A Balanced Life?

I am taking a personal finance class that is being offered through my church's Self Reliance program.  (For those of you who don't know I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And we are very big on being self reliant) I decided to take this 12 week course because I figure I will never have my quilt shop if I don't get my personal finances under control. Once I get them under control I can start look at taking the starting and growing a small business class.  

This class is spiritually based as well as temporally based. In other words we also deal with the spiritual side of finances.  Not just handling money but setting priorities.  There is a gospel foundation principle every week. One week it was counseling with the Lord about our finances. Another week it was paying tithes and offerings. This week's foundation principle is Living a Balanced Life.  In other words getting your priorities straight. Not all work and not all play. Time with Family.

What a challenge to get right as peanut season is starting up.  Top that off with kicking off another segment of my project and I am one busy lady at work.  I haven't worked less than 9 hours in the past 2 weeks, except for the 2 days I had to leave early due to my asthma.  I definitely don't feel like I am living a balanced life. 

Part of the weekly challenge is picking things to work on to live the principle. I have long felt that I never have enough time to do what I love (quilt, sew and craft). It would have been really easy to go that route. Carve out time for myself. But after a little reflection I came to believe that was not truly a good priority. So I re-evaluated.  I chose to spend time with the grand children. By that I mean doing something meaningful, not just letting them entertain themselves.  Another one I chose was to spend time with my kids and not hole up in my room.

Now the tricky part was going to be how to do that and still get some quilting in. Yesterday, I started involving Rorie in quilting. Rorie is 3 years old and pretty smart for her age. We decided her baby doll needed a quilt. I have a bunch of 4 inch squares that I have gathered over the years.  I let Rorie go through them and pick out the ones she liked. After going through them, she chose all of them, I needed to redirect her. Since her favorite color is pink, we went through the blocks again and started pulling out the ones with pink in them. Then Rorie sprayed them with starch and I pressed them. it was a bit of a sticky mess. We have 61 pink print blocks and 61 neutral print blocks ready to start sewing.  Later this week, (when I get home from work and she is here) we will start sewing pink blocks to neutral blocks. Rorie is really excited about this project and by doing it in bites, she will stay engaged in it. 

As for my other quilting projects, I am currently marking the layer cake for the second Ribbon Dance Quilt.  I ended up buying a new ruler to do it.  This ruler is 3 inches by 18 inches. It is long enough to go diagonally across the layer cake. It is short enough to make it easier to handle in tight spaces. I had one but I can't find it.  Emerson has been rearranging my studio again.  I just need him to understand my organizational style. Then maybe him putting things away will not be so traumatic for me. He likes to put things up but not where I want them. He tends to move things around in my studio to suit his likes. So I am missing some things. I need to clean up the studio again anyway, so I am sure I will find them.

That is about it for this week.  I have some homework to do for my class and I am behind.  I need to get on top of it.  Are you living a balanced life? What can you do to bring more balance to your life?