Hearts in Service

Tomorrow is our town's community day and not only will we have a church booth there, with a free craft for children, but I'm setting up my own booth with some of my crafty things for sale.  I'm also bringing copies of my new book and we'll see how I do. Here are some things that I've made this week to add to my stash. I made a small tote bag. I bought some plastic canvas, covered it in fabric and added it to the bottom to give it some durability. I also made an apron.  Love the red & white dots! Today, I'm going to whip up some tea totes and tissue holders to add to my stock and then I'm good to go tomorrow.   I'm also in the midst of rearranging and cleaning my sewing room so I have lots to keep me busy this weekend!

I've always wanted my house to be a welcoming one.  One where my family knows they are loved and wanted.  One where they know there is safety and peace.  A home where they are cared for and encouraged and built up. I'm not always successful.  Many days my mouth tears down, instead of building them up.  My children and husband feel rejected and not accepted.  There is turmoil and not peace. However, when those times happen, I always go back and ask forgiveness.  I hug them.  I tell them I love them.  And we move on. Being a ministry family is hard.  It can be stressful.  It can be hurtful.  So I work very hard at making my house a home.  And that is one of the reasons I love being a stay at home mother, even though my children are older.  I can easily get pulled in a thousand directions and my family starts to get pushed last on the list. I want to be available to my family.  I love making my husband's lunch each day.  I enjoy doing the little things around the ho

Emily finished school this week and you would think with it being summer and all that I'd get a chance to slow down and take it easy.  Hah!  The next few weeks are even busier.   I've been gifted a few different times over the past 2 weeks with fabric and I have so many ideas popping around my brain that I can smell smoke! ;-) Here are two tote bags I made this week and an apron. The first is identical to the one I made last week, only with nylon lining. I'm not sure why this looks crooked here.  It may have been the angle I took it at.  It is symetrical! :-)   I'm catering a friend's graduation party on Saturday so I'm going shopping with her today and then will spend the day tomorrow prepping. I need to get Emily's quarterly report in the mail by Friday.  Yikes!!!  That's tomorrow! I'm writing on a study to do with a friend this summer, entitled, "Finding your place, passion and purpose in Christ."     Next Satur

Last week, Emily had the painful process of taking a standardized test, which is required by our State each year if you homeschool.  It was stressful, but she did pretty well.  She came out above average in reading, language expression, and social science and average in everything else.   But I had some thoughts about standardized tests.  I'm not sure who came up with the bright idea of these silly things.  They are designed to tell how a student compares with their peers, but to me they just let you know if your child works well under pressure and can take a test well.  I can tell you what they do NOT measure. They don't show that my daughter is artistic & musical.  She has a very sweet voice and is developing her art. They don't show how compassionate and kind she is.  She feels things deeply and it hurts her when she sees others being mistreated. They don't show her merciful side. Tests don't mention how persistent she is.  She struggles under

Yesterday, as I stood on the platform ready to help lead worship, I looked out at the congregation and saw frowning faces, weighed down by concerns, worries, or just not enough sleep.  The discouragement was palpable and those type of moods really do affect the atmosphere of a Sunday morning worship service.   After breathing a quick prayer, I felt led to have people call out one way they were blessed during the past week.  It was a bit scary at first, because no one spoke!  However, first one person, then another, then many began to list the ways they saw God's hand on their life.  And immediately the mood shifted.  People began to smile.  It was almost as if a depressing spirit had been lifted from the place.  And worship of God began. God created us for praise.  When we take our eyes of our misery and start putting them squarely on His face, hope is birthed.  When we look for His hand in the happenings of our life, we are transformed into people of praise.  When we see Him i

I managed to get some sewing done this week and realized it's been a while since I've done one of these posts too! I love the first item I made.  A friend saw my blog post yesterday about the Coach bags and asked me if I could make her a patchwork tote bag.  She sent me the specifications and after playing with it a while, I came up with this.   LOVE IT!!!!  It is lined in tan vinyl and is very heavy duty.   The second item was an unlined apron.  Again, the material is so cute.  One of the hazards of working with hand me down fabric is you get what you're given.  Originally this was supposed to be lined in pale blue.   The pale blue was donated fabric and when I went to sew it, I noticed a yellow fading of the fabric right on the fold line that I didn't see when cutting it out.  I tried washing it to no avail.  So this became an unlined apron. The final item is something I made last week and never posted.  I made some tea totes with the same fabric.

I haven't done a "Thrifty Thursday" post in a while and with my latest acquisition I thought I should.  A friend contacted me one day recently and asked if I wanted some Coach bag material.  I thought, "Sure!" When I went to her house to pick it up, it actually turned out to be three 30 gallon garbage bags and 2 small shopping bags full of actual Coach bags!  Apparently, they were purses that customers had bought, and had found a slight defect in them and returned them to the store.  Instead of reselling them at a reduced rate or giving them away to some charitable group, the store had sliced open every single bag and thrown them in a dumpster at the mall..  The price tags were still on and the bags were anywhere from $350-$450 each.  There was about $10,000 worth of merchandise in the bags. My friend couldn't stand seeing them go to waste and pulled them out of the garbage.  lol  Anyway, she thought I could do something with them. Unfortunately, t

There is an activity floating around facebook that is popular among my young teen friends.  The person posts something like this..."Like for truth is."  Basically, you click the like button under their status and then they are supposed to post some true statement about you.  It makes me smile because it always seems to be the same teens doing it and their statements are always the same.  "Truth is your my best friend."  "Truth is we don't talk that much anymore."  "Truth is you're really pretty." and on and on.    There seems to be an entire generation coming up who cannot communicate outside of technology.  They text what they want to say or send a tweet or update their facebook status on a regular basis.  I was trying to have a conversation with someone the other day who had their face buried in their phone the entire time, and this was an adult! Today I thought I'd give some of my own "Truth is..." statements. ►

When I think of Mondays, there are many words that come to mind... Mundane Melancholy Manic Morose "Meh" - lol Messy Moody Mindless Many of these words come as a result of a crazy weekend.  Weekends generally are not relaxed for a pastor's family.  This weekend especially was very busy.   Our youth group had an all day tag sale, craft fair and car wash to raise money for camp.  I cleaned the church, did the bulletins, Dan & I planned out the service, I led worship, wrangled a very busy, but adorable new little girl the entire service, and then went grocery shopping in the afternoon because our cupboards were literally bare.  Not a meal could have been planned with what I had left.  So Mondays are the day when everything comes crashing down.  The house looks like an explosion happened.  I always feel down on Mondays.  It's hard to want to do much of anything.  My poor husband still has to get up and go to his other job so I really shouldn'

This old house was built in the late 1800s.   There was a fire here at one point so it has been remodeled on the inside and an addition was built on as well about ten years ago.  As much as I complain about the stonewall and wood basement that I'm afraid to go in, the cold in the winter, and the upstairs windows and rotting frames that need to be replaced, I do love it. I tend to look at the negative at times and today want to focus on what I love about this old house. ♥ The downstairs has a large open dining room and living room perfect for entertaining.  We've had families over, had large gatherings, small group, and a teen group meeting here over the past few years. ♥ Everyone has their own bedroom.  In our last house the boys shared a room and that posed problems as they got older and larger! lol ♥ I have a sewing room.  No more setting up and tearing down a sewing machine every time I want to sew or craft.  It's a large room and has also been used to house p

I've been planning this surprise for months and yesterday was the big day.  Dan's 50th birthday party.  His actual birthday in on June 12th but I planned for the party after the morning service yesterday.   I found that the blessings were in abundance yesterday.  Thanking God for blessings #1621-1625. We had "Friend's Sunday" at church and so he was expecting to see new faces and old friends so it seemed a perfect way to incorporate the surprise.  One of the first blessings was just seeing a full church!  Our church is small and struggles much of the time.  Unfortunately, we find that when people don't feel like it, or feel down, or have something better to do, they just stay home.  And they don't realize how much that affects the rest of the church. It was wonderful yesterday to have a large group of people, excited to be there, singing and smiling!  It made a huge difference in the atmosphere of the place.  My husband was energized and had a wonder