Don't Call Me Martha

I don’t wanna be a Martha.

My name is Sarah, but my penchant for crafts and meticulous, obsessive creative streak has earned me the nickname “Little Martha.” Martha Stewart used to appeal to me in so many ways: she seemed to be a strong, independent woman whose home was always just-so. Prepared to whip up a French petit four or German chocolate cake at the drop of a hat, constantly ready to entertain a guest of one or one hundred, able to carve masterpieces into gourds? Genius!

But over the last year or so, as I’ve grown and changed in my perspectives on parenting, and on what’s really important to me in my life, I’ve started to really resent the nickname “Little Martha.” Where I used to admire her, I now look on her as incredibly superficial…selfish…self-centered. I’ve been bugged by the question: who was she really doing all that crafting and hostessing for anyways? I still love to see all the crafts and clever things she can do, but I wonder why she bothers? What’s her goal? Who is she doing this work for?

I love to work with my hands, I enjoy making things, and the part about crafting that brings me the most joy is being able to give the things I make away to my family and friends. Handmade gifting makes my heart happy…being able to do use the gifts I’ve been given to do something that helps someone else fills my cup. This is true across the board in my life: whether it’s teaching, mentoring other teachers, writing, crafting, caring for children, I feel as though the tasks I’m engaged in are meaningful because I’ve been called to serve in these ways.

Which is why this picture, taken by my three-year-old son, gave me pause.

He was using my phone to take pictures of things around the house that he thought were important- he snapped and giggled for almost ten minutes before returning my phone and running off to play cars. As I scrolled through his snapshots after he went to bed, I found it so telling to see the world from his short-legged perspective, to review the things he felt to be meaningful enough to steady his little hands and click the button: a half-eaten cookie, his sister’s painted toenails, his pile of dinosaurs, his Daddy in the kitchen, his barely-able-to-see-over-the-counter shot of the art supplies…and this. Mommy, hunched over computer, coffee cradled, busy at work.

This one stopped me.

Is this how they see me?

There is always the guilt, even in working from home: every minute spent on a work or home or any task other than engaging in the moment with them…am I missing something precious? Will my children remember the moments spent with them, or lament the times I was “busy” doing something else? There is no doubt that, no matter how I craft my schedule each day, there are times when I have to do things that do not directly involve them. I am ok with that, I really am. But then pictures like this make me think: what was I working on right then? Was it a necessary action at that moment, or was I distracted from what was really important right then? Was it child or work-related, or Pinterest-related? Was I serving my children, serving others, and serving God at that moment…or was I distracted by my own interests?

The story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38 has been on my mind quite a bit lately, and this photo from a three-year-old’s perspective really drives it home:

In this photograph, am I Mary, or am I still playing Little Martha?

Tiny Elf Fairies

Tiny Thread Friends

What fairy garden is complete without little buddies to visit and play?

Just before bed last night, I asked Little Lady how she would know if any fairies or little friends visited the garden while she was asleep? She said, with a sparkly, hopeful look and a smile:

“Well, maybe they’ll still be there when we wake up and we can see them!”

How could I not stay up late to create a couple little friends to greet the Littles in the morning? (Find a tutorial to make your own Tiny Elf Fairy at the end of this post!)

After whipping up these little buddies, I posed them in the garden: Boy was climbing the trees, and Girl was taking a dip in the pool!

Little Lady opened her eyes this morning, called, “Mommy- I’m awake!” and when I entered her room, she popped up and said, “Mom! I wanna check the garden! Did the fairies come?”

Tearing through the house, skidding to a stop: smile, reach, pet, explore- she was tickled to find her new friends! Questions:

“Mommy, where did these come from? Are they fairies or elves? Do they have wings? Did you make these? Are these real live fairies? Can they come to life when we aren’t looking? Can I name her?”

I smiled and nodded along, noncommittal. Her decisions:

“Mom, these look like you made them, but I bet they can come to life when we are sleeping or when we’re not looking. I can’t see her wings, but I bet she can fly. She’s an elf fairy. I think she’s magic, and she likes to dance- see how her skirt twirls? She can jump and swim and do gymnastics too, and she can run really fast in the forest- see her long legs? Look, she can sit in this big seashell and row- it’s her boat. You can tell she’s magical because she has bells on her feet. Why doesn’t she have a face? Oh, I know: she can’t have just one face, she needs lots of faces, and you can’t draw all the faces on the same doll at one time. Now she’s happy- look- she just blinked her eyes and winked at me, Mommy- did you see her?”

And on and on and on…this friend was discovered six hours ago, and she’s been on enough adventures in the house to write her own book already. Beautiful, and so worth the time to craft these moments, to encourage these dreamers!

Make your own Tiny Elf Fairy!

Materials:

·         2 pipe cleaners

·         1 small wooden bead

·         2 colors embroidery floss

·         2 tiny jingle bells

·         hot glue gun

·         scissors

Directions:

·         Using one pipe cleaner, bend ends in to touch at center; bend in half at center, making a V shape. Glue the open ends and bend inside of the wooden bead.

·         Using one color of embroidery floss, tie the bells to the looped ends of the pipe cleaner V- these will be the feet.

·         Wrap embroidery floss in a double layer ¾ of the way up towards the bead head- these are the legs.

·         Use half of the other pipe cleaner- fold in the same shape, and wrap around the torso- these are the arms.

·         Wrap each arm in the second color embroidery floss. Wrap up to the head, like a turtleneck shirt, crisscrossing the chest, down around the tummy, crisscrossing the legs, and tie off in the back.

·         For the skirt, use a four inch length of lace. Baste along the top- pull to gather; tie onto the waist, and wrap over with embroidery floss to attach and cover.

·         For the hair, just gather six or seven threads; tie in the middle, and hot glue to the top of the bead. Trim to desired length.

·         Faces: I left my friends’ faces blank so the Littles can imagine the emotions on themselves. A smiling doll is always happy, and sometimes our dolls like to experience different emotions- sometimes they sleep too, and open eyes make it tricky to nap in the garden!  J

·         Safety notes on Tiny Elf Fairy: these will be played with as toys at my house, under my supervision. Any of the tiny parts can become detached, and the pipe cleaners do have pointy wires inside. If you make these friends, take care to monitor their structural integrity before, during, and after play to keep your Littles safe.

Make your own Tiny Buddies!

Wake up and see who came to visit the garden!

"Mommy- LOOK!"

"My little buddy is taking a cool bath with this dinosaur pet!"

Our First Fairy Garden

placing the plants and "little buddies"

Inspired by The Magic Onions Fairy Garden Contest- 2012, we started collecting items for our first fairy garden.

I decided we had better go with a succulent garden, because we needed some very hardy, resilient plants that were resistant to death-by-Mommy. (Our Grace Garden was so very beautiful, but it was too difficult to keep alive- my black thumb worked its magic on that one.)

The aloe plant in the back is actually the only plant I have ever kept alive for more than a year- the Hubs bought me that plant when I got my second teaching job, and I have convinced it to hang on for dear life this whole time! The tiny aloe plant on the right was picked out just the other day by Little Man during our trip to the greenhouse at the IMA. He carried it all around the paths, cupped in his little hands, talking to it quietly: “Hey, you little buddy. You see that statue over there? Hey little buddy- you want a sip of water?” The rest were picked up on a clearance rack at Lowes.

All the rocks came from Little Lady’s extensive rock collection: she donated almost all of her “gray rocks” (the ones she finds in parking lots, so gravel), as well as some of her favorite, very well-loved painted river rocks, and her “beautiful crystals” for the special pool in front. "Can I make some of these rocks be headstones to remember our friends and family who've died?" Sure! The pool is especially magic because when water is poured in, it disappears right before your eyes! (This would be because the pool is a small terra cotta pot with a hole in the bottom, shhh!)

The tiny house was a garage sale find- we knew we’d need that for something special! A tiny basket in the back holds the plates- spiraled craft sticks formed into plates for the fairy tea parties, and a small foam apple hides behind a plant in case anyone needs a light snack. The purple flower because, of course, purple is the favorite color these days. Why the tiny lock even though there’s no door? “Because the little friends who come will have a magic key- that’s how they’ll know how to find the garden!” A sign on the side of the house, plucked from my scrapbooking supplies, reads “Dream as if you’ll live forever.” Some pussy willows and a stick from Little Man’s collection provide some depth- “the forest,” they call it. Voila: our first fairy garden!

Now here’s where things really got interesting. Watching the littles’ creativity fly as we assembled the garden was delightful- listening to them talk about it afterwards was spectacular, insightful, and inspiring…here is a snippet of conversation overheard from the kitchen:

LM: “Look- my dinosaur can take a bath in the magic pool!”

LL: “So can my horse- actually, this is a hot bath for the animals to come relax when they’ve had a hard day.”

LM: “Who else is coming to the fairy garden?”

LL: “Well, actually, anyone can come to the fairy garden, whoever wants to come can bring their friends, like animals, and bugs, and squirrels, and bunnies- no, bunnies will eat the plants- no bunnies, but frogs can come, and elves, and mushroom people…”

LM: “Can Jesus come too?”

LL: “Oh yes, of course- Jesus can go anywhere! He can take this path right here and take care of the animals. The little house needs a welcome sign, Mom.”

LM: “How ‘bout a sign that says ‘welcome buddies’ so all the buddies can come and stay here?”

LL: “Oh yes, that’s right- Mom? We need to get the art box out again…”

considering what comes next...decor?

"dream as if you'll live forever"

dinosaurs come for a visit and a hot bath

"welcome buddies" sign, and Mr. Toad says hello

ready for buddies!

Finding My Secret Fish Pond

Take time out to blog? Isn’t that just adding another thing to the already overstuffed “to do” list?

Yes.

No.

Something about being busy makes me want to write.

When I’m busy with the things that have to get done, the things that should get done, and the things I want to do, writing feels right: it’s taking time out to put order to my thoughts, realign my priorities, to tell myself it’s ok to stop and think about things without feeling idle.

Some people can day dream. I can’t- I dream myself off to sleep.

Writing is my day dreaming: cataloguing, recording, thinking on paper, my way of processing my life.

In our many travels around the gardens of the IMA, we came across this little pool of goldfish. It’s become known as our “secret fish pond.” It isn’t a secret- it’s on a well-marked path; it can be found on the map. But it’s our secret place because we never knew it was there until we took a different path and just stumbled across it one day. Each time we return to the gardens, we wander around looking for the “secret fish pond,” and sometimes we don’t find it. I could mark the right paths on our map and make it a point of interest: I could lead the littles right to it each time we visit. But wouldn’t that take the magic out of rediscovering it every time? We find it when we need it, and it keeps its feel of magic and intrigue.

Writing is my secret fish pond. What’s yours?