Falling for Fabric

Yesterday, Mom and I were sitting in the craft room talking about the day and the different projects we were working on. My mom is a true crafter! The kind who collect crafts with the famous last words "I'll get to it." Currently she's working on a scarecrow for our harvest themed fall decorations while also putting together pieces for a quilt. She was looking for something to use while putting together a quilt square and asked me to help. She pointed to the small cabinet above the tv. It's high and one of the doors was already partially opened on it's own. "Is anything going to fall on me?" I asked. She said very seriously "I make no promises." And that was the beginning. When I opened the cabinet, things did fall on me! Right on my head. We picked them up and stacked them neatly on the table, then I had to get the step ladder to get high enough to see into the cabinet. Piece by piece I had to pull things out to find what we were looking for. Unfortunately, what we found in the cabinet was something totally different. Because Mom isn't able to get into the cabinet often, she doesn't look in there much. She doesn't mind admitting she had no idea what treasures were hiding up there. But when I started pulling things out, she started discovering things she'd completely forgotten about! Slowly one cabinet turned into another, and that turned into drawers and boxes, and our neat and tidy craft room turned into an explosion of a reorganization project!

Used with special permission.
This is the mess we had in the middle of our reorganization!
It's all clean now. =)

During this reorganizing and rediscovery project, Mom and I started to realize just how many projects she had that either we never started or we never finished. I jokingly looked around the room and laughed "One hundred and one projects in one year!" Of course there was so much stuff everywhere I couldn't imagine how anyone would be able to finish all of these in two or three years, much less one. But Mom shrugged "We could probably do it." I stared at her and she nodded "Sure. There are 365 days in a years and I don't think I have quite 100 projects." I looked around then we both laughed. Without saying anything I knew, we'd both already decided to do it.

As we were pulling things out, we also started discovering a lot of my projects that I'd never finished. By the end of the night I couldn't believe how many there were!! Mom smiled "See? You can't say anything bad about all my stuff. You're exactly the same!" Well, I guess I am. =) So here we go then. 100 projects in 1 year. Needless to say, I don't think we'll be buying many Christmas presents this year. We've got all we need right here!

Elmer's Not Our Friend!

A story from my mother: I'm very particular with how I place my furniture. Especially in the tv room because there's not much space and it doubles as our craft room. I had a couch that faced the tv and two chairs facing towards the couch so that people could actually have a conversation. I wanted to teach my girls that the tv was not the center of the space, but that what was important was the people with you. But every time I came into the room, the girls would have rearrange all the furniture so that everything faced the television. I kept fussing at them about it because I'd move everything back and the next day it'd all be moved again. I've give them another lecture and the next day it'd happen again. The girls never listened. It was my four year old little son who was paying attention to my lectures. And he wasn't even the one doing it.

I guess I'd fussed at them enough that for a while the chairs weren't moved. The next week, after a blissful seven days of my furniture staying as it should, I was vacuuming the tv room. I went to move the chairs to vacuum beneath them and I couldn't move them. I thought maybe they must have been heavier than I remembered so I asked my oldest daughter to help me move the chairs. I got on one side and she on the other and we lifted. Up came the chair...and the carpet!! All four legs of the chair were stuck to the carpet!! I got down on the floor and found, to my horror, that under all four legs of each chair someone had put large quantities of Elmer's glue!

I look at my girls, who immediately gave indignant response of how they'd never do such a ridiculous thing. Then my son piped up, all proud of himself. "I did it, Mommy!" I looked at him, bewildered, and demanded to know why. He explained with a smile "So they can't move the chairs anymore."