Theme: Sweet | Become a Photo Hunter | View Blogroll
There is this kind of sweet:
And this kind of sweet:
And then there is this kind….
…a 5 lb. bag of M&Ms. We used them to put into favors at our Ladies’ Luncheon. We also had some printed in words that matched our theme (“The Heart of the Matter”) and coordinated with our theme colors (pink and chocolate brown):
You can see more interpretations of this week’s theme here.
Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts the “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.“
I don’t wear a lot of jewelry — I like it, but I just don’t always think to put it on, or the clothes I bought a particular piece for wore out long ago. Plus I guess I am pretty particular in my jewelry selections.
I wear mostly necklaces and pins (brooches — I don’t know why, but I hate that word.) I was just going to show the three cameos, but as I looked around in my jewelry box, I saw other favorites I wanted to share as well.
The two small pins on the right plus the cameo stick pin were given to me by my mom, so that makes them special, besides the fact that I love the way they look. My husband gave me the cameo with the blue background and the 1928 oval one with pink roses in the center. I love both pieces — the 1928 one is probably my favorite of all — but they are also special to me because he gave them to me. He may have given me the gold cameo also — I can’t remember. The one in the upper left with the little flowers I bought at a craft show when we lived in GA. I don’t know what it is made of, but I thought it was cute (the craft shows there are one of the few things I miss about living there! They don’t seem to have many around here). The one on the lower left with the dangling pearl is also one I bought, but I don’t remember where. I liked that it looked antique even though it’s not. I used to have an old-fashioned looking dress with a lace collar that that pin went really well with. Too bad dresses don’t last as long as jewelry does. 🙂
The gold cameo isn’t actually a pin: it’s a scarf clasp. There was a time — oh, maybe about 20 years ago? — when ladies used to wear scarves a lot, and one way to hold them together was with a scarf clasp like so:
I wish scarves would come back in style — I loved the way they looked and the way they added a bit of color or pattern.
I loved this cameo like that, but once I saw a friend wear a scarf clasp clipped over the top of a crew-neck sweater which she wore over a blouse with a collar. I thought it looked very sweet and feminine. I had a couple of dresses with a high rounded neck and a lace collar that this cameo looked nice with — it looked like a brooch pinned at the center of the collar where the two sides curved up toward the center.
As you can tell, I like jewelry that is smallish, feminine, and old-fashioned, even vintage looking. I do have some pieces in different styles, though — I’ll have to save those for another day.
I don’t like expensive jewelry, though, and I don’t think any of this is. A friend asked me once what I would do if someone gave me $2,000. I think I said I’d pay off some bills, give some to the church, get something for the house, etc. She said she’d buy jewelry. One $2,000 piece of jewelry. I’d be a nervous wreck if I ever wore anything like that!!! And — not to criticize her choices, because we’d all have different ideals of what to do if we had money to “blow” — but I just couldn’t stand the thought of sinking a lot of money into jewelry. And thankfully for me, it’s easy enough to find things I love without doing that. I’m sure my husband appreciates that, too. 🙂
I saw this meme on several blogs a few weeks ago, but didn’t have time to do it then.
What were you doing 10 years ago?
June 1997: We were living in GA, finishing up the 3rd of our 4 years there and had also recently completed the 3rd of our 4 years of homeschooling.
What were you doing 1 year ago?
June 2007: About what I am doing now –enjoying the summer. I hadn’t started blogging yet, but I think I was reading others’ blogs at that time. (What ever did I do with myself before blogging? 🙂 )
Five snacks you enjoy:
1. chocolate chip cookies
2. popcorn
3. chips
4. M&Ms
5. Swiss cake rolls
Five songs that you know all the lyrics of:
1. Amazing Grace
2. How Great Thou Art
3. This Old Man
4. Honey
5. The Star of the County Down
Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. Pay off all our debts.
2. Buy a more adequate house
3. Give to the church (that should be listed first, shouldn’t it?)
4. Set up college funds for the kids
5. Find a special cause or person to give to
Five bad habits:
1. Eating too much
2. Eating the wrong things
3. Staying up too late
4. Not using my time in the best ways
5. Not exercising
Five things you like doing: (Not in any order of importance)
1. Reading
2. Blogging
3. Watching good TV shows or videos
4. Playing games as a family
5. Visiting with friends
Five things you would never wear again:
1. Swimsuits in public
2. Mini-skirts
3. Short shorts
4. Headbands. I wish I could, but they just roll off my head.
5. Can’t think of anything else. There are plenty of things I wouldn’t wear but most of them are not things I used to wear. Most of the changes in what I would wear come from becoming a Christian and having a better understanding of modesty.
Five favorite toys:
1. The computer
2. My camera
3. The Wii
4. For my kids when they were little: Legos and
5. Little Tykes riding toys (we had the red car with the yellow top and the green tractor)
I won’t tag anyone since I can’t remember who all has done this, but feel free to do this one, too, and let me know if you do so I can come and read your answers.
See more Wordless Wednesday entires at the WW Hub or 5 Minutes for Mom.
(There is an explanation of this in the first comment. 🙂 )
With next Wednesday being Independence Day, many of us will likely be posting quotes from the Founding Fathers. Just after publishing several such quotes in our ladies’ ministry newsletter a few years ago, I discovered to my chagrin that many of them had no historical verification. There is a great article called Unconfirmed Quotations at the Wallbuilders site which discusses several of those quotes. Hopefully this will save some of you the embarrassment I suffered. 🙂
Incidentally, Wallbuilders, “an organization dedicated to presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built,” has a number of great articles here.
Click on the WFMW graphic above to visit Shannon’s site for a wealth of great tips.
My Life as Annie hosts Time Travel Tuesday in which we look back at some time in our lives in relation to the topic of the week. Annie asks, ”
This week I decided we should revisit our time of salvation, or a special time in your spiritual life. Was there a moment when you became a Christian, or did it take a while? Can you remember that special time in your life?”
My testimony was one of the first posts on my blog, and when I figured out how to make “pages” (listed across the top of my blog), I made a page for that there so that people who visited could easily see it and click on it if they wanted to, because one of my desires in making a blog was to be a witness to people. I thought about writing a shorter version here, but since I thought it through carefully and wrote it out there, if you don’t mind, I am going to refer you there: here’s the link.
Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
From The Barefoot Boy by John Greenleaf Whittier (1855)
The picture is Boy and Dog in Nature by Eugene Iverd, from AllPosters.com.
I came across a couple of excellent posts this morning I wanted to share with you.
Elle at A Complete Thought has an excellent, excellent post about using the things of God as “catchy” advertising slogans.
And Nancy Wilson at Femina writes on “There is not a man on earth who can satisfy the heart of a woman.”
My husband grilled pork chops yesterday, and I thought I’d share with you his mouth-watering recipe. 🙂 I don’t remember quite how we stumbled across this stuff, but it’s wonderful. He just sprays the pork chops with spray-on margarine for a little flavor and for something for the spices to stick to, then sprinkles them with McCormick’s Garlic Season-all Seasoning Salt, then grills them. That’s it!
No, this is not a paid advertisement — just sharing a good find. 🙂
Yesterday Jim, Jeremy, and Jesse went to the men and boys camp out sponsored by our church at a lake about an hour’s drive away. They have these every other year or so. They even took Suzie-the-dog, though she’s not male. 🙂 She loves any type of outing with her people, though. I’m not sure why Jim enjoys camping so much — seems like an awful lot of work in preparation to me!! But his family camped out a lot when he was younger, , or at least spent a lot more time outdoors. Jeremy says about once or twice a year is enough to get it out of his system. 🙂
And me, well, I was gleefully anticipating a whole almost 24 hours of quietness and solitude. Oh, I dearly love my family, and after just a few hours I am ready for them to come back. But I’ve always craved a certain amount of quietness and solitude to keep my sanity. And a little bit of absence does make us appreciate each other more, I think.
So last night I splurged and got a take-out meal from a restaurant (with the rest of it tucked away for lunch!) I had planned to spend some time reading others’ blog entries and then write a letter or two or even work on an article I’ve been thinking about. But I got caught in the YouTube vortex and spent way too much time there! I had seen a couple of links on other blogs and message boards to a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent who wowed the judges and the audience with his rendition of “Nessun Dorma,” Paul Potts. I would venture to guess that that’s a crowd not usually inclined to listen to opera (on the American version, at least, not much of anything anywhere near classical gets through). Of course — that is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and if you think of the human voice as an instrument, you can admire the power, the emotion, and the beauty whether or not you know what it is about or what the words are. And Paul, a mobile phone salesman, aced it! Beautiful voice! So, I was looking around last night for Andrea Bocelli singing the same song, then his singing of “Time to Say Good-Bye” with Sarah Brightman. Then the “related videos” links led me to “The Phantom of the Opera” by Sarah Brightman and Antonio Banderas (I hadn’t known he could sing!), to a couple by Michael Ball (Marius in the 10th anniversary video of Les Miserables — just loved him there), even to Hugh Laurie. Then I looked up the lyrics to “Nessun Dorma” and “Time to Say Good-Bye,” then went back and found Paul Potts singing the latter and the the video of him winning Britain’s Got Talent as well as the little girl who was one of his competitors. So — it was enjoyable though not the way I had planned to spend so much time.
Then I listened to the second message in a series on the Deity of Christ (if you click there, scroll down for the links to these messages) that I mentioned earlier, dealing with questions like what the Bible means when it speaks of Him being only begotten or the first begotten since He is eternal. I did the same thing as before with a Word document open to take notes and the BibleGateway program open to look at and then copy and paste the Scriptures in. I am almost wishing I had a laptop to take to church, that’s such a great way to take notes. My husband and oldest son do that with their PDAs at church.
After spending probably a great deal too much time on the computer, I went to bed. So this night alone was pretty enjoyable and relatively calm. But the funny story I mentioned in this post’s title happened the very first time the guys went on a men and boys camp out a few years ago. I was also at that time joyfully anticipating some extended time with the house all to myself when I suddenly realized that it would be the first time I was completely alone overnight at home since before I’d had children. Being alone in the late evening and overnight gave me pause. But I once again got dinner out, then checked out some chick flicks from the library (Little Women starring Winona Ryder was one — just loved it!) and did some ironing while watching. I was doing all this upstairs in my bedroom when I heard the sounds indicating something was caught in the window. I took a flashlight and looked, and there was an enormous beetle stuck between the window frame and the screen. It was making a lot of noise, but I didn’t want to open the window to try and get it free and take a chance on it getting out into the room. So I just left it there, and eventually it quieted down. A few hours later when I was getting ready for bed — it started up again flapping around! I took the flashlight and looked again — and it was no longer stuck where it had been! I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. I thought — of all the nights and all the windows in this house, it has to go flapping around in this one on this night when I’m by myself! I couldn’t do anything else with it — once again I didn’t want to open the window even to spray bug spray and take a chance on it getting into the room. So I went on to bed with all the flapping going on in the window. Once again it quieted down after a while. But all through the night, whenever a strand of hair fell across my face I flailed around slapping it away thinking it was the beetle. 🙄 It wasn’t funny then, but when I think now how that must’ve looked, it would have been pretty amusing to see, I think. The next morning I couldn’t hear or see a sign of it anywhere, so it either got out or died somewhere!
Finally, the contest I mentioned is from 5 Minutes For Mom in honor of Independence Day. Like they did for Mother’s Day, they will be giving away several prizes on July 4. You’ll need to enter for each prize you are interested in individually. All the instructions can be found here.
Have a great rest of the weekend! I’m off to do laundry and dusting. The guys got back a little while ago, so I’ll wait for them to take showers and unpack their stuff. I am told the lake was pretty muddy and the things they had on that were white will probably never be white again….
Stray Thoughts 