My Crafty Momma....

This weekend starts the beginning of CRAFT SEASON!  Our first craft fair is on Saturday, and it's definitely one of my favorites of the year!  I won't be home from San Francisco yet, so unfortunately, I will miss out... not to mention that Town and Country will miss out on Tootsie Tillie Cupcakes this year!  However, in the spirit of this first weekend of craft shows...I am bound and determined to go to one out here!  I have found this one and it's this weekend in Mill Valley, CA!  Mill Valley is such a charming and beautiful little town...and very artsy, so I am excited!  It's about a 10 minute drive from where we are and for a bonus, it's where my favorite crafting store is located just a little ways down the road!  It's so much fun to attend craft fairs to look and get ideas and inspiration.  The crafting store is hosting a free scrap day for paper crafters that day, so it looks like maybe it will be a very crafty Saturday for me! 

I am still very excited for my mom and sisters to do good in the craft fair back home.   They have been making some adorable things and my sweet mom has even sent me the most adorable fall tote/purse to cheer me up and give me a taste of our favorite time of year.  Here it is...isn't it ADORABLE??!!

 

 

I'm so in love with it and I'm gonna load this baby up as my purse and show it off at the craft fair this weekend. 

 

My mom will be selling some of these at her craft show this weekend along with a lot of other handmade items.  She's so talented and can make anything!  She always made us outfits when we were little and provided endless supplies of sheet pants during that craze.  If I ever need something hand painted, sewn or created....she always comes through with something even better than I imagined!  If I needed a shirt the next day for a pep rally in high school...she'd get out her air brush and create away!  Now that she has a grandson, she has really gotten good at baby blankets and with another grand baby on the way....I can't wait to see what she will make next!  I'm so glad that I have such a creative mom and that I can share this passion for crafting with her and my sisters.  How lucky are we to have the BEST MOM IN THE WORLD??  Very lucky..I must say. :)

Flying High Above the Sadness and the Fear....

There never seemed to be "an end in sight" as some are calling it...until today.  With what started last March seemed like a never ending journey that just got harder and harder as the days progressed.  There's the medical factor, which is what is on the surface and what has been the most exhausting element of this stressful period of our lives.  For the patient, I know it's the hardest.  It takes a toll on your body, your mind and your emotions.  It makes it difficult to fight through anything when all you are doing is jumping from one doctor's appointment to another and from one procedure to another and from one major surgery to another.  It takes a strong willed person to survive all of that and I don't know if I could ever do it. 

For me, it's the worrying in waiting rooms, waiting on lab and pathology results, care giving, driving places I would have never done alone before, making life altering decisions, getting no sleep and most of all...watching my husband go through it all.   

Today, we got some great news that hopefully marks the beginning of the end of this time in our lives.  It seems like we've been on the "waiting" end of so many pathology reports and this is the first one to give us fantastic news!  No malignancy is music to our ears!! 

With the medical part well on it's way to calming down, there's so much more that I hope to be looking back on one day.  When we are cleared to go home by the doctors, I will be so happy, but at the same time, scared.  The things I must face have been here all along, but I know now, it's getting closer to me facing them head on...like a train coming right at me.  So, while the illness we have had to deal with was awful and interrupted our lives immensely, it allowed me to take things day by day....and now I have to be ready to decide for my future. 

Never Gonna Forget....

We are swimming where the snakes are....at the bottom of the well.
So silent and peaceful in the darkness where we fell.
But we are not snakes and what's more, we never will be.
If we stay swimming here forever we will never be free.

I heard them ringing the bells in heaven and hell.
They've got a secret they're getting ready to tell.
It's falling from the sky.
It's calling from the grave.
Open your eyes boy, I think we are saved...
Open your eyes boy, I think we are saved.

Let's take a walk on the bridge.... right over this mess.
Don't need to tell me a thing baby, you've already confessed...
And I raised my voice to the air...
And we were blessed.
It's hard to give.
It's hard to get.
But everybody needs a little forgiveness.

We are calling for help tonight on a thin phone line.
As usual we're having ourselves one hell of a time.
But the planes keep flying right over our heads...
No matter how loud we shout.
Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey
And we keep waving and waving our arms in the air but we're all tired now.

I heard somebody say...today's the day.
A big ol' hurricane...she's blowing our way.
Knockin' over the buildings...
Killing all the lights...
Open your eyes boy, we made it through the night.

It's hard to give.
It's hard to get.
It's hard to give.
But still I think it's the best bet.
Hard to give....
Never gonna forget...
But everybody needs a little forgiveness.
Everybody needs a little forgiveness.

Time's Up

Search history, my boy, and see
What petty selfishness has done.
Find if you can one victory
That little minds have ever won.
There is no record there to read
Of men who fought for self alone,
No instance of a single deed
Splendor they may proudly own.

Through all life's story you will find
The miser—with his hoarded gold—
A hermit, dreary and unkind,
An outcast from the human fold.
Men hold him up to view with scorn,
A creature by his wealth enslaved,
A spirit craven and forlorn,
Doomed by the money he has saved.

No man was ever truly great
Who sought to serve himself alone,
Who put himself above the state,
Above the friends about him thrown.
No man was ever truly glad
Who risked his joy on hoarded pelf,
And gave of nothing that he had
Through fear of needing it himself.

For selfishness is wintry cold,
And bitter are its joys at last,
The very charms it tries to hold,
With woes are quickly overcast.
And only he shall gladly live,
And bravely die when God shall call,
Who gathers but that he may give,
And with his fellows shares his all.


-"Selfishness," a Poem By Edgar Albert Guest