Getting Closer!

And the stockings were hung on the chimney with care…

in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there!

*Oh the anticipation!*

Actually, I believe that I enjoy the season more than the actual day.  Of course the day is wonderful, but I love having a continuous celebration; Thanksgiving through Christmas is such a joyful time for me!  An extended time to really focus on thanking God for…everything.

(And aren’t the stockings pretty?  Mom made them; I uncovered an old, beautiful coverlet, but it was too small for any of our beds.  So mom and I are  putting it to good use, and will spread the “pretty” around.  Stockings, scarf, maybe a throw or two.  Creating is so much fun!)

Heart Warming

I meet with a really awesome group of ladies on Wednesday morning at my place-we talk, we laugh, and most importantly, we pray. It’s a wonderful time of fellowship! A little while ago, one of these ladies decided to make a difference, so she started visiting the nursing home to talk with the lovelies that reside there. And then she had an idea; what if, as a church, we made blankets and delivered them to the residents? The idea took off and after a few weeks of cutting and writing and sewing, a crew of us from church made our “special deliveries” of personalized blankets last Saturday. It was so joyous…a time of caroling and lovin’ up on some very, very special people. The boys and I were in charge of Marietta’s blanket (whom I have written about and in whose house we now reside). I managed to snap a few sweet pictures-the light wasn’t fantastic for photos, but the memories we made were wonderful.

Our Sweet Ms. Marietta. Isn't she a doll?

caroling!

sweet Norah giving her blanket to Ruby

What Joy in Giving!

I love Ms. Audrey's sweet smile

Wasting no time in putting her gift to use!

I'm helping Ms. M unwrap her blanket. We had quite a packed house!

On Sunday, one of our church members stood up and reflected on the day and the special time we had. She also suggested that even if you have 15 minutes, stop by the nursing home and spread some Christmas cheer. Many residents do not have family, and it is so incredibly heart warming when they are given a simple “hello”. We often visit Ms. M…and being the social butterfly she is, she is rarely in her room-always out in the dining room with other residents. They all get SUCH a kick out of the boys and their faces light right up to see them smiling and putting on a show for everyone. (Boy, do they put on a show. And wear me out in the meantime!) Anyway, check in and see when craft time is-that is a great way to get to know residents. And children are such a delight to them, so bring the kids! We must not neglect those who have paved the way for us-not only will they appreciate it, but so will you!

Frozen

Check out these pictures that my dad took…I think they are gorgeous!

Mom and Dad's backyard

See that little pathway in the snow? That's the "trail" to our house. No one is currently living in the house inbetween us, so we blazed a path right through their yard. And see that porch beyond the for sale sign? That's our place.

View of the church from mom and dad's. Did you notice the "glow" from their porch? Read on!

That's my grandparents aluminum Christmas Tree, hauled across the country from the farm in New Mexico. Complete with working Color Wheel! Gasp!

Y’all, it’s officially too cold here. I think with wind chill we were supposed to be around zero degrees today. And you would NOT believe it; God is so gracious…Erick decided to check on our house in Dexter yesterday; our snowblower is in the shop so he hasn’t been up to the place in a few days (kind of need to snowblow so you can get up the driveway!) but he stopped anyway, and found that our oil tank was EMPTY. Zip. Zero. Nadda. He obviously scrambled to the gas station and bought some kerosene, enough to get the house through the night, and then borrowed his dad’s snowblower to make a path for our oil man to get there. And our precious oil guy was more than accommodating and hit the house first thing this morning. WHEW! Luckily there were no breaks or bursts or whatnot, but if Erick hadn’t of discovered a dry tank yesterday, that would have been very, very unfortunate. Thank you Lord. The house had burst pipes when we bought it, and that is not something we want to have to fix again anytime soon.

I have one more book review on the docket, I think I’ll share it with you tomorrow. You won’t want to miss it-my favorite so far!

40 Loaves

The 3rd package I received from Water Brook Multnomah included this book:

40 Loaves by C.D Baker. If you want bite-sized, this is definitely bite-sized. One short reading a day for 40 days, covering intriguing questions such as:

“Why don’t I have more faith?”

“Why am I so bored with Jesus?”

“Why are Christians so hard for me to like?”

“Why don’t I know what I want in life?”

I appreciated the honesty and the personal touches-Baker is a very entertaining author…so much so that I would have enjoyed him delving into the topics a bit more. I didn’t agree with a few (very few…maybe one?) of his opinions, but it was a great “thinking” book, and encouraged questioning, which is always a good thing. At the end of each topic, he included more questions that I think would be appropriate for a group discussion, actually. I also thoroughly enjoyed some of his prayer “quotes” at the end of each chapter…many from people who lived in the 16 through the 1800’s. (Amazing to read and see how very much alike we all are, and always have been!)

Click on the book if you are interested in purchasing…and happy reading!

Before And Afters

It’s official-we’ve met with our realtor and the house should be on the market by Monday! Finally! Actually, it sounds funny that I’m saying “finally!” when we purchased this place just last year. Good grief.

Anyway, I was browsing through some old photos last night and thought it would be fun to do a before and after post. Erick took some new pictures after work last week. My word, the memories! This might be a lengthy post, but it will mainly be pictures. So here ya go:

The Kitchen:

Before!

The eat-in area of the kitchen

We still have to add the kickboards under the cabinets. Our original plans were to subway tile the backsplash, put an open shelve under the cabinets, add crown molding...buy new barstools. But we are letting someone else take over from here!

We added a half wall between the eat-in area of the kitchen and living room. Further plans were to add built-in seating and a rectangular pedestal table.

The Living Room:

Before…

Check out this crew of scrapers! And all those layers…I still have dreams about scraping layer after layer…

After number one

After number 2 (taken from the kitchen)

The Bathroom. This one was pretty awful to begin with.

eek. We layed new tile, among about 15 other changes in this room.

The wall was half missing, and there was a *fantastic* drop ceiling. Which we scrapped. Immediately.

After

(funky shadow, I know)

Our bedroom:

yeah, even came with a dresser half way in the closet!

scraping cat pee filled carpet. awesome!

no more layers of wallpaper, no more cat pee carpet!

The Boy’s Room:

The very last layer of wallpaper in here was nursery-themed. For all of the work involved in starting from the beginning, it was actually fun to see the “history”, you know?

We actually started on this room after we moved out, so we gave it a good ol’ coat of white paint.

Downstairs Room Number One:

Filled with junk when we moved in…unfortunately unusable junk!

this was going to be my craft room...ahhh...a space of my own! We pulled up the carpet and put new flooring down in here, also.

There is also one other room across from this one, but Erick didn’t get any “afters” of it. It almost mirrors the room above, but the paint scheme is different.

Anyway, that gives you a glimpse of almost everything we overhauled.

And this will give you a glimpse of the market situation these day.

The owners before us purchased the house for $130,000.

We are listing it at $89,900

But God is Good. And Big. And will give us what we need, when we need it. Of that we are sure!

The Gift of Water

I decided to take part in Blue Monday again so I could spread the word, and what luck-this link is blue!

This idea was born in the mind of Julie over at Joy’s Hope; she is such an inspiration! In short, she decided that she not only wanted to give 10 dollars here and there to help fund wells for clean water, but she wanted to raise the full $5000 to actually build one! In order to reach that goal, she and some other incredible bloggers are putting together a raffle of sorts; donate 10 dollars to the cause, and get entered to win some wonderful crafty things. I’m excited, and I hope you are, so please spread the word!

And Happy Monday!

Christmas Treasures

I’ve had fun lately…receiving wonderful little packages in the mail! Packages containing books. I just received a new one a few minutes ago-what a delight to see this particular manila envelope arrive in my mail slot!

A bit ago I signed up to start reviewing books for WaterBrook Multnomah, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled with the first round of books I received, so I am more than delighted to give my opinion of them.

The first book is called Treasured and is authored by Leigh McLeroy:

Leigh, will you be my friend? Can you just hop on a plane and come visit me? Or vice versa? I could come visit you!

I adored this book. I have to say that I probably wouldn’t of chosen this book of my own accord, because I very often read fiction. Oh, but I enjoyed this book so much! Leigh picked out a few things that God, if He had a “treasure box”, might keep around. You know the things that you have collected all of your life, that are meaningful and have wonderful little stories attached to them? It’s the same idea, but of course God’s treasures are found in his Word, and tell of the most precious things to Him…which are his children. You and me. What I very much enjoyed about this book was the love I felt; that of God for me, but also snippets of Leigh’s personal stories. Of her life, and love, and struggles. She is so completely open and genuine and real that I immediately felt as though I’d love to get to know her in person. I wouldn’t hesitate one iota in recommending this book to anyone at all.

I also, as a HUGE bonus, received these two books:

and

God Gave Us Christmas and God Gave Us Love, by Lisa Tawn Bergren, are just what I didn’t know that I needed for the boys. I’ve wanted so very much to impress upon them the ultimate story of Christmas-that it isn’t all about Santa and presents (although those ARE fun aspects!!) but that it is about Jesus. In God Gave Us Christmas, Little Cub’s mom takes her on a journey looking for God, and they find him exactly where I find Him; in His glorious nature. There is evidence of God’s love for us everywhere if you just look around! Santa absolutely symbolizes generosity, but the greatest gift of all is Jesus. The story is very easy to understand, and Jack especially enjoys it-asks for it every night!

God Gave Us Love is a spectacular description of “love”. All kinds of love-the kind that parents share, the kind between siblings, the kind you share for your friends, and the kind that God has for us. The unfailing kind-He loves us no matter what (and I personally can’t hear, or read, that enough!) While the books are certainly geared towards the younger crowd, I appreciated their messages immensely and am truly delighted that we now have them on our bookshelf (or more often than not, right by the bed because they have been read so many nights in a row!)

One blog tour down, many to go! What a job, huh?

Stay up there, already!

Don’t you wish the leaves would just stay on the trees? They are so pretty up there in the fall, and are even pretty on the ground, but then they start to pile up. Therein lies the problem.

Beautiful! When it's a leaf, here or there.

And pine needles...let's not even get started with pine needles.

Combine the two, and you're really asking for trouble.

Maybe the boys could haul 'em all away?

Maine life ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at! Or it is, actually, depending on your sinus situation in the fall. But boy, you have to be of hardy stock to live in a place like this. Because it not only involves raking, but hauling and stacking, too.

from this...

to that.

But for me, it’s still The Way Life Should Be. (Although I could be easily enticed to move south about mid-February through, oh, April. I would have no problem with that. Just so you know.)

Vacation Part Two, and Back to Reality

As nice as it is to come home…it’s hard, also. To come back to messy houses and responsibility. To work, and changing diapers. Although it was wonderful to see Ry and Jack! We’ve never had 3 days and 2 nights away from them. Doesn’t sound like much, but it was to us!

We had grand plans of visiting Boston and venturing a little further south to visit Ikea. But they didn’t pan out; this ended up being more of a relaxing vacation, which was exactly what we wanted. It was so refreshing; our Inn was right in downtown Newburyport, MA, so we walked everywhere. Such a nice break from Motel 6in’ it every time we get away! (Which isn’t that often, really). It was hot as blazes while we were gone, so we spent a good part of our time in our room, becoming totally addicted to the Food Network. I took a few pictures; not really that many. But here we go:

our home for 2 nights

our 8 dollar lunch from Edible Arrangements...fruit salad totally fit the bill in that heat!

rooftop dining from the 3rd floor...a majority of the following pictures came from up here.

the bay

Chim Chiminey Chim Chiminey Chim Chim Cherooooo....

Erick's middle name is Lee. This boat cracked us up. It's probably "Erica", because boats usually have girlie names, but still!

the boardwalk in the evening

fun signage

The following sign caught our attention right away…is that not Ryan and Jack?! Skinny Ry with his blond hair, and little Jack with his wild mop of dark hair? We couldn’t believe it! You can actually get these signs personalized, so I think we’ll do it. Too good to pass up!

Anyway, it was wonderful to just immerse ourselves in one another for a few days. A “must-do” for all marriages. Oh, and when we came home yesterday, this shirt was waiting for me. I bought it from Union 28…because he absolutely does!

Reporting from the Soggy Northeast

Blast it.  I am so tired of this endless gray, as I sure everyone in the northeast is, by now.  I mean, what is it?  A month straight?  Ok, maybe 3 weeks.  But might as well be a year, actually.  That’s sure what it feels like.

Earlier today, I saw a bit of blue sky outside, so I said “Come on boys!  Lunch, quick, then we’ll get dressed and walk down to Big Bill’s for an ice cream.”  Unfortunately about 2 minutes later it was pouring outside.  Plan B; pop in some Charlie Bird and Ella Elephant and Philly Joe Giraffe CDs to jazz us up a bit, and partake of the Klondike Bars from the freezer.  So it’s been a good afternoon anyway, filled in with some dancing and wresting and hide n seek.  And I highly recommend these books and CDs-you can get a great deal on Amazon.

My dad uses them for his classes, so the boys get good use out of them too.  The cds are FUN.  They make you wanna boogie and belt out some tunes, which is a good thing on a day like today!  There are 4 or 5 more in the series, too.

In the meantime, Erick hopped over to our house (we are staying at mom and dad’s while they are away) to see if he could get some painting done in our bathroom and the boy’s room.  Low and behold, our practically watertight basement was no longer watertight, so he has been salvaging what he can from our sodden boxes.  Fantastic.  So much for a short, productive trip today…

Well, I hope you all are having a sunnier 4th of July than we are.  We are going to grill some burgers on the indoor Cuisinart Griddler that mom and dad own, and hope for a half-way clear sky tonight to have some sparkler fun of our own.  I don’t think we’ll go cruising to a big show tonight-we’ll be seeing fireworks in a week or two that are just a walk down the street.  And I’d rather do that than get stuck in 10:30 pm traffic somewhere. 

Have a happy weekend!