Monday Musings 10.27.2014

Scary Fellow!

Jaydon carved this Jack-O-Lantern on Saturday morning for use in Sunday afternoon's Harvest Festival at church.  He did it entirely on his own - the only thing I did was spread out the newspapers on the table and give him a trash bag.  He's done this every year and looks forward to it.  Good job!

Now for the musings. Some time ago I had the realization that I could either have
1) a beautifully decorated, immaculately clean, perfectly organized home,
2) a beautiful, well-landscaped yard that is perfectly maintained, or
3) I could pursue interests such as making quilts, knitting and other needlework, reading, writing, researching places and then travelling to them, grooming and training my dogs, preparing food for friends who are sick or bereaved, taking friends who need a bit of cheering to lunch, and other activities that bring me pleasure and are worthwhile endeavors.

But I cannot have all three.  I cannot have two; neither can I successfully balance all three.  Even though I know this fact I still attempt to try to balance the three because I cannot choose which one to pursue.  It will not work; I cannot have them all.  I know this to be a fact.

I had a Halloween wall hanging that I started early in the fall that I wanted to use for the Harvest Festival.  I managed to make myself work on it every night when I was home.  Each day I set a goal to piece a certain part, quilt a certain part, to get x amount done that night; I had reasonable goals and I met them.  Did I finish the wall hanging?  Almost, I basted the binding (no one ever knew) and I also plan to re-do some of the embellishments before next year. 

I was successful with this project by focusing on it to get it done.  I think this approach works good sometimes; however, the trade off is that I now have a nice layer of dust on the furniture (no, I can't blame not dusting on the weekend trip to see my sister), there are animal fur samples in corners and on the back of the sofa, and the yard looks just about like it did before the sewing project fired up.  Books are still stacked up, waiting to be read.  Pictures and notes await creation into blog posts.  I have only sporadically walked the dogs (and myself). I have managed to keep groceries stocked and feed myself.  Basically, life will go on.  But the musings of this blog post will end because I think, dear readers, you know what I'm saying - you can't have it all!