Saturday we had a rousing family Easter egg hunt up at Leslie and Rick's farm.
My sister Jenny is sooooo competitive.Afterward, we gathered at our home for a dinner of Curt's yummy homemade lasagna and Lisa's delicious Hershey pie.
We were together all day, playing games, watching the NCAA basketball tournament (my Illini won and made it to the Final Four!!) and just enjoying being together.
Sometime during that afternoon, sweet Mila slipped upstairs and into my sewing room where she prepared a surprise for me. A tender and very sweet one, but also one that made me gasp a time or two. Luckily, Mila is old enough and has had plenty of experience of being around my collection and knows to be careful. (Still, I honestly did gasp.)
As they were leaving for home, Vanessa quietly gave me a heads up that there were surprises hidden upstairs for me by Mila.
Vanessa was not kidding.
Sunday morning I came upstairs to write and went looking.
The first thing I saw was a bright pink scrap of paper tucked under my 18th century pincushion.
I also noticed that she'd chosen to tear the paper rather than use my expensive sewing shears to cut the paper! Thanks, Mila!
She'd used some of the colored ball-headed pins to make a smiling face
and then created a mohawk out of the machine needles, hand sewing needles, a pin or two, and my favorite bodkin.
Ian had done the same years ago with a regular pincushion and I keep it displayed as it still makes me smile.
I use that 18th century pincushion every time I sew so I can't keep it as is, but I took lots of pictures to help me remember it.
Looking around the room, I noticed that the sewing basket I take downstairs when cutting out patterns had a note in it.
Honestly, I don't get bored so I flipped it over anyway.
A list of things to do! Pick one a day. I will have to begin with baking cookies for my grandchildren, but the nap and reading a book are awfully appealing to me.
Looking around the room again, I had my first heart-stopping moment.
A scrap of pink paper under the hooves of my large (and expensive) Cheval Thoroughbred.
A little bit of love from the horses in my collection! No harm done. But then, Mila does know how to treat model horses. I kept repeating that to myself as I continued to look around the room.
Over on the other side of the room was a note I'd already walked past and missed.
Again, I went ahead and flipped it over.
More suggestions of things I might do, all of them service oriented. (Mila followed her own idea by writing all these notes and not leaving her name.)
And I will try hard to "be me," although I'm not sure what I should do to be me besides, well, just be me! (I think it's actually a form of the old adage, "Be true to thine own self.")
Hmmm. Some socks on the floor by some sewing supplies. Too small for Craig or me!
Two more things! A note with my name on it and another pink scrap under the hoof of a plastic (thankfully) model horse!
More encouragement for me.
Another flash of pink caught my eye, this time among my Hartlands.
Folded up and stuffed into the open mouth. (Yeesh, I never did dust my collection this past winter like I'd wanted to...)
Another note of encouragement from the horses!
I took a moment to open the note I'd found with my Weather Girls. Mila had taken a sheet off my Thanksgiving notepad and filled it in.
And Mila was not done. I've saved the three most gasp-worthy signs of love from Mila for tomorrow's post.
Like the others, they were very sweet and kind (and even tactful in their writing), but my heart beat fast and hard for some time after I discovered them.
Stay 'tooned!
