Too much

Lately I've been purging stuff. We had a garage sale at our church and I donated a lot of stuff. I saved it up in our garage for about a month. But now I'm feeling that itch again. Something has to go. I get such a high when I get rid of stuff now. I used to get that feeling when shopping, now I only go shopping for groceries, pet supplies and for some occasional special purchases. I want our house to be comfortable. I wanted to sew again but I haven't really reached the point where I'm organized enough yet.

 So I purge. You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff I've donated, tossed or recycled since I've been about 19. I always knew that I don't want to be surrounded by junk. Having lived with a lot of stuff already, I want to be able to move freely and dance in my living room if I want to...Ok with or without my DH.  Sometimes I just have to dance and sometimes my dog wants to join, how can I do things like that if I'm surrounded by clutter?

When we moved to Minnesota I thought that we had gotten rid of enough things to be comfortable. But, it turns out that I need different things to be comfortable here or it just didn't fit in the house the same way. So, out it went, to the recycling bin or to the thrift store. I try not to throw away good, usable things that someone else might be able to get more use out of still. I did sell a few things, like shoes that I bought when I worked in an office. I had to have these designer shoes...turns out that they aren't as important to me anymore. Especially since my office is sometimes muddy and I get poop on my shoes daily. (Remember that I'm a homesteader!)

We live in a stuff centered culture (Assuming that you are in the US like I am anyways. Some other cultures are the same, but for my discussion I'm talking about the US mainly.) We have too much stuff in our houses, so instead of going through it all and getting rid of what is no longer applicable to our lives and well being we keep it all and even rent a space to put the stuff we don't want to see or deal with; Some people call this a temporary measure, but I call it avoidance. Your life changes, it's OK to be finished with something and let it be used by someone else. You don't have to hang on to it forever. Let it go. (Please don't sing...) You free up mental space when you let go of physical objects too. You can free the stress in your life as well. You may not realize that all the junk that you own is owning you right back. It weighs you down and can make you heavy-I mean overweight. I know several people who have lost weight by decluttering their lives. Not to mention that it isn't for the weak or weary. But you may feel that way at first.
Be intentional about your things.

If you don't know where to start than start with the trash. Take out the trash in the bin and then walk around with a new trash bag and throw away things that are laying around the room. It will look better even if you only get one piece of trash picked up.

Then go through something easy like....your car, your purse, or one junk drawer. You could even try to go through something and set a goal of getting rid of 5 items from a room. I do this all the time. I don't like dusting and having to pick things up or moving a lot of things to vacuum. And having pets means that cats will walk on every surface and knock things over so, this is why I can't have nice things. (No, I'm kidding) Dogs jump on things and my large 'declutter dog' likes to jump and dance with me. (It's cute, I promise.)
So, I try to keep things to a minimum in our lives.
DH and I would much rather spend time together doing something meaningful. I won't go into details, but experiences are much more lasting memories than trinkets. Also, strangely we spend less money this way on junk and more on what we actually want to do with our lives.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that my home, life, or pets are perfect. NO! I'm human and if I'm right so are you, so we aren't perfect.
The only perfect person is/was Jesus Christ.
That brings me to another point.

Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough. Sometimes I only have time to clean off the counter in the bathroom, or do the dishes in the kitchen. Just because I can't make the room look perfect doesn't mean I shouldn't do anything. I do what I can and if it's good enough then I move on.
I'm not going to spend my time scrubbing and cleaning. Is my house spotless? heavens, no child. But, it is not a filthy cesspit of bacteria either.

It's good enough (unless I'm about to do something on the counters, then I scrub and scour it) most of the time.
A magazine is not coming to take pictures of my home anytime soon, nor is the clutter police coming, but...when you have less things to organize you have less to clean and more time.

Which is more important to you?

Pat sloans block of the month-2014-globetrotter part2

The friend that was making this along side me had to take care of her mother so I ended up doing this one alone. I waited awhile, but then i just wanted to finish it. I told her it was understandable, and it totally is. If it was my mother I hope that people would understand that she is important to me and I would take time out of my regular lie to take care of her if she needed me.
I did most of it within a few weeks. Ill show you all the blocks. They are not in order of month or anything. My favorite block is the one with all the purples and no green. It has the floral white print in the middle and dark purple on the sides. It looks like a folded origami piece to me.

This is my favorite, in case my description was weird. 

             

Here is all the blocks attached and the inner blue border being attached. I had some issues with that...but I got it all squared away. (Ha, ha...quilting jokes...*sigh* I know I'm a nerd.)

My quilt inspector. Who is also my 'Declutter dog', but he approves of soft pretty things that he can lay on, like pillows and blankets and they are even better if I love them and want to lay on them too. I should be glad someone wants to cuddle me. 

And this is what it looks like all together! 

I've gotten loads of complements on it when I went to the store to get some backing fabric for it and decided to use up what I had at home. I also took it to show my friend. She loved it too. The outside borders are called piano keys. I thought that was interesting. It took awhile to get them all sewn together, but I like the effect it gives the quilt. This was supposed to take a year...but I wanted to get it done so I could start on some Christmas presents. Now, it's off to my favorite machine quilter's house. 

I will post photos of the quilting when it comes back as well. This quilt is 62" x 62"-lap size. 

Have you ever done a Block of the Month quilt? Have you done this one? Post it in the comments! I'd love to see it!

Summer 2015 Capsule Wardrobe Update

After coming back from my VBS trip,  I realized how much I have. I see all the things that I've been holding on it so tight that I don't ever use. I want to be able to make fast decisions about what to wear based on what I want to do that day not by spending 15 minutes staring at my closet (which was full to the brim and over flowing) and thinking that I have nothing to wear.

I want to shake up my wardrobe and feel good about it. I also watched the new video on the 'my green closet' channel on you tube. I love her style, not that it would work on my body but I get inspired when I see someone else capsule wardrobe that's really well put together for real life. By that I mean not for office work. I struggle with wanting to look nice and have nice clothes to wear when I go out of the house and having farm work clothes. I usually end up wearing the same pair of pants or shorts to work in and a tee shirt that I would go to the gym in. Something else I learned at the VBS trip. I came back and saw some pictures of myself *eeeck* I need to get my butt back to the gym.

A Tee i bought on the way to the missions trip. 

But that's not what I want for myself! I want to look nerdy, quirky and vintage. Which expresses who I am pretty well. Maybe the pictures will explain?

I thought about my favorite dress and I knew it was packed away so I wanted to get it out so I could wear it. Then I saw a bunch more dresses that I love but haven't worn recently. So I took all of them out as well. Then I thought I could rotate some of these into my summer capsule since I didn't do much to it officially from spring to summer.

All pictures are described from left to right.
Maybe soon I'll remember to get pictures of myself wearing them...

Dresses-vintage linen dress(pictured above),pink shift, mint dress, pink polka dot dress, green dress with dots, yellow sun dress, navy dress, multi-pink dress, blue and green plaid dress, blue floral jumper, and green and plaid wrap dress.

Short sleeved Tops- Green layered tank,  black sequin tank, green/tan tank, Gir tank, kitty tee, blue linen top, blue/mint stripe, pink stripe,"fav burple" tee, white stripes back buttons, grey tee, and mint tee. (and now the new tee pictured above)

Long sleeved tops-white crochet fringe top, white linen with blue embroidery, navy 3/4 sleeve, ble and white stripe, button up chambray, pull over chambray, pink paisley and pink floral top. 

Pants-dark wash jeans, light wash jeans, rose skinnies, and peach skinnies. 

Shorts-high waisted vintage shorts, khaki camping shorts and mint shorts. (and a Grayson) I was also really excited to find out that the one pair of shorts I have been keeping since HS now fit on my butt again. They are still a little tight, so they are not included in my project yet, but I would love to wear them again.

Skirts-paisley wrap silk skirt, blue sheer, blue stripes, and pink wool. 

Shoes- same shoes. Grey and navy chucks, yara birkis, black fluevog flats, and fluevog tie up blue sandals.

I know that I'm late in getting this up, but hey I was busy this summer!!
I think I'm going to take out a few more of the short sleeved shirts next year. I didn't wear them as much as I thought I would. Oh well. live and learn right?
On to my favorite season! Autumn!
Do you do a capsule wardrobe or are you still getting ideas?

Pat Sloan's block of the month-globetrotting. Block 1

A friend of mine and I are working on a block of the month pattern this year. We are excited to do Pat Sloan's 2014 Mystery quilt-Globetrotting. Although at this point it is no mystery. I had never done a mystery quilt before and I wasn't too sure about it, so we decided to do the one from last year and polish up our skills and tidy our sewing rooms while whipping through our stash of fabric. I would say that I'm doing pretty well with going through my stash. This quilt is all stash fabric that I have had for some time and it all looks pretty cool together. We started in January 2015.

This is the fabric I chose for my quilt.

Well, some of it anyways.


If you are interested in the pattern or following along with us you can go to the 2014 Mystery Quilt Link and check it out.

This is what her quilt looked like when it was finished. It gives you a better idea of what mine might look like.

See the center of her quilt above? That block is block 1 and this is my version of it below.

This is my first block. It was a doozy! It's 22"x22" and those blocks were fun to make, but it was also odd to me too. What do you think of my color choices? This block will be in the center of the quilt with a border around it and then the other blocks will go around that. This quilt will be 60"x60" I'm thinking about adding something to make it bigger. But I think I am going to make it the size it is supposed to be and see how it looks before I do that.

Here is a better picture of it after it was all put together.

I leave you with one more picture. My friend's quilt inspector!
Isn't she cute?

What's happening with the camper now?

My DH seems to be under the opinion that the free camper I've been restoring is too big for my truck to pull.   I'm not happy about the fact that he wants to scrap my project...

I looked at my truck's tow capacity in the owners manual. It's somewhere between 9200-8900 pounds. I'm not too sure what model the truck is and apparently there are three different ones that have a little bit of differences. But, for my purposes, lets just say it's the smaller one that can pull 8900 MAX weight. Meaning that the safe weight is really 8000 lbs, including all supplies, food and whatever else we decide to put in it.

I have all the paperwork with the camper we have (really nice) and the original dry weight for it is 4850 pounds. Since I've taken quite a bit out we'll assume that mine is 4800 pounds. That means that I can still safely put 3000 pounds worth of stuff in, or that we can go over mountains; At a slower speed of course, but it can be done. So, really I think we're OK.

I've been looking online at campers that are less than 20 feet. There are some really cute ones, but they are so expensive.

I've already put a lot of work into this one, and I'm not really wanting to start over with another one. I suppose I can just keep fixing it up and sell it, but that's not what I really wanted to do with it.

I'm thinking about taking the full out couch out to get the little strip of carpet out that is stuck in between the floor and the couch. The couch might still have some miles on it and it's cool to use as a bed, but the fabric is a little scratchy and ugly. And we don't need an extra bed. IF I can figure out how to get it out and put it back in I might recover it in a neutral fabric.
Or I could just put in a futon or a regular couch. Or we could build a bench to put in it.

I think that the real problem with the camper is that I got too excited about it and ripped a bunch of things out without finishing them and went on to another project. I'm really bad about that.
Updates on what I've been doing coming as soon as we figure out what we are going to do. I'm for keeping it...for now.
Eventually I want to get an airstream. But for now, this is what we have.