A New Year Ushers In a New Arrangement

Everyone who knows me knows that I was exceptionally thrilled the day I found out we were having a little girl.  For 14 years I'd only been a mother to boys.  Now, my boys were, and still are, the pride worn on my shirt sleeve.  But the thoughts of a sweet smelling, soft spoken little girl who would enjoy doing "mom things" with me like learning to cook, sew, and garden brought me into a world of excited expectation.

17 years later I have a sweet smelling, highly intelligent, head strong, goal achieving, independent, not so soft spoken, exceptionally beautiful, 1/3 tom boy, 1/3 all American girl, 1/3 beauty queen who literally runs away from the stove, only views the sewing closet as a dumping ground for her unwanted belongings, and attempts to use gardening chores as bargaining chips.

Needless to say, when Songbird signed up for a quilting project in 4-H this year, I was shocked.  My shocked quickly turned to exhilarated joy and excitement!  Maybe a little seed was planted during those short little sewing lessons we attempted when she was much younger.  The opportunity to teach my daughter any of the homemaking arts, thrills me.  I'm so excited about it, I spent a day and half doing this:

BEFORE

Our "school room".  It is really the very large landing at the top of the second floor.  In here we have a large cupboard, with a broken door, flanked by two overloaded bookshelves.  A drafting table used for our spare computer & independent study and our "craft supply" cabinet.  By the way, Songbird and Farmer Boy rarely sit at this table for any school work.  They prefer the kitchen table, the floor, the living room coffee table, my office desk ... basically any place other than the one "designated" for school work.

I purged the book shelves, getting rid of 6 shelves of curriculum materials Songbird and Farmer Boy have outgrown.  I moved the farther bookshelf to the sewing closet for additional supply and craft storage.

AFTER

Mr.B finally repaired the cupboard door for me.  I brought my sewing table out of the sewing closet and placed it in the corner where the other bookshelf used to be. I removed the extra computer.  The drafting table will now be used as a cutting table for quilt pieces and other sewing projects.  The remaining bookshelf has been purged and re-organized.  The craft supply cabinet has also been purged and re-organized.

BEFORE

AFTER

I un-stacked the cubicle storage shelves and moved them to where my sewing table used to be.  The book shelf from the "school room" now occupies the old cubicle storage shelf area and has a hook that perfectly holds my yarn storage bag.  This larger shelving unit has added significantly more storage to this closet.

The horses and their beef projects are the only 4-H livestock Songbird and Farmer Boy have during the winter months.  Therefore, winter is the perfect time to work on their 4-H workbooks and other non-animal projects, like cooking, sewing, robotics, electricity, shooting sports, archery, etc.  Songbird will use these winter months to work on her quilting project and hopefully get most of it finished prior to spring when she will add lamb, goat, and swine projects to all her 4-H activities.

I look forward to letting you all know how the quilting project goes!