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Category Archives: Memes
Works-For-Me-Wednesday: Decorating Styles and Ideas
“That which we elect to surround ourselves with becomes the museum of our soul and the archive of our experiences.”
—Thomas Jefferson
I like to think of home decorating in light of the above quote. The way we arrange things, the type of things we collect, the colors we like, all provide a sort of window into our personalities. That must be why it is so much fun to go to other people’s houses.
Perhaps you have struggled sometimes, as I have, with almost feeling guilty about “decorating.” One excellent book along those lines is The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer. She points out that God “decorated” the earth; He made it beautiful, not just practical. We, of course, have to balance the urge to decorate with other areas of life that need attention and with the finances at hand.
Most of us can’t just go out and buy a houseful, or even a roomful, of furniture or accessories. Most of us start off with hand-me-down furniture from our parents, yard sale finds, etc. (a friend of mine describes her home décor as “early married.”) But as we do start to try to figure out what our own “look” is and try to incorporate that into what we have, one helpful way to do that is to go through some decorating magazines and pull out the pages that appeal to us (or, alternately, look at magazines in the library or decorating books at bookstores and jot notes, or search online). Then go back through those pages and note what appeals to you about those rooms in the pictures. Do you generally notice bright colors, deep, rich ones, pastels, or neutrals? Do you like the sleek lines and modern forms of a contemporary look, the cozy florals of a cottage style, or a rustic look? Do you like straight lines or softer curves? Do you like a lot of cozy clutter or a minimalist look? You’ll get an idea of what styles you like plus see ways of putting that style together. Then when you do need a new sofa or bedspread, or need to paint a room, you’ll have some idea of what you want to look for rather than being overwhelmed by the wide variety of choices. Having some pictures on file also helps you explain to your husband what you are trying to do or what look you are going for.
I started a file over 20 years ago for a Home Interiors class. The file then had required folders for different color combinations or period furniture styles. Over the years I adapted it to my own tastes. There is a file of ideas from magazines for each room, for window treatments, wall treatments (different painting techniques or ways to do wallpaper), wall groupings, and accesories. I want to add a folder for things like centerpieces. Sometimes it is fun and inspiring just to take out a file folder and browse through it.
For more tips, go to Rocks In My Dryer.
(Graphic at top courtesy of Creative Ladies Ministry)
Thursday Thirteen: Things Suzie the Dog Likes To Do
Suzie is half collie, half German Shepherd. We’ve had her since she was a puppy, about 10 years now. She’s not the brightest dog in creation. 🙂 But she is sweet and affectionate.
13 things Suzie the dog likes to do:
1. Sleep
2. Eat
3. Be petted. If you pet her head and then pull away, she’ll put her head back under your hand.
4. Be on the trampoline. We’ve had it about as long as we’ve had her, so she grew up with it. She used to bounce on it with the kids. She still gets up there when they’re on, but doesn’t stay long. She likes to sleep there and observe the world from there.
5. Be with her people
6. Eat
7. Sleep
8. Go along with my husband and youngest son when they ride bikes. If she sees them getting the bicycles out, she whimpers and groans pitifully until they come and get her. They don’t always, because she doesn’t always stay right with them, and it’s hard to hold her on a leash while riding. But if they don’t take her while they ride bikes, they’ll usually take her for a walk afterward.
9. Chase squirrels.
10. Bark at other dogs taking a walk with their owners.
11. Come inside. She’s an outdoor dog, but makes a beeline for the door when it’s open.
12. Eat
13. Sleep
Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Works-For-Me-Wednesday: Charitable Giving While Shopping and Searching
This week I wanted to share a couple of relatively painless ways to give to charity in the course of what you usually do online.
Igive.com is a site for online merchants to register and online shoppers to buy and have a percentage of their purchases donated to the charity of their choice. When you first register on the site, you choose what charity you would like for your purchases to go towards. Igive keeps great records, sends an e-mail when a check for my organization is sent, keeps a list of my orders so that I can track them and make sure the percentages were applied, and lets me print out a page for tax-deductions. They send out e-mails from time to time about which merchants are having special sales or promotions. There are a few merchants I shop from online anyway, so it is no problem to log into Igive first and shop from there (the links take you directly to the merchants’ sites, but you have to begin logged in at Igive for the purchase to register and for a donation to be made). Plus, any time I am looking to buy something online, I can look through the “mall” link at Igive and see if the new merchant I am wanting to buy from is registered there. I’ve used it for years and have been very pleased with it.
I’ve only recently heard of GoodSearch, but it is a search engine which uses funds generated from its advertisers for online donations to the charity of your choice. It is powered by Yahoo, so it should be as good as Yahoo is. You don’t have to register there: just put the name of the charity you are interested in in the “Who do you GoodSearch for?” window, click on “verify,” and then conduct your search. The site “remembers” that charity each time you search, but you can change it any time you want to. I just tried it to search for a product I was looking at earlier today through another search engine, and came up with multitudes of results. I e-mailed GoodSearch to ask if they had a list of the charities supported through them: they replied that they supported 20,000 non-profit organizations and didn’t have a good way to list them all, but users could put any charity in the appropriate window, and if it is not yet supported, they can click on the appropriate link to add it.
And that brings me to the other point I was going to make: I have seen various charities and non-profit organizations linked on various blogs. Perhaps you might want to look into adding your cause to one or both of these sites.
If you’d like to participate in either of these endeavors and don’t yet have a cause that you would be interested in, may I humbly suggest the Transverse Myelitis Association.
See Rocks In My Dryer for more real tips that really work for real people.
Wordless Wednesday: Doing Homework
Thursday Thirteen: Things you might not know about me
I’ve enjoyed doing “Thursday Thirteens” for weeks now, but today I had a hard time pulling something together. I had two different ideas, but they are not coming together very well, so I put them in storage for another time. 🙂 Barb over at A Chelsea Morning had the idea of posting “Thirteen Things You Might Not Know About Me” since part of this meme is to get to know other bloggers, and I thought that might be a good idea, too….so I hope she doesn’t mind if I borrow it. 🙂
1) I think most anyone who has read this blog for very long knows that I am a born-again Christian, but I wanted to mention that first and foremost. 🙂 I was saved when I was 17 — over 30 years ago.
2) I have been married to Jim for over 26 years and have three sons.
3) I prefer being called “Barbara” rather than “Barb.”
4) I grew up in Texas, though I don’t have a Texas accent. When I was in college and people found out I was from Texas, they’d often ask where my accent was. I was tempted to say, “Back on the ranch with my ten-gallon hat and tumbleweed.” 😀 Actually, most people I know in TX don’t sound like people think Texans sound like. 🙂
5) I’ve spent most of my adult life in South Carolina and love it. I consider this “home.”
6) I was a Home Economics Education major in college, but I wish I had majored in English. For a long time I felt I had totally missed out on the Lord’s will and wasted time and money in college (though time in a good Christian college is valuable and never wasted even if you don’t “use” your major professionally) but eventually came to see maybe the Lord did have a purpose in it after all (it’s a long story).
7) I was painfully shy growing up. In group settings, if someone would try to draw me into the conversation I would almost panic. Thankfully the Lord has helped me with that over the years, but it still overcomes me sometimes.
8 ) Maybe because of the above, I’ve always felt that I expressed myself better in writing than in talking.
9) I collect Boyd’s Bear figurines and heart-shaped objects or things that have heart shapes (pink, not red) on them. I have heart-shaped bowls, serving platters, mirrors, and I have a number of heart-shaped ornaments hanging from pegs on a rack. Some of them are from different places we’ve visited.
10) I’m very hot-natured. My husband says I keep the house like a meat locker. 🙂 I remind him and the boys that they can always put on more clothes to get warm — I can only take so much off to get cool!
11) I love soft, pastel colors, especially pink, blue, and sage green.
12) My favorite flowers are pink roses, white carnations, and purple hydrangeas, but I do not have a green thumb.
13) My favorite hobby has always been reading. I also enjoy writing, have just gotten into scrapbooking and photography, and used to sew, cross-stitch, stencil, and stamp. I’d love to learn how to knit or crochet some day and get back into sewing and cross-stitch — but I think I’d have trouble seeing it these days. 🙂 I’d also love to learn how to do a little bit of tole-painting.
Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
(Thursday Thirteen header courtesy of Amanda.)
Wordless Wednesday: ‘Tis the last rose of summer….
…or one of the last ones, anyway. There are still a few unopened buds. I am so glad my roses keep blooming so long, especially when I am not very attentive to them.
You can find more Wordless Wednesday pictures, or link to your own, here and here.
Edited to add: A few people asked whether the water droplets were sprayed on or natural. They were natural. It had rained the whole day before. and I think that plus the natural morning dew made it more “dewy” than usual. I noticed it after getting home from taking my son to school. It was opened just the right amount (in fact, later the same day the outer petals looked floppy) and I knew I had to capture that moment of beauty. Thanks for all the kind comments!!
Thursday Thirteen: Favorite Jokes
“Mirth is God’s medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety — all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which everyone is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which is runs.”
— Henry Ward Beecher
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.
Proverbs 17:22a
In that vein, I give you 13 favorite jokes collected over the years.
1. A mother mouse and a baby mouse were walking along, when all of a sudden a cat attacks them. The mother mouse shouts, “BARK!” and the cat runs away.
“See?” says the mother mouse to her baby. “Now do you see why it’s so important to learn a foreign language?”
~~~~~
2) A kid and his mom were walking on the sidewalk in Dallas. The kid, being 100% Texan, upon seeing some cowboys, said, “Hey Maw, look at them thar men with them thar bowed laigs.”
She said that if he didn’t start speaking correct English, she was going to send him to a Shakespearean English school.
A little further along, they saw some more cowboys. “Hey maw! Look at them thar men with them thar bowed legs!” he said.
So, true to her word, she sent him off to a Shakespearean English school to learn correct English.
He came home several months later on vacation. As they walked together down the sidewalk, they saw some cowboys. “Hark!” he said, “What manner of men are these who wear their legs in parentheses?”
(I grew up in Texas and never heard any Texans speak quite this way — but I still loved the joke. 🙂 )
~~~~~
3) When Art learned that he was being fired, he went to see the head of human resources. “Since I’ve been with the firm for so long,” he said, “I think I deserve at least a letter of recommendation.”
The human resources director agreed and said he’d have the letter that next day. The following morning, Art found the letter on his desk. It read, “Art worked for our company for eleven years. When he left us, we were very satisfied.”
~~~~~
4) One caller to our answering service gave me his name, number and message and then said, “You know my name. What’s yours?”
“We’re not allowed to give our names,” I replied, “but my operator number is 4136.
Sounding disappointed, he said, “May I call you by your first digit, or would that be too personal?”
~~~~~
5) Young Son: “I heard that in some parts of Africa they don’t know their spouse until they get married. Is it true, Dad?”
Dad: “That happens in every country, son.”
~~~~~
6) Tom had won a toy in a contest. He called his kids together to ask which one should have the present.
“Who is the most obedient?” he asked. “Who never talks back to mother? Who does everything she says?”
Five small voices answered in unison: “Okay, Dad, you get the toy.”
~~~~~
7) One man once said, “I’ll never understand women. I don’t see how they can take boiling hot wax, pour it onto their legs, rip the hair out by the roots, and still be afraid of a spider.”
~~~~~
8 ) We just hired a new consultant at my company. I asked him a question. He replied, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to bill you.”
~~~~~
9) On their 50th wedding anniversary, a couple summed up the reason for their long and happy marriage. The husband said, “I have tried never to be selfish. After all, there is no “I” in the word “marriage.”
The wife said, “For my part, I have never corrected my husband’s spelling.”
~~~~~
10) When Edna’s grandson asked her how old she was, she teasingly replied, “I’m not sure.”
“Look in your underwear, Grandma,” he advised. “Mine says I’m four.”
~~~~~
11) Two buffalo were standing on the range when a passing tourist said, Those are the mangiest, scroungiest, most moth-eaten, miserable beasts I have ever seen”
One of the buffalo turned to the other and said, “You know…I think I just heard a discouraging word.”
~~~~~
12) Peter and Gladys were looking at a new living room suite in the furniture store. Peter said to the salesman, “We really like it, but I don’t think we can afford it.”
The salesman said, “You just make a small down payment, then you don’t make another payment for six months.”
Gladys wheeled around with her hands on her hips and said, “Who told you about us?”
~~~~~
13) I misplaced my dictionary. Now I’m at a loss for words.
Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
Wordless Wednesday: Baby Brother
This was 13 years ago when Jason was 6 and Jesse was newborn (they are now 19 and 13). I always loved this expression on Jason’s face here, as if he’s thinking, “What do I do now?” There are other pictures of him smiling down at his new baby brother and later pictures of him down on the floor playing with him or talking to him, but at this point it was like he was thinking, “OK, I’ve had enough now.”
You can find more “Wordless Wednesday ” photos or link to your own at 5 Minutes For Mom.
Works For Me Wednesday: Clutter
I thought this anecdote was hilarious. The author is unknown: I don’t even remember where I got this from:
It arose one morning from the bowels of my desk, a formless mass that spread and covered itself over anything I was looking for. “Who are you?” I asked.
“I am Clutter,” the mass answered, “and I am here to confound your life. I am the things you refuse to throw out though you haven’t used them in six years, the miscellaneous papers, phone numbers, business cards, and checks you accumulate and don’t put away. I am the inevitable manifestation of your sloppiness. I am Clutter.”
I grabbed Clutter and moved it from one end of the desk to the other. Clutter chortled, “That’s my favorite pastime. Moving from one end of the desk to the other.” “What do you want?” I asked.
“To frustrate you. I will resist all attempts to remove me, reduce me, or otherwise eliminate me. It’s my purpose to hide whatever important piece of paper you need, whichever phone number you must call.”
“I’m throwing you out,” I stormed. Clutter shook his untidy mass sadly, as in pity.
“Not without looking through me to see if there’s anything you really need,” Clutter answered. “the odds are slim, but you won’t take that chance. And while your sorting through me, I’ll re-form in another pile.”
“But you’ll be smaller, more manageable.”
“Not really. You’ll decide to keep 90% of me, as you always do. And soon, new papers, numbers, documents will gather, making me more obstructive than ever.”
“You won’t ruin my life, Clutter! I’ll start a filing system! I’ll put a bit of you where you belong.”
Clutter gazed at me contemptuously. “The last time you tried that, you created my cousins, Chaos and Disorder. It’ll never work.”
Clutter had me and I knew it. Attempts in the past to file things alphabetically had only created 26 piles of mess instead of one. I was desperate, so I decided to bluff. “I’ll take a time management course,” I threatened.
Clutter quite rightly ignored my remark. I wasn’t dealing with an idiot, after all. “Then I’ll buy a computer and store you on my floppy disks!”
“And within a month your disk-filing system will be in total disarray, plus you’ll have another pile of papers waiting to be entered onto disks. Face it, you can’t win.”
Exasperated, I ran to the closet. “I’m getting some air.” Clutter had been to the closet before me. Shoes were scattered, shirts were unhung, clumps of pants and underwear lay strewn next to towels and a lawn chair. Socks congealed in small piles, looking like the waste product of some nylon-eating monster. Cliff notes from A Tale of Two Cities lay atop the heater.
“Clutter,” I yelled. “You have crippled my productivity for the last time. No longer will I be late, no more will I miss appointments, never again shall I be overwhelmed by your size and withdraw into reading old magazines. I am going out to the store to buy a paper shredder.”
I looked around for a long moment. “Now where did I leave my keys?”
Clutter burped.
—Author Unknown
~~~~~~~~~~
Clutter isn’t quite that formidable to deal with — it just seems like it! 🙂 Whole books have been written about how to deal with clutter, and I haven’t conquered it totally yet, but here are a few things I’ve found to help:
* If I don’t have time to clean out the whole attic or closet or refrigerator or whatever, it helps to break it down into smaller portions. Clean out a box at a time, a shelf at a time, a drawer at a time.
*If you have the space somewhere, it is helpful to have a box or shelf set aside to place things to get rid of as I come to them rather than having to sift through a drawer to get them. Then when the box or shelf is filled, take it to the mission or Salvation Army.
* I do keep sentimental things, but ask myself realistically if I will ever use or look through the items. For instance, I used to keep all my son’s Sunday School papers until I realized that after eighteen years that stack would be daunting. So as we get such papers I try to pick out representative or especially meaningful ones and (wince!) throw away the rest.
* I try not to set something out of place “for just a minute” but rather go ahead and put things back where they belong as I get done with them as much as possible.
* I try to encourage the kids to brings their “stuff” in from the car whenever we get home.
For more tips and helpful hints, visit Rocks In My Dryer.
Stray Thoughts 