Hobbies

Something I personally have struggled with since having children is answering the question "What are your hobbies or what are you passionate about?"  I don't know about other moms but once you have kids it becomes VERY hard to find time for yourself to pursue what YOU want to do.  I did some thinking about this last weekend and I initially was blaming this on being a working mom; but I know the stay at home mothers don't have time to themselves either they are devoted their family 100% of every day. Working outside of home I at least get some minutes to myself at the office but with each new assignment I take at GE this gets less and less.  I have my workday packed to the gills(typically double and tripled booked meetings most of the working day) in order to get it all in to spend time with my family and start the cycle of getting ready for tomorrow.  I have to admit this running at double speed most of the time makes me wonder if I am doing anything well or if I am just doing.  We'll contemplate that in another post...  Thus I came back to the conclusion that this "loss of hobbies" probably is a phenomenon of having young kids not your paycheck status.  There just is very, very little time for you to develop your interests as a person.



After my contemplative weekend we decided to do a Halloween Dry Run on costumes.  This year the kiddos are going as C's favorite Disney character "Tinkerbell" and B is the matching "Peter Pan", we have an eye patch and hand hook in case Papa wants to join the Never land Family.  We decided this shortly after our trip to Disney World. In my usual "just do it' house management style, once decided I hopped on Amazon.com and ordered the cutest costumes I could find.  B's costume is adorable and suits his personality to a tee.  C's costume just looked like any other Disney princess dress and honestly doesn't look that much like Tinkerbell to me at all....not sure what Disney was thinking there. So given my contemplations about my hobbies I decided to take on a Tinkerbell redo by sewing C's costume myself.



The real "Tink" looks like a leaf, not leftover Easter Candy!

Prior to the kiddos when we lived in Roanoke the first time I was into sewing; mostly of the home decor variety but I did enjoy it.  My sewing machine was a gift from my Mammaw Counts when I was in college.  She sewed a lot and we have quite a few quilts she made for us; one I will cherish forever is a wedding ring pattern that was a wedding gift for me.  She made it a few years before we actually got married because she knew she would not be able to sew for much longer.  I am so glad she recognized this and had the foresight to leave these special memories with us in form of warmth.  She is still with us in body but her mind is not there; she recently asked me if I had kids.  You just have to laugh because it is easier than crying.

Thanks to my friend Liz Irwin at Growing Home I had pulled the machine out on the prior weekend.  For the kiddos upcoming birthday party I had made a simple birthday garland and a matching table runner. I'll post better pictures after their party next weekend.  This whetted my appetite and gave me the confidence boost needed to take on Tinkerbell!!!  So being all full of myself I ventured to the Jo Ann Fabric located about 1 mile from our house and bought all the goods needed for my adventure(same cost as the costume already purchased by the way)

I felt relatively confident I could pull off a decent costume. Hurdle #1 was interpreting the pattern grid on how much fabric to buy.  Problem solved I asked the cutting table clerk. Together we figured it out...or so we thought.  I was back on Wednesday for more fabric...d'oh! Hurdle #2 was actually using the pattern, I honestly thought my abilities to read a mechanical drawing would be sufficient to interpret a sewing pattern.  I was wrong. Wednesday I was hauling my pattern and cut pieces into work to ask one of my "domestically enabled" employees to help me get it straight.  It turns out I had 1 piece turned the wrong way and that had me on the verge of quitting.  I was cruising after that and had my sewing mojo on; all that stood in the way was my health.  I was still battling the colds/ear infections the kids had two weeks ago and ended up at the Dr for antibiotics and cough syrup myself.  I am pretty sure the way to recover from any sickness is NOT to stay up until midnight sewing and get up at 6am to go to work all day.  Somehow the love of my little girl and her love of pretty dresses pushed me through to finish Saturday.  What do you think?  She said "Mommy that is beautiful"  just what my tired, congested, coughing lungs needed to hear.

Red tights not part of the costume!

I have tried to spend the rest of this weekend getting well.  A whirlwind of events and travel are about to hit us starting with a quick overnight to Pittsburgh this week, kids party on Saturday, Halloween festivities then a trip to Berlin, Germany for me(G-mama is coming to help Papa).  Until then I am enjoying my re found hobby, it may just be a re-applied hobby adapted to my new status of Mommy.