have two other projects, plus my knitting that I should rotate to, but the February pattern was released this month and I haven’t even finished January, so I want to see how much I can get done this week, then I’ll pull one of the other projects.

Getting Stuff Done in 15 Minutes

This week I have been very successful in getting things accomplished and I thought I would share how I am getting stuff done in 15 minutes. Recently I have become addicted to watching “happy homemakers” on YouTube. You know those women who post videos of how they keep their house clean, tips and tricks for staying on budget, organization ideas, etc. Well, many of them are annoyingly ridiculous and only make you question the value of YouTube. However, there are some pretty neat ladies on YouTube that are sharing valuable ideas. A recurring theme amongst the “mommy bloggers” is tackling chores in small increments. As an occupational therapist, I am very familiar with the concept of task simplification and breakdown, however I never thought of applying it to my own daily routine. This concept should have been something I incorporated long ago when I first injured my back, as one of my biggest recurring issues is that I often take on too much at one time and end up aggravating my back and will be in bed for days. But for the past two weeks I have been applying and sticking to the 15 minute rule and it has changed my day to day life. Basically, I give myself 15 minutes to work on whatever I need to work on and at the end of the 15 minutes, I stop. If I need to move on to do something else, I move on; if I need to sit and rest my back, I do, if I can keep working for another 15 minutes, I stretch and then keep on working for another 15 minutes. You will not believe how much you can accomplish in just 15 minute increments! For example, Wednesday morning I had 15 minutes before needing to get ready for work, so I opened two kitchen drawers that had been driving me crazy. Dumped, purged, sorted and replaced all the items with 2 minutes to spare, and now I love opening these drawers!

Valentines Day & Snoopy

We had a very lovely Valentine’s Day. Although we stayed at home and didn’t really do anything special, just being together is enough. Spending time together and being in one another’s company is a blessing. I’m determined to capture, document, and treasure every blessing in my life, so I’m sharing the scrapbook page I made using the ProjectLifeApp. Also, I can finally share the gift I made for my hubby, it is a Snoopy magnet for his workshop that I made from Perler beads. I think he liked it, Snoopy is one of his favorite cartoons.

Spring is Coming & Sunbathing Duke

One of the greatest things of this past week, was the definite promise that spring will soon arrive! I love spring in North Carolina, it never was my favorite season, but down here it’s just so amazing how the world comes alive during Spring. How do I know Spring is nearly here? Not only because of the beautiful sunny days we have had, as you can see by my dear sunbathing Duke, but because my beautiful spring blooming backyard tree is bursting with gorgeous white blossoms.

 

That’s everything, thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!