Hearts in Service

We are off to visit Dan's parents in PA in the morning. I'll be back next Tuesday night. Have a wonderful week!

We've been in this house for a month now and I've had time to think about what I would like to do with my yard next year. Of course, it could change but here is my tentative plan. I dug out all the weeds around the little patio in the back yard and defined the edge of the flower bed with bricks. There are some bulbs planted in there but they are clumped up in about 3 spots with no rhyme or reason. I'm not even sure what they are. They are big, thick green leaves. I am planning on digging up the bulbs that are there and replanting tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. There is a large bed along the fence that the boys weeded for me when we first moved in. Of course, the weeds are back. I want to plant a sunflower garden there. Emily loves sunflowers and I've never lived in a place that I could plant them. See this huge, sunny front lawn. The sun beats down on it all day long and it is huge. I want to plant a large vegetable garden over by the fence in the left hand

Remember this project? This is the building next door that I will use for our church's 3D Girls Club. It's a very large room and every wall is cement block covered with 20 year old wallpaper. The wallpaper peeled right off but the backing and glue was left. The boys started working last Monday for just a few hours a day and so far the 3 largest walls done. This is the last and hardest wall because it is covered with 2 layers of wallpaper. Dan went and helped them with this wall today. I'm actually editing this to say that they have finished all 4 walls and are shop vacuuming up the mess. Doesn't it look great? Tomorrow they will clean all the walls with bleach and water and hopefully by Wednesday be able to paint with oil based primer because of the mildew. When we get back from vacation they will paint the next coat with latex paint. I think they made great progress this week!

I love to learn new things, especially about plants and flowers. The internet is a wonderful resource to try and figure out the names of things. Today I took a stroll around my yard to show off my new knowledge! ;-) Phlox Foxglove Mums (these I knew) Purple cone flowers or Echinacea Black-eyed Susans These I still don't know. This is the only little flower on this bush. It looks like it's at the end of the season. This is a flower of a different kind. Isn't he gorgeous? LOL!

Good morning! This week was okay - not great but not terrible. It's hard to keep this up week after week yet I know that it's basically about portion control and I will need to eat this way the rest of my life. Anyway, I got on the scale this morning and lost 1 lb. for a total of................. 23 lbs. I guess slow and steady wins the race. I'll be on vacation next week so I'll check in again in 2 weeks.

I often wonder if things are chance happenings or divine appointments. I don't necessarily think that every single encounter is from the Lord but I do believe that every now and then he puts us in the right place at the right time to help someone out. Last night, we were up much later than normal. We are usually in the back of the house, in our room reading and are asleep by 9:30-9:45. Well, last night we were up watching a movie when someone knocked on our door at 10:15. It was a little scary given the fact that we are the only house on the street and it was late! Dan opened the door and on our doorstep were two college age girls from England. Of course, I immediately thought of some of the ladies that read my blog. Turns out they worked at a camp about 30 minutes from here in Connecticut and were in New York City for the day. They were supposed to get off at the train stop prior to our town which is about 10 miles away. However, they missed the stop and their ride back to

There is an ebb and flow to our days around here that I find soothing. Don't get me wrong; I like excitement and new things but especially after a busy period, it's nice to have a predictability to our days. This week has been one of those type of weeks. Getting up and spending time with the Lord and the sunrise. Dishes to be washed. Busy with projects around the house. Laundry to hang. Meals to be made. Special treats for snack. Vegetables to be harvested. At the end of the day, we can relax and know that we had a productive day.

When I think back on my life; years that have passed one by one, I have to stop and ask myself... just what could I have done? What could I have done that was so special? What did I do? I'd like to know. What virtuous deed did I commit that equals the privilege of watching you grow? As I watch your playful expressions while some amusing story is being unfurled, I think I must have done something right to bring such a child into this world. The special times we share together make memories that last long after. My child, you've brightened so many days with the sound of your sweet laughter. When a bad day gets me feeling down and things just aren't going right, you can turn my attitude around with just your hug and kiss "goodnight." For anything that you may need, I would walk mile...after...mile if my reward at the end of the journey was just to see you smile. Our hearts seem to be connected as though linked with an invisible chain; for when you laugh..I am happy a

Someone asked me what my menus look like on a shoe-string budget so I thought I'd share my menu for the week to give you an idea. Monday Breakfast - Cold cereal & juice Lunch - Leftovers Dinner - Fresh tomato & basil pasta sauce over linguini, homemade Italian bread, Tossed salad, blueberry pie Tuesday Breakfast - Blueberry pancakes & sausage, juice Lunch - Hot Dogs & chips (yes, I know this is not healthy but it only happens once in a while) Dinner - Sausage & peppers over brown rice, summer squash, marinated cucumbers & tomatoes, leftover pie or ice cream Wednesday Breakfast - zucchini bread with cream cheese, hard boiled eggs Lunch - homemade pizza, garlic breadsticks Dinner - Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, homemade biscuits, apple crisp Thursday Breakfast - cold cereal Lunch - Leftovers Dinner - Chicken fajitas (using leftover chicken), homemade tortillas, spanish rice, tossed salad Friday Breakfast - Scramble

I believe that I mentioned that there is a building next door that our landlord is letting me use for 3D Girls. There is an old funeral home next door and this building is behind the funeral home. It's a long rectangular building that was used to do embalming. That was about 20 years ago. Previously, a church used the property and they used it for a fellowship hall. There is a kitchen in there as well as a bathroom and office. Here's the corner of the building. The landlord said he would pay to get it painted for us and he is not going to charge us rent to use it either. I gave him the estimate we received and it was really more than he wanted to pay. So we came to a happy medium. He is going to pay the boys to scrape the old wallpaper off the walls and we will get a church work day together to paint it. He will pay for all the materials. Someone wallpapered over cinder block and what a mess! The wallpaper peeled off easily but the backing and glue stuck to the wall.

What a night! I ended up going to the emergency room with chest pains around 6:00 p.m. For the past week and a half, I've had slight chest pains on and off. I attributed it to stress and basically ignored it because it was hardly anything. They've gotten worse the past few days and Saturday and Sunday I couldn't swallow anything without a sharp pain in the middle of my chest. You know the feeling you get when you swallow something and it goes down the wrong tube? Well, I've had that everytime I eat and drink. By yesterday afternoon, I had this crushing pain in my chest and decided I shouldn't play around. I was pretty sure that all I have is the symptoms of GERD (acid reflux) but the pain was severe enough that I thought I would be dumb enough to be sitting at home while I had a heart attack. Well, after doing an EKG, a chest xray, and blood work, I found out I was right! So I should of gone with my instincts of staying at home. The only good thing that cam

This week was another difficult week for me and I didn't do great in the eating department. I got on the scale this morning and had lost 0 lbs. So I'm still holding at...... 22 lbs. lost At least I didn't gain! I'll check back in next week.

Sometimes I have to remember that I do not have super-human strength. I need to realize that I can't do it all. I try to be that way but then something will cause me to snap and I realize that I actually do have a limit. Thursday and Friday were days where I just couldn't keep it together. I kept having mini-meltdowns and losing it. I felt overwhelmed, depressed and discouraged by the smallest things. Small and not so small emotional explosions were happening all over the place. I sat down to ponder why I was losing it. Then I realized that in the four weeks so many things have been happening. Since July 15th.... * I have cleaned an entire house from top to bottom. * I painted a room. * We moved an entire house. * I cleaned the old house from top to bottom. * We moved an entire church. * I cleaned the old church building from top to bottom. * I unpacked and put away not only my stuff but found space for some of the church things here as well. * We had

It's Sew Crafty Friday over at Shereen's blog, Waiting for Him. Take a minute and go check out the crafts over there. Well, we since moving I haven't had a whole lot of time for crafting. This week I started stenciling Emily's room. I wanted to keep the theme of roses. If you remember, I'm working on a quilt for her room. I'm going to make curtains as well. Here is the quilt material. I only got one corner of the room done so far. Close-up. My husband suggested I just do the corners of the room as opposed to the whole room. What do you think? Hopefully next week I'll actually have some crafts to show you.

Tina nominated me for an award. Thank you, Tina! That was really sweet of you. This will actually give me an opportunity to let you all know how much I've enjoyed getting to know everyone the past few months. I've met so many really neat people through this blog. I sometimes feel badly that I don't always respond to your comments. However, I do read them all and enjoy them and I try to respond here or there as I can. I have to remember that my family is my priority and I literally could spend all day on here if I let myself. Yet, I have children to educate, a household to run, and a church to help my husband minister to. So I work hard to limit my online time. I'm trying to spend some time early in the morning and then maybe 5 minutes here and there, as I finish different tasks. Anyway, I wanted to say this so that you will all know that if I don't respond to your comments it's nothing personal. I love comments and I hope you'll keep posting them!

This was Emily on Sunday morning. Doesn't she look sweet? She hates wearing dresses but looks so beautiful when she does. This was Emily & a friend on Sunday afternoon. Silly, huh? This is her normal personality when she is around her friends! Of course, I love her this way. Now, put 4 girls together and what do you have? A much louder house! They played board games, ate brownies, played hide and seek, and rode bikes and rollerbladed. The boys stayed locked in their room (literally) all afternoon! LOL!

The winner of The American Frugal Housewife is........................ Leah . Leah, give me your address (you can pm me through CHF) and I'll send off your book. Congratulations!

Our friends, Stephanie & Juan love ethnic food. Dan & I are the same way so about 6 months ago we decided to get together once a month and cook a meal from a different country. We put the names of countries in a basket and draw a name. Whoever's turn it is has to cook the entire meal from scratch. Usually we will research some interesting information about the country and share it with the group. Last night was my turn and I had Poland. Since Dan is have Polish, I thought it would be fun to learn to cook some of the food. Everything is ready to go. I'm learning how to do different napkin folds. Fresh flowers from the garden. We had stuffed cabbage. Kluskis (potato dumplings) Haluski (cabbage & noodles) Bialys (onion bread) For dessert, I made kolachky cookies. These things had 1 lb. of butter in them! After seeing the amount of butter in everything, I definitely will not be cooking like this a lot! It is such fun doing this every month. We didn't have an