Handmade bags, quilts and ornamnents...OH MY!

Here is the forest that I would like to retire in. It is actually a cyclamen that I am trying to keep alive...I don't have much luck with these, but they are just SO beautiful. I have to be honest...doing this handmade Christmas thing is HARD...I didn't realize that I had so little time and my energy is just being sucked out of me by my kids this season.

I am going to be trying to shift something (?) the rest of this week...you know, the new parenting strategies that you have to come up with when you just feel like what you are doing is not what is working for your kiddos. My oldest son seems to have a few really wonderful weeks followed by some that are really hard....like figuring out what amount of power he can control...versus what Mommies and Daddies control. Those are hard lessons for all of us to learn....but most...no some adults have the behavioral control skills to make the confusion of it all more bearable for everyone else. I don't think that 4 year-olds have those skills all intact yet. They shouldn't, they are working on it...but WOW hard stuff.

This one here...he is a real powerhouse...his latest is climbing. "No fear" is his motto. He usually just wants to leap in to my arms when he has had his fill of the heights. (BUT WOW...kinda scary...his brother was far more cautious.)

SO, back to my original thoughts...Handmade...what a challenge, but on the other side...I am realizing that I have some wicked skillz. I have been trying a few things and they look really cool. (I will post them someday after the 25th). When I do have time...it is great to see that my ideas are not just wisps of fancy, that they are practically viable (does that sound dry or what?) My friend Emily had a quote the other day...so artsy she wrote it on her hand:

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.”
Emile Zola

This thought creeping in my head...."the gift is nothing without the work" That is it... we need to put in the work, the effort, the time....let me not waste the gift. A good thought, I will continue to ponder it. Here, also thanks in part, to Emily is my new hair. Granted, I am still in my bathrobe...just woke up. (The more I look at this picture the more I see the asymmetry of my face and it just starts to wig me out... but the best I could do this morning) I got about a head of hair cut off...I feel much lighter and I like the messiness of the cut...feels reel reel gud!

JMB