needle & thREAD

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Most of my "sewing" this week has been of the lace/sequin/tulle type. And it's not really sewing; it's more "rigging." When  you measure and order costumes months in advance, there's a good chance lots of them won't fit at showtime. Time doesn't stand still and little girls grow (big girls do, too). I've seen lots of sizes and shapes in the same costumes in the past couple weeks and it has me thinking about those all too familiar themes. One of the reasons we made a dramatic change in studios last year was I was super concerned about emotional balance. We've found it here, I think. But, oh my! What a lot of work the whole wardrobe thing is:-) Well worth the tradeoff to be surrounded by healthy bodies of all shapes and sizes.

Karoline has organized our sewing box to take on the road. The girls have a dance competition in Baltimore this weekend. We're ready to go and I'm here to tell you that packing for dance is very different from packing for soccer:-). Quite an education I've gained this spring. Soccer was a good warmup; packing for dance is not for the faint of heart.

I've been promising Karoline I'd sew with her "for real"--promising for about three weeks. Sigh. Life is rocking and rolling here, folks. Sewing keeps getting shoved. As Karoline gets older, I notice more and more how "spirited" she is. She flits; she floats. For the most part, we've just smiled at her along the way. But as she gets older and, say, she is called to pay attention to a dance for a whole three minutes, we're noticing how easily distracted she is. We've been down this road before--I'm determined to apply what I've learned. Reading? I'm dusting off my favorite parenting book: Raising Your Spirited Child. I'm also doing a great deal of research on essential oils. We've always dabbled with these-- little lavender on the sheets, eucalyptus with Espom salts in the tub, tea tree oil for almost everything else. Now I'm seeing how essential oils might be helpful in lots of other ways, including focus and anxiety and hyperactivity.

Back to the sewing promise. Karoline was flitting all over the house this morning. There is a pre-competition pep rally in 7 hours and 13 minutes (who's counting, right?). She's so excited she cannot contain herself. Mike is working from home. He required complete quiet for a conference call. Um. "Karoline, how 'bout we go in the sewing room and close the door?" The only way to quiet her is to have her focused and on my lap. We made a cover for her new journal (inspired by the Junie B. Jones books). Just a few straight seams and she sighed happily, "Oh, I love that feel! Don't you love the way you feel when the sewing machine is humming and fabric is in your hands?"

Yes, my sweetheart, I do. And I'm grateful it calms us both.

What are you sewing and reading this week? I really do want to hear all about it!

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I'd Dearly Love...

...just one more day of babymoon.

To hold you close all day and night, while the world swirls by.

To know that no one expects either of us to do anything except be here in the quiet and sweetness of each other.

To inhale that precious baby smell, blessedly sure that nothing, no one, has yet hurt you.

To hope and pray, with wide-eyed innocence, that no one ever will.

To rest in the assurance that I can provide absolutely everything you need today.

Right now.

I'd dearly love just one more day of that kind of mothering. 

~

Even one hour of it would be a welcome gift.

These Days

These days are moving so fast that I struggle to capture them. I'm finding that this season of life is more active than the previous one. And all my moving is mostly happening outside my home. No more am I turning circles within my own four walls, wee ones tugging on the hem of my shirt and babies neslted into front pack carriers. Now, I'm strategizing about how to most efficiently take my show on the road and be where I need to be to meet their needs: orthodontist, dance, soccer, doctor, gym, tutor, park. The list is long and varied. They are mostly moving targets and my days of coming up with a standard schedule for a whole season or even for a year at a time are long past. Every day is new. 

I have been challenged to move through these days with peace and to pursue my plan to renew my body, soul, and spirit. I thought renewal would be mostly about snuggling under quilts with knitting and copious amounts of tea. Not so much. There is tea. It's not caffeinated any more. I gave up caffeine (in pursuit of genuine renewal) back in January. I'm drinking lots of hibiscus tea these days. Did you know that hibiscus tea can lower one's blood pressure? Mine's down 14 points. Might be the tea. Might be the exercise. Might be the diet. Might be the essential oils. Or maybe it's just renewal kicking in. Since I don't know, I guess I'll have to keep doing all of the above. 

I am challenged to see in these days the opportunities for renewal even in the midst of moving. For an introvert, this has been a challenge. Intentional self care is new to me. It's not the way I was raised and honestly, it's not the way I mothered in the first couple of decades. I'm good at giving and sacrifice. I'm just learning about loving onself so as to better love one's neighbor.

Michele put it well last week:

Mothers in particular can struggle with this. It feels selfish to take that time alone with God but taking time to nourish your relationship with God isn't selfishness, it's self-care and there a very big difference. By nature we are self-focused beings and that isn't an accident. While it has been distorted by sin, it is actually intended for our good and properly focused can be a path to growing in holiness. "Love your neighbor as yourself" assumes that we will love ourselves.
Not in an egotistical way but in the way that God does. Desiring the highest and best good for us, that of union with Him and eternal life. That is self-care. ~Michele Quigley, In God's Time

Aha! In order to truly love well, we need to learn to care for ourselves. Particularly if we come from homes where nurturing was in short supply, we need to learn to nurture ourselves--to be good mothers to ourselves so that we can be good mothers to our children.

So, these days I'm finding pockets of nurture in the midst of crazy. My husband is my biggest help in this endeavor. Last week, despite a ridiculous four day stretch of non-negotiables crowding our schedules, he insisted on a Friday night date. It was a lovely excuse to wear pretty new shoes and sit for spell in the tasting room of our favorite winery and just catch up with one another (and our friends at Rapphannock). 

Sure, that meant that plans for Kristin's birthday dinner morphed into takeout instead of home-cooked because I couldn't pull off the planned dinner. But Mike knows how to craft a pretty awesome takeout menu and we definitely rocked the chocolate cake (recipe below;-). And there is something to be said about giving someone a great pair of running shoes along with the richest chocolate cake on the planet.

Looking for pockets of renewal means recognizing blessings where they are unexpected. My sewing room is mostly untouched these days (except for the messes little girls keep making while rummaging to find scraps to craft doll clothes), but that doesn't mean I haven't fed my creative spirit. I'm spending hours at a table at the dance studio, tacking petals of lace to layers of netting or gluing rhinestones to wide brimmed hats. I'm brainstorming ways to make too-small costumes fit or to find other ones that do and to change gears at the last moment. True, these aren't quiet hours in my light-filled home studio. Instead, they are hours in the company of sweet women whose daughters dance with mine and who feed my creative spirit with their own. It's the closest I've ever come to a sewing circle or crafting co-op. Gift. Truly.

Often--always?--when time starts spinning and I want more control (or to comfort myself with the illusion of control), I look to my my internet usage. I think that I just need to curtail it all. Um. No. Not this time. As a matter of fact, this time I saw a meme floating around Instagram. It was picture of guy who said something like, "I had no internet on my phone for a day and look what I accomplished: finally graduated, got married, gave the dog a bath, etc, etc." And of course, that got me thinking. What would happen if didn't have internet on my phone for a day? And the next day? I had answers.

Nothing happened. It was pretty much business as usual. So, yeah, it's not the internet this time. On a related note, though, I have adjusted my "Do Not Disturb" time on my phone. With the exception of immediate family, my phone knows not to ding, ring, or ping me from 9:00 PM to 9:00 AM. And I promised my phone not to bother it either. Just don't touch it between those hours. We're both good with it. 

Michele has lots of good thoughts in her post. Here's where I admit that I didn't read it before I posted it and I didn't read the whole thing until several days later. I'm sure there's some irony in not having time to read a time management post. I'm finding lately that I don't have very many decisions to make regarding time management. Most decisions are made for me and I just do the next thing. The greatest decision I make is to be flexible, to bend in the direction I'm being called--to recognize that my plan might not be the best plan and that I best plan to hear His plan.

There are dust bunnies under my couch. This state of affairs is so not me. Yesterday, sitting on a black floor at the dance studio while Katie and Karoline rehearsed their solos, I was overcome with needing to grab a broom. I swept that floor clean. There are still dust bunnies at home, but the dance floor is cleaner. Productivity? Not so much. Instead, I'm being called to being where my children are and often to being still there. I makes me a little crazy. Apparently, though, renewal for me means learning not to equate that checked off to-do list [::clean house ::homecooked meals ::laundry all caught up ::bathrooms sparkling] with personal worth. That doesn't mean I don't still think homemaking is very much worth the bother. It just means that I'm coming to recognize more clearly that the value isn't in the productivity, but in the love behind it. And when we love well, we love ourselves enough to recognize that we can't do it all. We can't check off everything on the list all the time. And we are not failures if we choose the better over the good. 

Productivity is not a virtue --which isn't to say that it can't be virtuous but sanctity doesn't consist in the works we do but in how we respond to God's invitations in our soul. We have a duty to God and to our families and justice demands that we fulfill that duty, but LOVE must hold primacy of place and productivity can only be at the service of love. ~ In God's Time

These days are full. They have a cadence that is very new to me. But they are good. And if I am alert and aware to His plan, they are full of opportunities to renew.

Michael's favorite Kahlua cake

1 package devil's food cake mix (without pudding in the mix)

1 package (5.9 ounces) instant chocolate pudding

1 cup of Kahlua

1 cup sour cream

1 stick of butter, melted

4 large eggs

6 ounces mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 and place the rack in the center. Coat a tube pan with oil and flour. Combine all ingredients except the chocolate chips and mix on low for a minute. Scrape down the sides and mix on medium for 2 minutes more. Fold in chocolate chips. Bake for 50-60 minutes. Test with a toothpick, but know that if you hit a chocolate chip, it's not going to come out clean. Just use common sense. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes. Invert. Remove the pan. Cool completely and dust with powdered sugar or go for it and make it super decadent:

Kahlua Sauce

We topped the cake with vanilla bean ice cream and spooned this over top. It just sort of happened, using leftovers from cake ingredients.

1 stick of butter

1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup Kahlua

1 cup of sour cream

Melt the butter and then stir the chocolate chips in to melt them. When they are completely melted, stir the Kahlua into the chocolate until thoroughly mixed. Carefully, fold the sour cream into the mixture. Spoon over cake or ice cream. Or just eat it by the spoonful!

Getting to Know the Folks at Catholic Embroidery (& a Giveaway)

Just before his wedding, my son sent his brother to tell me to "hurry to the groom's room" because Michael wanted to talk to me. I admit, my heart was in my throat. When I got there, he had this for me.

Michael and Kristin had it made locally, but I want you to get to know some people who can make similar incredibly precious items for you, no matter where you live.  Let's meet Mary from Catholic Embroidery.

Tell us about your background. What path led you to the work you do today?

We started our business in 2007, after an introduction to the world of machine embroidery through a sewing shop in our local town where my sister worked as saleswoman and technician. The idea of spearheading such an endeavor was offered to me by my father and I believe that deep down at the heart of the idea was his desire to provide for his young adult daughters, searching for their niches in life with interests in the world of art and sewing. It was a leap of faith, for my skills were few and knowledge of the embroidery world quite basic. The business slowly took off and we found ourselves successfully growing in a world of company logos, bridal projects, and monograms. As a Catholic homeschooling family with a large Catholic network of friends, requests for religious items and designs became greater than what we could provide. Thus, while still retaining our work for businesses and monogram-lovers in our local community, we began to build a Catholic business to provide for the request of religious embroidery across the world. Before we knew it - Catholic Embroidery was born!

How do you come up with new designs and ideas?

 

It didn't take long to realize that the world of Catholic embroidery was almost non-existent to the average embroidery artist. True, beautiful, religious embroidered designs that reflected Holy Mother Church and ageless devotions could be found in abundance on antique vestments and in little cloisters. But to the modern world, so full of creativity and with every ounce of technology at our finger-tips, such designs were scarce. After much prayer and discernment, we began creating and copyrighting exclusive designs with the help of contract artists that also shared in the desire to reproduce the beauty of our Faith through the medium of embroidery. Most of our designs are inspired from personal devotion of our family or other fellow Catholics and customers, others are inspired from antique pieces of European convents and traditions, and nearly all are created in the spirit of various styles of art throughout the ages.

Is your business a family endeavor? How do combine your work and your family life?

Our business is definitely a family endeavor! As our business has grown - so has the workload! I am very happy to have the assistance of my two sisters as seamstresses, both of whom assemble our altar linens, book covers, and rosary cases from scratch. With Dad as "Boss", Mom as "Crisis Department" (because let's face it! every business has those crisis moments, right?) and five other siblings in the family, we are never lacking in hands for trade-show help, hearts for guidence and suggestions, eyes for late-night paperwork, feet for running business-errands along with the family food-shop, and prayers for the ultimate in spiritual support. Product Pricing Movie Nights are not an uncommon event in our house!

 

Is this contemplative work for you? 

The location of our business' workshop in the basement of our home is not the only contributer toward a quiet contemplative work-style. Most often, the projects at hand dictate the spirit of the day. When working on linens that will hold the hands of a priest on his ordination, we are united to the priesthood and the mothers of priests who will one day hold the same linen on their hands when they depart this life and are presented before God. When a baptismal request is put to action, the life of new little soul is at the forefront of our minds. In creating new products and anticipating others' devotions and hunger for beauty, we travel through the lives of the saints and the history of the Church through art. The list goes on!

How does your work minister to others?

It is no secret that the human soul longs for beautiful things and reacts to them in an uplifting gesture toward heaven. It is our desire to provide beautiful embroidery designs and useful products that bring the splendor and devotion of Holy Mother Church to individuals, homes and schools around the world, thereby undergirding society and the home with visual reminders of our Faith and the path toward Christ.  By applying such designs to useful products, we hope to make those visuals a part of everyday life - whether carried in a pocket, laid on a couch, worn in the kitchen, and toted about town. These items become little missives that ultimately share the beauty of the Church with the world. Positive feedback toward this end from happy customers has only invigorated our ministry further! The crowning moment that justified this cause came only weeks ago, when I received an order for a rosary case from a 7 year old girl. Her mother told me that when she saw her parents open a package containing rosary cases ordered from our company, she ran to her piggy-bank, emptied it's contents in her mother's lap, and demanded to know if it was enough money to buy her own. 

 

Can you suggest ideas for Mother's Day? How about graduation gifts?

Yes! Our Mother's Crown Handkerchief would be the perfect thing for Mother's Day! This handkerchief showcases Cardinal Mindzenty's famous quote, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." Our new Embroidered Doilies are treasures for the mom who wants to add a touch of Catholicity to her home decor or home altar. Graduations are most-often celebrated in our shop with our Maid of France Handkerchief, directing the future with St. Joan of Arc's words, "I am not afraid; I was born to do this."  And what graduate wouldn't like to be sent off to college with a new Pillowcase or Rosary Case of heavenly protection and inspiration?

Do you do custom embroidery?

Customization is our specialty. Thanks to the nature of our small business status, we are able to create custom projects for customers and make their dreams and ideas realities. Our digitization services (converting an image to stitches) allows us to turn our customers' images and logos into embroidery patterns, ready for application on their items or products we find from our suppliers to suit their needs. As I type, our shop is filled with a variety of custom projects in the works, including a First Communion dress, baptismal gown, scapulars for a religious order, and church items, not to mention the custom requests we regularly fill for "tweaks" of our own product line. To avoid the overwhelming aspect of "all those flavors to choose from!" I often tell customers that we can be as "customized" as they desire!

 

What's the product you are most excited about in your shop right now?

Right now, I am super excited to share our Mother's Crown Handkerchief. Many of our products involve mothers - some are inspired by my own mother, others were encouraged by friends and customers who are mothers, and nearly all are loved and used daily by mothers and their families. I wanted to create a tribute to that love and devotion comprised in "rocking the cradle" and its impact in ruling the heart of the world and society. With many thanks, of course, to the Blessed Mother who never ceases rocking the cradle of the world.

A set of 2 Mother's Crown Handkerchiefs  are offered for the Giveaway. Visit the blog, website, and Facebook page for  Catholic Embroidery:

www.catholicembroidery.com

www.facebook.com/CatholicEmbroidery

www.catholicembroidery.blogspot.com

 Tells us what you find that strikes your fancy. If you leave a comment below, you will be entered once for giveaway. If you mosey over and "like" the Facebook page for the first time, leave a message there, too, and you will be entered twice. Come back here next week for the announcement of the winner.

Go Out and Play

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This is my favorite week of the year. It doesn’t always fall on the same week on the calendar, but it always falls in April and it’s always celebrated the same way in our family. We call it “Bluebell Week” and we delay our spring break until the blue flowers bloom along the banks of Bull Run. When those sweet flowers start to chime, we heed the call and pack blankets and sunscreen and water shoes and head for the creek.

Please read the rest here and let's talk about how important it is to get outside and what the benefits are when we spend time in nature. What are your favorite ways to get out and play?