The Positive of Social Media - Giving Back

Say what you will about the "perils" of the internet and social media, but I believe the positive that comes from being able to keep in touch, in being able to connect and create community with those that you would otherwise most likely not, far outweighs the negative. I have a perfect example.

Several girlfriends, most I've known since kindergarten, and I have really reconnected within the last year through facebook and we've had several discussions about who we choose to accept friends requests from, and we each have our ideas about who and what we are comfortable with. We grew up in a small town and we receive a lot of friend requests from the same people. My rule of thumb is this: If I were to run into at our local small town Maple Leaf Festival and we would acknowledge each outher because we were friends in the past, I accept. If we would walk right by each other and not say a word? I don't accept. I try to keep it simple and I have to say, I haven't had a single ounce of guilt managing it this way. Okay, I take that back. I think the very first time I declined an invite I had the "But what if I look like the mean girl from high school if I don't accept?" worry go through my head, but I quickly realize now as an adult that isn't necessarily my issue, but is that person's issue. I am not a mean girl, so it hasn't bothered me since.

But! That's not my example. My example is this! Facebook has also allowed me to stay in touch with other childhood friends as well. Friends half way around the world, currently deployed while serving in our United States Military.

My friend, Staff Sergeant Chris Benjamin, has bravely been deployed for the last year in Africa and will be coming home within the next 8 weeks. While in Africa, Chris has been deeply affected by the mass poverty and widespread suffering during this deployment and has been committed to leaving a positive impact on local orphanages by participating in English discussion groups, leading holiday prayers and spending his free time with the local children. Chris is a father himself, to three young boys, that I know are anxiously awaiting his return home along with his wife and family.

Chris and I have known each other since the 6th grade and I am so very proud of the man he has become. The messages and experiences he shares through facebook have inspired me, so I wrote him a message asking what I could do to help. Could I send some handmade things I had made for the children in the local orphanages? Chris wrote back and graciously welcomed the idea, so today I will be putting 11 pillowcase dresses, 8 baby blankets, 20 handheld lovie blankets and a handful of crayon rolls in the mail, postmarked to Chris, to distribute to the local orphanage near where he is stationed.

Here are a few things I will be sending:

Stack of pillowcase dresses

Remember this fabric I posted about last week?!

Its made from a William Sonoma tablecloth!

I struggled right up until I sealed the box last night as to whether the items I was sending were "enough". The box was just one box. Only 11 dresses. Only 8 blankets. Is this something we all struggle with? Is what we do ever enough? I only let myself think that way for a few minutes before I changed my perspective, doing "enough", being "enough", isn't something I am willing to dwell on for long because the answer is no. It is not enough. But it is something. And it is a start. And a start is something I am committed to.

I would like to thank my mother-in-law Sally and my friend Marty Lang for each contributing a few dresses, and I would like to thank my dear friend Belinda Tawney for contributing several of the pillowcases for some of the dresses you see above. I truly apprcaite their generosity and their willingness to contribute when I approached them about the idea.

If you are looking for a great way to give back and contribute your sewing skills, this week Gingercake is hosting a "You Can Help Dress a Girl Around the World! Sew-A-Long" ! If you have never made a pillocase dress before, she includes a simple and easy tutorial link and I know you could have one made in no time. Please consider joining in!

Happy Monday!

Fun stuff! (and not so fun stuff!)

The fun stuff!

Today I purchased my fabrics for the One Million Pillowcase Challenge! I wanted to find fabrics with colors and patterns that were relatively neutral, as well as calming and soothing since they are to be donated to a local women's shelter. Here are the fabrics I chose and I even made a set of pillow cases tonight! Each coordinating yard of fabric makes two alternating pillow cases, the body of one and the band of another.

pink / brown

blue / yellow


made!

Now...the not so fun stuff!

Gussy, whom I LOVE (she makes the most awesome clutches, headbands, and laptop bags, all with her signature ruffle), recently wrote a series of blog posts about budgeting your money, both personal and business. You see, Gussy recently made Gussy her full time job. Read about her inspiring (inspiring to me!) decision here. I have been reading the series, but kept dismissing the relavence to me because, well, even though I have an etsy shop, I am not big time enough to consider it a business. Meaning, I do not have plans to leave my 8-6 (mine is not a 9- 5) anytime in the near future. Or even the distant future for that matter. So I kept dismissing it. That is, until this afternoon when she posted the last part of the series and then this piece of advice might as well of jumped out of my computer and "thunked" me in the forehead....

* save all your receipts!

And I get it now...now it is clear. Why wouldn't I want to be educated and informed about how much I was spending? Even if I am not in a position where I have to reconcile what is/' going out versus what is coming in in order to run a business, why wouldn't I at least want to know how much I am spending? Well, the answer is, I do want to know. So here is my commitment to keep my receipts so that I am aware of what I am spending. I am not quite sure what I am going to do with them once I've got them, but at least I have got them. :)

One Million Pillowcase Challenge

CityCraft, an fun local quilt shoppe here in Dallas, is participating in the Etsy Craft Party: One Million Pillowcase Challenge and hosting an "open house" event this Friday, August 27th. All pillowcases will be donated to a local Women's Shelter that provides shelter and security to women and children in need. What an awesome event! While I won't be able to make it to the event, I plan on donating a few pillowcases this weekend! Even if you are not local to Dallas, you can find an Etsy Craft Party near you by clicking here! You can also download the free pillowcase pattern by clicking here!

The Whole Point

I am the kinda girl who's mind is always racing, who's always looking forward to the next "thing" or the next "event". I lay in bed at night tossing and turning for hours because my mind will not slow down. I am a multi tasker. I am a planner. I am not comfortable unless I am juggling 52 million things at once or have the next several months planned out ahead of time. And when you are the mother of a newborn or a toddler, that's perfectly fine because planning a routine is something most new moms strive for. And boy did I have the daily routine down. So for the first two years of my little man's life, I was content with "living" his routine each day because, well, that was my job as his mother, or at least that is how I felt about it.

But when my little man turned 2 this time last year and started to become more independant and he didn't "need" his momma as much all of the time, I started to feel, well, useless really and my mind started to race into overdrive. What's next? What can I plan?

My husband, bless his heart, is not a planner. He is the most chill person when it comes to having, or not having, plans. He prefers it actually. How the two of us got married I am not quite sure actually. Opposites attract maybe? Must be. But one day, as I was in planning overdrive my husband casually mentioned under his breath that I should get a hobby. And he was right. But I had never had a hobby before, besides reading (which I love), so I decided to try my hand at a few different crafting type things. But like I have mentioned in a previous post, I am not a crafty kinda girl. And then I thought about my Stepmom who has sewn almost her entire life and I was struck by how much she truly enjoys it. So I decided to give it a try. I bought a $100 sewing maching at Wal Mart and got started.

Sewing, for me, has really been a life saver. And I am not trying to be dramatic, I am not really a dramatic kinda girl. Planner? Yes. Dramatic? No. But when I say it was a life saver, I mean it. It gave me back a life of my own. My own. And I love it. I love coordinating fabrics, I love reading patterns (I don't really love cutting fabric, but there's always something right?), I love piecing the pieces together and seeing something wonderful come to life that I've created from scratch. And what I love the most is that is slows me down, it keeps it from racing 100 miles a minute. It forces me to slow down, to take my time, to do it right without focusing on what comes next. And I love that. And I needed it.

As a result of my new found love for sewing, a whole stock pile of items that I loved were accumulating in my sewing room (which is really my formal dining room at the moment, but minor details). And unfortunately, one person can only have so many baby blankets (especially for an almost 3 year old boy that doesn't care for cute girl stuff!) and I only have so many friends having babies, which is why I created my etsy store. I honestly, and please know that I mean this, do not care about selling a single thing, I just can't keep it all and I want to share it because I am proud of it.

Which actually brings me to the whole point of my story.

Something else I hope to do with my life, besides be the best wife and mother I can be, is to contribute. Contribute to my family, contribute to my community, and contribute to this world. And I am hoping one way I can do that is by donating some of the items that I make. This time I am contributing the below butterfly blanket / crayon roll combo and the below Amy Frenchy style Hand bag to a friend's silent auction that is raisining money to assist a memeber of their church in the adoption process. I am so humbled to be able to contribute to the silent auction and I thank my friends for the opportunity. Because it definitely wasn't without all the usual doubts and fears of self-consciousness...."What if my items were not good enough? What if no one wanted them? What if they didn't bring any bids?" Well, guess what? If no one bid on them, I bet they would make some one happy for free at the end of the night. And that's perfectly fine by me as well. :)

I have another project in the works that is aimed at contributing to the community, I hope to share after a quick trip to Baltimore!