I’ve come to discover that you should beware of bright ideas. It’s like this: anytime you have a flash of brilliancy that will require work on your part, just put it away and don’t tell anyone about it. Because here’s the thing. It’s going to require alot more work than you can possibly know at that moment in time. I’m learning this through hard personal experience and through the experience of a dear friend … we’re paralleling each other at the moment and I’ll tell you about her experience because not many of you know her.

She’s one of my quilting friends. Her husband comes from a large, extended German-ish, Mennonite-ish family that’s mostly out west and every several years they have a large family reunion that even includes an auction (the proceeds of which benefit a Mennonite charity). She almost always makes a small, beautiful quilt that raises a lot of money and fuss at this auction. Well, the reunion has been held for time immemorial out at some camp in Colorado somewhere (… out west … you know … it’s past the Mississippi River, so this eastern chickie can’t be expected to remember which state it’s in 😉 ). Well, after the last reunion, my friend and her sister-in-law (who also happens to live here in this same northern VA suburb) decided all those western folks needed to come east one time … right? How hard could it be? Honestly? They’d come to the reunion (which would be at a camp in Pennsylvania), do some sightseeing, and leave … it couldn’t be that much work? And then they (my friend and her nuclear family) wouldn’t have to do that much travelling; it wouldn’t break up their summer quite so much, etc., etc., etc. Well … re-read my first couple of sentences again and again. The amount of work they’ve done on their house alone has been worth 3 trips to Colorado (or where-ever) … not to mention the stress of trying to figure out who is coming and going when, and whether or not Aunt Maude can have jello pudding, and … well … you get the picture. She is really regretting it now and yet, simultaneously, really enjoying showing off her new home state (I forgot to tell you she grew up in California) to her family and enjoying showing off the nation’s capitol … it really is a bang around the 4th.

So the next time you have a bright idea, make sure you examine it really carefully before you tell it to anyone. But even if you do, know that it will grow when you’re not looking and in ways that you cannot suppose. There will be a lot more work involved than you can know … but there will also be a lot more fun than you can imagine. And you will have a lot of good pictures and memories. So in the end it will probably be worth it. Just beware of bright ideas …