Where have I been hiding?

When I took a full-time job in February, I knew that my free time would become much less. And indeed, it has. So, naturally, I am not crafting as much as I would like to. But, the job isn't really what is taking my time away. It's what I choose to do with my free time that keeps me out of the craft room. Every time I vacuum, do loads of laundry, clean the kitchen, organize the pantry, sort through the kids' stuff, vacuum the heater vents, or (insert various necessary and unnecessary home keeping projects), I make a choice NOT to craft. As a friend reminds me, when I make the choice to neat-freak-ify, I also make the choice not to work on my creative projects.

It's not like I don't know what to work on. Here's a list of the projects that I have been thinking of making/creating the last few months, which I haven't been making time for:

-sewing a girly-girl toiletry zipper pouch for Olivia
-finishing the kids' quilts
-making my dust-buster art for a recycled art exhibit at my job
-choreographing a dance duo with Charles playing live music (inspired by a performance we saw in Seattle for my b-day)
-writing new Violet Modestly songs
-"catching up" on my scrapbooks (I left off at April of '09)
-making greeting cards to have on hand
-filling up an art journal with my block prints
-sewing a few presents (can't say what or for whom)
-knitting another baby hat

I could go on and on. So, I hope to make better choices with my time. And I hope to find more patience when I do start a project that seems doomed from the start (like when one of my cats jumped into my paint pan of bright pink and green paint today...he is SO on my bad side right now). And, since I don't have any pictures of instructions to post today, then I am including the old stand-bys: photos of some baking I've done in the last month (peanut butter chocolate bars and rosewater shortbread with espresso).