Happy Accidents

So I've been quilting like crazy the last couple of weeks. I love making flannel baby quilts. I have finished two baby girl quilts for friends as well as finishing four quilt tops (two girly ones, two boy ones) to have on hand. They will fly together when I need them for baby showers. (Pictures are coming, I promise.) ; )

I love to quilt. But I am not a mathematician. I barely got through high school algebra, figuratively kicking and screaming all the way (yes, I'm admitting my attitude didn't help). That said, I often make mistakes in figuring out how much of what kind of fabrics I need. As long as I don't panic and fall apart, I can figure out creative ways of making my quilts look really good even though it wasn't exactly what I had planned originally. And most of the time, I like it better the way it turned out in the end.

So this is a very long illustration of the whole point that I want to make. A lot of times things in our lives don't go as planned. Let me rephrase that. The majority of time, life does not fit into our tidy little schemes of how we want it to go. So what should we do with that? Panic? Fall apart? Sometimes I do, and it never helps.

I find that trying to view the "curve balls" of life as exciting challenges to overcome instead of disasters that will overcome me helps; they're accidents waiting to be made into Happy Accidents. I have to think of calming down (sometimes I have to leave the problem for a while), then coming up with as many different solutions as I can (often talking it through with someone else helps), then choosing the one that will work the best. I am often surprised at how happily my accidents turn out.

And soon I'll show you a quilt that is the happy result of a series of accidents. Now to apply all my good philosophies to dishes and scheduling around Little Man's needs...