I Love to....

I can hear Julie Andrews singing "My Favorite Things" as I sit here thinking about all the things I love to do.

When I was little, I loved to draw.  I had Learn to Draw books on animals, drawing people, and cartoon characters.  My sketch pads were filled with doodles, drawings of my pets, and faces of my family and friends.

I could have grown up to be an architect or designer based on the projects I used to do with my dad.  I helped him build a bookcase and see-saw.  I also helped him design, purchase materials, and build a dog house, two rabbit house, a parakeet playground, and a 3 ft. tall birdhouse.  To this day, I love taking our girls to Home Depot for their monthly Kids Workshop and sketching out designs for a Barbie dream home.

Music, especially playing it, is still something I love to do.  I play the piano.  I took six years of lessons, survived my Senior Piano Recital, and spent several years playing the piano for church.  Now, whenever I get the chance I break open my old piano books and see how much my fingers remember my old classical repertoire.  I also go through my songbooks to Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, and Jekyll and Hyde and sing my heart out.  It's even more enjoyable when the music reels my husband in and he starts to sing.  Sometimes, we even sing duets.

When my husband, then boyfriend, learned how to play the guitar, I had him and brother teach me the basic chords so I could play my favorite songs from the radio.  It helped out knowing a handful of worship songs on guitar to lead worship during a couple of Women's Retreats.  A piano is not always available, and playing a keyboard is NOT the same.  I still like to pick up the guitar every now and then, search for songs on the internet and have fun playing them while my little ones sing along.

I also love to bake and cook.  When I was newly married, my husband did the majority of the cooking. I was good at making breakfast foods and baking desserts, but dinner was not my area of expertise.  We bought cookbooks which helped, but I was not as good as him or my dad when it came to just knowing how to cook without recipes and know the flavors to put together.  He actually challenged me to learn how to cook without a book, and I am proud to say that I have made several meals pulling whatever we have in the fridge, freezer or pantry and creating something edible and delicious enough for the kids to ask for seconds.

Scrapbooking became the next hobby I love to do.  I wish I can redo the ones I put together throughout my high school to college years, but with the amount of pictures and albums I still have to work on from our wedding to our fourth little girls, I have my work cut out for me.  Unfortunately, unless I have the time and energy to pre-plan and drag all my tools, pictures, paper, embellishments, etc. to my favorite scrapbooking store, scrapbooking has not been an option for me, even as a weekend hobby.  Once I bring all my stuff out, my little ones all want to do a project with me.

So, then I found a hobby that was easy to transport: crocheting.  I had tried it back when I was in high school and got frustrated because I couldn't seem to get comfortable holding the hook and the tension was so much that my simple placemats were warped.  I decided to give it another try after our third little one was about 2 years old.  I found You Tube videos called The Art of Crochet by Teresa and found another love.  All of a sudden, everything made sense.  I made beanies, scarves, flowers, baby booties, and baby blankets.  I searched the internet for FREE patterns and started "cutting and pasting" patterns to come up with the end result I envisioned in my head.  A couple of years ago, I custom-made beanies, owl hats, scarves, cat beanie, Hello Kitty beanie and Angry Bird beanies for employees at our local Chick-fil-a, family, and friends.  I am constantly on the lookout for good patterns.  My more recent projects are 3-Strand Headbands with Flower, baby leg warmers, and fingerless gloves.  I've set up my items at Timeless Treasures before for a few months, but the best advertising/business I get are by my little girls who LOVE to wear all the things I make.

The last hobby that I love to do is sewing.  I have a friend at church who loves to sew too.  She made these bibs and burpees with the cutest fabrics, so when my third little baby girl went through her phase of non-stop drooling, I decided I wanted to learn how to sew some for her.  I think my soul is drawn to the sewing machine (my maternal grandmother was a seamstress, and I've been told that I am quite meticulous like her).  After that project, I would browse through sewing books at Barnes and Noble and even bought a few with very simple projects to get me started.  Only problem was that the instructions did not make sense to me.  So, my husband and I took a basic sewing class at Jo-Ann.  We also took a Pajama Pants class together in order to get familiar with the machine and reading patterns.  My next class was on a Quilted Pleated Purse.  I think I went crazy after that.  I took advantage of their $1 patterns sale and bought a bunch! Since then, I've sewn a Hawaiian dress for my eldest when she was in kindergarten, turned one of my husband's old plaid shirt into a shirt dress for her first field trip to the farm, spent one week sewing 3 dresses just in time for Easter, made a couple simple baby quilts, my first baby outfit, and a button up shirt for my husband.  I am still working on the eyelet dresses for my other daughters and myself to match the outfits I had already made for the baby (who is now 16 months old) and my husband--we were supposed to have a family portrait taken.  One of these days, I am hoping it will be in the year of 2014, I will have cleared out a space for sewing.  I am always flattered when people ask me if the dresses our girls are wearing were sewn by me.  I am hoping to continue honing this skill so I can create a business out of it.