So, this isn’t really a “Mommy Blog”, but I’m a Mama, and today’s project ended up being more about being a Mama than a Project-Doer. Just keeping it real over here.

Well, there’s bound to be at least one fail every 31 Days, right?

I had the idea that I would try my hand at another clutch. My first one is still my most popular project here on the blog, and I get visitors from all over the world daily because of that one.

I wanted to thrift some blue leather to make a clutch to go with my royal blue necklace. Sometimes, I’m overly optimistic. I was sure it would be totally easy to find something made of blue leather. I would have been happy with pleather.

First, I found these boots.

Great, right?! Hard to know why anyone gave these away. {sarcasm} Real leather, although clearly not enough to make a clutch.

So I expanded my vision into using another blue fabric and adding leather touches. Still great in my mind.

My original inspiration for this clutch was this zipper – kind of random, I’m aware. It was leftover from my apron skirt, and I thought the navy would pair well with royal blue.

I cut one of the boots apart. Cutting apart a shoe is surprisingly challenging.

Well, after some quiet time in his room (he’s transitioning away from naps), BB came into the living room to hang out with me while I worked. Sweet little guy, he just wanted to watch me cut and seam rip. That’s when I heard, “Uh-oh.” I looked over to see the zipper unzipped and in two pieces.

I took a deep breath, because I know that I know NOTHING about zippers, especially ones that have been cut from another garment and are just loose at the end. BB started to get upset, and I realized that this was one of those moments. My mind flashed to Mary’s blog and her writing on living out the things we tell our kids, especially “People are more important than things“.

I was super frustrated, to be sure, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to finish my project. BB tried encouraging words, “You can find another zipper, Mama. You can go get one right now.” I bit my tongue to not say what I was thinking, that this was The Inspiration Zipper, that BG was napping and we couldn’t leave the house, that naptime was my only shot at getting this done. (Full disclosure: I may have said one of those.)

But I pulled him over to me and explained that it wasn’t a big deal. I told him it was just a zipper, that people ARE more important than things, and this was just a thing, a silly little project I could figure out later, that I know he didn’t do it on purpose, that it was just an accident. He told me he was sure I would figure something out (sweet little guy), and then he went outside to ponder. I watched him through the back window, mulling over the whole thing while he dug little holes in the dirt.

I tried in vain to put the zipper back together. I tossed it in the garbage and went in search of another zipper. Twenty minutes later, I found an orange one in one of our unpacked boxes in the garage. BB was back inside by then, to see how I was feeling and to tell me that orange is his favorite color anyway, and that he thought it would be even better than the navy one. (I’m totally crying as I type. He really is such an amazing little person.)

So we worked in tandem for a while, me on my purse, him on a snowman project.

In the end, the purse just wasn’t working. Mostly because, without it being entirely made of leather, it looked like a makeup bag, not a clutch. The zipper wouldn’t have made any difference.

So I piled everything in a box and just let it go. Maybe I’ll come back to it with a better idea in a few days, maybe not. But it’s okay. Because I always find that the lessons you learn with failure are much more important than what you learn with success.

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This post is part of a 31 day series. Find all the posts in this series here.

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