Tag: happiness

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Happiness is a mug mat

I made my first mug mat on Sunday. What is a mug mat, you wonder? Really, it’s just an oversized coaster to dress up your desk. Anyway, I was fondling looking at a pretty piece of fabric and telling myself that I really should cut it up and make something because it is so pretty. But then I thought…no! I don’t have to cut it up, so I cut a 6″ square (yes, I know…technically that falls under the category of cutting it up) and backed it with a piece of muslin and a scrap of cotton batting in the middle. Then I ran some straight stitches through it ( and that will be a very exciting post soon! No, really, it IS exciting!). Then I used orange for the binding and voila! A mug mat!

I gave it away to a friend who could use a bit of cheering up.

And speaking of needing some cheering up…it is still snowing here. It’s been snowing for three days. Maybe I’ll make another one of these for me!

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Eat your Peas!

I’m back on my balance journey after being knocked off my pins for about a year and a half and it feels great! I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately, so when a particular post from Nancy at A Rural Journey popped into my inbox at breakfast this morning, I could really relate to it. Nancy did such a beautiful job of expressing what I have been thinking about, and so I wrote to her and asked if I could post her blog post on my blog today (say that fast three times, lol!). She very graciously said yes! Which, I guess makes her my first official guest blogger!  Please pop on over and share some love with her for these beautiful words she is sharing with us. Thank you, Nancy!

Eat your peas

~Bill Cosby
Live in the now.
Be present.
Just be.
These phrases, although short and to the point, are often overused – the original intent somehow getting lost on us by virtue of their familiarity.
Yet, there are so many books and poems and notable quotes on the subject, I realize as a society, we must ponder the value of our days quite often — as they effortlessly, predictably –blur into one another.
Necessary daily tasks and routines must be accomplished before we can get to the interesting and motivating parts and pieces.
So it seems.
That’s being responsible.
Eat your peas or there will be no apple pie for dessert.
Not that there’s anything wrong with peas. I love peas.
But I’d rather have apple pie.
So here’s my point —
What if the apple pie never comes?
Do we have the forethought, the insight —
to savor, to appreciate the ordinary “peas”
as if they are something special, something sweet,
a feast?
We should.
Because they are.
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
It’s not always easy to do this,
particularly when one day or week
just blows.
Your perfect child is acting up in school; the dryer and the tv decided to go out simultaneously;
you locked yourself out of your internet banking account. Twice.
The trick is finding small moments of each day, each week — to fully inhabit.
Don’t suffer through the peas to enjoy the apple pie.
Enjoy your peas.
Because all we ever have is now
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Promoting Marital Happiness: tip #1

Do not, under any circumstances, leave the garden hose in a tangled, knotted up mess for your spouse to discover and fix for you.

I almost did that today. Almost! But (phew!) I didn’t. I thought about it, but then I had a second thought. My second thought that this would not result in marital happiness.

But you know, it was sort of his fault that it got tangled up like that in the first place. If he hadn’t coiled it so neatly onto the hanger-thingy, I wouldn’t have had to pull the entire hank of hose off to use it.  Right?

Uh huh.