Make a Homemade Bread Basket Liner - Day 188 of 365, Tutorial Tuesday

Sugar cookies, be gone!

I love my sugar cookies. I love decorating them, I love looking at them, I love eating them, and I love giving them away. They are something I can do quick and easy without much thought.

But I'm tired of them right now. I'm not really tired of the cookies, but I'm tired of the internal struggle - like the one that happened on Day 127. I've had better willpower these last few weeks and have given them away before eating them, but still every single time I make them I struggle with keeping them out of my mouth.

The sugar cookie demon has been faced many times these past months:

• St. Patrick's Day (Day 12)
• Easter Eggs (Day 36)
• Peeps (Day 49)
• Flowers (Day 63)
• Ladybugs, Beehives, and Bumblebees (Day 146)
• Carrots (Day 168)
• Corn on the Cob (Day 174)
• Fishbowls (Day 181)

By making them again and again, it's like I want to torture myself. Am I trying to prove I'm strong? Or maybe I'm trying to prove I'm weak? I'm tired of feeling like I'm punishing myself every time I'm around them. I could just make them and eat them and have no guilt about it. But I can't.

So out go the sugar cookie tutorials for a while and back comes a sewing-themed tutorial.

A reversible bread basket liner similar to the one I made on Day 38. Nearly the same pattern, but with different fabric. If you like bread with your dinner, or you're thinking ahead to the holidays like me, it's an quick and easy project to whip up.

Now available as a written pattern in my Etsy shop!

Looking for something else? Check out some of my other kitchen sewing and crafting projects!

Otherwise you can find the step by step how to tutorial for the bread basket liner sewing project here:

Day 187 of 365

Just be still.

I keep having to remind myself to just be still. Stop trying to keep busy, stop trying to always be thinking or doing something. Just sit still and do nothing. Enjoy the quiet.

Over these past few months at home before summer vacation, I had been getting pretty good at it. I had the entire day to myself. Me, myself, and I (and some days the kitty). Time to think, contemplate, plan, and be alone in my thoughts. Time to appreciate the quiet, time to appreciate all I had.

But now as I've started back to work, I'm getting caught up in trying to keep busy. Work days are a given as the entire day is wrapped up in, well...work. Part of the draw of this work being part time was it was going to allow me those quiet, peaceful days during the week where I could be alone. I could take my time getting out of bed. I wasn't going to force my body to move earlier than it wanted to (because that always winds up costing me in the end).

Here I am a month into work and I have yet to have one day by myself. Those days I do have off I'm at a doctor's appointment or some other medical-related appointment, or my daughter is here, or my husband is here. Each week I have high hopes for some alone, quiet, just-be-still time.

Yet again this week it won't happen. Today hubby was also home, I work three other days, and the fifth day will be spent at the most interesting of all doctor's offices, the pain clinic.

Good things come about when I'm still and quiet. I just might have to force myself to be still and quiet. I did force myself just a bit today - I sat outside. After taking down clothes from the line, I just sat there. Enjoyed the weather, didn't think about anything.

The stillness did give me a chance to find a picture for the day. An big ugly old spider captured himself a moth and was doing whatever it is spiders do with moths.