O is for Octopus of course.

I’m sort of fizzling out on my excitement over the alphabet cards. You probably guessed that already since I’ve gone from daily to weekly updates. But don’t worry. I am not giving up. I know I’ll get into it again.

In fact, I am percolating on several ideas for them. Like… selling them on Etsy in a square format for framing! And… for a small price, making them customizable. So if you want to spell out your baby’s name but you want the background to be blue or purple or pea green… you can do that. How fun would that be? Fun.

Fun that probably won’t happen right away but is somewhere off in the distance with all those other fun projects I plan on doing someday. This is why I am not afraid of getting old. Because I have lots and lots of projects of fun planned for myself. Let’s just hope my hands and eyes don’t give out on me before I’m ready for them to.

That reminds me of something. This last weekend I spent a few days out in the sticks helping my mom clean out her sewing room. It was a project and a half and unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay until it was completed which is a really bad thing. It’s not cool to leave your mom with her house turned upside down. Especially when your mom is a pack rat and would rather squirrel everything away in a closet than deal with it. The whole thing was very emotional for her. I knew it would be. I’ve watched those clean house shows thousands of times because I am so impacted by this in my own real life.

Giving up clutter is more than just getting rid of stuff. It is giving up memories and dreams. It is changing your ideas about what things were meant for. For example: my mom had this great big box full of patterns. Cross stitch patterns, embroidery patterns, crocheting patterns… Books and books of them all wedged in a box so tightly, you could barely get one out.

She collected them when she used to work at House of Fabrics. When the patterns went on sale she would spend her paycheck on them, dreaming of days that she and my dad would retire and sit around doing crossword puzzles (this was before sodoku was invented) and counted cross stitch. What my mom didn’t count on was that she would get arthritis in her fingers and simple things, like even turning pages in a magazine, would become painful.

This great big box of patterns, that she so lovingly squirreled away, was now completely useless. I could see the tears well up in her eyes as she pulled out a pattern for purple pansies, her favorite flower. It’s just not fair. You save and save and then when the time comes, your eyes don’t work anymore without squinting and holding things at arms length and then if you can see okay, your fingers are stiff and knotted. Getting old hurts.

So we convinced my mom to throw out the box and focus on projects that she could do. It’s not like there is a shortage. My mom’s whole sewing room is packed with projects that she couldn’t finish even if she did one project a day for the next twenty years. But what can I say…. I come by my optimism and craftiness naturally. It runs in the family.

But enough about that! We have another letter to introduce… The letter P! P is for pumpkin. I hate to be seasonal and I like to think that pumpkins are special any time of year but Baby Bug loves pumpkins so much it would be a shame not to do Pumpkin for the letter P. So pumpkin it is and someday, if I ever get around to it, maybe I’ll do another version with platypus or panda.

Get your letters here. Oh no! You missed the free letter download. Stay tuned. They will be released again for sale in my shop.