Melli is hosting an ABC photo challenge wherein we’re supposed to look for letters in common everyday things or in nature without actually manipulating anything to make the letter and without photographing the letter itself in a word or sign. We’re doing two letters a week, and this week it is G and H.

G was a pretty hard one, but I found it in the bicycle lock my husband had looped on his bicycle. Can you see it?

It’s a lower case G (sorry about my less than steady-handed drawing…):

The H I thought I had last week didn’t work — it had two crossbars. But I found H’s in several of the different types of flooring in the house. Here is one:

You can see the what other people found for the challenge at Melli‘s.

I have been wanting to do a post along with this challenge on other things I “see” in unlikely places, but I forgot to take a picture of one of the main ones, so maybe I will save that for next week.

(My Poetry Friday post is below this one)

Susanne at Living to Tell the Story hosts a “Friday Fave Five” in which we share our five favorite things from the past week. Click on the button to read more of the details.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve participated, so a couple of these things are from the weeks in between today and last time.

1. Getting these hung:

I had gotten this little cabinet on sale half price a while back at Hobby Lobby, plus a little extra marked off because the shelves inside were missing. Evidently it was meant to sit on a shelf or tabletop, because it had felt on the bottom and nothing to hang it with on the back, but I didn’t have a surface to put it on and preferred to hang it on the wall. This last weekend my dear hubby went and got glass shelves cut for it and put hangers on the back and hung it up for me. I have in it just some odds and ends knicknacks mostly given to me by my family– my other shelves were getting too crowded (even for me) and I wanted another place to put them.

This little rose shelf I just love, but the hangers on the back were oddly placed, and it was hard to get level. But my husband figured it out. There is a matching one, only facing the opposite direction, on the other side of some other little wooden curio cabinets. Don’t tell him I said this, but I am not quite sure now I like them there. 🙂 They seem to kind of get lost in the wallpaper and I am wondering if they’d look better on a solid background. But I’ll leave them for now. I think they’re really cute.

2. A fixed washer and a husband who knows how to fix things. After doing a couple of loads of laundry, the washer just stopped agitating and spinning — with a load full of wet clothes — and my husband was out of town. When he came home a few days later he figured out the switch that makes the agitation and spinning shut off when the lid is open was not making the connection it needed to in order to start up again when the lid was closed. He disabled it, so now it doesn’t stop when the lid is opened, but I don’t usually open it during the cycle anyway. Thankfully I didn’t have to make a run to the laundromat in the mean time.

3. Winning basketball games! Jesse’s JV team had been steadily improving but hadn’t had any wins until the last couple of weeks. Now they have two! That’s always encouraging.

4. Root beer. Because of a heart rhythm problem I have to be decaffeinated. At home I drink Diet Decaf Pepsi, but you can’t find it in restaurants (the decaf, anyway — you can find diet drinks). I am not crazy about Sprite and 7-up but will drink them some times. But root beer is also decaffeinated! And there are just a few places in town that sell it. Every now and then when I am out running errands I like to pick up something to drink and regularly pick up root beer at drive-throughs. Oddly, I am not that crazy about it at home — the bottled kind seems almost too sweet there. But I like having that option when I’m out. (I know, I know, I could and should drink water….but I like the fizzy stuff.)

5. Lotion! Without it I would be a dry, cracked, itchy, flaky mess, especially this time of year.

Thanks, Susanne, for starting and hosting this!

Smiling Sally hosts a Blue Monday in which we can post about anything blue — pretty, ugly, serious or funny — and then link up to other Blue Monday participants.

I love the I Can Has Cheezeburger site — it’s often the last thing I look at before I log off for the day. Most of the pictures are cats, and I am not particularly a cat lover, but often the captions are hilarious. They do use other animals as well. This one cracked me up the other day:

It reminded me of a painting a friend from a former church did for me before we moved away. That was a pretty small church, and this lady was the only person who did any painting. She was also the primary “crafter” in church. So she couldn’t make anything for her “secret sister” because that would give away her identity. She instead sometimes made something nice after identities were revealed as a thank you to the secret sister who gave to her.

So the year I was her secret sister she gave me this painting she had done herself:

I know I have shown this for Show and Tell Friday, but I don’t think I have shown it here. I love the fact that she did this for me, and I love the dogwood blossoms: two of the houses we have lived in have had dogwoods. She said the bird came out (unintentionally) looking like it could peck someone’s eye out, though I don’t know if you can tell it here, as the picture is a little dark. But that’s why the above picture reminded me of this one.

I hadn’t thought of it before, but it is kind of funny that the bird’s expression doesn’t match the verse she wrote: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17). She added the verse because she said it reminded her of me, though it is actually speaking of wisdom. I hope I have gained and display wisdom, pleasantness, and peace, though I assured her I am far from walking in any of those elements perfectly. But maybe this little birdie’s scowl can remind me of what I look like when I am not exhibiting peace and pleasantness!

Happy Monday to you! More Blue Monday participants for today can be found at Sally’s.

Susanne at Living to Tell the Story hosts a “Friday Fave Five” in which we share our five favorite things from the past week. Click on the button to read more of the details.

I’m thankful for this meme because I’m not naturally a positive-thinking, look-for-the-good type of person. While I might originally think it was a blah week, nothing bad but nothing spectacular, when I look back for my favorite parts of it, often I find many more than five highlights.

1. Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

Those peanut butter kiss cookies converted to bar cookies, so you don’t have to do all that rolling of dough into balls, with the addition of mini chocolate chips. I saw the picture and cut the recipe from a Land O’ Lakes margarine box several days ago and just made them last night. Scrumptious. The recipe is here. (The online recipe says to use butter, but the one I cut out says margarine, which is what I used. I also used smooth rather than chunky peanut butter.)

2. Hearts in store displays and online in preparation for Valentine’s Day. You know I love pink hearts. Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays, and I love seeing the displays and ideas for it. Some I have found online recently are here (Valentine’s Day Ideas, Crafts, Decorations, and Activities) and here (tree of hearts).

3. Nights off from cooking. Jim grilled hamburgers Saturday night, we ate out due to a basketball game Monday night, my boys cooked dinner Tuesday night, and we ate at a pizza buffet for a school fund raiser Wed. night. So I have had a nice, unexpected break from dinner duty this week.

4. Good mechanics. Both my husband’s car and mine needed a little work this week — nothing major — but it reminded me that we’d had trouble finding places to take our cars when we first moved here. Tried different people and places and were less than pleased. Then a man at our church mentioned that he went to this one place, and we’ve tried it and have been going there ever since. It helps immeasurable on many levels to deal with people that are both knowledgeable and trustworthy.

5. New hymn. I’ve mentioned this twice earlier this week, but I wanted to share with the “fave five” folks, too, a new hymn titled “My Jesus Fair” written by Chris Anderson. You can find the full text of the hymn here and hear a sound clip here. The first verse and the refrain:

My Jesus, fair, was pierced by thorns,
By thorns grown from the fall.
Thus He who gave the curse was torn
To end that curse for all.

O love divine, O matchless grace-
That God should die for men!
With joyful grief I lift my praise,
Abhorring all my sin,
Adoring only Him.

Bonus:

Heat at the push of a button. It’s been really cold this week, and I am so glad I can just turn up the thermostat rather than having to haul in wood and keep a fireplace going.

Learning how to make ♥ on the computer. Smiling Sally asked her readers how to do that and one said you push “Alt” and the 3 on the keypad to the right, and voila!! I am always tickled to learn something new — especially new and easy! — on the computer!

You can find other people’s favorite parts of the week or add your own at Living to Tell the Story.

Smiling Sally hosts a Blue Monday in which we can post about anything blue — pretty, ugly, serious or funny — and then link up to other Blue Monday participants.

I saw this at our local Christian bookstore and loved it. My husband got it for me this last year for Mother’s Day.

Before the holidays I saw a meme going around to list seven things about oneself — one had little-known things, one had weird or quirky things, one had random things. I can’t remember if anyone tagged me (and if so, forgive me, I’ve forgotten who) or if I just thought it might be fun to do. But I’m combining all these various types of facts into one list.

1. In the “You might not know…” category, I seem outwardly to be a mild-mannered librarian sort (I actually was a librarian in college), but I can be very competitive in games. Not cutthroat — but competitive. At least in games where I have some kind of skill.

2. Speaking of games, in the “quirky” category, I seem to have a penchant for getting three “I’s” in Scrabble trays, whether the board game, computer game, or Facebook games.

When I started noticing it, I began taking pictures. These are just 9 out of 17, and that’s just from the time I started taking pictures of them — who knows how many times it happened before that. Weird, huh?

(By the way, thanks to my blog friend Ellen, The Happy Wonderer, for telling me how to do collages. She often has great ones on her site. She told me if you use Picasa 3, there’s a button on the toolbar for collages….and there it was! Duh! I had never even noticed, but I was happy to learn something new today!)

3. I don’t like most flavored drinks, like different flavors of tea or coffee. Saves me a bundle at Starbucks, but I do feel sometimes I’m missing out on a cultural phenomenon.

4. I like iced tea (unsweetened, decaf), but not hot tea. I wish I did — it would add to the variety of warm drinks available in cold weather. But the smell makes me almost nauseous.

5. I don’t like angels. Well, the real angels, yes — they have a vital role in God’s kingdom, but not most art and craft depictions of them. Most are usually feminine or cutesy, far from how Scripture portrays them. If I am going to have angels in art, I want them this way:

(Archangel Michael by Guido Reni, courtesy of Art.com, here depicted in a battle against the devil.)

6. I don’t know how to type — not the correct way. In fact, in college, where most girls typed their boyfriends papers in the days before computers made such things so much easier, my boyfriend (now husband) typed mine. I mainly use my two index fingers, but I have kind of developed my own method. (Although, now that I actually observe myself typing, seem to use my two longest middle fingers the most.)

7. I haven’t figured out Sudoku. But then I have absolutely no desire to. I probably should exercise that part of my brain more.

If you’d like to share six quirky, random, and/or little known facts about yourself, consider yourself tagged!