A little bit obssessed with…possibilities

I had thought that I was going to write about the garden again this month. A few things have been happening there, but I am sure your excitement to read about the emerging of teeny tiny little seedlings won’t match my enthusiasm for seeing them. Particularly as I was rather…gung-ho about broadcasting the seeds, and now I am not too sure what is emerging from the soil.

It will be a lovely surprise in due course, for me, and, I hope, you too.

I know that you’re just as invested in these seedling’s success as I am. They are either: nasturtiums, cornflowers or ranunculi

So, while the seeds are doing their own thing, on their own timeframe, I have been busy chasing the concepts of side-hustles down their respective rabbit holes.

Just looking around our house this evening, you can tell that we are a family who love the possibility of making something out of nothing. We have piles of creative projects in various stages of their life cycle.

During the Covid days I bought myself a Cricut machine; it's a marvellous contraption and can cut vinyl, card and paper and has other wondrous features. I enjoyed it immensely at the time, but  like so many of these things, its appeal wore off, and it was put in the back of the cupboard where it remained for some time. A few weeks ago I pulled it out with the intention of selling it on. Giving back to Facebook Marketplace, as it were.

It was at this point that I discovered that my marvellous machine’s rubber rollers had perished, and along with those, any hope of selling it. Undeterred, I found a way to replace those rollers, and within days, I had mentally taken the machine off the market and designed a whole host of items to use for my gatherings.

With renewed enthusiasm, I designed menus, place cards, gift boxes, greeting cards and stickers. ‘Stickers?’ I hear you ask, almost incredulously. To which I say, ‘But, yes, of course.’

Menu card made for my Dad’s birthday lunch. The Cricut lives again

Listen to my reasoning. 

I remember the sticker collecting craze of my youth - it must have been in the mid-1980s, and I can almost smell the vinyl of those stickers. They were no more than bumper stickers that would adorn the rear windscreen or the chrome bumper bar of the cars of the day, but they were in hot demand. I don’t recall many of my collection, but a treasured one was from the Adelaide Zoo as it was silver and may have had an image of a zebra on it. It was glorious, and made me happy. But I find that it’s rare to find a sticker that makes you unhappy. I am sure they must be out there, but I have not encountered them, and I am in no rush to do so.

So, stickers it has been. I want them for my calendar - a small pizza to indicate family pizza night, or a pair of secateurs to remind me to get into the garden. On reflection, maybe I should make a garden hose instead…. A sticker of a notebook to remind me to sit and plan my next gathering. I have designed them and now the trick is to get them to print out the way I want them to. But for me, this is the joy. The joy in learning. The joy in creating, and yes, the joy in success, when (if?) that comes. Then the joy of seeing a little sticker that I made on my calendar.

I made stickers to use on my calendar to help me plan my month; pizza night, gardening day, baking day. I now need to design a glamourous one to help remind me of the happiest days of all; Pay Day.

Not being content with that, I have also pondered becoming a User Generated Content creator, or UGC creator for short, but those ponderings lasted less than half a day. I have neither the time or sustained enthusiasm for such things.

And then this week I found myself watching a course about subscription box businesses. Within ten minutes I had mentally created an entire series of Gathering Boxes.

There would be a Strawberry Festival edition, complete with recipe cards, strawberry tea, picnic invitations and a jar of Beerenberg raspberry jam.

A Soup Weather edition featuring soup recipes, conversation cards and planner pages.

A Christmas edition. An Autumn Harvest edition. A First Bloom edition inspired by Perdita's garden.

And oh so many more.

Thankfully, reality intervened before I reached the stage of researching cardboard suppliers and freight contracts.

How cute would a Soup Weather Gathering box be? I had fun pulling this together for a photograph. I think doing it as a business would somehow take the fun out of it.

The truth is that it isn't really the side-hustle itself that appeals, rather, I think it's the learning. The challenge of figuring something out. The satisfaction of taking an idea that exists only in my imagination and seeing whether I can bring it to life.

Perhaps I am not obsessed with stickers, subscription boxes or Cricut machines at all. Maybe I am just obsessed with possibilities.

The possibility that I might learn something new, or  the chance that an idea might become a project. Or simply that tomorrow's rabbit hole will be even more entertaining than today's.

For now though, that is more than enough. The knowledge that I am still capable of dreaming and making lets me know that there is more joy to be had, and that I can create it. I certainly do know that I can make a mess during this phase.

What are you obsessed with this month? Let me know!