Today I happened upon the  blog themiddlestsister.com and I laughed so hard!  If you have siblings then you should be able to relate to the humor this blog brings out.  I about died when I read the post: Beauty Tip: Hair Maintenance from June 24, 2015.  I fit the sister with the snarly hair!  This post is under the heading Comic in the MENU section.  Then if you go to Table of Contents, you can chose any of the entries to read.  I think we can all relate to The Brussels Sprout Stand-Off.  If you have a minute or an hour check it out, I thought it was very cute!

Can you believe it, we start back to school in 10 days!  I have been trying to get my room set up and my lesson plans ready.  I am excited because I have been taking a Digital Tools Course online, and I hope to have a art blog  for my classroom this year.  Yes, it's one more thing to do, but I can display student work and hopefully  learn great new ideas that will inspire my students.  This class is keeping me busy, but I will try very hard to get some posts completed for this blog as well.


In the meantime, I thought I would share pictures of our recent flood!  We had about 4.5 inches of rain in about an hour.  It did a great deal of damage around town, and we had to dig our way out to get across our wash.  It's a good thing we live up high, and we felt very lucky that the damage was at the bottom of our property.

This is what a couple of the roads looked like right down the wash from us! 

Lastly, here are a few pictures from our trip to Denver.  We had so much fun.  We went to the Rockies game and they won!  We had food and drink at the Yard House.  We also went to the zoo.  It was amazing, and we could get so close to the animals.  Mike planned this entire trip and it was perfect!!

When I finished my blog post yesterday I started thinking about how many treasured gifts I have received lately.  I am truly grateful!  Since school is starting back in a couple of weeks I decided to make a sewing kit for someone at school.  It is always nice to have a few things stocked up for a student who is having a bad time in their life, or even in their day!  Isn't that when we need a little something that tells us there are people who care and are thinking about us?

 

Right before I went to Wyoming my cousin Nora brought me some vintage clothing that had been in her family.  I know, I am very fortunate to be gifted so many amazing things!  There were two beautiful sweaters that I wanted to share with you.  Also notice the amazing hanger they came on.  Such beautiful work!

This story gets better!  When I was at the estate sale with my sister, (this is where I found my quilt), I also found some vintage sweater guards.  I didn't realize there was such a thing, but I knew they would be perfect with the sweaters.  I went to pay for them and the lady who was running the sale gave then to me, along with about 4 more pairs. 

Do you have pretty table scarves you never use?  Here is a 5 minute project that lets you use turn those scarves into pretty envelopes.  Here is how I made mine!

Lay the table scarf out flat.  Fold it in half, and then in half once again.  Cut off the bottom 1/4 of the scarf.  Fold the fabric over where you cut and sew that edge so it's nice and neat.  Now you have 3/4 of the original table scarf.  Iron it into I/3 folds, so you have room for the pocket and a flap that goes over the front of the pocket. Sew the side edges of the pocket and ta-da, you have a pretty table scarf envelope!

This post deals with 3 things; a book, my tidying up and what to keep because it sparks joy!  Here is how this story started.  When I was visiting my sister I saw a book on her table called, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing" by Marie Kondo.  I started reading the book and I did some serious reflecting about myself.  First off, I highly recommend the book, and I purchased it myself so I could use it for reference.

Any way, when I got home, I dove into the discarding part of tidying up.  You realize I am a collector by nature, and this was not easy!  The author states you should discard and organize in one go, and it changes your lifestyle and is life transforming.  When you are done, you are only surrounded by things you love.  Here was my problem, I have so much stuff I couldn't do it all in one sweep.  I started with the guest bathroom.  This took me about 5 hours.  No kidding!  I went through everything, cleaned and put back what sparked joy.  The next day I took my junk out of my son's closet.  He hasn't lived here for many years and I used his closet to store my classroom stuff, bedding, and junk I didn't know what to do with.  The book said to stay away when someone is tidying up because you might have an attachment to the stuff or you have a fear for the future.  I have a big attachment to things connected to memories!

Then yesterday I worked my way through the laundry room.  This was hard because I LOVE vintage linens.  But I realized I didn't need all the extra sheets, etc.  I made a nice donation pile and dump pile.  My husband came in and I told him I was grumpy.  Seriously, this is life changing, but fun?  This process makes him very happy because he would love to see about 1/2 my stuff disappear, and I can't blame him!

I have had very little time this week to play, so I decided to take some of the beautiful lace and goodies my cousin Nora gave me, and organize them in a appealing way.  This is what sparks joy!  These are things I love to look at, use, keep or make something beautiful with.

That's it for today!  I'll let you know how the rest of my tidying up goes!  If you don't see new posts as often as I should be posting on my blog, you'll know I'm tidying things up around here!