Friday’s Fave Five

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FFF fall leaves 2

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, and you can visit Susanne to see the list of others’ favorites or to join in.

1. Thanksgiving praise service. Our church moves its usual Wednesday night service to Tuesday night during Thanksgiving week since many travel Wednesday, and the majority of the service is given over to whoever wants to share a testimony. To me it is one of the highlights of the year.

2. Thanksgiving Day. Though we should be thankful year round, it is nice to have a time set aside specifically for that purpose. Plus I like that it is an untarnished holiday — no controversial origins, nothing bad associated with it, the time for family gatherings. I enjoyed the extended time with all the family.

3. Thanksgiving food. All the usual stuff, having a meal in the early afternoon so that one clean-up is over, I’m “off” the rest of the day. Then heating up leftovers or making a sandwich in the evening. Plus it was nice to share the cooking with a new daughter-in-law this year!

4. Thanksgiving Day naps!

5. Playing a few rounds of Apples to Apples Thanksgiving evening.

Bonus:

My son shared with me a fun site called Face Ahoy: it’s a collection of photos of faces that people “see” in everyday objects. Some are very cute, some are funny.

Bonus 2:

Magazine deals! Thanks to a post at Skip to My Lou, I saw that Amazon is selling subscriptions to several magazines for $5 between now and Dec. 1.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most high: To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night. Psalm 92:1-2.

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

For flowers that bloom at our feet,
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear and see,
Father in Heaven, we thank thee!

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

Giveaways here and there

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This giveaway is now over and comments are closed. The winner is Ivory Spring!

I mentioned a couple of days ago that in all my sorting and organizing I found some duplicates that I planned to give away. I want to share this first one right away so someone will have it in time for Christmas.

If you sew or know someone who likes to, you might Sew Pretty Christmas Homestyle by Tone Finnanger.

I first saw Tone’s books at Anita‘s, and loved them. I have three and see another one or two I’d like. I just love her beautiful style and her neat ideas.

Here are just a few of the projects in the book. I am sorry about the photo quality: I had trouble getting the right amount of flash. But the photos in the book are gorgeous:

If you would be interested in this book, leave a comment on this post. I will use the Random Number Generator to choose a winner the morning of Dec. 2, a week from today.

There are several other contests around the Internet just now, too:

The 5 Minutes for Mom site is hosting s slew of giveaways beginning a few days ago with the final drawings on Dec. 4, among them an Oreck Halo Vacuum, an HP Touchsmart 600, an Epson Workforce 600. You can find more information and a list of links to the various giveaways here.

The 5 Minutes For Books site is also hosting a series of giveaways: more information here.

Vanilla Joy is hosting ten giveaways totaling $2,000 on Black Friday beginning at 6. a.m.


Mocha With Linda is also hosting a series of book giveaways in the next few weeks. Click on the button for more information.

Earlybird Thanksgiving Random Dozen

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Linda at 2nd Cup of Coffee is hosting her usual Wednesday Random Dozen on Tuesday this week, since many will be making pies or traveling tomorrow.

1. Are you sticking to traditional Thanksgiving foods this year, or are you being culinarily adventurous?

All the usual very traditional Thanksgiving fare.

2. Tell me something concrete that you’re thankful for. (Something you can literally touch, see, etc., not a concept like “hope.”)

Music and the means to play it.
Heat at the touch of a button, especially after having been without it for two weeks.
Books.
Films.
Food.

3. You knew the flip side was coming: Share about something intangible that you’re thankful for.

Love, joy, peace, grace, forgiveness.

4. Share one vivid Thanksgiving memory. It doesn’t have to be deep or meaningful, just something that remains etched in your memory.

I think it was about 13 or 14 years ago we lived in GA and planned to come to SC to stay with friends, go to our old church and the Thanksgiving praise service the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, spend the night with them, and then drive to TN Thanksgiving morning to spend a couple of days with more good friends, my husband’s former pastor and his family. The first part of the trip went as planned with a great visit and a wonderful service. But pulling out of our friend’s driveway Thanksgiving morning, our car broke down. We had to have it towed in but had to leave it as no mechanics were working on the holiday. We rented a car and headed out to TN, stopped at a Burger King for our Thanksgiving lunch, drove over the mountains where Jesse got sick all over the rented car, and made it to our friends’ house in time for leftovers that evening. The rest of the visit was very nice: then we had to deal with the car issue afterward.

5. What is one thing that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt is going to happen this Thanksgiving because it always does, year after year?

Oh, just all the usual stuff — cooking, eating, napping, more eating. Sometimes we watch a movie or play a game in the evening.

6. Do your pets get any left-overs?

Yes, my husband, thankfully, takes on the job of getting everything off the bird that he can, and he saves a bit for our dog.

7. Does your family pray before the big meal? If so, do you join hands while seated, stand, repeat a formal prayer or offer a spontaneous prayer? Who does the praying?

My husband either prays spontaneously or asks one of the boys to while we’re seated around the table.

8. Will you be watching football in the afternoon? If not, what will you be doing?

No football. My husband and I will be napping at some point, I am sure.

9. There are two distinct camps of people on this issue: How do you feel about oysters in the dressing/stuffing?

Bleah, I am not an oyster fan.

10. Do you consider yourself informed about the first Thanksgiving?

Yes.

11. Which variety of pie will you be enjoying?

Apple and pumpkin.

12. Do you feel for the turkey?? (This is a humorous throw back question related to the 12th question in another Random Dozen!

Not really. I enjoy every bite. 🙂

Check over at Linda‘s to find more participants or to join in yourself.

What’s on Your Nightstand: November

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What's On Your NightstandThe folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read. You can learn more about it by clicking the link or the button.

I finished My Heart Remembers by Kim Vogel Sawyer about three siblings separated after going West on an orphan train. I probably would not have picked it up, because I have read books and seen films about the orphan trains, and they all seemed to have the same basic plot line, but this one came highly recommended by several blog friends. I did enjoy it: Kim brought in some elements I hadn’t seen before.

I also just finished Home to Harmony by Phillip Gulley. It’s in the same vein as Mayberry or Jan Karon’s Mitford series: small town, eccentric residents, heart-warming stories. It was….okay. Parts I really liked, parts touched me, but overall I didn’t like it as well as Mitford. I’m not inclined at this point to read the sequels: I have a whole shelf full of books to be read. But I might pick them up some time in the future.

I also finished Farraday Road by Ace Collins, and it is the only one I did a full-fledged book review of this month, here.

With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, my reading plans for the next month are going to be very loose, though I do always have something available to read.

I’ve just begun The Heirloom by Colleen L. Reece and Julie Reece-DeMarco, given to me by my friend, Carol. It’s been on my shelf for a while, and I just rediscovered it while reorganizing my bookshelves and saw it was set during the Thanksgiving season. It’s fairly short, so it will be perfect for this week. I’m also planning on Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus, a compilation of 22 Christmas related essays from authors varying from Augustine and Luther to Piper. I saw this recommended by a lot of people last year, but by the time I got it the Christmas season was nearly over, so I saved it for this year. I’d also like to do a Bible study called My Heart Restored by June Kimmel.

Other than that…I have plenty to choose from my TBR bookshelf: I just recently gathered most of them on one shelf, the middle, double-shelved one here. Only the front row is TBR:

Book Review: Farraday Road

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The opening pages of Farraday Road by Ace Collins set the stage for mystery: a literal “dark and stormy night,” a car discovered run off the road, two bodies having been shot, one alive and one dead, and a historic bridge washed off its moorings. Lije (short for Elijah) survives but neither he nor anyone else in the town can think of any reason why he or his wife, a pillar of the community known for her generosity, would become targets. In his grief he searches for clues about what happened, sometimes teamed with a reluctant detective who thinks at first she has the suspect, sometimes doing his own investigating, which leads him to another mystery involving a piece of prime real estate his wife had purchased before her death.

I am sorry to say I was not thrilled with the book. It could have used much tighter writing, and the “mystery” seemed splintered off into too many pieces which at the end are still unconnected. Hopefully it will all come together in the sequel, Swope’s Ridge. I thought perhaps this was Mr. Collins’ first book: I was wrong. He has written more than 50 books, but most of them are non-fiction. I was disappointed that, for a book in the genre of Christian fiction, there was a four-letter word usually absent in most Christian fiction and that there was little Christianity in it beyond the charitable nature of Lije’s deceased wife and the testimony of a wrongly-accused prisoner.

If you’ve read the book, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts: perhaps I am missing something. And if you haven’t, please don’t let this review dissuade you from checking out the book if you like mysteries: most of the reviews at Amazon.com and Christianbook.com are positive.

Thanks to Zondervan for providing a copy of the book for review.

Results of Getting Things Done week

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So, last Monday I declared Getting Things Done week. I debated with myself about whether to show what I got done (– would anyone really be interested? Would I just be booting my own horn?) But just the fact that I declared publicly that I was going to dig in and get things done last week provided a little bit of accountability, even though no one was going to come after me or check up on me to see the results. But I decided to go ahead and show the results:

1. Cleaned off this table.

Before:

After:

This is a little drop-leaf table that used to be our main dining table ages ago. Now it is in the “sunroom.” It’s meant to be a table where people can work on different projects that they might need to leave out to finish or dry or whatever, but it tends to end up a place to dump things.

2. Cleaned off computer desk.

Before:

3. Sorting through files.

No photo for this one, but I sorted through two filing cabinet drawers, tossing our several things and moving them all up into the craft room into my little pink two-drawer filing cabinet (which I discovered tends to pitch forward. Sigh. Maybe I can put a brick in the back of the bottom drawer or something.) I also cleaned our two drawers in an upstairs plastic rolly-bin thing.

4. Cleaned out part of this cabinet.

Before:

After:

Still have some work to do there, but I put  major dent in it.

By the way…that poor little amaryllis that someone gave me years ago actually bloomed all by itself in the box without having been planted. Does anyone know if I can cut off the old bloom and plant it again, or is it done?

5. Straightened and organized these bookcases.

Before:

After:

I still have a little work to do there, as you can see by several little stacks.

That blue bin contained outdoor things — basketballs, bats, super-soakers, etc. I had the boys go through it and sort out what was usable and what they wanted to keep, then they put the bin out in the shed. Then they moved two shelves worth of craft books to the craft room, and then I sorted and arranged what was left. I have a box-ful to get rid of (including a 30 year old Roget’s Thesaurus that is way out of date. I usually just use the one online anyway). I have a few more from home-schooling days that I want to list for sale — they are music books that I regret we never got to but which the boys have outgrown now.

It felt good to get to these things that have been needing attention for so long, plus it helped to actually see and remind myself of what I have. I discovered I have duplicates of a couple of books (which I am thinking I’ll hold a give-away for here). An added bonus was unexpected discoveries, like the letter I mentioned from my mom, and this sign one of the boys made a few years ago when I was repairing a stuffed animal:

I don’t remember their having a stuffed bee, but I do remember sewing a leg on something. I got a kick out of the “B+” blood type.

So now I need to start on a new list for this week, but I am floundering this morning. I’ve been fighting off a headache that isn’t enough to incapacitate but is making me draggy and foggy. I’ve been taking acetaminophen, but the only thing that seems to help is putting pressure on my forehead or cheekbones. I don’t want to spend the day doing that, though, so I am going to see if I can keep this momentum going and maybe shake it off. I am only going to try working on these types of things today and tomorrow, though, with Thanksgiving coming. The rest of the week I’ll just play by ear.

Have a good day, whatever your plans are!

Microfiction Monday

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Welcome to Microfiction Monday,
where a picture only paints 140 characters.

microfictionmonday

Susan at Stony River has begun a Microfiction Monday wherein participants write a story in 140 characters based on a particular image that Susan has chosen for the day.  Design 215’s Character Counter helps keep track of the number of characters. It’s a fun exercise in creative conciseness…or concise creativity…

As the bright glory surrounding God’s throne, as the colorful, faceted arc after rain, so is God’s grace and protection surrounding His own.

For those who might not understand the references there, in Genesis 9:8-16 God established a covenant with Noah and his sons and future generations after the flood that He would never again destroy the world by a flood, and He set the rainbow as the token of His promise. Ezekiel 1:28 and Revelation 4:3 speak of a rainbow surrounding God’s throne. It wasn’t until thinking about what to write in regard to this photo that I caught the encircling — the parallel between the circle of the rainbow round His throne, the arc of the rainbow, and the encircling of His promise and protection around His people.

I guess if I have to write another paragraph explaining my thinking, that might mean I didn’t do the greatest job expressing myself with 140 characters!

If you’d like to read of another encounter I had with a rainbow, The Storm and the Rainbow was originally a blog post that was submitted and accepted as an article for Frontline Magazine.

And you can find other people’s takes on this photo at Susan‘s.

Face the Cross

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I first heard this beautiful hymn on the Wilds CD Creator, Redeemer, and King, and it literally stopped me in my tracks.

Upon the cross of Jesus my eye at times can see
The very dying form of One who suffered there for me.

Face the cross, He hangs there in your place.
See the Lamb upon the killing tree.
Stand and look into the Savior’s face
As on the cross, He dies for you and me.

Face the cross and see the dying Son.
See the Lamb upon the killing tree.
See His anguish and His tears of love.
Face the cross, He dies to set us free.

Turn not away, turn not away.
His nail-pierced hands are reaching out to you, to you.

Look upon the One without a sin,.
Spotless Lamb upon the killing tree.
Feel His pain and love from deep within,
So great a price, yet paid so willingly.

Turn not away, turn not away,
Face the cross, face the cross.

Face the One who suffers in your place,
See the Lamb, upon the killing tree.
Light of the world, now clothed in darkness grim
As on the cross, He hangs in agony.

Face the cross and turn not away, turn not away.
His nail-pierced hands are reaching out to you.

Turn not away, behold His wounded side.
Turn not away, behold the crucified.
Face the cross, He hangs there in your place.
Face the cross, and see the King of Grace.
Face the cross, face the cross.

— Words by Herb Fromach, music by David Lantz

Thoughts about…hell

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I don’t remember what train of thought led me to this destination, but I was thinking this morning about the fact that modern day Christians don’t like to talk about hell very much. It’s offensive. Yet the fear of and desire to avoid hell played a major part in my own salvation and that of many others I know. But without the love of God, I would have remained in that misery of fear: the fact that He did love me and did make a way that I could be cleansed and forgiven drew me. It is as Jude said in verses 22-23 of his letter: “And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” Some will respond more to a compassionate appeal; others will only be shaken from their complacency by fear of the fire.

I’ve heard it said that Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven. I haven’t counted up the verses to see if that is true, but it would only make sense that He would want to warn people about such an awful place. I think we do a disservice to our friends and loved ones when we avoid speaking of it.  There is a little tract titled “Hell: Suppose It’s True After All?” (full text here) which poses just that question. It is too big an issue to take a chance on. Another, titled “What To Do To Go To Hell,” opens up to a blank interior, meaning we don’t have to do anything to go there: we are already on our way and need to do something to avoid it.

Salvation isn’t just a “fire escape” from hell: it is so much more. It is by faith entering into a relationship with God as a Father, a relinquishing of our rule over our own lives to acknowledge and yield to His rule, a turning from and cleansing of sin, a beginning of learning to know Him in all the facets of His being, in all the ways He illustrates His love and relationship with us (Shepherd, Light, etc.).

Too often I want to present only the positive: His love, His care, His provision. But there is something blocking access to Him in that way: Isaiah 59:1-2: says, “Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.” Sin is a barrier, a roadblock. The ultimate end of sin and self-will is hell. It’s not going to be a good ol’ party time with the buddies. It is awful.

But the good news is that God doesn’t want us to go there any more than we want go there ourselves. I urge you, as lovingly and kindly, and yet as urgently as I can, to consider these truths:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. John 3:16-21, NKJV.

You can read more here.