Odds and Ends

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Barbara Harper

If you’ve ever seen del.icio.us referred to and wondered what it was all about, Jeremy found a video that explains it in very simple terms for non-technical people like me. 🙂

Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home showed the cutest little Keepsake Envelope Folders. They’re just perfect for small but meaningful gifts for a friend or even a “secret sister” if your church ladies’ group has that kind of program.

I am having a blast looking through the Artful Blogger party contributions, graciously hostessed by ArtsyMama. I’m maybe about halfway through. Even though I might not do some of the specific crafts shown, it’s inspiring creatively and mentally just to see what people come up with. Such imagination out there! I’ve bookmarked several, but one of my favorites is cards made from hankie designs by Yapping Cat Studio (this was what I meant when I said some of these folks are light years ahead of me, but, hey, ya gotta start somewhere. This was so inspiring and just plain lovely!) Some of my other favorites are tutorials about making decorative bows by Sugar Bear, making crepe paper ruffles by Natasha Burns, and sewing on paper by Julie. I’ll be spending free time over the next couple of days checking out the rest of them!

I don’t mind the verifications codes that some blog hosts require when you post a comment — well, not too much most days. 🙂 I know it’s a necessary step to block robotic spamming. But I do get frustrated when Blogger shoves letters all together so you can’t make them out easily like this:

Which is a v and which is a w and how can you tell what is a w and what are two vs stuck together? Whatever this was, I didn’t get it right and another (longer!) code came up. If I could send a plea to the powers that be at Blogger — please spread the letters out a bit! 😀

Booking Through Thursday: Multiples

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Barbara Harper

The Booking Through Thursday topic for this week is multiples.

Do you have multiple copies of any of your books?
If so, why? Absent-mindedness? You love them that much? First Editions for the shelf, but paperbacks to read?
If not, why not? Not enough space? Not enough money? Too sensible to do something so foolish?

I have two copies of Little Women, both hardback. One came with a set of children’s books. The other I saw at a bookstore and just loved the illustration on the cover, the size of it, everything about it. It was the type of book that you would remember long after reading it for the book as well as the story. If I had ever had daughters, probably one copy would have been hers. I am hoping someday to have a very bookish granddaughter to share these kinds of things with.

Other than that, I discovered I had two copies of a biography of William Carey — I had just forgotten I already had it. If I haven’t given away the extra copy yet, I should.

As to the “why not” part of the question — I really don’t see a need for two copies of any book unless one copy is for children and one to save and keep nice, or one is part of a set that has some value. Otherwise I’d rather the extra copy went to someone who could use it rather than taking up space on my bookshelf.

One exception would be Bibles. We have different translations as well as older copies too worn for general usage but which contain notes we want to keep.

Signs of summer in the South

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Barbara Harper

I posted this on a Thursday Thirteen last summer, but I thought of it again this week when I thought my skin was going to be flayed before I could get from my car to Wal-Mart. It’s not original with me: I received it in an e-mail a while back.

Thirteen signs of summer in the South:

1. You step outside at 7:30 a.m. and break out into a sweat.

2. The birds have to use pot holders to pull worms out of the ground.

3. Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard-boiled eggs.

4. The cows are giving evaporated milk.

5. You can make instant sun tea.

6. You learn that a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.

7. You decide the best parking place is determined by amount of shade instead of distance.

8. Hot water now comes out of both taps.

9. A parent laments, “I wish it would rain – not so much for me, cuz I’ve seen it – but for my 7-year-old.”

10. You actually burn your hand opening the car door.

11. Your biggest bicycle wreck fear is, “What if I get knocked out and end up lying on the pavement and cook to death?”

12. You realize that asphalt has a liquid state.

13. The trees are whistling for the dogs.

Artful Blogger Party

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Barbara Harper

ArtsyMama is having an Artful Blogging Party today, partly to celebrate the new Artful Blogging Magazine by Stampington & Company (in which she is featured!) and also “to applaud artful bloggers everywhere.” She encourages participants from all over the world to post anything “artsy,” from tutorials, instructions for a project, “pictures of how you display your own art or vignettes of art you’ve received from others. Anything goes… whatever artful blogging means to you.” Then go to this post and put up the information about your post as per her instructions, and she will create a link to your post. Whether or not you want to add a post of your own, I am sure you’ll be inspired and delighted by all the neat information and artsy, crafty eye candy.

I wasn’t going to post anything of my mine because I’m way out of my league here, having just ventured back into crafting after a long absence. But…I just wanted to! So here are a few of my offerings.

I’ve really enjoyed the new (to me) art form of various paper crafts that I have seen around, and I’ve just started making cards, bookmarks, and a few other things.

Here are some tools of the trade:

These are some leftover hearts from our ladies luncheon several weeks ago.

Here is a little plaque I made:

Here are a few cards and bookmarks:

The last picture came from some bookmarks we made for missionaries our church supports to use in their ministry.

I used to do a lot of stitchery and would like to start back up (after getting my eyes checked. 🙂 ) This is one of my favorite pieces, made 23 years ago when expecting my firstborn.

I loved the detail, the little raised cookies and french knot cupcakes and fringe on the blanket:

Paper crafts are definitely a lot faster!

One other craft I’ve dabbled in a little recently has been button crafts. These are my favorite products of that:

I didn’t make the plaque underneath, though I have thought of making similar ones.

For the button wreath, basically you just glue buttons on to whatever shape you want. The base can be cut our of lightweight cardboard (for something small like ornaments you could use probably use heavy cardstock). I found the heart shape just by searching for “heart shape” online and finding a coloring-book style heart. I started with flat, plain buttons and added the shaped and decorative ones on top as I filled in spaces. I used a small hot glue gun. I imagine craft glue or tacky glue would work, but would take longer to dry and work with. I glued a ribbon for hanging it on the back, then backed it with white felt (I read that some other used decorative paper for backing).

I was going to also post some favorite art around the house, but this post is way long already! I have posted some of it on my Show and Tell Friday posts.

Works-For-Me Wednesday: Greeting card file

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Barbara Harper

When I buy cards, I like to look at several in the category I’m shopping for before deciding on one, even if I like the first one I pick up (though that practice had to be curtailed when my children were small or when I was in a hurry). That led to sometimes finding more than one card I liked and not being able to decide which to choose right there in the store, so I would buy two or three and take them home and then decide. That led to having excess cards and no way to store them to keep them neat and be able to find them again when I wanted them. So I bought a small accordion file (smaller than the letter-sized and bigger than the check-sized ones) at Wal-Mart and labeled the tabs with different categories: Birthday, Get well, Sympathy, etc. I grouped baby and wedding cards together under “Congratulations” and Mother’s and Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day under “Miscellaneous,” but you could label the categories however you wanted to depending on how many compartments you have and what types of cards you usually buy.

It has helped to have cards on hand for times when I can’t get out to look for one or for when someone else in the family needs one. But even when not under a time crunch, it saves on multiple card-shopping expeditions to have some on hand. Plus sometimes stores have sales to get a card free when you buy a certain number. So now when I go card shopping I look on purpose for a few that I like and bring the extras home and store them in my file.

I have liked this better than buying boxes of all-occasion greeting cards — I usually don’t like all the cards in a particular box.

For more real-life workable tips or to share something that works for you, go to Rocks In My Dryer.

Time Travel Tuesday: Birthing edition

Posted on August 7, 2007 by Barbara Harper

My Life as Annie hosts the weekly Time Travel Tuesday and asks us this week about birthing stories.

With my first pregnancy, we had been married four years and had been wanting to get pregnant for about two. We were beginning to wonder if we should go to the doctor and check things out when I finally got pregnant. My first sign was

(click to read the rest) Continue reading →

I wonder if this kind of thing ever happens to Emeril…

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Somehow I don’t think so.

I was making chicken teriyaki for Sunday dinner and thinking that it’s pretty easy to make and wondering why I didn’t think of making it more often.

The last stage of preparing it calls for you to mix a little cornstarch with some cool water, then pour it into the chicken and soy sauce mixture, and stir for just a little while until the sauce thickens. It usually only takes a few seconds for the sauce to get to just the right consistency.

So I poured my concoction in and, instead of the gently, slowly thickening sauce, POOF — a foamy mess instantly formed and rose almost to overflow the pan. I thought, “What in the world….???” as I took the pan over to the sink to skim off the foam.

Then I realized….I had used baking soda instead of cornstarch.

If I had been really smart I would have called my kids in for a teachable moment in chemistry. When we discussed it later and my husband was explaining to them that the baking soda reacted to something in the soy sauce, my oldest said, “Just like those little volcanoes we used to make for science class.”

Yep. Neat for volcanoes. Not so good for dinner.

When I told my husband what happened (and yes, he laughed, and I can’t blame him), he came upstairs to look at it. By that time the bubbles had died down. He stirred and tasted it a little and said he thought it was ok to still use. I thought it might taste too salty, but it seemed ok. I had heard you could add a potato to soups and stews to counteract excess salt, but this was ready-to-serve except for the sauce, so I didn’t know if that would work. I didn’t have any more soy sauce to make new sauce, so I just added the right cornstarch and water concoction this time. It looked fine. It smelled terrible. It tasted way, way salty. None of us could finish our serving.

It took two tall glasses of iced tea to begin to relieve the salty feeling in my mouth. It might have helped if my tea had been sweetened.

It’s a good thing none of us is on a low sodium diet.

Parties, contests, awards, and randomness

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Jungle Mom’s Saturday Morning Cartoons about blogging will bring you a lot of smiles.

ArtsyMama is having an Artful Blogger party on Wednesday, August 8, “to celebrate all the amazing creative blogs out there.” Participants can post a tutorial of some art or craft technique, or instructions, or “pictures of how you display your own art or vignettes of art you’ve received from others. Anything goes… whatever artful blogging means to you.” Doesn’t that sound like fun? I don’t know what or if I will post, but I will definitely be seeing what others come up with.

If you haven’t heard by now, the ladies at 5 Minutes For Mom are giving away Insignia® 37″ Flat-Panel LCD HDTV, a prize valued at $799.99, courtesy of Best Buy. Can you believe it? All you have to do is go to this post, leave a comment, and create a post on your site linking to the contest post and Best Buy. I wasn’t going to enter at first because we have a somewhat similar TV, but Oldest Son reminded me he will be leaving the nest soon and wouldn’t mind a “pretty TV” as he called it. His birthday is this month, too — wouldn’t that make a great present?

Tamara at Training Hearts is having a “Pass the Button” give-away of 25 different things as a thank you to her readers. She says, “Pass the Button is a family tradition of the past where a family member would secretly bless another family member by doing a chore or deed, and then leave a pillow with a button sewn on it as a token of the deed. The principle of this is to then Pass the Button to another family member by doing a secret chore or deed and leaving the button pillow to keep the blessing going.”

Tamara also honored me with the Courageous Blogger award. Thanks so much, Tamara! My understanding is that I am supposed to pass this on to five others, so here are five who I think are courageous:

Janeen at Our Story, also known as ChupieandJsMama, has little boys with severe allergies, and I am amazed at how she handles all the details. She probably doesn’t feel very “courageous,” but if I had to deal with all that she does, I would probably crumple into a whimpering heap. I admire her vigilant perseverance in watching over the details of hers sons’ diets and providing creative alternatives for them.

Barb at A Chelsea Morning has shown a lot of courage in the last year in the face of her husband’s employment problems, which would be a trial anyway, but especially during the time a daughter’s wedding was coming up. Then facing and learning to deal with little grandson Cameron’s juvenile diabetes added another layer of pressure and concern. She has handled it all with grace, humor, and courage, and I admire her transparency in letting us in on the hard times.

Laura of My Quotidian Mysteries has just moved to Qatar! It is always hard to move to a new location, but to move to a whole new country and adjust to different customs, to set up a household without the resources you’re used to, to make new friends and find a new church — it can be daunting.

Mopsy at Lifenut is facing her third miscarriage, and my heart has been touched by her faith and her writing, especially today’s post about not having to be “tough,” but admitting it’s ok to feel hurt and to letting yourself be open to others’ comfort.

Rita at The Jungle Hut has been a missionary to Venezuela for several years but has had to leave due to the encroaching policies of President Chavez. She’s excited about preparing for a new ministry in Paraguay, but it takes a lot of courage and grace from the Lord to start all over and leave behind those you love, trusting them to God’s care and protection, knowing that the communistic influence will likely only get worse unless the Lord intervenes.

I want to add a sixth: “Lizzie” at A Dusty Frame has challenged me many times over with her walk of faith. Her husband is incarcerated but has come to repentance. Lizzie faces many challenges awaiting the time until her husband is released and is raising her son as a single mom until that time. I know she probably doesn’t “feel” courageous, either, but she shows true courage every day as her faith and endurance are stretched and replenished by the Lord she loves and depends on.

Finally, Debbie at Counting Our Daily Blessings tagged me with the 8 random things about me meme. The rules are as follows:

1. Post rules before we give you the facts.
2. Start with eight random facts/habits.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their 8 things and post these rules.
4. At the end of the blog, you need to choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names. Leave them a comment to tell them they are tagged.

I did this one a while back and received notice of this when I was working on my 100 Things post, but I am not going to check and see whether I’ve mentioned these before. So there may be a few repeats. 🙂

1. I am a self-confessed germophobe. I’ll spare you the details of how this plays out in everyday life.
2. I have to check to make sure all the doors are locked at night, even if I know someone else already has.
3. I love to play Battle Boggle on the computer.
4. In its natural state my hair looks like an old straw broom.
5. I was the valedictorian of my graduating class of 8 other students. 🙂
6. I am not nearly as organized as I’d like to be, but I have made progress over the years.
7. I am lactose intolerant.
8. I have never been out of the country — and don’t particularly want to venture over the borders at this stage of life.

This one has gone around a lot, so I am not sure who all hasn’t done it yet. But I will tag these, and if you have done it and don;t want to do it again, that’s fine: Jeremy, Bet, Rita, Susan, Janeen, Diane, Jewel, and Ann. And, as always, if you don’t like tags, I won’t be offended if you don’t participate, and if you haven;t been tagged and would like to do this, let me know!

When a little one dies…

Posted on August 5, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Tonight at church we were surprised and saddened to learn that a little baby girl, less than a week old, of one of our newer church families passed away today. She was born prematurely and developed a bowel infection that developed too quickly and extensively to be treated.

The family is grieving, naturally, but solid in their faith in God’s goodness and timing.

When I hear of a little child being taken on to heaven, I often think of a passage from one of my most often read books, Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur by Frank Houghton. There is a section quoting Amy’s writing about the death of one of their little ones at Dohnavur and a passage from a letter of Samuel Rutherford’s to a grieving mother over 200 years before which was a comfort then to Amy. I posted this last fall in connection with the death of a little boy, Canon, for whom many in the blogging community had been praying. It came to mind again today, and I wanted to share it:

You have lost a child. Nay, she is not lost to you who is found to Christ; she is not sent away but only sent before, like unto a star which going out of our sight doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere: you see her not, yet she doth shine in another country.

If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth of time that hath she gotten in Eternity; and you have to rejoice that you have now some treasure laid up in heaven…Your daughter was a part of yourself, and you, being as it were cut and halved, will indeed be grieved; but you have to rejoice that when a part of you is on earth, a great part of you is glorified in heaven…There is less of you out of heaven that the child is there.

I also thought of Jesus’ prayer, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).

We rejoice that this little one is with Him where He is, beholding His glory. We could not wish her back. That was one thought that came to me often after my mom passed away, and I missed her sorely and so wanted to talk to her again and give her a hug…but though I could wish her here for my sake, I really couldn’t wish she were here when I have some small inkling of what she is experiencing there.

Yet we are “indeed grieved” by the loss of our loved ones’ presence and fellowship. I know this child’s family will feel this intensely both now and for many days to come. A verse that someone shared with me that was a great help (I am including the preceding and following verses as well) was from Psalm 119: 75-77: “I know, O LORD, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me. Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to thy word unto thy servant. Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for thy law is my delight.”

God’s Messengers

Posted on August 5, 2007 by Barbara Harper

From A Lamp For My Feet by Elisabeth Elliot:

How can this person who so annoys or offends me be God’s messenger? Is God so unkind as to send that sort across my path? Insofar as his treatment of me requires more kindness than I can find in my own heart, demands love of a quality I do not possess, asks of me patience which only the Spirit of God can produce in me, he is God’s messenger. God sends him in order that he may send me running to God for help.