Post-travel balance

Last week was our much anticipated and planned-for family trip to attend DCI and watch D's performance in his almuni corps..  It was not what I would call a "family vacation", in that D had rehearsals or performances scheduled for the entire week, and as a family we only spent about 24 hours together without a performance schedule.  However, while D was busy with his schedule, G and I filled our time with museums, concerts, Broadway shows, and other tourist attractions.

I dubbed it the "Magical Mid-western Music and Cultural Tour".  G's friends made us t-shirts.  It was awesome.

As with any trip, the time leading up to departure was filled with prep work, which diminished any hope of fun project time.  Throughout the prep and during travel, however, my mind's wheels were ever-turning with new ideas on projects, and perhaps more importantly... organizing my thoughts for the projects I already want to do.

Some are travel related, and I would consider to be extremely long-term projects that I have longed to have come to fruition.  

After contemplating my extensive smashed penny collection (which dates back to my early childhood) I've now come up with a display plan: create a silhouette of a state as a background, mount the pennies from that state on the background, and frame.  (alternately I could paint the state on a canvas and adhere the pennies, but I'm not sure how well they would stick)  

For my pin collection... stamp various travel stamps onto canvas, decoupage/paint over the stamps with sepia-toned paper/paint (to diffuse the sharp stamps and give the canvas an aged look) and pin the pins to the canvas, perhaps grouped by geographical location.

The idea of geographic groupings is beneficial in two ways.  A: it gives the display a sense of how much time or how many visits I've had to a particular location.  B: it makes it easier for me to check the collection over before I go to visit that place again, to avoid duplicates (this is more of an issue with the pennies than the pins, but helps in both cases)

I also have a patch collection, which will likely end up being on some kind of quilted wall hanging, but I don't have a particularly clear vision of how I want to do that, so the wheels are still turning (though I'm making notes)

I've also worked up an idea that is a grand surprise for D and a few of his friends... not that I have a wide audience but I will keep it under wraps until it is complete and presented. But I am incredibly excited about this project and it will probably jump ahead in my project queue.

While the beginning of our trip was packed with activities and events, the latter days had a lot of "hurry up and wait" moments.  I took advantage of these long pauses in activity to begin to organize my thoughts for all these project ideas - including projects I've already started - and I've listed them out in a document that is accessible through my computer and my phone.  I've had too many days where I've had some blocks of time to work on something only to draw a blank as to where to place my energies... and then by the time I go to bed an idea comes to me and I think "Oh shoot, I could have gotten that one thing done!"  I'm hoping an updated list will help avoid those lost opportunities.

I've also implemented lists for household projects... I dub these "need to do's" (as opposed to my projects "want to do's")  I've often found myself so easily consumed by the need to do's that, by the end of the day, I have no time for want to do's, because I feel like if I don't do the need to do's now, I'll forget to do them later.  By writing them out, though, I can read them all over, decide which ones *really* need to be done now, and assign the others to a waiting list... giving me a little more balance with my time to fit in some want to do's.  As I complete my typical post-trip need to do's (laundry, unpacking, etc...) I'm lining myself up to jump right into my want to do's.  Fingers are crossed that this blog will showcase great leaps of activities in the coming weeks.