Erin Condren Life Planners rock. There are many other planners, and some of them are almost as good as the Erin Condren planners, but they aren’t the real thing. Some people prefer FranklinCovey (which is more formal), or other fun ones like Filofax, Plum Paper Planners, or The Happy Planner. You can also find nice planners from a variety of sellers on Etsy or you can even buy one at Walmart and dress it up. I haven’t seen any I like as well as my ECLP, though. ATTENTION: The link below is my affiliate link. If you purchase a planner through that link, you will receive a $10 discount. And I will receive a $10 credit toward my own next purchase. 😀 ~~**ERIN CONDREN LIFE PLANNERS**~~ Reason #1: It makes me happy. All the other reasons are really justifications. It makes me smile to see my planner. I’m just an amateur planner, but I enjoy decorating it with stickers and washi tape, making inserts for it, using different colored pens and showing it off, especially to my granddaughters, who love it as much as I do. It’s pretty, and they can find their birthdays and special events in Read More
Category: Life
Doesn’t Dad Deserve a Mother’s Day?
It’s not fair. We all know that moms and dads are equally important in their children’s lives, but the days we set aside to honor them – Mother’s Day and Father’s Day – are very different. I read online (so it must be true) that Americans spend $7 billion dollars more on Mother’s Day than on Father’s Day. The Hallmark cards are funnier on Father’s Day. Churches treat Mother’s Day with reverence and sensitivity and Father’s Day is an opportunity for sermons on “how to do it better.” I know it probably bugs me more than it does the men, but it does bug me, so I wrote about it in one of my books. That’s an advantage of being an author. You can spout off your opinions and attribute them to fictional characters. In my story “Baggage Claim,” Ben Taylor goes in search of his biological father. He finds Jonah Campbell, who is delighted to learn that he has a son and four young grandchildren – and he especially likes the children’s nanny, Agatha. This is a scene between Agatha and Jonah, getting in the car after church on Father’s Day. It’s a work in progress, before editing. Remember: Read More
This is what it’s all about.
Grandmotherhood. Granddaughters. I’ve made several of these skirts for my two granddaughters. It’s a simple swing skirt with a yoke and bound hem. The binding at the hem gives it better twirlability and a nice flared shape. It’s a quick skirt for me to make, and I have done several for each of them. They like having matching ones. This week, while Alanna was visiting, she made the skirt all by herself. I cut it out and basted part of the binding at the hem, but she did all of the sewing, using the serger as well as the regular sewing machine. It’s quite an accomplishment for a ten-year-old! Teaching granddaughters to sew and quilt is a joy to me!
Colder Than Thou – Living in Wisconsin
Wisconsin provides an unusual bonus opportunity for its residents. We have a long, cold winter. Fact. It’s Wisconsin. The media tries to whip up a panicked frenzy periodically, reporting worst blizzards ever, unprecedented cold snaps and record snowfalls, but most of us roll our eyes and go on with life. It’s Wisconsin. I’m not saying we don’t grumble. That is our special Wisconsinite privilege – the opportunity to bemoan our cold weather. The winters give us bragging rights. That’s always been fun; our grandfathers enjoyed it: “Cold enough for ya?” Winter is an attitude. Winter is a challenge. A dare. I host a Bible study in my home on Thursday mornings. We have 8-10 young moms and a hundred children. (Maybe it’s only about 15.) No one has perfect attendance. We often have one one or two families absent. But on winter days when the snow is blowing and the wind is bitter, every single woman is there. Some of them walk instead of driving, just because. No sissies in that group! And now, to make it all even better, we have social media. We can wallow in our weather long-distance, with friends around the world. We can talk all Read More
Don’t Quit Your Day Job
That’s usually good advice for an aspiring novelist, but my day job isn’t all that profitable, either. I teach quiltmaking. I have been teaching for twenty years, and I love it. Teaching is something that blesses me. I also make quilts for sale on etsy or by commission and do some custom dressmaking. Although I learned to sew clothing over forty years ago, I didn’t take up quiltmaking until I was pregnant with my second child. That first quilt was very sweet, with pink and blue lambs on a muslin background. I appliqued the lambs with a zigzag stitch on my sewing machine and used a puffy batting. I decided I enjoyed quiltmaking and started looking for more information. We were living in a tiny farming town in Germany, and it was hard to find calico fabric in the local stores. The Air Force Base Exchange had some fabric, although none of it matched, and they had something even more interesting: a rotary cutter. There weren’t many quilting books in the base library, and they were all too old-fashioned (I was 24), so I used graph paper and colored pencils to design a little wall quilt to insulate the bathroom Read More
Resolutions Everywhere
On every blog, every website, and every facebook page, there are articles about resolutions and goals. Some people want to sell you their latest organizational book or tool, and some people want to sell you fitness advice or diet pills. Webinars, videos, podcasts all over the place, free and fee. Some people just want to talk about setting goals – their own or in general. Okay, so it’s not “everywhere”, but it’s a large percentage. Some people are more retrospective, writing about the past year instead of goals. I have one statement that wraps it all up for me: Last year, I lost my job. That changed everything. No more income of my own, but I have a husband who is encouraging me to follow my own dreams. I would like to keep contributing financially, so I will do some sewing, but what I really want to do is write. I can make pin money by doing some copy writing, but I really want to spend the time writing fiction. Resolution – to figure that out and do it all, without procrastination or distraction. Goal – next year, at this time, I want to be ready for publication of at Read More