Macarons and Milestones

Hand-sewing hell.... 

Meet a macaron.  I found a tutorial on Pinterest (the place of Lost Hours) for making this little treasure and immediately thought, what fun - I love little things like this.  MiMBY Girl too relishes this kind of stuff and is quick to claim anything that surfaces.  I did neglect to think of the challenge of hand-sewing, having some crazy impression that much of the sewing could be done on the machine.  Really, what was I thinking.  It was my proclivity for scanning instructions instead of reading in detail that caught me out again. Don't get me wrong, I like hand-sewing and I don't mind time-consuming and fiddly.  I live for time-consuming and fiddly.  But everything I machine sewed, and I thought I'd prepare to make five of these babies (I'm a machine, I know) because why not, had to be ripped back and painstakingly reworked by hand.  The first one is always a learning experience.

My mom sent us this fabric and we've done some silly stuff with it, little stuffed dolls and the like.  Fishing through the piles of fabric, I thought a Japanese print is perfect for this kind of project.  I loved the little peek-a-boo character: 

And I had some lovely Liberty scraps for the interior. 

BUT, hand-sewing around a metal zipper is tricky at best.  I don't know where you can buy those delicate antiqued bronze zippers with the ball pulls and twill fabric like pictured in the tutorial, but I aim to find out.  A large metal zipper is stiff and uncompromising, completely unwilling to bend to my will.  We wrestled and my fingers and thimble have the battle scars to prove it.  Ultimately, the zipper was defeated and a little box that can house a ring and not much else was created.  Success!

Much like the day we were married, 22 years ago, we woke up this morning to a steady downpour of rain.  Back then, we had an outdoor wedding to reorganize in a scramble. Today, we lay in bed listening to the rain and counted our many blessings and that is truly the best start to any day, even the ones that mark no milestone at all.