Thanks to those who prayed for my family in Texas through Ike’s onslaught. They lost power around 2 a.m. the night it hit, but otherwise had no damage. I don’t know yet if the power has been restored — I haven’t been able to get in contact with them since Saturday morning, so that may be one indication they haven’t.

I wanted to share some interesting posts I’ve found recently:

How to help a family in a medical emergency at Adventures In Daily Living, HT to Rocks In My Dryer. Excellent advice.

How Christan Women Can Mentor and Be Mentored.

Books Build Character by The Common Room. Yet another excellent reason to read.

The Common Room has also been keeping up with several posts detailing the media feeding frenzy since Sarah Palin was named McCain’s running mate. It’s just amazing.

Semicolon has lots of links and resources to say Goodbye to Summer, Hello Autumn.

I found TipNut via Susan at By Grace. This post shares several 25 household tips. Some are outdated, like the one about cords on packages — I don’t think the Post Office allows cords or twine any more, do they? But most are really good. I’ve enjoyed subscribing and getting tips every day ranging from household tasks to craft ideas, like this one about organizing craft supplies and sewing rooms, and this thumb pincushion looks sooo handy.

Sew, Mama, Sew! has a great tutorial on sewing lined curtains, just in time! I hope to start mine this week. There is also one for cut-out curtains — embellishing plain panel curtains with designs cut out from other fabrics.

Here are some other neat crafty ideas:

This quilted potholder looks like a great way to try beginning quilting, as well as tying together a color scheme.

The cutest doorstop I have ever seen.

Christmas mitten ornaments out of felt.

A button/toile reversible heart ornament (the bottom half of the page).

A lovely and a little different fall centerpiece from Hydrangea Home.

Finally, I have been remiss in acknowledging the kindness of blog friends who have sent awards my way.

Carolyn at Talk to Grams gave me this Proximidade award. “To translate the gift from Portuguese to English, it means:”This blog invests and believes, the proximity” [meaning, that blogging makes us ‘close’ -being close through proxy] How awesome is that?? They all are charmed with the blogs, where in the majority of its aims are to show the marvels and to do friendship; there are persons who are not interested when we give them a prize, and then they help to cut these bows; do we want that they are cut, or that they propagate? Then let’s try to give more attention to them! So with this prize we must deliver it to 8 bloggers that in turn must make the same thing and put this text.”

I clicked back through several links trying to discover where this originated, but gave up after a while. It evidently began with someone who speaks Portuguese. 🙂

I’m going to pass this on to Alice, Jen, Susan, Susanne, Bet, Lizzie, Ann, and Melli. I know a couple of these ladies don’t “do” awards, but I still want to acknowledge them.

Mindy passed along this award:

Thanks Mindy! I passed this along to others a while back, so i won’t do so now.

Alice gave me this Super Commenter award:

as well as this bunch of tulips:

Mama Bear gave me this:

I’d like to pass this one on to Janet at Across the Page, Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home, Ivory Spring and Cindy Lou at Skip to My Lou.

Thank you all so much for thinking of me! You are very kind! Forgive me for taking too long to acknowledge some of these.

And now I think I am caught up! Have a good Monday!