“Remoted” – Day 244 (Sunday)

The weekend included trips from the house. As much as one of the top new hobbies is to order things online for delivery and find excuses, however flimsy, to not leave the house, it was unavoidable. Some things cannot be magicked to my doorstep. 

Saturday’s trip out of the house was a quick trip to pick up two wreaths to decorate for the wreath festival fundraiser at The Brush Art Gallery and Studios. With the wreaths in hand and a night to ponder the options, today was arts and crafts day at the BungaLowell. Coffee was poured, Christmas movies were chosen on Netflix, the scissors and floral wire were gathered, and the craft supply inventory was accessed. The living room, usually the site of lounging, became crafts headquarters for the day.

Thanks to leftover materials from years of previous completed craft projects and the optimistic gathering of supplies for other projects that never happened, there was a variety of ribbon and ornaments to choose from. The floral wire, searched for unsuccessfully last year in multiple locations including the sewing desk during the wreath decorating, was found last month in the same sewing desk while looking for something unrelated. It’s amazing how that works. 

Done and delivered.

The crafting procedure was methodical. Even before the full materials gathering, I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do, which really saved time. One wreath was completed, then the other. Several of the ornaments had glitter on them, so now the whole house has a fine coating of glitter – the floor, the furniture, my socks, and even Moose’s head. The car is probably dusted in it from the transportation leg.

Thanks to the preplanning and advance supplies gathering, it took just two Christmas-themed, formulaic movies to complete the two wreaths. Against the backdrop of "Operation Christmas Drop" followed by "A Very Country Christmas," the sweat shop operated with brief interruptions for aerobic activities. The magic of the pause button prevented missing crucial plot points during trips to let the dogs out, heat pizza for late breakfast-early lunch, and run up and down the stairs too many times to the spare room and the basement to fetch suddenly necessary items. Thankfully, this year’s floral wire find avoided the use of the hot glue gun, which really slowed things down last year with multiple accidental incidences of the gluing of fingers and the ongoing need to reload glue sticks.

The wreaths were completed and delivered in the most efficient, miraculous crafts production in recent memory. It was slightly less than 24 hours from picking up the two plain wreaths to delivering the completed wreaths. If I could only be this focused all the time with crafts projects. It is not uncommon to have projects in process covering the dining table for weeks, then packed up incomplete and shoved out of sight somewhere.