Wicked Wildfire Read-a-Thon: Update 1

Poor, poor Wicked Wildfire Read-a-Thon. It's totally being neglected. There's been sad, sad amounts of reading this week. Today fared no better. My stats are pretty ugly, but I figured I should probably get an update post going.

I had bold plans for the day...they just didn't happen. Seems to be the theme for the week. I did manage to get up and participate in the Wicked Wildfire Twitter Chat, but it was all downhill from there. I situated myself on the couch for some hardcore reading, and then promptly fell asleep...for four hours. Who does that? I am blaming the heat.

After that, I managed to waylay myself further with dinner, margaritas, and some goofing around on my iPad. I am finally now settled in bed, but I can tell by the tequila induced headache I have brewing that there won't be much reading before I crash out for the day.

Ready to see how sad my reading progress has been? I'm totally ashamed by these numbers. Pathetic...

Currently Reading:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Minutes Read Today: 32 minutes

Total Time Read: 1 hours 14 minutes (74 minutes)

Goal: 21 1/2 hours (1300 minutes).

Pages Read Today: 18

Total Pages Read: 79

Goal: 1600 pages.

Books Finished Today: 0

Total Books Finished: 0

Goal: 6 books.

Ugh...maybe I should count the 50 pages I read to finish The Dressmaker as a finished book for read-a-thon stats. This is really looking sad.

I will get some reading in tomorrow, but not a lot. We have a couple of places to be in the afternoon. I'm hoping for two hours before I call it a day. Luckily, I do have Monday off and Darian will be home, so maybe we'll be able to have a reading day and make up for some of my slacking.

Oh...and I discovered today that Monday also starts another read-a-thon I had planned on joining. The High Summer Read-a-Thon over at Seasons of Reading runs from July 21st to 27th. So for half of next week my stats will be counting towards two different read-a-thons. Craziness. Maybe that will give me the push I need to get my reading out of the slump.

Custom Toddler Memory Quilt

Sometimes funny things happen on Facebook. I belong to a couple of local buy/sell/trade groups. Lots of things go for sale on these sites. I've seen clothing, pet supplies, books, furniture, you name it.

A little over a month ago, I commented on a post asking about reasonable pricing for rag quilts. As a result, I got a message in my Facebook inbox. A local woman was looking for someone to make a memory quilt for her daughter's upcoming 3rd birthday. She had saved all of the clothing from the time she was a newborn and wanted to know what could be done with it.

This was a slightly new endeavor for me. I'd made a t-shirt quilt before, but not one that mixed this many types of materials or styles. It sounded like a fun challenge. I considered what I would need to do and the time I'd need to put in and quoted her a discounted price since this would be slightly experimental for me. She was very excited.

And that's what I've been doing for the last three weeks...sewing. After she presented me with a large black garbage bag full of clothing, I went to work. I cut apart onesies, and t-shirts, and swimsuits, and dresses, and even one Halloween costume.

There's been a lot of random fabric hanging out in my family room for just under a month.

While the project was occasionally daunting, it turned out to be a lot of fun. She had given me a lot of terribly cute clothing to work with and the challenge of putting some unique touches in made it even more entertaining.

The Pooh costume was an interesting piece. The shirt and stomach were actually only attached by two thread sections. I had to piece them together and then sew a pocket in for the stuffing so his belly wouldn't explode all over the inside of the quilt. The pleated BSU jumper was originally two separates.

That red, white, and blue piece to the right of Pooh? It's a bikini; one of two swimsuits in this piece. Lycra is a challenge to sew.

There are three photos included. One as an infant and then one each from her daughter's 1st and second birthdays.

So many fabrics. So many different shapes and colors.

She selected a dark pink minky for the back side and a pink/purple border fabric. It actually went together quite well.

I had some small slip ups along the way that made some stages take longer than I expected. I initially sewed my binding on without remembering to open my flap for the first attachment. That was a 3-hour error that led to a lot of seam ripping, repinning, and resewing. It also led to me staying up until 4:30 in the morning when I had to be up for work at 7:30. That was a bad error.

But then the project was done. On Thursday afternoon, I said good-bye. At her request, I delivered it folded up with the front side folded in. She'll be opening the quilt on Saturday afternoon at her daughter's party. The fact that she hasn't seen the finished project makes me kind of nervous, but she has told me that she's already thrilled with it based only on the backing she's seen plus the photo preview she got of the initial layout. I'm hoping she loves the finished product just as much.

I plan on doing more of these. There is just a large sense of satisfaction in the process for me. It was fun and challenging and I learned some new tips and techniques that I can use for future quilting endeavors. I'm so glad that she gave me this opportunity.

Better yet? When I dropped it off, she asked if I would be interested in making a few more. Turns out she has some family that might be interested in something as well and she's saving up her son's clothing for another customized for him. It's all very exciting. Sometimes I love the things that crafting has offered me.

Top Ten Tuesday...on a Thursday

Holy crap. Seriously? This post has taken me two days just to put together. First off I managed to be a total spaz this week. All day yesterday, I kept thinking it was Tuesday, so I planned to get this posted then. Oops.

Then? Well, then I finished the memory quilt that I'll be posting tomorrow. I managed to completely screw up my binding so I spent nearly 2 1/2 hours ripping out seams, repinning and resewing. The project I planned to finish by 10pm didn't get done until 4:30 in the morning. Obviously this post had no chance of seeing the light of day. How about a Top Ten Tuesday on a Thursday post? Can we do that? Because I'm gonna.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, created due to a fondness for lists. Each week they post a new Top Ten topic. After that, it's bloggers UNITE! Participate with your own Top Ten post, have fun, and get to know your fellow bloggers.

This week's topic is favorite movies & TV shows. I can't decide which to run with, so I'm going to do both. It'll be a bit of a long post, but I get to play with gifs...so it's all good.

**Whittling down these lists was incredibly hard. I started with a rather large list.  To make this a bit more uh...suspenseful...I'm counting down. We're going from ten to one. Ready?...Set...Go!!! **

Favorite Movies

I totally cheated on this. First off...bonus. I'm starting at 11. Just like Spinal Tap, this list just needs more.



Second, I grouped a few movies. I couldn't bear to cut anymore. I love them all. Just go with it.

Bonus...

     a. P.S. I Love You          b. Notting Hill

 

  

10. Skyfall

9. All Kevin Spacey...all the time...

     a. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil          

     b. The Usual Suspects

8. Finding Nemo

7. Fiddler on the Roof

6. I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year - Charles Dickens

(Somehow, I don't think this is quite what he had in mind.)

     a. Elf

     b. Christmas Vacation

     c. A Christmas Story

5. Will Ferrell has a strong showing as well.

     a. Stepbrothers

     b. Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby

4. I enjoy stupidity and reckless abandon.

     a. Superbad

     b. The Hangover

     c. Office Space

3. American Beauty

2. Across the Universe

1. Love, Actually

How many of these have you seen? 

Ready for round two? I did a little better in slimming down the candidates this time.

Favorite TV Shows

Current Favorite : House of Cards

Honorable Mention :
     a. 30 Rock

     b. The Office

10. Scrubs

9. Parenthood

8. Arrested Development

7. Grey's Anatomy

6. Big Love

5. Big Bang Theory

4. House, M.D.

3. How I Met Your Mother

2. Friends

1. Gilmore Girls

Seriously. They're not kidding.

What are your favorites?

Wicked Wildfire Read-a-Thon: Goals

Holy crap. This week is totally getting out of hand. Believe it or not, I really am still participating in the Wicked Wildfire Read-a-Thon hosted over at My Shelf Confessions.

I've been a little slow to get moving though. Instead, I've spent the last two evenings working on the memory quilt that I'll be delivering to its new owner on Thursday and posting on the blog later this week. I've also spent that time watching many, many hours and episodes of House while the sewing machine does its thing. (I will warn you...it's late and I've already caught myself twice trying to use "it's" instead of "its", so please forgive any ridiculous typos.)

And now...well...I kind of intend to read. I have gotten in a whopping 30 minutes since Monday, a very pathetic start. And once I finish the binding on that quilt tomorrow night...reading is almost all that's on the agenda. (I've also been tasked to do some sewing repairs by 3-year-old Marley. That superhero cape isn't going to put an "M" on itself.)

Wicked Wildfire is a ten day read-a-thon rather than a week long one, so that will allow me some additional reading time to make up for my slacking thus far. Thank goodness. We all know I'm going to need it.

Darian will be at his mom's house for the week, so I'm going it alone for at least the first six days. He was a little bummed that the timing didn't work out, but hopefully he'll be able to join me for the tail end.

I will...per what's become the usual...be tracking my progress using an excel spreadsheet and posting updates here on the blog. They'll probably be coming in every other day since I apparently have a lot on my plate.

The biggest goal is to hopefully catch up some on my reading challenges. I've fallen a couple of books behind on my Deal Me In Challenge and I intend to a bit better standing on that one. Additionally, I want to finish my book for the current Classics Spin choice. Not to mention the large stack of library books on my nightstand that need finished before August 8th.

Now...on with the goals...

Total Reading Time Goal : 21 3/4 hours (1300 minutes)

Total Pages Goal : 1600 pages

Completed Books Goal : 5 (I already finished The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott, but I had less than 50 pages left when I started the read-a-thon, so I'm not counting it in the books goal.)

Planned Reading:

1. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Classics Spin choice)

2. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Deal Me In)

3. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (Deal Me In)

4. The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander (Deal Me In)

5. The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman (Lent by Patti...who gave it a very enthusiastic 5 stars and said I need to read it.)

Bonus Books (all on the nightstand from the library):

1. Glimmerglass by Jenna Black

2. The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

3. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

4. How to Love by Katie Cotugno

5. How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

I'm reading my Deal Me In books a little out of the pulled order, but seeing as the next on tap would otherwise have been the 900+ page behemoth The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, I'm going to go ahead and allow myself that liberty.

Better late than never...

Reorganization Phase I - Feedly Purge

Every once in a while, it comes time to do a little reorganizing. Some purging, some realignment. It's about that time. In oh so many ways.

I have had the week off for a little bit of a staycation. Really that's just a fancy word that people use to say that they couldn't afford to go anywhere awesome for their time off from work. Yup. That's the case. But while Collin continued to be stuck at work for the Monday through Friday grind (and Saturday and Sunday in his particular case), Darian and I had a nice week of doing nearly nothing. It was grand.

But along the week, I came to realize that I'm totally getting behind on just about everything and I have messes nearly everywhere. So it's time for some reorganization of me. Yup...me. I kind of go willy nilly with my time and have difficulty keeping focus on tasks at hand with regularity. So I need to buckle myself down a bit.

I'll be breaking it up into a few posts, starting with this one. After today's post, I'll also be reorganizing my weekly schedule (including chores and hobby time), reorganizing some pieces of the house, and doing some purging. Right now I'm planning on at least four posts, but that could grow. We shall see. The posts won't necessarily be back-to-back, but the reorganization bug has hit...so plan on reorganizing posts in some capacity for the remainder of the month.

Ready to join me?


Feedly Purge

A little over a month ago, I mentioned that my blog feed had grown unbearably large and it was time to thin the herd. I just can't manage reading through 200 blog posts a day. It's not really feasible without totally losing all of my free time or not really paying attention to the posts at hand. And so, even though some pieces of me hurt to do it, it's time to rip of the band-aid and toss some blogs.

When I started the endeavor, I had 207 blogs in my reading list. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that during this purge time, I actually added two blogs to my Feedly. I just. can't. help. myself.

The goal was to remove the blogs that I just don't read or those that have become inactive (because some haven't really posted for 6 months or more). Before the final purge began, I had already marked 64 blogs for saving (not including the 2 new blogs). These were not only the blogs that I read during the thirty days with regularity, but also that had posts that caught my interest in some way. There are no free rides in this stage of the game.

Now there were 143 blogs to evaluate.

Phase One...

Evaluate those who haven't posted in more than thirty days and determine which are likely dead and those who have moved on to another site that doesn't dump to my Feedly (i.e. broken links...because they totally happen). Save or eliminate the rest based on interest.

This is a pretty easy task. I simply click down my blog list in Feedly and it brings up each blog with the most recent post. If it's older than 30 days, visit the page, see if there's any notification of a move and then either delete or add the correct feed. If the blog is still active, evaluate if it's something I still want to read.

Stats after this phase:

79 blogs saved

4 blog links corrected

43 blogs eliminated

It's progress.

Phase Two...

This is where things start to get difficult. Now that I've taken care of those who haven't posted in over 30 days, it's time to evaluate those blogs who did post within the 30 days that I've been evaluating.

It's time to get brutal. Now it's "cake or death" time. I need to start being honest about the situation. If a blog really isn't jiving for me and isn't really catching my interests, then it has to go. It doesn't mean it's a bad blog, it just means that it's not my style anymore. This is the final gauntlet. After this, the trauma is all over and the final count is ready to roll forward.

To do this, I visited the blog pages for all blogs that haven't yet been saved or eliminated. This means 89 blogs to evaluate, one at a time. Let me tell you, that's a long time. It can be easy to get distracted (not that that would ever happen with me...). Thank goodness I only do this every year or so. I just have to keep reminding myself that it's a long one, but it will be worth it. The feed will be cleaned up, streamlined, and hopefully less daunting.

Final stats:

136 blogs saved (including 2 new blogs added during this process)

73 blogs eliminated

About the Eliminated Blogs...

I will admit that I am a little bit of a hoarder with some things. Blogs apparently is one of them. Out of the 73 blogs that I eliminated, there were a handful of blogs (5-7) that I really had a hard time letting go. So why did I eliminate them? These were blogs that have obviously died. The writers haven't posted for at least a year (in some cases nearly two years) and show no signs of returning. But I loved those blogs so much that it hurt to say goodbye...even though they had disappeared long ago.

Of the remaining 73 blogs, there were a few traits that I found made me lower the blade a little quicker. This became a nice little lesson for me in things I want to make sure I don't do with my own blog. First off...truncated posts in the Feedly feed. I get it, you want to protect your content, blah, blah, blah, but there are other ways to help this and this honestly really irritates me. 

You want to truncate your posts on your homepage? Sure. Fine. I'm totally cool with that. It makes sense to me that you want potential readers to be able to see a lot of samples when they pop over to your page browsing. But when you have regular readers who also have a large handful of other blogs they read, clicking over to another page everytime they want to read one of your posts is totally annoying. This frustration is increased in the case where the post does not have a photo header for the item it is about. Picky? Yes. Honest? Of course. I'm being somewhat brutal here, but I hope that this will serve to help other blogger see what things can turn off a reader.

That being said, there are a few blogs that I have been reading for a long time that I adore and don't mind clicking over for once in a while. I left them in my Feedly because their content is totally worth it, but I still do find myself mildly irritated.

The next thing that turned me off on a blog most often was very inconsistent posting. Now I'm not talking about the case where you took a week off on vacation and didn't post for ten days. I'm talking about those blogs that did a post in October, another couple in January, and then maybe showed up again in March and May. That's too infrequent for me to stay interested. I need to see you posting at least a couple of times each month. I'd probably even give you a free pass if you only made it onto the blog once a month if I love your content. I get that people have lives (I sometimes have one too), but if you want readers, there has to be a little consistency...and frequency.

Because I use Feedly, blog design, hosting choice, font choice, color of page/text, and all that design stuff didn't matter. That evened the playing field pretty well. If you're a frequent blog reader and don't already do so, you need to find a reader for yourself. I like Feedly, but I've heard that Bloglovin' is pretty good as well. There are other choices out there, I just know literally nothing about them. Whatever works for you. Just find something that will help streamline the job for you. 

Additionally, since you're going to be using a reader, give bloggers a break. Some like more color on their pages than others, some have overly crowded sidebars or their menus are in odd places. Whatever. This really shouldn't matter. Look for the content. This is what will be seen in your reader anyway. If you like the content, read them. Don't let silly design choices take you away from someone who has a real talent.

Reflection...

Now that it's all said and done, I'm really glad I took the time to do this. It took a LOT longer than I thought it would, but I think it will save me a lot of time when it comes to reading blogs and I won't feel so overwhelmed or start to feel burnt out (which was a real possibility there for a bit). The other nice thing is that it will allow me to feel like I have the time to pop over and comment more often. As a blogger who loves comments, this will be a good thing. A little spring (or summer) blog cleaning can be good for the soul.

Top Ten Tuesday: Blogging Confessions

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish. It's a fun weekly link-up with a provided prompt where entertaining list-making ensues.

I've been watching and reading Top Ten Tuesday on a few blogs for quite a few months. Since I've been slacking off on my posting, this seemed like a good time (and a good topic) for me to jump in on and start participating. This week the topic is blogging confessions. Heaven knows I have a few of those.


1. My blog is just like me...erratic. (Pieces of this will pretty much show up in confessions 2-10. Beware.)

I have good intentions. Really...I do. But sometimes the best laid plans just fall apart. Life gets to be a little overwhelming and I just melt and shut down. When that happens, it all goes to crap. No projects, no blog. And then I'll get back on the horse and knock that shit out of the park. So I'm here and then occasionally I'm gone (like the last couple of weeks where I've been semi-MIA). But just like me, the blog bounces back. And so do the projects. And I keep my fingers crossed that my readers won't bail on me during those time periods when I'm just such a horrible flake.


2. I go through phases of craftiness...in different genres...like a spaz.

This is why I liked my approach of dedicating different topics to different months. Sometimes I'm on a sewing kick, sometimes scrapbooking, sometimes reading. I think I'll keep the month to month themes, but maybe just not plan them ahead so much anymore. That kind of slapped me in the face when Pinterest project month hit and all I wanted to do was read.


3. I don't (and never will) review all of the books I read on my blog.

Sometimes I just don't have that much to say. I'll put a little blurb on everything I complete when I post my finish on Goodreads, but they won't always make it here in full review form...even if I love them. That's just the way I go.


4. I can be obsessive about my stats.

I like to click the little stats tab and find out where my readers are coming from. I also like to see how many reads come in on any given day, week, month. Occasionally this backfires and I get totally forlorn over the days when those stats drop. Usually this is due to me not writing anything for a day or two...so, duh that would happen...but it still makes me momentarily sad.


5. There are bloggers I love to read, but rarely comment on...because I freak out.

I read a lot of blogs. A lot. And I really do read their posts. But I rarely comment even though I feel utterly guilty about not leaving a little blip. Why? Because I don't want to post something dumb and look stupid later. Petty? Yes. Totally true? Oh you betcha. This is also why I struggle responding to comments on my own blog. (Confession within a confession...I'm asocial and completely socially awkward. This extends to my blogging persona sometimes. It's kind of a crippling issue on occasion. Just know that if you leave a comment, I read it and totally appreciate it. I just may not know how to respond without feeling like a fool.)


6. I frequently covet other bloggers' layouts.

I like a cute blog. That's just the way it goes. I read most blog posts via Feedly, so I don't really see blog homepages all that often, but there are just some people who have a knack. I need to work on craftier graphics and I seriously want to start figuring out how to find gifs to put in my posts. Sometimes those just make my day.


7. I scrap a lot of posts.

Somewhere around 1/3 of my posts never see the publish button. I'll get a post halfway written and then just decide that it's utter crap...or not what I had in mind for that day, or whatever. There's always an excuse. In most of these cases, I just select it all and hit delete. Sometimes I hit save and make it into a useful post on another day, but this is a rarity. I keep telling myself I need to be better creating drafts because there have been times where it's really been a bummer to realize a week and a half later that the post I had nearly finished would have worked great for next Tuesday with just a little editing.


8. I like doing crafty posts. I just need to do more crafts...or maybe just remember to take pictures of the ones I do.

Some of my favorite posts are project posts...the ones that turned into tutorials. But I am a horrid planner in the case of crafts. I don't know why, but I just get the whim to create, start a project, finish it, and then realize ten minutes later that I didn't take a single picture and now really can't use it for a full post on the blog. It's dumb and I do it all the time. Three...three...Christmases have gone this way. That's something like ninety projects that I could have posted on here if I wasn't such a ninny. It's not like I don't own like ten cameras. You'd think I would remember to take a freaking picture once in a while.


9. I have contemplated splitting the blog into two.

EPJ has been around for a while. And I like it. It works for me. But I worry that it doesn't always work for my readers. There has been more than once that I've considered creating a second blog just for the reading stuff. But then I panic and worry that I won't devote enough time to each one if I do that and I'll just be spreading myself too thin or alienating my readers. (If you have an opinion on this one, I'll totally take it. This is a more constant mental debate recently.)


10. I really want this blog to grow readers, but I'd probably keep doing it even if no one read it.

EPJ is a good creative outlet for me. I love that there are people who enjoy it and there are some regular readers who I consider to be pretty good friends even though I don't know them outside of the blogosphere. In all honestly, I'd love to have one of those blogs that has thousands of readers, but I'll still enjoy it if it stays small. I just need some way to put all this stuff out there and if only one or two people really like it enough to keep reading, I guess that's okay by me. I enjoy the validation, but I'm happy to say that I still blog mostly for myself. I hope it always stays that way.

Just a Little Updating...

It's been a different few days and I kind of blew off Summary Sunday. Oops. The good news is that most of the "different" was a good thing. So in lieu of a Summary Sunday (since it's obviously a little late for that), today's post is just going to be a loosely organized update of sorts. That's a semi-fancy way of saying that I'm going to be rambling. Better that than nothing, right? Hopefully?


Where I've Been:

Last week I was home all alone for a small string of days. I spent that time getting a double case of pinkeye, watching episodes of House, wishing I had something more interesting than pinkeye, trying to keep my contagious mess to myself, and cursing the fact that I couldn't wear my contacts. I also managed to avoid cooking a single meal for five solid days. Amazing. Sometimes it's nice living like a college student for a while. (I'm also proud to say that I survived the week without resorting to eating Ramen noodles.)

Instead of hanging out here in the blogosphere, I spent my weekend hanging out with the newly returned home Collin. He'd been spending his week in a couple of small towns on the Nebraska/Colorado border teaching a specialized first aid course to a bunch of wind farm workers. It's a seriously crazy job. He always brings home awesome GoPro footage from the tops of those ridiculously huge and tall windmills.

We spent two days doing little more than watching a lot of Netflix. We finally finished off Rescue Me. That only took us about seven years. We're also caught up on House of Cards and just a few episodes shy of finishing off Weeds. Super productive weekend, let me tell you. But it was SO nice...and SO needed.


What I've Been Up To:

For the last couple of days, I've been spending my free time working on a memory quilt. It's a custom order project for a local lady who has a young daughter with an upcoming birthday. She's asked me to piece together her daughter's clothing (and a few blankets) from birth to age 2. I've been cutting and squaring fabric for the last couple of days and should be able to get the front side layout figured out by tomorrow evening. It's been a fun project so far and I think it should turn out pretty darned cute. It needs to be finished by the 19th, but I'm fairly certain I'll be finished with it with a handful of days to spare. I'll be checking with her, but I should be able to put pictures of it up here on the blog when I'm all done. It's nice to have a good creative project.

What else? Let's see... I finished another superhero cape...this one for Abigail. I still need to put the letters on it and make the "M" emblems for Marley's. (Marley informed Nana - my mother - that she could't very well have a superhero cape if it didn't have her "m" on it. Duh. Silly Auntie.) I organized my felt stash onto the baker's rack in the crop room and I'm currently working on moving in some desks from the storage unit to help me revamp the rest of the room. We'll see what happens with that.


What I've Slacked Off On:

I have totally fallen behind on reading. That's what happens when I craft. One hobby gets temporarily ditched for another. The good news is that I have vacation next week and will have some increased time available for reading. The bad news is that I'm supposed to be reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand...which is nearly 700 pages long. I'm not super excited. I'm also a week behind on my Deal Me In challenge because of this darned book. I may spread out my reading time on the other four, yes four books on my currently reading shelf. I also have five library books that need read before the 7th (there may be a few renewals) and a book loaned to me by Patti that needs to make it into rotation soon. I'm slightly drowning in books at the moment.


What I'll Be Up to Over the Next Few Days:

The quilt work will continue, but I'll be wandering away from that project here and there to keep myself from burning out. We'll be doing 4th of July with the family and then having a belated birthday party for Darian (who turned 12 last week) on Saturday. I will hopefully be making some progress on the crop room and my reading.

I'm going to be deciding how exactly I want to tackle this month's blog theme of vacation. I have a few things jotted down, but I'm mildly flying by the seat of my pants. I'll be using my vacation week next week to work on a few projects for that as well as getting some darned hand puppets finished for the Etsy shop. Now that the felt has been wrangled, that task will be easier.

I'll be checking in again this week with a (hopefully) more organized post. For now, I'm headed to edit/update my challenge pages for progress and then maybe wrap up the evening with a little bit of reading. Most likely not from The Fountainhead.

I hope you're all having a great start to your July!