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I couldn’t come up with anything terribly creative this week. I did see a house number of 222 today — but I would have felt a little awkward taking a picture of someone’s house number and having them wonder what in the world I was doing 🙂
My husband likes to collect these:
I always thought Thomas Jefferson looked a bit like Buddy Ebsen here.
Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts “Show and Tell Friday” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky. Guidelines are here.“
Some of you know that I have lamented about not having any heirlooms passed down through the family. Well, a few months ago I was talking to my aunt on the phone, and she asked me if I would like to have a bedspread crocheted by my great Aunt Dorothy (or Dot), who was my mom’s namesake. Naturally I said yes, I’d love it. Then I forgot about it. But it arrived last Friday!
I tried to drape it fetchingly over the sofa, but it was too big and heavy to drape. 🙂
I think it is at least a full sized bedspread, possibly a queen sized (I just took it out of the vacuum-sealed bag it was in tonight, and my husband is occupying our bed, so I don’t think I ought to toss it on to check the size just now. 🙂 ) It’s at least 30 years old, probably much older. My aunt said in the years since she has had it, she’s tossed it in the washer several times. I’m amazed at the great condition it is in.
I love to think of my great Aunt Dot crocheting this with her own hands and lovingly passing it down.
I do remember my Aunt Dot. She and her sister, my Aunt Ruth, were very close and I always seem to remember them as a pair. They always gave the nicest gifts when I was a child. I remember when I graduated from high school I felt awkward about sending an invitation because I hadn’t been in contact with them for a while and didn’t want it to seem like I was just sending a veiled request for a present — but when they didn’t get an announcement, they scolded. I don’t remember how long ago she passed away, though she passed on several years before Ruth.
I am not sure yet whether I will use this or keep it put away for a while. I’ve avoided solid light-colored things in home furnishings with three boys in the house (who am I kidding — I tend to stain things as much as anyone else…). And they’re old enough now that they don’t even come into our room much. I do need a new bedspread, and I can just picture this with something pink underneath peeking through. I do have a quilt rack someone gave us which is stored in the attic because we didn’t have anything to put on it. I’ll have to mull that over. But I am very glad to have this in itself, but especially because it is a connection to my past.
Jesse starts school tomorrow, and he and I have been trying to get up in the mornings closer to our school-schedule time rather than our later summertime non-schedule. I’m already ready for a nap. I’m not having many coherent, much less deep thoughts this morning.
Jason comes home from CA on Saturday!
This time of year is birthday season for our family with Jason’s in July, mine and Jeremy’s in August, and Jesse’s in September. But Jason wanted to wait to celebrate his til he got home, and Jeremy wanted to wait to celebrate his til Jason got home, and mine falls naturally next week, anyway, so we’re celebrating three birthdays in one week!
We almost always celebrate birthdays as a family on the actual birthday, even if there is a party with friends some other time. So even though Jeremy wanted to wait til Jason got here to celebrate his birthday, it seemed a little sad to not to anything on the actual day. So yesterday we went out to lunch at the restaurant of his choice. Then I ordered a decorated chocolate chip cookie cake to take to a church fellowship last night.
I had to scrape the icing off my slice — those things are so sweet and rich!
In addition to all the birthdays, we’re having out of town company. Jason’s very special friend of the female variety is coming up before school starts. They are not calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend — they’re still just getting to know each other. I don’t want to say too much — I don’t know if either of them reads my blog and don’t want to embarrass them or violate their privacy.
But from now through next week will be busy. I have to finish birthday shopping. I almost have Jeremy’s done. Jason didn’t give me many ideas besides gift cards, and that’s fine if that’s what he wants, but it’s nice to have something besides that to unwrap. Then there’s regular cleaning, shopping, etc., plus getting Jesse ready to go back to school, plus cleaning Jason’s room, which has been collecting dust all summer (and getting the stuff set aside to give to Salvation Army off of his bed, where I’ve been putting things as I sorted them all summer), plus all those extra things you want to do when company comes…
So posting may be a little light the next few days. 🙂
I had wanted to get the family room curtains done before company came — I finally got the fabric I liked, the pattern, and the lining (I agonize over most of the decision-making steps involved!) I took the fabric to the dry cleaners because you should always clean fabric in whatever method will be used on the finished product so that it doesn’t shrink after it’s made. But the girl there didn’t know if they did that, so I am supposed to call the manager this morning. I spent an afternoon searching for trim at several outlet places within a half-hour away, but couldn’t find anything that “fit” exactly (more agonizing decisions!), plus the cheapest was $4 a yard — and I need 11 yards for the curtains plus a couple of pillows. I already put a bit more money into the fabric than what I originally thought….so, I don’t know, I make make them without trim. There are a few more places to check out, but I decided I should probably put that back on the back burner and get these other things done. It’s probably more important to dust and vacuum and clean the awful burner pans on the stove than get curtains up at this point.
I’ve been needing to go to the dentist for ages. Sunday morning a filling that has been chipping off lost a good-sized piece and left a ragged edge on one tooth, which has caused a little blister on the side of my tongue. I really would rather wait to deal with this til after next week!! But I may need to see if I can get in before that. Augh. I just hate dental appointments (no offense to our very nice dentist).
My sweet bloggy friend Alice gave me this very nice award for being, as she said, “such a godly Christian woman”:
That is such a blessing and so encouraging, in one sense, that anyone would see me that way, but humbling also because I know I am so far from what I ought to be. Thank you, Alice! I’ll be thinking about who to pass this on to. In one sense I could give it to everyone on my blogroll. 🙂 But I know it’s not meant to be used quite that way. I did want to go ahead and acknowledge Alice’s generous gift, though.
On another note, there is a situation in our extended family that I can’t make public, but if you feel so led, I’d appreciate your prayers that this would work out to God’s glory and the best of all involved and for God’s wisdom to know what our actions should be. Thanks!
I’m off now to work on that to-do list…
The Booking Through Thursday topic for this week is:
One book at a time? Or more than one? If more, are they different types/genres? Or similar?
(We’re talking recreational reading, here—books for work or school don’t really count since they’re not optional.)
Quite often I’m reading through a couple of books at a time — one in each bathroom. 😳 🙂
If I am reading a non-fiction book, I almost always have a fiction book on hand, too. It takes a different mindset to read non-fiction and it’s not something I read to relax like I do with fiction.
If I am reading a classic I often have a lighter work of fiction on hand as well.
I’m almost always in the midst of some Christian fiction book.
Sometimes I’ll also make my way through a third book if I am incorporating one into my daily quiet time of Bible reading and prayer.
Jeremy turns 23 today!
Happy Birthday to my firstborn!
And thou…my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind…
I Chronicles 28:9a
Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee.
Psalm 143:8
When we travel by air or car, we always pack toiletries and medicines in an overnight case. But with either means of transportation, that case isn’t always easy to get to. So on one trip, I put some tablets of the most-often used medicines (for us, ibuprofen, Tums, Lact-aid, Claritin, Pepto-Bismol caplets, and a few more) in snack-sized resealable plastic bags, and then put all of those into a sandwich sized bag and put it in my purse for easy access. I ended up never taking it out. It was so handy to have certain medicines available right at hand when needed.
You could probably combine some in the same bag if they aren’t powdery. If, like us, you buy a lot of generics, you might want to label each bag with a label-maker (or even masking tape or blank address label — whatever you have on hand) because the generics are sometimes harder to recognize.
If you wanted it to look nicer, you could put it in a cosmetic bag.
If you only use a few medicines regularly, you could put some of each in one of those plastic day-of-the-week pill sorters.
Another quick tip: if you fly, you probably want to keep prescription medicines with you rather than in your checked luggage in case your suitcase ends up taking a different route. 🙂
As always, you can find a wealth of great tips and add you own at the site of our WFMW hostess, Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer.
This isn’t my tackle — my husband and oldest and youngest sons have done all the work. I’ve just been a consultant and encourager. 🙂
We’ve been needing to redo our shower for a long time. The tiles kept coming a little loose, though my husband had reapplied grout several times, and water had gotten behind the tiles enough to warp the shower walls. This close-up shows it a little bit.
I really don’t like tile anyway. We constantly have to battle mildew in this bathroom, and it tended to settle in the grout easily. Plus I didn’t like the color of the tile here. We wouldn’t have redone it just for those reasons, but I was glad to have the opportunity to change it.
So here’s the “before” picture:
Removing the old tiles:
I didn’t take a picture of the most disheartening part. After getting the tile off, Jim saw the sheetrock behind it was water-damaged and needing to be removed, but he was expecting that. But the insulation behind that was wet and a couple of joists were rotted. It looked really awful at that point. Thankfully Jim know how to take care of those things. This is the end of Day 1:
This was the debris taken from the bathroom: old tile, wet insulation, etc. They took all of this to the dump.
The next day they began putting the shower surround in.
This is the end of stage 1, the shower ready to use:
I like it!!
As you can tell, the wall above it isn’t finished. The shower surround is shorter and not as deep as the tiled shower was. We talked about trying to patch up the wallpaper but decided to remove it instead. That room gets so humid, even with a fan, and some corners and seams were peeling anyway. That’s what the boys are working on this week while Jim is at work.
I need to go look at paint colors and maybe a border or stencil this week. We’re hoping to have it all done before out of town company comes a week from today. 🙂
This is in the category of “You don’t get everything you want while renovating” — unless you have a lot of time and money — or the Extreme Makeover: Home Improvement people are doing your renovations.
We had wanted to replace the old faucet. It was still functional, but it was chipped and pockmarked. But when Jim took it off and took it to Home Depot to compare, there were no other faucets with the configuration in the back that was the same. Jim felt he didn’t know enough about plumbing to cut and redo the piping, and to call a plumber in would have added a lot more cost and time. He had already taken off a couple of days to work on this, so he’d lose that window of time if we had to bring a plumber in, and we had to get the faucet figured out before we could do anything else. So we decided to keep this one. He filled in the holes and tried to paint the chipped panel with chrome paint, but he said it looked worse, so he took it off. He was able to take the knob apart and clean it thoroughly — some mildew had gotten in where it couldn’t be reached — so it looks much better now. We might get a little soap dish to cover up the chipped part, even though we don’t really use that shelf for soap.
We were without use of the shower for two days. The first day, the boys just went without, Jim washed his hair in the kitchen sink, and I washed my hair there, too, and had a little “sponge bath” in the bathroom. The next day was Sunday, and of course, we were wanting to shower before going to church. Jim had “points” for a certain hotel (kind of like frequent flyer miles, accumulated during business trips), so we rented a room for the night, and Jim and I took showers then. The boys went swimming in the hotel pool for a bit. Jim and I like our own bed, so we came home to sleep, but let the boys have the adventure of staying in the hotel overnight. They had showers the next morning and we joined them for the hotel breakfast, so it was a nice little treat. I was so glad for a real shower after just one day of missing one. I remembered one of our missionary friends to a primitive jungle area talking about the only place for bathing being the river, and, since the people were so curious about everything they did, they came out to the river with them (along with watching them eat and almost every other aspect of their lives). So they kept their clothes on and soaped up underneath. 🙂 I’m sure after a while they probably rigged up something, and the people got more used to them and didn’t watch every move. But remembering that did make me appreciate how easily we can get clean in this country.
By next week I hope to have pictures of the finished room!
Sometimes it seems easier to trust the Lord for the big trials of life rather than the little things.
When a major crisis comes my way, I realize it’s too big for me. I’m acutely aware of my need for God’s grace and strength. I feel myself sinking, like Peter, and cry out for help almost instinctively.
But when I encounter some smaller provocation — when someone interrupts what I am doing; when I’m trying to wrap up computer time or I’m just logging in for something real quick and my computer decides to run extremely slowly or “time out” on the connections I am trying to make; when I am running late to an appointment and hit every red light along the way; when another driver cuts me off; when I am in a hurry at the grocery store and find the shortest check-out line only to have the customer in front of me encounter some time-consuming problem; when I give dinner a quick stir and slosh red sauce over the side of the pan and onto the stove, the floor, and/or myself — then too often I react with simmering impatience, carnal anger, unloving harshness.
Amy Carmichael once wrote:
The hardest thing is to keep cheerful (and loving) under little things that come from uncongenial surroundings, the very insignificance of which adds to their power to annoy, because they must be wrestled with, and overcome, as in the case of larger hurts. Some disagreeable habit in one to whom we may owe respect and duty, and which is a constant irritation or our sense of the fitness of things, may demand of us a greater moral force to keep the spirit serene than an absolute wrong committed against us. (1)
“Well, I was provoked.”
Love…is not easily provoked. I Corinthians 13:5
“I’m only human.”
Yes. That’s the problem, not an excuse. With the exception of One, all humans have a sinful nature. Our natural reaction is likely to be a selfish one. As Christians we’re called to have a supernatural reaction.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Galatians 5:22-23.
Even on the highway or in a check-out line.
Thank God there is forgiveness with Him, His mercies are new every morning, and if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness(I John 1:9).
But how can I get the victory over wrong reactions to little provocations and react in a right manner the next time?
The day had been an unusually strenuous one, and I was really very tired. Toward evening, a crowd of women burst through the living room door and came trooping in before I had time to meet them outside. One woman set herself out to make things unpleasant. She was rough and repulsive and– well, just indescribably filthy. I paid no attention to her except to treat her as courteously as the rest. But when she put both hands to her nose, saying loudly, “Oh, these foreign devils, the smell of their home is unbearable!”, my temper rose in a flash and, turning on her with anger, I said, “How dare you speak like that? Leave the room!” The crowd, sensing a “storm,” fled. I heard one say, “That foreign devil woman has a temper just like ours!”
Now, I had not noticed that the door of my husband’s study was ajar, not did I know that he was inside, until, as the last woman disappeared, the door opened and he came forward, looking solemn and stern. “Rose, how could you so forget yourself?” he said. “Do you realize that just one such incident may undo months of self-sacrificing, loving service?”
“But Jonathan” I returned, “you don’t know how she — ”
But he interrupted. “Yes, I do; I heard all. You certainly had reason to be annoyed; but were you justified, with all that is hanging in the balance and God’s grace to keep you patient?”
As he turned to re-enter his study, he said, “All I can say is I am disappointed!”
Oh, how that last word cut me! I deserved it, yes, but, oh, I did so want to reach up to the high ideals he had. A tempestuous time followed alone in our inner room with my Lord. as I look back now, it was all just one farther step up the rocky hillside of life — just climbing! (2)
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16.
___________
(1) Houghton, Frank. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur. (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1983), 86-87.
(2) Goforth, Rosalind. Climbing. (USA: Bethel Publishing), 45-46.
A few years ago when our church was putting together a cookbook, one lady submitted these two “recipes.” I thought they were cute but also had a good bit of truth to them. I don’t know how old they are or where they originally came from. I have seen variations on the first one.
How To Preserve a Husband
Be careful in your selection. Do not choose too young, and take only such varieties as have been reared in a good moral atmosphere. When once decided upon and selected, let that part remain forever settled and give your entire thought to preparation for domestic use.
Some insist on keeping them in a pickle, while others are constantly getting them into hot water. Even poor varieties may be made sweet, tender, and good by garnishing them with patience, well sweetened with smiles, and flavored with kisses. Then wrap well in a mantle of charity. Keep warm with a steady fire of domestic devotion and serve with fruits of constant devotion and milk of human kindness. When thus prepared, they will keep for years.
Preserved Children
Take 1 large field, half a dozen children, 2 or 3 small dogs, a pinch of brook and some pebbles. Mix together; put them in the field, stirring constantly. Pour the brook over the pebbles; sprinkle the field with flowers; spread over all, a deep blue sky and bake in the sun. When brown, set away to cool in the bathtub.
(Graphic courtesy of the Graphic Garden)
(Graphic courtesy of Snapshots of Joy)
