A bittersweet year

2020 was a bittersweet year.  So many things have changed for all of us this past year.   Did you ever think you’d be spending a holiday on a zoom call?  I could never have imagined this, and yet now it seems almost normal.  As I look around my studio, I realize my Bunny Hill lock-down partners have been affected by this virus too.  Bless their little hearts…

Tweety and Chelsea spend the day with me..  Tweety usually sleeps in a little drawer, and Chelsea in her heated donut bed.

And sometimes they switch beds just to change things up.

Chelsea is a social dog, so I keep her routine as normal as I can.  We still walk every morning, but I can’t make up for the visitors she normally greets.  Even the UPS man is off-limits now.

Just before this pandemic began, we had to say goodbye to our sweet Peanut dog.  It will be a year on January 31st.  To say I miss her wouldn’t be saying enough.  Peanut would have done well during this Pandemic because she hated leaving our house.  Now her behavior would actually be considered normal.

My grand-daughter Alyssa left for college in August. She’s at San Diego State and will soon be through her Freshman year. You may not know that Alyssa’s been my hand model for our Bunny Hill Petite patterns, so telling her goodbye was really bittersweet!  I taught Alyssa to sew at a very young age (you can find my “Sewing With Children” tutorials on this blog), and she still loves to sew!  She’s been making tons of masks and took her sewing machine and stacks of fat quarters to college with her.  I dare say she might be the only one with a sewing machine in her dorm room.  A girl after my own heart!

Just before this virus hit, I was into organizing my pantry.  You may remember, I did a giveaway in exchange for your pantry organizing ideas.  Such a sneaky thing to do, but I got so many good ideas from you!  I don’t have a large pantry, but I’m thankful I have one.  Here’s the before and after pictures I promised you:

Pantry before re-organizing

Pantry After Organizing

The white cans came from Ikea.  One of you told me about them, and I’m so glad you did!  We now use the larger one for recycling bottles, and the smaller ones are for cat and dog food.  I keep a large scoop inside so I can easily fill their bowls.

Just after I took this photo, I gave my husband the talk about how it was just the two of us, and we no longer needed to buy a case of everything.  He agreed to change his purchasing style.  Then the pandemic hit.  People started talking about shortages and how we might not be able to even purchase toilet paper.  Shelves everywhere we empty, and my husband panicked right along with everyone else.  He happily stood in long lines at Costco.  And he searched every store for things he couldn’t find.  Boxes of toilet paper arrived from Amazon!  And paper towels arrived from Home Depot.  Who does these things, right?

My kids in Germany sent photos of empty toilet paper shelves there too!  This increased my husband’s panic, and soon my pantry exploded!  I’ve lived with pantry chaos for almost a year now.  It’s much worse than the first picture I showed you.  I have to step over things stacked on the floor just to get to a jar of spaghetti sauce.  And the chaos has spread to my garage.  I’m afraid they may want him on the hoarder show before too long, so I have now taken over the grocery shopping.  I order online and have everything delivered.

How are all of you doing in this new environment?  Do you still go to the store?  And, if you order online, will you continue to do this after we get through this pandemic?

As we begin 2021, there are so many things to look forward to!  Many of you have finished quilts and projects you’ve had on your list forever.  Doesn’t that feel great?  To those of you who have shared your completed quilts with us, thank you!  Once again, we’re pulled together because of our quilting passion.

I hope to keep up a little better this year with my blog posts, but I’d like to know if you use FaceBook and Instagram?  Or, is Pinterest your favorite place?  Are newsletters better for you?

I’ll be back on Friday to show you my Sewcialities block for the Fat Quarter Shop sew-along.

Anne