Mondays are for Making

A couple of months ago, I cut back my hours at work when Lena and I rearranged our schedules. I had been working on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but life was way too crazy, and neither Lena nor I felt like we were getting quality time with the kids (there was just so much swapping and run-around). So I stopped working on Tuesdays, Lena switched around her hours, and we altered Zeben's preschool schedule as well. The result is that on Mondays, all three of the big kids are in school, and Lena is on Leo duty, and I am one free mama. So far Lena and I have used these glorious Monday to just be in bliss together. A whole date day, every week? Heaven. But really, I do need to be figuring out a way to generate an income on Mondays (writing? crafting? childcare?), and this week I decided that in order to keep myself from simply hanging out with my beautiful wife and our adorable baby all day, I needed to leave the house.

Luckily, my mom lives just 2 miles away, and offered up her fabulous studio as a place for me to work. Lena and I (and Leo, of course) enjoyed a luxurious breakfast out at our favorite café (I have no intention of cutting out the date portion of our Mondays all together) before I headed over to my mom's to get busy. I decided to break myself into my new routine slowly, so my plan for this first Monday was simply to get in the crafting groove by making something for our house. My side goal was also just to try to get my mom back to using her hands.

My mom is a talented textile artist. But since she and my father separated--and ultimately divorced--19 months ago, she has struggled to tap into her creative energy. I can completely understand since I have often felt entirely devoid of creative energy myself (hello, pregnancy), but it's still heartbreaking to witness since I think if she could be creating again, it would really help her to climb out of her depression. So, for the foreseeable future, Mondays are for the mandated making of things with my mom.

My mom's studio is a very inspiring place to work. At the center is her loom. When I was a baby, my mom kept me in a basket beside her while she wove. To this day, the sounds of a loom in action (which are clunky and loud) are like music to my ears: so very soothing.


And I love my mom's yarn collection nearly as much as her loom. So many colors.


But the project I wanted to work on this week had nothing to do with the loom. Rather, I wanted to sew a canvas magazine holder for our bathroom. I got the idea in my friend Meg's bathroom; she has exactly such a thing hanging beside her toilet. Our solution for the storage of bathroom reading for the past several years has been a wicker magazine basket. But a certain small someone in our current home has made it his mission to destroy every single magazine within it.

our bathroom:
the basket beside the pot

trouble baby on a mission

"yes, I am a trouble baby"

One aspect of our discipline philosophy is that we try to keep our house a positive, "yes" environment. We eliminate as many reasons to say "no" as possible. Thus, I believe that everything within Leo's reach should be OK for him to touch and play with (hot wood stove not included, of course). Thus, if any magazines were to be saved, it was time to move them out of his reach.

I wasn't really sure about how to make the magazine holder I was envisioning, but I figured we could probably just wing it. And we could. I had a large piece of green canvas, and my mom and I put magazines on top of it to see how they would fit.

We figured out how big each pocket should be by measuring the magazines. My mom let me dip into her outrageous fabric stash and select some printed canvas by Denyse Schmidt.

Next it was just a matter of pressing and sewing all the seams, and then attaching the rectangles of fabric to the green background, turning them into pockets.

I left a casing at the top and bottom of the green canvas
because I wasn't quite sure about how I would end up hanging it
and thought I might use dowels.

The finished product turned out exactly as I hoped it would.

I ended up hanging it by putting wooden slats in the casings, and then drilling through them into the wall. It works perfectly. Some have mentioned that it's not as close to the toilet as it might be, but it's really not that far . . . our bathroom is pretty tiny. It's tiny enough that it's very hard to photograph with my current camera lens, so this is the best I could do of the final result (the toilet is directly opposite):


Our bathroom seems so much less cluttered now with just the simple removal of that one tattered basket (and its tattered contents). Hooray for taking advantage of wall space! And as for trouble baby? Well, he's moved on to new mischief making endeavors, figuring that once he masters climbing, he'll be able to reach his treasured magazines once again.

Leo on the kitchen step stool

Looking forward to many more productive Mondays to come.