Category Archives: Gratitude

The Kindness of Others

This week I had one of those moments that reminds you that there are so many nice people in the world. Here you go.

You might remember that last December I did a custom order for a woman from New York. (Story posted here.) This was my first custom order and it was really fun to work with this particular customer. She was so friendly within the confines of our email conversations about her order. For the first time, I used a wax print, Ankara fabric to make her Chemex cozy. We chatted a bit and I told her how much I liked this gorgeous fabric. She told me she buys wax prints at an open market in New York.

Time passed. (Lots of time, seven months!) Last month, she emailed me and said she would be going to the marketplace soon and would I like her to pick up some fabric for me. It is really a good price there. I had looked on-line to buy some and wasn’t thrilled with the pricing. I have to be fairly careful with what I spend on fabric for my Etsy shop or my already meager profits become even less. All about the profit margin, right. 😉 I jumped at her offer.

When she got to the shop, she texted me pictures of about seven or eight pieces she thought I might like. Jamie explained I would have to buy them in three yard pieces as they are pre-cut to this length. It was a tough choice but I settled on two. It was amazingly easy to be texting with this virtual friend and picking fabrics out based on a few quick iPhone photos.

As I wrote her a check and popped it in the mail it came to me that some might consider this a bit of a risk. I didn’t have any hesitation about sending the money. I knew the fabric would show up. It appeared that she didn’t have any hesitation purchasing the fabric for me and she even mailed it prior to receiving any sort of payment from me.

I received the fabric a few days ago. It is so gorgeous. Made by Vlisco, these wax prints are manufactured both in Holland and in Ghana. The company was founded in 1846 and has served a vast African market over the years. Their process reportedly consists of twenty-seven steps to achieve these prints and is a highly guarded secret. Because many textile companies attempt to create counterfeit Vlisco fabric, they are quite bold with printing their name along the selvedge and putting these (nearly impossible to remove) adhesive labels on the fabric.

If you look closely at the label, you might notice that this piece was actually six yards, not three. Both pieces are huge, six yards each. Jamie was mistaken when she told me she was sending three yards of each. At $20 per piece, this was a steal.

This blue and purple piece has more of an African look to the pattern. It is really bold. I chose it because I want to utilize the curve of those spirals when I cut the curve of the Chemex covers. But now that I have six yards of it, I need to think of another project to use some of it! The fabric is 48″ wide. Lots of fabric here.

This red piece is my favorite. I love the birds. Do they look like a peacock? I think so but I’m not sure. It has a green border running the length of the piece. It is just gorgeous. I have several ideas for projects to use this piece for so I need to make some decisions.

What most impressed me was that this was just an act of kindness. She had no compelling reason to do this, other than to be a nice person. Yep, there are so many really kind people out there and she is certainly one of them.

Linking to this week’s Sunday Stash.

Love and Good Luck Rolled Up in a Quilt

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This is the greatest story and it led to the sweetest quilt I have made yet. Get your tissues ready!

My daughter-in-law, Naomi, has a wonderful family. (Side note, isn’t it cool that when my son married, I gained not just my DIL but also some really nice friends from her family??) Included in her family are her mom, two brothers and her sister-in-law. Just today I finished an adorable quilt for her sister-in-law, brother and the baby they are expecting in September. The story of this baby is pretty darned amazing.

Margot and TJ (these are their real names – Margot blogs at Find Your Spark and uses their names publically so I have done the same) have been trying to have a baby for years. This has been a really rough time for them. Margot has been pregnant numerous times and has miscarried at various stages of pregnancy. (This post tells part of her story.) It has been really painful for both of them. I can relate somewhat to this sort of pain. I miscarried a child a long while back. It was my third child and I lost the baby at 14 weeks. It was a painful experience that took some time to grieve. But this happened to me only once. And it was after having two healthy babies and before having two more healthy babies. Margot has gone through this repeatedly and has not (yet) had the joy of holding her baby or bringing the baby home. That sort of pain and frustration is truly torturous.

After years of this, they decided last December to take an alternative route to their goal of having a family. Margot and TJ are working with a surrogate. You can read all about their decision and experience on her blog – the story of the surrogacy begins with this post. The surrogacy agency they are using is located in Mumbai, India. To say that 2015 has been an exciting year for them is a huge understatement. They went to India at Christmas last year and were able to achieve a successful surrogate pregnancy. They have been in constant communication with the agency and the surrogate mother and everything is going along perfectly. Their sweet baby is due to arrive in September. Margot and TJ will be going back to India in several weeks to wait for the birth of their baby. I am so dang happy for them.

When a quilter knows a new baby is coming there is only one way to respond, right? Today I mailed off this quilt to New York and I am hoping that it brings great joy to Margot and TJ.

I know that they are incorporating elephants into the baby’s nursery. Elephants are a symbol of good fortune in India and I am pretty sure that Margot and TJ will be forever grateful for this woman who has given of herself to birth their child for them. Good fortune? Oh yeah. In India, elephants represent Ganesha, one of the most important gods in Hinduism. Ganesha is the god of success and the destroyer of evil and obstacles – perfect! For more details on this, here is a site to read. With elephants being symbolic for their family, I used that as the theme for the quilt.

The pattern is a simple stripe with the two focus fabrics cut in widths ranging from two to six inches. Just like the green and white quilt that I made a few weeks ago, I have the stripes arranged from narrow to wide widths, in alternating order. The pattern is Firefly, by Canoe Ridge Creations. I went with a color scheme of gray and yellow. They don’t know the sex of the baby so these colors are gender-neutral. Finding this elephant print, “Oh Boy” by Riley Blake was a perfect choice for the backing and binding.

Those tiny elephants are sweet in every way. The yellow dot on the front is from the “Mixology” line by Studio for Moda. I can’t honestly remember which gray I used. My favorite part of the quilt is the elephant that I thread sketched at the bottom, on the widest gray stripe.

To create this little guy I took the backing fabric and made of copy of it on my printer/copier. I kept enlarging it until the size felt right. Then I cut him out and traced a rough shape right on to the quilt. (Actually I made several of them on practice fabric first.) It is hard to tell from the picture but I used three different shades of gray thread so that the elephant would have some definition. I love him. (Why do I keep calling the elephant ‘him’? Is that an omen for Baby Guy? We will know in just two short months!)

To quilt this piece, I used organic wavy lines that were sewn with my walking foot. I didn’t space them too close as I wanted it to be really soft when washed. The binding is double fold as usual, and I machine stitched it to the front and back. Going for baby-proof durability here. After I washed it, the quilt measured 36″ x 36″. Hopefully this quilt will be used and washed and then used some more. It will hold up well for outings to the park, rolling around on the floor, tummy time, and then eventually fort making, pretend play, and so many naps.

A quilt filled with good fortune and love all rolled up in one for a very special baby.

Linking to Lorna at Let’s Bee Social and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner

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Giveaways are pretty darn fun. Luck has been on my side and I have two wins to brag about. I know it isn’t nice to be boastful but what can you do? Plus I want to show my thanks to the bloggers that sponsored these giveaways.

The first win was actually in late spring which means I am a bit late in writing about this one. I entered a giveaway on Linda Smith’s blog, Scrapmaster. She and several others were writing posts to introduce their guild, the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild. I was lucky enough to win the draw for three lovely fat quarters! Thanks so much to Linda.

The dark and light grays in these prints are so pretty and they will be fun to incorporate into an as of yet unknown project.

The other prize I won was from the June giveaway for A Lovely Year of Finishes (ALYOF) which I have been faithfully linking to each month since January. (If you aren’t already familiar with it, ALYOF is a fun link up. At the beginning of each month you link one quilty goal that you have for that month. If you finish the goal, link again at the end of the month. They have a number of prizes that they draw names for each month.) When I won, Kim Lapacek, of Persimon Dreams, gave me the pattern of my choice. It wasn’t easy. She has a selection of really fun patterns that she has designed. Being a lover of dresdens (here is a post a bout the first, and so far only, dresden project) I chose her pattern titled, Dresden Neighborhood Block. This pattern is such a cute riff on a neighborhood. I plan to make a mini with it. If you want a closer look, the pattern is available here on Craftsy.

Thanks so much to these two blogger/quilters for their generosity! I do love this community of ours.

I have been squeezing in minimal time for sewing over the past few days. Instead of my sewing room, I have been in the kitchen dealing with the amazing number of peaches ripening on our tree. They are so juicy and sweet but really, we have more than we can handle.

So far, I have frozen five gallon size zip lok bags of sliced, peeled peaches for making pies over the winter.

This morning Julia and I made a batch of jam using strawberries and peaches.

We canned 8 half pint jars and will do at least one more batch. I think peach jam on its own can be a bit bland so I like to add berries to it. Last year I did raspberry peach and it was really good.

I am a bit worried that this batch isn’t going to set up properly. It doesn’t seem to be getting thick enough as it cools. True confession time – my husband is really the jam maker in the family. He does a great job and just uses fruit and sugar, cooking it down until the consistency is perfect. Me, not so much… Last year I tried his method and ended up with a product similar to Jolly Rancher hard candy. I tossed the whole batch. I just cannot get a consistently reliable result. Today I used pectin and followed a recipe (which for some reason, Ray never needs to do) and I am just not confident it worked. We shall see. If this batch turns out to be too soft, I will just have to resign as assistant jam maker and leave it to the expert.

Post Update: Yay!! The jam set up just fine. I will make a second batch now that I have seen success. 🙂

Summer is going so fast. Today Julia received an email from the high school with an assignment to read two books before school starts on August 18th. And so it begins!

Hope you are all enjoying your summers and savoring the days.

Linking to Freemotion by the River.

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

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I can hardly believe it, but today marks one year since I first published my first post on this lovely little blog of mine. This post is my 97th. Who knew I would think of something to say 97 times!! I have had such a fun time this year writing posts, tracking my projects, and best of all, meeting so many friends in this on-line quilting community.

I read a lot of blogs. From food, vintage collecting and thrifting, finance information and investing, to humor and parenting (which should go hand in hand, in my opinion!) there are blogs about anything and everything. However, the quilting community of bloggers is unique. This community is caring, respectful, and supportive. Honestly, this is a great group of people. There are all levels of quilters in the blog world – some are experts with endless talent, many are beginners and everyone has a common love of cutting fabric into bits and creating something from it. The philanthropic and caring nature of this group impresses me no end. I have seen so many situations where another quilter is experiencing a hardship and is immediately supported by quilters as a group. Conversely, when there is reason to celebrate, this community is right there cheering you on.

I am grateful for all that I learned this year. It was nervewracking to publish my first post. I was not at all sure anyone would want to read what I had written. I remember thinking, well, I would have at least six readers (my five sisters and my parents!) Here it is one year later and I have nearly 100 followers. Thank you.

Gratitude also goes to my son, Andrew. He set up this self-hosted blog, does the updates and other miscellaneous tasks needed to keep it running. When I come with questions, can I do this, how do I do that, he is so patient with his explanations. Better yet, he often just makes the changes I want. Take a look at those gorgeous social media buttons on the upper right side of the page. Yep, thank you Andrew!

I am truly grateful for this community. Getting involved with other bloggers has enabled me to improve my quilting skills. The tutorials that are so generously provided and painstakingly written are such a great source of learning material (hah – pun intended!) Just this year, using tutorials, I learned to use a Hera marker for quilting, found cleaner methods for binding my quilts, learned to look at color values when deciding which fabrics to use in a project, and free motion quilting – oh, how thankful I am for the endless posts on FMQ! The many link parties that are hosted each week have provided me with exposure so that readers could find my little blog as well as allowed me to find other blogs that I may never have stumbled across.

It has been a blast and I look forward to my second year! In celebration of this milestone, I wanted to do something special. I considered a giveaway of some sort of fabric but it didn’t seem right. Really, don’t we have enough fabric? Aren’t our shelves bursting with it? Be honest now. 🙂 Instead, let’s celebrate in the giving way that our community is known for. I would like to make a donation to your favorite non-profit. Leave me a comment with a link to your favorite charity. Maybe add one or two lines about the charity. (Who knows, maybe others reading the comments will be intrigued by your charity and get involved.) I will pick one lucky winner and donate $25.00 (USD) to your charity. I am looking forward to reading about the organizations that are near and dear to your heart. This type of giveaway also allows me to include international readers. Previously, I have always included only USA readers in my giveaways because the shipping costs are so expensive. But this giveaway is open to anyone! Just give me the link to contact your non-profit. This giveaway is open until Monday, June 8, 2015. I will announce the winner on Tuesday the 9th. I hope everyone will enter so that your charity has a chance for a donation.

UPDATE: The donation to your favorite charity has just been matched by my sister Patti! She is celebrating my one year blogaversary with me and wants to double the donation. Yay!! This means that $50.00 will be donated to the charity of one lucky winner. Isn’t she the best? See her comment offering to make this match. Thank you Patti!!!

I hope you all know that I am thankful for your readership and even more thankful for your friendship.

Linking to Thankful Thursday at Quilting Jetgirl and Lorna at Let’s Bee Social.

Gratitude-Part 6

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I haven’t done a gratitude post for a couple of weeks but this week I have one to share. I am grateful for these two people.

Mom and Dad are celebrating their 60th anniversary tomorrow. Sixty years! That’s a long time to live side by side with someone. They are truly soulmates and their marriage has long been an inspiration to me. I am grateful for the example their marriage set for me and my sisters, over the years. With the high rate of divorce in the US, we are very fortunate to have grown up with parents that stayed (happily) married. They enjoy and respect each other, which created a solid home life for their six children.

Research shows that growing up in a home where the parents marriage remains intact, decreases the likeilhood of the childrens’ future marriage ending in divorce. Having a healthy marriage modeled for you teaches a person what it takes to successfully marry. It appears to create a stronger commitment to the institution of marriage. The study showed that this increased level of confidence was more apparent in females than males who grew up in homes with intact parental marriage. I was blessed to grow up in such a home. Thank you Mom and Dad.

This is a fun picture of the legacy they created. Taken at Thanksgiving of 2012, there are a couple of the grandchildren missing, so the group wasn’t quite complete. Since this picture was taken, two more great granchildren have been born so the group is even a bit bigger now. I think our family (their six children, our spouses, their 21 grandchildren, and their eight great-grandchildren) tallies 45 people now. Little did they know what they were starting when they said “I do” back in May of 1955.

Linking to Yvonne over at Quilting Jetgirl.

Gratitude-Part 5

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Hope everyone is having a good week so far. All is well here. We had a great weekend. Made some good progress on the Downieville house. Drywall is in (we had taken down old paneling in the our bedroom). Tomorrow they will texture it and then we can paint. Yahoo!! My husband is doing the lion’s share of the work on this house but drywall is not a fun project; one he happily paid someone else to do. I bought the paint yesterday (gray with a creamy trim color) and cannot wait to get those walls painted.

In other exciting news, my daughter received her acceptance to a high school program she applied to for next year. She has worked very hard on this application process so she is overjoyed. (All of us are actually!)

But the best part of the week so far, is this. Here is the backstory. I had a very special friend, Betty, who we lost to cancer 15 months ago. She battled Multiple Myeloma for almost four years. We were friends for almost 20 years. We worked together (she was my manager for a while but mostly we were co-workers) and we played together. We were in a book club together for a while. We made trips to museums, walked together until she couldn’t do that any longer, and she introduced me to the joy of dim sum about ten years ago. I keep a small photo of her taped to the wall in my sewing room so she can cheer me on when I am in there working on a project.

Betty was skilled at both knitting and crochet and could do huge damage in a yarn shop in no time at all. She created beautiful pieces though. When Julia was born she gave us a sweet crocheted blanket. When she was going through chemo and making herself chemo caps, she made Julia a gorgeous purple hat with a cute flower attached to it. Anyway, after she died, her husband gave her yarn stash to his sister. His sister, Marlene, shared this love of knitting with Betty. When Marlene was in California, visiting from her home in Washington DC, they would hit the yarn shops. If they were across the country from each other, Betty told me that she and Marlene would text pictures of yarns, colors and projects to each other. It made sense for the yarn stash to go to her.

Here is the surprise. Yesterday I had lunch with Betty’s husband. We try to get together for a visit every couple of months. He brought me a surprise from Marlene.

Isn’t this gorgeous? Marlene chose to make me a scarf with some of Betty’s yarn. What a treasure. I love the flecks of color in this yarn.

The yarn is a recycled product by Rowan. Manufactured in Italy, it is made of recycled clothing and fibers to create a silk, cotton and viscose content. It is wonderfully soft. She sent me a copy of the pattern she used ( I can kind of, sort of knit but would not be able to make something like this) and it is called “Best Friend”. That choked me up. I will treasure this. I am so grateful for Marlene’s thoughtful gesture and this gift that she sent me. It was such a wonderful surprise.

Linking for the first time over at Handmade Tuesday, as well as Freemotion by the River. Thursday I will link this to Yvonne’s Thankful Thursday Series on Quilting Jetgirl.

Loving Spring

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Hi Everyone. Hope that your week was good – the weekend is nearly here! We had a bit of a crazy week here. It started with a storm which was welcomed by all. Easter was rainy and cold. Then on Tuesday we actually got snow. Such extreme changes; we went from 75 degree afternoons to snow! It was a treat though as we haven’t had any snow this year. It melted off by the next morning and we are already back in the 60’s. Just a crazy spring storm.

We are still dealing with a horrible drought though and because of this, my husband and I decided to forgo our usual vegetable garden this year. It doesn’t make sense to use so much water in that way. I will also skip planting annuals and will not be planting any summer flowers in my deck pots. We are really in conservation mode here. We have three acres and much of it is grass so come summer, we will let some of it die back. Normally we irrigate a great deal of it but this year we will have some brown patches. It will grow back the following year. Hoping next year brings a monsoon our way.

Our garden is definitely pushing blossoms everywhere. The clematis is gorgeous.

Roses are blooming.

Artichokes will be picked soon.

Peaches are already the size of small almonds. I do love spring!

I worked on a few fun projects this week. I finished the vintage linen pillow that I was hand quilting last week. It is so cute. My stitches certainly leave room for improvement but I loved doing the hand work. I will definitely continue to practice. I used Aurifil because I really wasn’t entirely sure what I should be using and I didn’t want it to stand out too much since it was my first attempt at hand quilting. Next go around, I will try something with more heft; maybe a Perle cotton? Suggestions welcome here!

It is certainly harder than it looks! Tricky to quilt tiny stitches of a consistent length. Overall, I am pleased with my first attempt and it will be a good reminder of where I began.

The pair of pillows work well together.

I also made one of the tablerunners this on my ALOYF goal for this month. I used two Joel Dewberry prints that I won a while back. It is a basic chevron with a tiny pop of turquoise bordering it. I am quilting it with straight lines on the chevron and pebbling on the white triangles. Hopefully I can get that finished and bound this weekend. (This picture was taken inside, in the evening, which never makes for a great shot.)

That’s it for this week! I know I skipped writing a gratitude post this week, but if I were to choose something I am especially grateful for, it would be the storm we had. It may not have fixed our situation, but it sure didn’t hurt!

By the way, if you are an Instagram fan, have you been enjoying the “twenty things about me” posts that are going through the quilting population? I love them. I have read so many fun things about some of the quilters I admire. It has been fun to follow these posts! Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend.

Linking to my usual: Let’s Bee Social, Crazy Mom Quilts, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Also linking to TGIFF which is hosted by Lorna this week (at Sew Fresh Quilts.) All of these links are located at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Gratitude – Part 4

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We’re home! My husband and Julia and I spent a long weekend up at the Downieville house working. It was really productive and, consequently, tiring! We made so much progress though.

Over the weekend Julia and I painted the basement level bedroom. It had dark paneling on the walls – ick. It made it feel like a cave in there. We primed the paneling and then painted it a sage green. It looks wonderful. I forgot to take a finished picture but do have this (iPhone) picture which portrays the wonder of having a 13 year old that is already 5′ 7″ tall. She did a great job rolling the top half of the walls. Made me jealous of her height.

Also got the valances and pleated window shades installed in the kitchen.

Another project that I tackled was painting the picket fence that runs along the front yard. (Yep, I felt like I belonged in a Mark Twain story.) It was in terrible shape. Most of the fence needed to be scraped paint and then primed and painted. This took up the better part of two afternoons but was well worth it. Here is a before picture.

And after:

It looks so clean and fresh. We did a relatively good job of not getting paint all over the little rock wall. See the little orange tulip peeking out? It is the only one in a sea of iris. Gorgeous though.

Photo credits to Julia for the three pictures shown above!

The best part of the weekend, and my gratitude focus for this week, was the new friends we met. You might remember that this is a tiny town. At it’s peak, during the California Gold Rush in the 1800’s, the population peaked at about 5,000 people. Now there are about 300 people that live there full time. From what I can tell, the school district there has about 50 students (grades K through 12). Pretty tiny. Spending the afternoons outside working on the fence gave me the opportunity to meet a few new people and everyone was kind and gracious. They seemed to truly appreciate that we were fixing up this little house.

The day after painting the fence, Julia and I checked out the library. It is adorable. Tiny but with a reasonable selection of books and because it is part of a larger library system, the patrons have access to a much larger selection. People can “order” books from the larger library and they are delivered to the local library. But best of all was chatting with the librarian (Cheryl) and guess what? She is a long arm quilter. What do you know! Immediate connection there as we talked all about quilting. The local guild, the Mountain Star Quilters, keep a library of quilting books in the public library which is a fairly impressive collection considering the size of the guild. As we talked quilting (and bored Julia) another woman (Linda) came in. I remembered meeting her briefly when I attended the quilt retreat in Downieville last October. (I posted about that here.) The three of us visited for a bit and and Linda showed me a book she had brought in. It was Tula Pink’s City Sampler book. We talked about it and she said she had decided she didn’t want to use it, and would I like to have it? I love Tula Pink and have looked at her beautiful book numerous times, wondering if I would ever really make the blocks in it. Seems like fate, right? There was the book falling into my hands. Clearly I am meant to make these blocks.

This adds another project to the list. I will use the 1/2 yard collection of Floriography, a Riley Blake fabric that I won from Doe Street Fabrics a few months ago.

I need to add a few solids to it but no problem there. I think making a block or two a week will be a fun way to use the book and the fabric.

Back to the kindness of these women. It never ceases to amaze me what a friendly group quilters make. Meet a quilter in the store, instant rapport. Run into a few in the library, new friends. Both women talked about the local quilt guild. They have about 30 members and meet one afternoon each month. I am going to attend the April meeting and see if I can start participating in their guild. I belong to our local guild as well and it is a challenge to get myself to the meetings, so we shall see. Luckily the schedules of each of the guilds seem to be opposite of each other (quilt show dates, challenge quilts, etc) so that will help. For sure, joining this second guild will be a great way to meet new friends and for that I am thankful.

Finally, just so you don’t think the weekend was all work and no play, here are some pictures from a hike along the river that Julia and I took. It was a gorgeous morning.

We are fortunate to have found our place on the river. It is a treasure for which we are so grateful.

Linking to Quilting Jetgirl’s Thankful Thursday and Needle and Thread Thursday and Let’s Bee Social (links to these are at the top of the page under Link Ups.)

Gratitude Week Three

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Somehow I missed my goal of a weekly gratitude post last week. All of a sudden the week was over and I didn’t get it posted. Ah well…. let’s make up for that.

Thoughtful gestures, not huge but those times when you know that there was true kindness behind the gesture. This is what I am grateful for this week. I have two examples for you. Both gestures were bestowed upon me by my hubby, a very thoughtful kind of guy.

The first one requires a backstory. I am hypoglycemic which I wrote about about here. Because of this, I rarely eat sugary or processed foods. Anyway, I had been buying these little sugarless, fruity candies at Caroline’s, a local shop in town. I love them – chewy like a “tootsie roll” and very tart. Just after Christmas, I went to the shop to buy a few and was so disappointed to find out they no longer carried them. C’mon… my big indulgence was gone! A week ago, I ~~lamented~~ whined to Ray how much I missed my little bits of chewy goodness. That night he was all over Amazon and a few days later a box arrived on our porch.

What a guy, right? He found them and ordered a ton. I will not soon run out!

Second story: Earlier this week I was looking for updated software drivers for my DSLR camera. I went to the site and started the download. As soon as I clicked run on the executable file I knew I was in big trouble. (I have a Windows laptop.) Ahhh!! All sorts of windows started popping up in the background. I was so angry. Clearly the site was a fake and I didn’t catch it. Jeez, it was a mess. I am pretty knowledgeable technically. Before working in HR, I worked in the I/T department for a decent sized company. I was both a technical writer and a corporate trainer for some large software installations. I KNOW BETTER. I should have paid better attention to the site I was using but jeez, these creepy people make these sites look so legit. I tried to clean up the mess. I couldn’t. Feeling very frustrated, I shut down the computer. The next day, Ray tried uninstalling everything. He then ran the virus scan, which ran for hours and finally found the mess and (supposedly) uninstalled it. Come the following day, there it was; Binkiland was back on my computer and I couldn’t use Chrome (my usual browser). Ugh. I was so irritated. I told Ray and he did some research on this. Luckily this mess was more of an annoyance than a danger. It is an insipiad browser that forces it way into the computer and takes over so it can collect data on your internet usage. That night he came home from work with a pile of pages of instruction and scrubbed the laptop. I know this wasn’t fun for him. He has a stressful job and sits at his computer at work for a good part of the day. He doesn’t usually come home hoping to sit at another computer for an hour cleaning up yet another mess! But he did and my laptop is back to normal. I am grateful — he is very thoughtful.

Always good to pay it forward right? Time to go extend the gesture to someone else. Recognizing these little gestures and appreciating them make my day that much richer.

Linking to Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl today.

Gratitude Week Two

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This post is the second in a series on gratitude, or counting one’s blessings. The idea to write about appreciation was inspired by Yvonne at Quilting Jet Girl (Yvonne happens to be an amazing quilter by the way. If you haven’t already, please take a look at her work.)

When I was working full-time I went out to lunch one day with friends for Chinese food. I received the following message in my fortune cookie. It said “Enough is as good as a feast”. I love this saying, which is a Buddhist proverb. I had it taped to my computer monitor in my office for years and would look at it often. For me it was, and still is, a powerful reminder that one doesn’t have to have stuff; the newest cars, the trendiest clothes or the biggest stash of fabric, to be content. If you have enough (I interpret that as the basics) then you have a veritable feast.

I have enough, for which I am so grateful and because of which, I am content. There is food in our cupboard and a roof over our heads. I am fortunate. When we lose sight of all that we have, if we are always desiring more, we miss the opportunity to experience the joy of appreciating life at that moment.

So, this week, I am focused on feeling grateful for the pantry that feeds us (messy though it is) and the home we live in (again, messy though it is!) It is enough.

Note: The picture of our home is from last spring. It ihas been ridiculously warm here but I certainly don’t have peonies and iris in bloom yet!!

Linking to Thankful Thursday at Quilting Jet Girl today.