five fun things in forty eight hours

On Friday, by about lunch time, all the chores were done and even the craft room was clean. In the chat, we were having a very first world moan about the problem of too many projects and not enough motivation. What if, says I, we have a little old-school challenge, like it’s 2015? From 4pm, we would quit our bellyaching and instead get busy doing the things that fill our cup. A cheer up challenge, a list of five fun things for the next forty eight hours.

On my list:
-“don’t talk to me about life” collage
-Cookie Monster journal page
-read one book
-quilt backing prepped & basted
-1.5 colours added to my crochet blanket

It felt doable. Of course, though, life has a way of interrupting the best laid plans. The meeting I had for Saturday morning took almost two hours, not the thirty minutes I’d intended. Our Sunday afternoon plans were likewise double the amount of time I’d mentally budgeted. But despite not ticking off everything on my list, it was a corker of a weekend, with limited scrolling which was the entire point of the exercise.

I kicked off on Friday afternoon, enjoying the last of the sunshine with a cheeky vino on the deck and making some progress on my book, before shifting inside and watching a couple of episodes of Utopia and making progress on my crochet. Saturday was cool and drizzly, and I alternated between my blanket & my book, until it was time to get ready for town. Two hours later, I arrived home just as Mr Barefoot and Beetle were heading out the door for junior hockey presentation.

While they were gone, I pulled out my paper box and got to work on the first bits of my journal page. It’s an idea that’s been floating around since Thursday, inspired by our daily habit of completing the NYT games and swapping results of a morning, and specifically, the introduction of pips and our new cookie hunting habit. Step one was creating the cookies from some brown paper, and the dominos from an index page and my gel plate. While that dried, and I contemplated my next step, I went back to the lounge with my kindle.

The book I started the weekend with was this months bookclub pick, and I will confess, I was not loving it. I chose it because it’s a genre I don’t normally read, and wanted to mix up the selections plus broaden my own choices. It was a decision that wasn’t paying off, and I was struggling to get into it. I decided to put it aside, and grabbed another book on Kindle Unlimited. Next thing I knew, I was at 12% and on a roll.

After taking so long to complete the last few rounds of my crochet blanket, the start of part four was much quicker – two rounds of treble all the way along. When I set my list, I had half of one round down, and thought the second round was a different colour. My main goal was to get all the trebles done over the weekend, rather than actual colours. I jumped on Stan and found a new show to watch (I settled on Totally Completely Fine), and got to work. The mindless repetition of the trebles was just what I needed to get back into this project.

On Sunday, I was intending to start work on the quilt backing, but by the time I’d gotten some chores done (and got a little lost in my book) the family was up and ready for the day, and we were heading out for some mountain biking, followed by a drive to town to grab frozen drinks, and the afternoon disappeared with not a single stitch being stitched. I did, however, finish a second book over a cheeky wind down vino, and got some polymer clay earrings carded and photographed for the blog. The weekend wound up with some present wrapping, and cake making; just to keep me on my toes, the birthday child requested an icecream cake.

In the end, I got three of my five items ticked off, an extra book, and cleared a project waiting for the blog, plus a fabulous afternoon out with the family. The goal wasn’t just to tick boxes, it was to anchor myself and my weekend in the things that matter and the things that fill my cup, and on that basis, the weekend was a raging success.

I really do need to make progress on that quilt though…