Balance

I like my life being full without it overflowing.

I like to have projects and activities without them being hectic and rushed.

I like to fit a lot in but I also love my down time.

In short I like Balance.

When there is Balance everyone is happy.

This week our lives have been busy mixed with quiet....just the way I like it.

Matt working on putting closets into the kids bedrooms in the new part of the house

Hmm...thinking....



Utilizing some of his MASSIVE tool collection....



Kids skyping their cousins in Australia under the supervision of George and Martha.

Putting Handmade to Work

OK....so you already know how much of a fan I am of handmade things.

I like that there is a little piece of the person that made it in each handmade item.

It makes it personal...and special.

With that in mind, Matt, the kids and I sat down to work out how we can put our handmade to good work.

Every year we pick a family community service project to do together.  Last year we put together little Christmas gift bags for some children in remote villages in Guatemala. We sent them down with our local Bishop and some missionaries who gave them out to the kids.  My children really enjoyed seeing the fruits of their charity. And they decided that they wanted to do something like that again.

So I sent out some emails to local charities here in Spokane asking if there was anything that they needed that we could make ourselves.  I got IMMEDIATE responses and a big YES from a number of charities asking for handmade blankets and quilts for babies and children.

The charities we will be helping provide support to low income pregnant women and parents with young children as well as serving as emergency and transitional shelters for homeless women and their children.  The work they do is invaluable in helping the vulnerable in our community so we are super excited to be able to lend them a hand.

We will take a number of months to complete our project. We are going to try and make as many quilts and blankets as we possibly can. So over the next few months I'll be posting updates on our project.  Putting our handmade to do some good work.

The Case for Handmade

"That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger."  

— Aimee Bender

There is an innate value in something that is handmade.

That someone took the time to plan and create it with their own hands.

Unfortunately the truth is that many things are cheaper to purchase already made than to buy the components and make it yourself from scratch. The cost of the yarn to knit yourself a scarf for example is often more than to buy a premade scarf at the store. Now don't get me wrong, sometimes that is great....I have absolutely no interest in making my own laptop, carpet or light fittings. I am happy and grateful to be able to buy these things from others who obviously have way more expertise and skill in manufacturing them.

But in other cases I think we lose something by not utilizing our own skills and talents. When I think back to my own childhood I realize that certain things I owned were almost exclusively homemade. My toys and those of my brothers were largely made by our Grandmother. She also made quilts and blankets for us, pottery and painted plates and dishes. She was the wife of a farmer and she lived in rural Australia so her creativity was often borne of necessity, but still those things she gave to us some 40 to 50 years ago still are used today by all our families and our children in turn. They have survived and are cared for and continue to bring joy to generations that my grandmother never met.

They are something of a legacy.

So I think about my own children. Whatever they need for their day to day lives can be bought.....clothes, shoes, food etc but do they have the skills to make these things themselves using their own 2 hands?
Just so they know they can. 
Just so those skills aren't lost to this and future generations of our family.
Just so.

We talked about this as the New Year approached and we decided that 2011 was going to be good time to tackle this to some small degree in our family. We are working on a couple of ideas that I will be sharing a little later, but our hope is that we will plant a seed that will grow a legacy....even if it is a little one.

"Good apprentices know that they are in the process of becoming masters and that as responsible artisans they must seek to improve upon the knowledge entrusted to them and go further." 

— William Coperthwaite (A Handmade Life)

Outside my window

Images from outside my window this morning.