Grief is a funny thing. It’s been a month since we lost Pop, and I’m finally starting to feel my groove coming back. I expected to cry, to be upset. And then I expected to kind of ease myself over it in a generally swift fashion. I figured I’d be back to blogging and sewing, and just back to normal pretty quickly. I just haven’t been in the mood for all of that.
Still, every night, when I get my dish rag out to clean my kitchen counters, I have the urge to call him and talk while I tidy up. Routine, routine. It’s hard to get used to.
But I’m working on new outlets, new routines, new normals; and it really is getting easier.
To start, I wanted to write this “collage” post of all the recent happenings that I want to record for the kids. I promise, the rest of this will be happy and, as usual, a little cluttered and jumbled, too!
Guess what? A.S. has her first loose tooth! She’s four-and-a-half and thinks that she is just the bees-knees. She can’t eat or drink without having me check out how much looser it is from the last time we checked. It’s really cute.
Poor A.W. is suffering from a serious case of superhero identity after seeing this costume I made for a sweet birthday boy. (I pretty much got the idea from the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway contestants; so thank you!)
I actually ended up giving A.W. the prototype (I almost always sew from my own sketches, so the first of anything is usually a real humdinger to me, but a masterpiece in the eyes of my forgiving almost-three-year-old!), and he’s been wearing it nearly every day — with nothing else, but that is another story entirely.
On the gardening front, everything seems to be coming up nicely. I think I have the upper hand on the grubs and voles and birds – for now.
Check out our first harvest of the season — this gorgeous, jumbo-sized beet:
Also – this sort of relates to gardening – after seeing a fabulous movie – more on that later – and doing some soul-searching on my needs versus the needs of our chickens, we’ve been doing free-range time in the garden with the chickens. I know, they mess things up in the garden. But look how happy they are doing it!

In true scatter-brain fashion, let’s move along and talk about the last painting project. I was approached by one of our local librarians to re-do this chair that was made by a community member years ago. We decided a lion would be cool.
So here was my first attempt:
I loved painting this! I really liked the whimsical feel and the intense look of the eyes. Kind of makes me think of the warning I give my little Toddler Mutant Ninja Turtle when we’re in the library and he’s getting too wild. ;O)
But everybody has different tastes. And the group that I was painting this for didn’t love it. Fair enough. You don’t always get second chances. So when you do, you really should try to rock it. And I tried and tried and tried to come up with this one.
Here’s what my second chance looks like:
They love it, so I’m a happy camper.
I’m also very happy to have the project completed so I can do more fun things!
Oh, but wait! I forgot. The theme this summer at the library is superheroes, so the same sweet librarian asked me if I could create some photo props for the kids. I don’t draw much these days, so this was a bit of a stretch for me. It was fun! I hope the kids get a kick out of it.
As I type this, I’m hopeful that I will find time to slow down this weekend and spend some time in the best place I know of these days. This right here, the most perfect corner of our garden is calling my name!
I think I’m back!
C
LOVE the chairs…
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Thank you, Miss Lori!
It was so great to meet you today!
We LOVED the class!😊
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