Eli

My five-year-old nephew, Eli, and his brother Enoch came over to play with us Thursday night. They are so energetic and fun! And they both love to eat. I had made some black bean soup just for me (no one else in my house will even try my cooking half the time, and when they do, I just feel disappointed because they don't really enjoy it.). Anyway, Eli said he was hungry - as always - and I told him to smell my soup to see if he wanted some. He said he would try it, so I gave him a little. He started to make the perfect sounds, "Mmm, this is good! I wish my mom and dad were here to try this!" I gave him some more. He said, "Wow. I wish I had the recipe for this soup!" Oh, how one small child can make my day.

Sewing Machine Maintenance 1

Watch all five of Pam's videos on sewing machine maintenance to make sure yours is running great. Save yourself hundreds of dollars by doing this yearly!

Common Sewing Machine Tension Mistakes - Part 1

Thank to the wonderful videos on YouTube, I have found the solution to my problems!

Happiness

I just finished reading Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. It was a really enlightening read. She said that she posts six days a week to her blog. Wow! I might post six times a year. But then again, I'm not a professional writer. Maybe one day.

So this week I got out the sewing machine, because Gretchen, in her book, said to make time for your passion. I love creating. I love sewing. I've been trying to get myself to make a slipcover for my couch for years. I have the best material, and I've even started on it, which is supposed to be the most difficult part. But I have a hard time getting everything out of the shelves and on to the table, because I know I won't have a lot of time to work on it. I like to get things done in one sitting, though that rarely happens. So I was was inspired and decided to just set apart some time to work on it.

I pulled out everything and got it all set up. I started to sew a zipper onto the fabric. Unfortunately, the zippers that I had found and repurposed were broken. So I'm stuck on finding zippers for the cushions again. I know. I will find them if I just go to eBay or amazon or some online store. But at the moment, I had just gotten everything out, and I wanted to sew.

I had some old blue jeans that were just dying to be turned into a project, so I started cutting to see what they wanted to be. It turns out they really wanted to be a bag. Someday it is going to be a really cute bag, but not today. As I started sewing, and as I went through a really thick part, the needle broke, and apparently the machine broke. I took off the face plate and dusted everything out, but even with all the cleaning and replacing the broken needle, the machine will not sew.

I think maybe I should give up this passion. Not sewing all together, but sewing with a machine. Hand stitching takes forever, but maybe not as long as getting a machine repaired. If I gave up machine sewing, I could get rid of all the material cluttering up my attic. There will never be enough time in my life to go through it all, even if I do get my machine fixed. So, maybe now's a good time to spend some time on decluttering, which was step one in the book.

Thanks, Happiness Project!