My Changed Life

Hi fellow bloggers. I haven't been around for awhile cause my life has been totally turned upside down.

My husband passed away on September 13 and life has been a fog ever since. I was doing so well at first but I think it was adrenaline. Being Executor is an incredible amount of work and grieving on top of it has really worn me down. I'm not sick, I'm overwhelmed.

I called 911 on August 3 and by the end of the month the doctors told me there was nothing more they could do for him. He had cirrhosis and his liver was completely destroyed. So I went from hearing he had 5 years to live, to 2 years to live, to 1 year to live, to not knowing if he'd survive another month. They admitted him to hospice and he lived for 3 days there. My daughter and I were with him when he passed. He looked very peaceful which was good to see as far as he went. For us it hasn't been so easy.

I'm incredibly blessed to have so many supportive friends in my church. But this past week all the Christmas stuff is out in the stores, lights are up on houses, my classic rock station has turned to all Christmas all the time.

While I've been doing pretty well - most of my duties are done - for some reason yesterday I had a blip. I realized December is going to be a very difficult month and it hasn't even officially started yet.

I'll finally get a pension cheque on December 1. I haven't had an income for 3 months. I was okay though cause I sold our boat, albeit at a lot less than was owed on it, so have been living off of that.

My sister came from Ottawa and was a total, total blessing to have here. She even played the piano at the memorial service because she's a church organist.

I haven't been sewing a lot but did make some adult bibs - which we now call Shirt Savers. And I did some small crafts for our bazaar next week.

The first one is a cork reindeer. I made 5 of them. There is no tutorial for them but I saw a photo online in a few places and couldn't resist

Then I made cork snowmen. There is a tutorial online but I couldn't get the hat to look right so we'll sell them cheap. I just think they're cute.

I also found this tutorial quite some time ago for Soap Pouches I originally made one for my son Michael cause he has such a problem with grooming that I thought it might help him when he has a shower. He says there's too many "bits" to clean. His toes never seemed to be clean when he got out of the shower. But he loves this cause the soap doesn't slip out of his hand. 

Then I thought about using them for those little pieces of leftover soap. They're perfect. Then I realized that a lot of people at my church are older and have arthritic hands so I decided to add an elastic so they can put a full bar of soap in it and slip their hand through the elastic so they wouldn't worry about dropping it. So here's my final result:

I got the facecloths at the $ store. $1 each and you only use 1/2 a cloth for each one. 

I'll be glad when the bazaar is over. It's a lot of work and I just haven't had the energy to do a lot of the things I would normally have done.