New Tree and Mary Doodle Frame

A friend sent me this new tree shape as an idea for a Christmas tree doodle on our 2012 cards. Not sure that I like it, but I'll probably color it in today and see of it appeals to me more. 

And I played around in PSE with the doodle frame I did for E's picture....worked with the masking tool to get a better fit in the frame. Much better. (This is a picture I took of Mary some months back at Hobby Lobby. I just happened to snap it in front of the LOL! sign. Ha!)

Ok - off to work! Have a good one, bloggy friends! And go check out AEDM for some creative inspiration if you get a chance.

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A Day with E

Yesterday was a good day... I got to spend all of it with my girl E in Raleigh. Her boyfriend was with us, too. We went to church, had lunch, shopped and shopped some more for a new "big girl" outfit she needs for a speech on Wednesday, had dinner, and then picked up a few groceries. She's such a good girl. And I love her puppy. And her boy is  pretty good fella, too!

I took this picture just before we left for church and doodled the frame this evening.

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Happy Books

My daughter, three of her friends, and three of us moms are going through this book together. We meet about every other week and the mom’s have been alternating turns leading the discussion.

This week was my turn and the chapter was “A Girl Who Knows True Happiness.” The main point was  “true happiness is found not in your circumstance but in your thoughts.”  The chapter was long and full of lots of good things. Reading it, I envisioned each girl having a “Happy Book” she could turn to when feeling blue or angry or without hope to remind herself of the truth of God’s Word. So…. we made “Happy Books!”

Here’s the cover to my Happy Book. (The back says “Book.”)

And here are the girls hard at work:

 
The main gist of the “book”:

If you’re struggling with finding happiness, here are some things to consider -

• Tell yourself the Truth (found in God’s Word)
• Take every thought captive (get rid of those negative thoughts!)
• Agree with God (know what He loves, what He wants for your life)
• Forgive (yourself and others!)
• Trash your idols (those things that crowd out God in your life)
• Live a life of contentment (prioritize, simplify, help others, enjoy what you have)
• Find happiness on the other side of heartbreak (trust God’s plan for your life)

Here’s my page on “Take Every Thought Captive”. The girls put an illustration on each page with related verses to remind them of what they learned. You can see my whole “book” here. 

We spent a good bit of time talking about how these verses should be read in context and also that the expectation is not for us to have these happy, happy little lives. As Christians, we know there will be pain and suffering…. We will be sad and we will be hurt. But our faith in Christ gives us the ability to have a deep and abiding joy that is always flowing in and through our lives.

So, AEDM Day #2 was a fun and crafty time with some beautiful little girls I love very much. Thanks, Lovelies, for such a good evening!

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A Dog, a Pen, and a Carpet

This is Annie. Cute, huh? Seems pretty innocent and sweet, doesn’t she? She’s my daughter E’s best friend. When E comes home, Annie comes home. She’s a great dog. Really. Very snuggly. Loads of personality. So glad E has her as a roomie for college.

But….

E came home Thursday to go to The Boy and The Girl’s going away party (that’s for another post). While we were enjoying a nice conversation in another room, Annie found a sharpie pen and decided to nibble on it a bit. (Read “completely destroy it.”) On my carpet. On my cream carpet. On my cream carpet in the middle of the living room. Egads!

Honestly, when I saw it I wasn’t mad…. just astonished and without a clue as to how to clean this up. After 26 years of being a momma and cleaning up all kinds of disasters, this one had me in a quandary.

So, what did we do? Googled it! (What on earth did we do before Google? I guess I would have called my mom, maybe?)

Here’s the before picture. At this point we had used paper towels to blot up as much of the ink as we could. Then we grabbed a can of hairspray and started spraying the worst spots and blotting some more with paper towels until we ran out. I realized it was just the alcohol in the hairspray that was dissolving the ink, so E and Boyfriend ran to the store and got a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

(Sorry for the poor quality pictures. At this point, I was thinking, “Maybe I should take a picture to send to State Farm…..? Maybe this is covered under our homeowners?”)

We saturated a corner of a rag with alcohol and blotted, blotted, blotted! Then we poured the alcohol on the spots and blotted some more. (Everything said DON’T SCRUB!) The ink was coming up, …..but not totally.

So, our next step was for (brave) Boyfriend to dig around in the (scary) garage and find a can of WD-40. We sprayed the spots with that, let it soak for a few minutes, then blotted. And, yes, I couldn’t help it at that point, but I scrubbed a bit, too! (“Out, you @#%$ spot!”)

And guess what? It pretty much all came out! The two most saturated spots left a bit of bluish dime-sized spots, but they’re not terribly noticeable.

After steam cleaning, here’s what it looked like. The pinkish area is a shadow and not stain remnants. It really is pretty much gone.

I hope if you’ve come upon this post because you are panicking and trying to figure out how to get ink out of YOUR cream carpet, you’ll take a breath and see that with some alcohol and WD-40 and about 2 1/2 hours, you can most likely get most of it out.

So stay calm, get to work, and realize your carpet is just part of all that “stuff” you can’t take with you. So don’t get too upset.

Daughters and doggies are worth much, much more than carpets!

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Cardboard Fortresses

This drawing is from Mary. She drew her little friend one day while listening to Latin class online. Yes, she is her mother’s daughter! I focus better with pen in hand and doodle paper at the ready. So – I can’t really fuss with her for drawing while listening to class. I loved this little fellow and scanned him in so we could make him just the perfect size to frame and put out on our porch.

I’m reading a book about the Jesus Prayer which is mainly encountered in the Eastern Church. I came across it a long time ago in some writing (can’t recall exactly where) but often have prayed it when awake in the middle of the night and no other words will come to soothe my soul. The verdict is still out on the book, so I’ll have to let you know. But here’s a passage in the first chapter that has got me thinking:

“So we ask for mercy because we are sick with sin, and will go on sinning. Even though we are confident as beloved children in our Father’s compassion, we grieve because we contribute more to the planet’s suffering every day……. 

God doesn’t need us to remind him to be merciful; he is merciful all the time, even when we don’t ask. But unless we make a habit of asking for mercy, we forget that we need it. Ego builds a cardboard fortress that humility must, every day, tear down….. 

The process of healing takes a long time. Even as we see reasons for hope, we simultaneously gain better understanding of how far down the roots of sin can go. It would be devastating to see the whole truth about ourselves all at once. Our compassionate Lord brings us along gently, allowing some blissful ignorance. Each layer of the onion is shed at the right time; we encounter the next truth about ourselves when and how we can bear it, as our loving Lord knows best.” (From The Jesus Prayer”)

I loved this image of our ego building a cardboard fortress. We live life and go along and nothing really bad is happening and we think, “Oh, I’ve got this life thing handled. Look at me, World, if you want to see how it’s done!” We so quickly forget we need mercy, or help, every moment of every day. And so we need that dose of humility to tear our flimsy fortress down.

The healing dose may come in that hurt look you get from a friend after a harsh word, from the bumbled-up conversation you tried to have with your child to correct their path but in which you only beat them down and made things worse, or from the realization of how easily that little white lie rolled off your tongue and now you find yourself building yet another lie to keep the first one protected.

And that’s just a few humility-builders I thought of in the seconds it took to type that paragraph. There are so many, many more. Thank God He is gracious and does indeed bring us along slowly, showing us our sinfulness layer by layer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Amen and Amen.

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Bald Head Island...

 

 Ahhh.......

 

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Update

Ah, poor little blog! You've been sitting here patiently waiting for me to pay attention to you! So sorry. It's just been so very hot and sticky here that it's been hard to find inspiration to write.

Not that there hasn't been plenty going on to write about.... Home schooling, crafting, cleaning and sorting, friends moving.... in short - life happening!

So here's a little bit of an update....

1) Mary turned 13! Hard, hard, hard to imagine! Here she is with Dad just before leaving for their  Dad/Daughter birthday date. He gave her a special ring and took her to a snazzy restaurant to eat. So this is the beginning of a tradition he started with our first girl, E..... fancy birthday dinners with just Dad for quiet time and long talks. Love them both!

2) Spammie-Ann and her mommy have been home for the last week or so on break from college. They managed to make all A's during both summer sessions and add a whopping 10 hours of credit to their schooling. Fall semester starts tomorrow! Annie says, "Wow!!"

3) How's home schooling going, you ask?

Well, pretty good, I think. The goal was to start out slowly this summer, just dipping our toes in the massively huge pool that is the World of Home School... Well, Windsor Academy is officially up and running and doing well! We're at the end of chapter 2 in Algebra I, we've almost finished the first module in Physical Science, summer reading for the virtual Omnibus class is coming along, we're reading one of the books from Secondary Omnibus list, and we've continued working on our Ephesians memory work. We've also gotten in a few more movies and discussed their worldviews. *And* Mary and I have managed to get (somewhat) into the habit of walking together.... mostly at the gym because it's been so hot. We're up to 3 miles together!

I'm learning to be patient and not so uptight about everything.... trying to focus more on the relationship and the process than on being perfect. Deep breaths, listening, and lots of hugs. God is definitely going to teach me more this year than I will ever teach Mary!

Virtual classes start the first week of September, yikes! That's going to be a step-change for sure! Here's a great informational video from Veritas Scholars Online Academy:

And now here's Mary making some observations and lab notes from our experiment on concentration yesterday. Ha!

Well, there's much more to say and many more pictures to show, but I will post more soon! This little blog has been too precious over the years to let go so I'm making a promise to do a bit better. Life seems fast and I feel slow and well.... I guess that's just the way it is right now! Lots of hats to wear and the Writer's fedora has gotten stuffed in the back of the closet. I'll be trying hard to dig it out and dust it off!

Blessings, Bloggy Friends!

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A Tid and Some Bits

The Tid – Grab a cup of coffee and your computer and go read The Girl’s article in Relevant Magazine! I usually just refer to her as “The Girl” and don’t write about her very often out of respect for her privacy but she’s been making a virtual presence for herself…. so here she is…. Mindi Jo Furby! (Cute name, isn’t it?) She has inspired me with her diligence to follow God’s calling to write for Him and navigate the publishing world. Guess what? There’s a book soon to be published! You can read more of her writing at her personal blog here. Big mom smiley face! (And, by the way, Relevant is a really good magazine and worth the time of poking around while you’re there!)

Bit #1 – Check out this “shadow artist”! How tremendously cool is this?

Bit #2 – A book that made a big impact on me when I read it years ago was The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Since Amazon has recently released the Audible App for the Windows Phone (hooray!), I’m back in the audio book business! And my first use of saved up credits with Audible was for Peony: A Novel of China. Only listened to the first 30 minutes or so, but so far, so good!

Bit #3 – List added to my Bee-Keeping book this week:

”Movies Mary & I Have Watched:”

• Groundhog Day (7/3/12)
• Life is Beautiful (7/12/12)

Mary’s schooling this year is going to be a combination of several things…. some yet to be figured out. The primary subjects I have to actually teach her are Algebra I and Physical Science. But, I want to plug in some auxiliary topics as we can like creative writing, art, cooking, and sewing. One topic I really want to incorporate in a lot of different ways is “Worldview”…. helping her learn to look at our culture through the lenses of Scripture. We’ve started this in the last two weeks by watching movies together and then discussing them. If you’re interested, here’s a great article in Touchstone Magazine about Groundhog Day.  (Some of it is a bit of a reach, but for the most part it’s a pretty good guide for discussing the movie.) I’m using these resources to choose which movies we’ll watch -

• Reflections on the Movies (We’re reading the introductory essays in this book on the history and influence of movies in addition to looking at the specific movies the author writes about.) Highly recommend.
• Movies that Matter (Very short essays on specific movies and discussion questions.)
• Finding God in the Movies (In-depth essays and discussion guides on specific movies.) Highly recommend
• Reel Spirituality (Resource for me.) Highly recommend
• Hollywood Worldviews (Resource for me, but haven’t read yet.)

The fun part is deciding what we’ll watch next! I’m not sure if we can keep up with a weekly pace when all her subjects really get rolling (she’ll be doing three virtual classes with these folks beginning in September), but right now it’s something we both look forward to!

Ok – off to do laundry and clean bathrooms and cook and just do some general cleaning-out-and-getting-rid-of today! Have a wonderful Saturday, bloggy friends!

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Working Memory

For the last few weeks I've been working on using some of my driving time to and from work for memorizing Scripture. I was a little skeptical that my sluggish brain could actually do it, but guess what?! It's working!! And is so, so very rewarding to have time to really focus on God's Word and let it seep deep in my brain. So far I've memorized my favorite passage - Acts 17:24-27 - and Romans 3:21-26. 

Then Mary....

....decided she wanted to memorize the WHOLE BOOK of Ephesians! Yi-yi-yi! What a girl! She was greatly challenged at a recent youth retreat she attended and came back saying she loved the book of Ephesians and would really like to commit it all to memory. So, being the *good* mom that I am, I've added it to our home school goals and found a fella here who had memorized Ephesians using a moleskine notebook like this....

...and dividing it up so -

And of course I said I'd give it a try too, so Mary and I are on Week 2 of our 24 week adventure to memorize the whole book of Ephesians! We each have our own little handy-dandy notebooks. *smile* 

Here's our schedule (shamelessly stolen from Mr. Brister) and our progress:

Week 1 :: Ephesians 1:1-6
Week 2 :: Ephesians 1:7-14 (currently working on!)
Week 3 :: Ephesians 1:15-23
Week 4 :: Ephesians 2:1-9
Week 5 :: Ephesians 2:10-16
Week 6 :: Ephesians 2:17-22
Week 7 :: Ephesians 3:1-6
Week 8 :: Ephesians 3:7-13
Week 9 :: Ephesians 3:14-21
>> Week 10 – Review 1-9
Week 11 :: Ephesians 4:1-8
Week 12 :: Ephesians 4:9-16
Week 13 :: Ephesians 4:17-24
Week 14 :: Ephesians 4:25-32
Week 15 :: Ephesians 5:1-6
Week 16 :: Ephesians 5:7-14
Week 17 :: Ephesians 5:15-21
Week 18 :: Ephesians 5:22-33
Week 19 :: Ephesians 6:1-9
Week 20 :: Ephesians 6:10-17
Week 21 :: Ephesians 6:18-24
>> Week 22 – Review weeks 11-21
>> Week 23 – Recite weeks 1-22
>> Week 24 – Meditate, Pray, and Rejoice!

And if you would like to memorize Ephesians in ESV, you can use Mr. Brister's already formatted pages (see download link in first paragraph of post). Unfortunately, Mary wants to memorize in NIV so we're making our own pages as we go along. If I can figure out how to post them for you when we get finished, I will. 

So, the homeschooling adventure begins! :-) More on that to come...

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A Tid and Some Bits

The Tid. Home is the place to be.

After a rash of little trips the past few months, I’m back today from the last one on my calendar until our annual beach week vacation at the end of August. And, well, I’m *SUPER GLAD*!! Since March 1st, I’ve been:

• Home to visit parents in Louisiana
• To Atlanta for work
• To D.C. with Mary for a school field trip
• To the Outer Banks to walk a half marathon
• Back to the Outer Banks for our annual work fishing trip
• To the Blue Ridge Mountains for a Writer’s Conference with The Girl
• To Winston-Salem for a Home School Conference
• To Denver for a work conference
• To Myrtle Beach (with Mary) to accompany Matt on a work trip

All really good stuff, loads of fun, but frankly too much for me to do in just 3 1/2 months! So, home is where my heart is and I’m oh-so-happy to be back in my little brown house on the hill…. even with all the projects and maintenance and cleaning and laundry to do! Wikipedia says “home” is a “place of residence or refuge.” This place is definitely a refuge for me. In honor of “home” here’s a few houses I think I would like to visit:

In Portugal -

In Yemen - 

In France -

In Poland -

In Austria -

But please do note…. these are all just places to visit! :-)

Bit #1. Mary and I were very excited that Hobby Lobby has finally opened in our town! We spent a few hours last Friday afternoon going up and down each aisle, oohing and aahing over the endless crafty possibilities. She bought yarn and a pattern to make a baby blanket for her youth pastor’s soon-to-arrive baby #2. And I finally found gray thread to make a “crochet” patch for The Girl’s favorite shirt.

 

Bit #2. I am engrossed in a novel I checked out through Amazon Prime on my Kindle: The Shadow and Night by Chris Walley. It’s a Christian science fiction novel in the fashion of C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. (Of which, Perelandra is probably in my top 5 all time favorite books!) It’s chunky – 640 pages – and I’m about 40% through (according to my Kindle.) I find myself cheering Mr. Walley on…. I sure hope he comes through and does a bang-up job at the end with this genre. I am turned off to most Christian fiction, but I think this particular genre (Christian Science Fiction) has lots of potential and is very underdeveloped. If anyone has a hope for a future and great stories to imagine, shouldn’t it be Christians? I’ll keep you posted! Oh, and if you’d like to read Mr. Walley’s view of end times theology go here. Although he clearly states he’s no theologian, he does one of the better jobs I’ve ever read of trying to explain the three views most Christians hold.

Last Bit. On the plane from Dallas to Denver last week, I had lots of time to peruse the May/June edition of Colth.Paper.Scissors. It was full of lots of inspiration. One work that really stuck with me was abstract maps by Jill Berry based on Google Maps. Hop over to her site to see her fantastic map work and read the full article on her abstract maps. Definitely a place I’ll be going back to often!

Google map of her house:


Abstract map from pan pastels:

I’m toying with the idea of an abstract of a favorite vacation spot for us – Bald Head Island. I think it would make an interesting piece of art, no? I don’t have any pan pastels but I bet I know where I can get them! (See Bit #1 above!!)

Visit Jill’s gallery, there’s lots of good eye-candy there…. like this imaginary city map she made. Makes me want to do one of my own!

Some of her work with helping people make their own “personal geographies” (see her book…. going on my “wish list”!) makes me think of the life map of mine I drew in March, 2010. The process was very personally fulfilling. I need to add to it…. much has happened in my life since then!

At any rate, Jill Berry’s work and website are well worth the gander… I just wish she had workshops on the East Coast!
Blessings, bloggy friends!

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Mother's Day

What a great Mother's Day! Coffee with hubby and #1 daughter, a wonderful service at church, all the family together for a most yummy, all-male-prepared grilled lunch, a nice comfy nap, delivered frozen yogurt snack, and time just fooling around on the computer with digital scrapbooking.

For the past few years, I've been emailing my mom photos on Mother's Day of the whole family. Here's the page I put together today:

 

Clockwise starting with the red heart: E and her pup Annie, me and George (aka Matt, hubby, best friend), Mary (love the braces!), and The Boy and The Girl (such a lovely addition she has made!).

Then I couldn't resist doing something with this photo of Mary and her buddy Erin. I just love Mary's smile and Erin laughing up at her with her missing teeth and fancy jewelry. Such sweet girls.

 

Oh! And let's not forget the gifts!!

• A honey pot
• A birdhouse
• A handmade crocheted bumble bee :-)
• "B" bookends
• A salt pinch (the first of six I need to collect for my mix-matched tableware)

Pretty good, huh? And let's not forget.... my best friend - and the one without whom I wouldn't be a Mom!

Cute, huh? I love the crinkly laugh lines he's getting around his eyes. We've had a lot of laughs in our years together! :-)

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Did I Tell You That....

.... me and a few friends walked a half marathon in the Outerbanks April 22nd? I had been training for it for a while but the last month or so was a bust. My walking buddy hurt her feet and couldn't really walk and, let's just be honest here.... I didn't have the self-discipline to take those long walks without her (ahem) encouragement.

The Thursday before the race I traveled to DC to be with Mary and her class on a field trip. It was a great time. (A whirlwind, actually! Three Smithsonian museums, a Capitol tour, a walk through *all* the monuments on the Mall, the National Archives, and the National Zoo! All in basically a day and a half....whew!) So Saturday, as the class was heading to the zoo and then off to catch Amtrak home, I drove down to Kill Devil Hills to meet up with hubby and friends.

Then I found out it was supposed to rain the next day.

All day.

And it did.

Indeed.

It.Rained.Every.Single.Step.Of.The.Way.

But I finished, as did all my walking buddies. Me and two others finished at 3 hours and 9 minutes - significantly better than my last half-marathon adventure. Not bad - especially walking the whole way in the rain! I'd still like to walk one in under 3 hours. Not really sure if that's doable or not.

So, here's a shot of the start line.... I shall abstain from posting my photo at the finish, though. Three  hours of rain, not eating anything (dumb, dumb, dumb) and foolishly galloping across the finish line the last tenth of a mile or so.... Well, let's just say all that makes for a not-very-attractive photo! 

Note the poncho's and rain jackets. :-)

Now I'm off to find another race to start training for.... I need goals!! Mary says she'll train and do the next one with me. How fun will that be!?

Oh! And the hubster? He ran it in just a little over 2 hours - without really training for it. Makes me want to puke!!! Some people are just made to run, I suppose! I can only hope at least one of my three children have gotten that gene....

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