Bucket list - and the benefits of living in AL

So last fall for the first time in my life, I sewed something:

Thanks to a wonderful new friend who noticed my curiosity about her own sewing projects and offered to teach me. This meant giving up 4 of her precious 8 hours a week of kid free time. Her husband is deployed to the Middle East. It also meant being VERY patient because I'm so slow, prone to forget important things like the measurements, and I am rather chatty. Thank you, Becky. I don't know if you realized it at the time - but it was just about the best birthday week activity I could have had! (Short of a vacation with my man of course.)

Can you tell I'm gritting my teeth?

Now I have such friends in California. Fabulous, fun and giving friends. One in specific who has offered to help me before. But here's the difference of living in Alabama. Here my friend lives 5 minutes away (as do my many, many other new friends). In CA my friend who offered to teach me to sew lived 50 minutes away. My new friends here were made so quickly, but many of my friendships in CA took quite some time to develop. People here are so open. And they are conveniently near by. And life is conveniently at a slower pace where there is time to stop and learn something you've been really wanting to do.

I'm still grinning here at the beginning.