In Awe

My mom taught me to craft.

I remember all the while growing up times of painting and stenciling under her tutelage. Chalk was a big form of entertainment whether it was on a chalkboard or concrete. And I couldn't begin to count the hours I spent with a big box of crayons and coloring books. Coloring can still keep me entertained =o) I spent a lot of my life watching my mom and learning from her. Seeing all she did to sew and help create things for church... so it would probably surprise you to know that there were times she surprised me!

I always thought I knew how capable my mom was... and then I was in Brownies where my mom was a troop leader. Our other troop leader was pregnant and my mom put together a project for us. I mean most people would probably just throw a shower. Buy some gifts. But we made a quilt! My mom, in turns, had each of my fellow Brownie troop friends over to our house to stencil a quilt square and before my very eyes, I watched my mom take all of those squares and turn them into a beautiful memory quilt!

And then, in the fourth grade, I learned how to knit. We learned for a class project after we read a book. It was called the Ernie and the Mile Long Muffler and, to be quite honest, I still remember all that it was about and I LOVED it! haha Anyway, for class everyone had to knit a square. Just a small square, but it was an assignment. We all learned how to do it and did it! So at the end of the time, my teacher had around 30 knitted squares and she asked MY MOM to put them together! So she used yarn to stitch the squares all together and then put fabric all the way around  to turn it into a blanket that my teacher hung on the wall for the rest of the school year!

My mom did that! And do you know how many people (besides me) think its awesome that my mom used to sew pretty much all of my dresses and halloween costumes when I was a kid? Not to mention all of the stenciled borders in our house and homemade curtains and everything else she used to do. My mom was DIY before DIY was popular!

It's pretty cool.

I hope that someday I'm the kind of mom that my kids are proud of...