It's the little things

Sometimes it is hard to remember the little things that make life a wee bit happier or easier.  I know there is a strong trend among scrapbookers to have a 'nice things' jar into which they put notes of the nice things that happen to them throughout the year to look back on when times are not so great, or at the end of the year.  It is something that I have thought of but, like many things I start full of enthusiasm for, I have let lapse by March for one reason or another.  I have set myself a few challenges this year and have made them public, which isn't something I tend to do, but this means that others will be aware of it if I let them lapse and I am hoping that this will motivate me to maintain them.  If by March I am still going strong I can start a jar then and add the little things I have posted here to it.

My last post was a bit of a rant and more of one than I had initially intended.  It is hard being in pain all the time and it does get me down.  I am still finding adaptations to things I used to take for granted.  I love stamps and use them a lot in my scrapbooking however my hands are now often too shaky or too weak to stamp as well as I used to.  I have discovered though that if I put the foam mat that I bought with my We R Memory Keepers sewing tool under the page I am stamping on, I get a far better result.  I have downsized my desk tote to a tiny wee thing with not much more than my essential tools, glue runner, wipes and my favourite journalling pens.  More than this I cannot carry.  I am now paying more attention to what I am using and always looking for an easier alternative given that things are likely to get worse rather than better.

A good friend of mine has just become and aunt for the first time and I am frantically knitting a couple of sets of cardigan, mitts and bootees for her in white and baby blue.  I know she and her sister will appreciate them and it makes a nice wee change from dolls clothes for Sharlitt who has now become Charlotte.  I think Katy has been reading Charlotte's Web perhaps.  I like knitting little things in between the big things and have decided that I will knot some premature baby stuff over the year to give into our local hospital.  My daughter had both her children there and as I though she was likely to have small babies, because I did, and because of the scan results, I had knitted some prem size things for her which was just as well as the hospital had nothing suitable.  Once her children had outgrown them she handed them into the hospital for others to use.

Katy at 2 days old and wearing prem size knitwear

Logan at 1 day old in an incubator in the special baby unit, lying on a heat pad because he was small and cold and wearing prem size knitwear.

The best little thing that happened in the past week was on my departure from the occupational health doctor I was tired and sore and making my way, very slowly, down the ramp back to the car park.  There was a young lady with a baby in a buggy and another child of about 3.  As he saw me coming down the ramp he stood across the bottom of it with his arms outstretched and said 'you have to wait mummy there is a lady with a stick' and as I approached the end of the ramp he swung to the side to let me past.  It was such a lovely thing for a young child to do.  I thanked him profusely and made a point of telling his mum what a lovely young man he was, it fair cheered me up and has made me smile every time I think of it.

What was your 'little thing' this week?  I bet it wasn't nicer than mine.