Starting again...

This is my third attempt at a blog and I vow (hand over heart) to give it a real effort this time...I think I can, I think I can.  Let me back up.  I am an elementary school teacher and a mother of two young kids and a wife and dog owner and home owner and, and, and... and lets face it, we are busy. Kids get sick, husbands travel and well, life just happens and suddenly its been 10 years and that great idea you had seems like fairy tale without a happy ending.  For me, the biggest problem is follow through.  I am great on the front end!  I have fabulous ideas and tons of enthusiasm up front - then time goes on and something happens to all that optimism.  I think this is true for lots of reasons but I have finally pin pointed the biggest one.  The affliction of perfectionism.  The thought that - if I cant do it PERFECTLY, then why do it at all?  I'm not alone here right?  I cant be, because I know a lot of type A people.

So, how do we rectify this?  Think I have it figured out.  We just do it and let it be what it is.  So instead of having delusions of grandeur as, my dear friend Jennifer's dad use to tell us, we humble ourselves to just doing whats in front of us today.

Today what is in front of me is starting this blog.  As a wife, mother, teacher... I need to be crafty and creative.  Its my outlet (and its better for me than eating or shopping).  It allows me to let go of lesson plans and worries and lose myself in something that, when I am finished, gives me a sense of accomplishment and a way to stand back and say "Heck ya! I made that!".  It also allows me to show other people how much I love them because, as we know, everyone loves gifts.  And for many of us, myself included, its a love language.  My other love language is words of affirmation.  Though I would love to be like my husband and not give a rats patooty what anyone thinks, I like hearing that I've had a good idea or I've done something to please someone.

So here we are.  I have claimed our guest room - which is blue and lovingly called the "blue room" - as my craft room and decided to name it Studio BLU.  I designed it to be a place where I can start projects and not have to put them away.  Where I can create and make a mess (and of course as someone with mild OCD, clean it up) on a journey to creating things for myself, other people and maybe (hopefully) you, whom

ever you are.  I will show you how I, on a teacher's salary, created this studio and some of the projects that are born in it.  I hope you will come back and visit and maybe take away some ideas that will allow you to lose yourself and your worries in your own way.  Without feeling like it has to be perfect.