Craftiness, etsy excitement, moving ramblings

My life has been entirely absorbed by Christmas crafting projects.  The biggest project was making gobs and gobs of little yo-yo trees as favors for the moms and workers who attended the MOPS Christmas Brunch.  I was so very grateful for the help of my dear mother, my dear sister Clara, and my dear new friend Kylie...sewing over 300 yo-yos of varying sizes is a lot of work and I could not have done it by myself.

My "dining room" table was overrun by the little guys for over a week.

I was really pleased with how they turned out.  My favorite part was rummaging around through the bag of vintage wooden spools that I picked up at a junk store to use as "trunks" for the trees.  Some of the spools were green, black, or blue, some had the brand name stamped into the wooden ends.  So much fun!

With all of the yo-yo making to do, I had to resist the temptation to finish our family stockings.  I had purchased the supplies a few weeks ago: rich wool felt, drool-worthy Christmasy fat-quarters, and juicy rickrack.  There it was, sitting in a bag just begging me to get to work.  Since Steve was home yesterday, I handed Harriet to him and ran downstairs to spend a few moments on my fun project:

It was worth the wait.

Now I just have to make tags for a few gifts, finish decorating a bit, and sew Harriet's Christmas dress.  Then I will collapse into a heap and go on vacation to California.  No, actually I will pack up my house to get ready to move.  Then I will collapse into a heap and go to California.

In other exciting crafty news, I sold my first item from my Etsy store!  When I got the email notification of the purchase I nearly fell out of my computer chair.  It was such a shock!  Sometimes I just really, really, really want to make it on Etsy, and I just don't know what to do.  It will take time and effort to both make creative things to fill my store and promote my products and with a HarriEd around I often think that time and energy are in short supply.  But sewing and creating is truly a passion of mine.  (It's just that the mercenary part of me wishes that other people would notice and pay me for my products.)  The purchase from my store this week was both encouraging and motivational: I need to make a plan for filling my store and just stick to it.  (After the move, of course.)

It was one thing to pack up all of my personal belongings into a Rubbermaid tub, load up the trunk of my car and move to a dorm room for a semester.  It's an entirely different matter to move as grown-ups from an established home to another state.  I found a very helpful list online which is helping me focus my energies on what needs to happen right now, rather than freaking out about what needs to happen in a month.  The challenge of yesterday was to obtain information on switching the utilities/internet/gas accounts from our name and/or cancelling them.  Such a simple task should not be so difficult!  While Steve was cursing the world of automated answering systems, I was wishing that the Qwest website would fall into the ocean-never-to-be-seen-again.  Tell me, what website signs you out of your account every time you visit a new page on the site?  Not a well designed site, that's for sure.  Eesh.

I won't even tell you about the whole "secret password" fiasco.

There are some things that I am not looking forward to regarding this move, namely saying our fond farewells to people (especially my family), driving in the middle of January for 10+ hours with a Uhaul trailer, and not really knowing what to expect job-wise when we make our landing.  However, some aspects really excite me.  This will be the first time that Steve and I will be known as a couple.  Every other place we've lived or visited we have both been known as separate entities, whether at school or just being in our hometowns.  I'm looking forward to being the Rodgers and getting involved in a community together.  The prospect of being back in an academic environment is wondrous, as well as being able to serve more whole heartedly in a local church.  I'm excited about what cultural possibilities St Louis holds, too.  (I really love being able to access a city.)

Back to crafting....