Getting my Craft Ready

Today was a major "work day" for me. I'm a piano teacher, and am offering lesson times once a week during the summer. I have 15 students on my normal school-year roster, but I knew in the summer I wouldn't be able to see most of them regularly. Today, there were five students who had time to come in, plus my own daughter. Six lessons...three hours...that may not seem like much of a work day, but when you are working from home, and have an infant, a preschooler, and a first grader around....it is absolutely the longest stretch of time I have been able to focus on anything in months. It was also my first time working in my new "space."

 Last Saturday, a moving truck arrived with my in-laws' piano. It was destined for our den, as neither of them play and they didn't want it in their new condo here in town. (Did I mention my in-laws recently relocated from Salt Lake to Seattle? No? Well. *SQUEEEEE* That's all I have to say about that.) We ended up moving all of the furniture from the den into my in-laws' new condo...and now have tons of space for the piano, and a lot of mess to clean up from the junk that had piled up on the desk and other things in the room over the past three years. We decided to move my piano teaching in there - when the doors are shut, you can barely hear even the loudest, most jangling playing, in the baby's room. Which means I can teach through naps. Hooray! The piano is in desperate need of a good tuning - it hasn't been tuned in 15 years...and was then moved across several state lines, into a warehouse, and finally into a local delivery truck and carted into my home. At least one of my students asked if she would ever be able to play the beautiful piano in the front room anymore. Her brother said he really liked the warbly sound of the new piano. I think, after the tuning, one of them will like the piano more...and one will like it less. Heh. It is a beautiful Yamaha upright, and it came with my in-laws when they moved from Hong Kong to Salt Lake. That means, we presume, it is a "genuine" Yamaha, as in Made in Japan. Kind of cool stuff. (Yamaha has since put up factories in areas other than Japan.)

Having my in-laws here is really going to be a blessing! They made sure the kids were relatively well-behaved while I was teaching, and held my sleeping baby. I am ridiculously spoiled.

Tonight, I had a planning meeting at my home for an upcoming crafty-day activity at church. The activity is called Super Saturday, and it's one of my favorites. (My "job" at church is to head up the committee of ladies who plans monthly activities for our Relief Society, or women's society.) Unfortunately, only half of the committee was able to make it, so we couldn't get a ton of planning done...but we got enough done that I am getting really excited about the activity! Historically, at these activities, we focus on making inexpensive (but cute and trendy) holiday decor for the fall/winter holidays and inexpensive (but cute! and trendy!) gifts to give out at Christmas time. Last year, we made lotion bars, chalkboards, wreaths, Christmas ornaments, handmade earrings...and other fun stuff like that. This year, I'm hoping to make table runners, autumn decor...and that's about as far as I've gotten. What crafts have you seen floating around that might be fun to make? Chime in in the comments!