Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

Brillo Man had an emotional weekend.

He had to say goodbye to an old friend.

A friend who has been with him through thick and thin.

Through sunshine and rain.

Through the muck and mire.

In all kinds of weather and in all kinds of storms.

He sold his beloved excavator. gasp!!

Whatever will he do now when he's bored? He will have no 'friend' to help him dig holes all over our property. Alas.

Here he is - posing for one last photo with his friend:



Driving it up onto the buyer's trailer:



Reluctant to leave...



The new owner driving away with Brillo Man's old friend... such a sad, sad day.

Psalm 91

What's in those Eggs Anyway??!

A friend recently inquired what it was that we feed our chickens because the eggs are so very good. She gasped with horror and disbelief when she discovered that we "slop" our chickens....in much the same way that a farmer slops pigs. In other words...we feed them all our table scraps. Well, there are a few that Bentley enjoys...but most of our leftovers make their way into the chicken coop.

As a result of that, we have VERY LARGE chicken eggs. Seriously. Some of the eggs are as large as duck eggs. And they have double yolks. And the shells are super duper hard - it takes a greater effort to break them.

Our farm fresh eggs are delicious - so much more tasty than the eggs one can purchase at the grocery store! In fact, I won't even eat eggs anymore in a restaurant since there is no way that they can compare with our Farm Fresh Chicken-Slopped Eggs!!



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Yep! They for sure are sloppin' those birds...
Just look at the size of those yolks!
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Back in Our Hands

"Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude." Luke 9:16

Here's a thought: When Jesus took the loaves and the fishes from the young boy before the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 he blessed them and then handed them back to the disciples and expected them to disperse them to the crowd. Once again...He blessed them and put them back in the disciples' hands. Ah...how many times does the Lord bless things and then expect us to act in order for the miracle to occur?

...just a point to ponder.

Dolce Far Niente

Italians have a saying - Dolce Far Niente, which simply means:

The art of doing sweet nothing.

Oh, how I love that! It's so much nicer to think of time spent doing nothing as an ART rather than considering it a bunch of wasted time! For one, I am Italian and being an artist, I am all about

...I'm thinking I must now go and CREATE!!

Cold

So, I get myself all bundled up to face the frigid air as I walked Bentley this morning...

Coat - check

Hat - check

Boots - check

Gloves - um. no. That's why I have pockets.

Did I mention that I'm allergic to the cold? No? Well, I'm allergic to the cold. Really. Seriously. I break out in hives if any skin is exposed to cold for any length of time. And the hives are not fun. They are extremely itchy and extremely annoying. But - this morning I was prepared! I knew it was cold outside and I had every inch of skin covered (well, except for my hands....that's why I have pockets.)

Halfway up the driveway, I decided to take a few photos of Bentley. He is cute, after all. So, I snapped away with the camera on my iPhone. Of course, doing so would obviously cause me to have to remove my hands from my pockets.



Ah...I know what you're thinking... You're thinking...yep, now she's going to get hives on her hands. She should've worn gloves!!

Nope. By some miracle I did not get hives on my hands - despite the frigid ten degree temperature with a minus something wind chill. No, instead I got a huge hive - ON MY EYELID! Caused my eye to swell shut. There's a new one. Must've been the act of LOOKING at all that cold snow!

On my "to do" list today: Ordering a Ski Mask

Today.

The tree is still up.

Anybody want in on the pool as to when I'll take it down? No idea when it will happen.

Today, I made chili - in the crock pot - with ground chuck which I had cooked several weeks ago and stuck in the freezer. I opened up some cans of kidney beans and garbanzo beans and sauce and added a bunch of spices and chopped up a green pepper. Easiest and fastest chili I've ever made in my life. I'm thinking I'm going to start stockpiling cooked ground chuck in my freezer.

Snow. We've got it. Lots of it. It's white and it's cold and I stayed indoors all day because of it. Well, I did walk Bentley halfway up the driveway while wearing my PJs. Here's proof - note the snow is covering the boots. Did I mention we have lots of it?:



Oh, and I drove Olivia the entire way up the driveway so she didn't have to stand in a snowstorm while she was waiting for the bus this morning. (I am a good Mother. Sometimes.) But other than those two times...I stayed in.

I started to clean off my desk. I found a bunch of things that I didn't know I was missing. Amongst them were these items:



I have no idea why I had plastic Easter eggs on my desk. So don't ask.

Let's see...what else? I've had approximately 14 hot flashes thus far (ten of them being in the last two hours...AFTER I ate a bowl of spicy chili.) (I knew that ingesting spicy foods can increase the likelihood of hot flashes. I didn't care. Then.)

I worked on the afghan I'm crocheting for Olivia. I'll post a photo when it's complete. Don't look for it any time soon.



So...that was pretty much my day. What did you do?

Perspective

As is customary at this time in my life, with the New Year now upon us, I have been thinking -- about a lot of different things. While I enjoyed the Christmas season and all the festivities that went along with our family celebration, I am glad that time has marched on and I can now get back into my regular routine of doing nothing special. It feels good to be sitting in my favorite spot in my reclining sofa with my laptop on my lab and a sleeping dog at my feet. Brillo Man and I just watched an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Olivia is in her bedroom singing along to some silly song in her head and I'm trying to blog.

Aha. And then Olivia appears. "Mom, will you please log onto PowerSchool and check my grades?" All A's and B's. Good for her! I'm so proud of her. And then my heart starts to beat a little faster as I begin to think about what awaits me in just two short weeks... I'll be concerned about my own grades. I'll be starting work on my Masters Degree in Professional Counseling. It's been years since I've been in school. I have moments when I think... "what were you thinking?!...signing up to take classes?...and GRADUATE classes no less??!!" I'll have to do a tremendous amount of writing. And I'm told that my writing will have to follow APA Format (whatever that is!) Oh. Help. My nice quiet evening of sitting on the couch with my laptop in front of the TV with an old Alfred Hitchcock episode suddenly turned into a nightmare.

Did I ever tell you that I don't like to write? Seriously. There was the one time in college when I was required to write a paper for extra credit and my friend offered to write the paper for me (because she was student teaching and had no finals for which to study and she was bored!) And I jokingly told her "sure! write my paper for me!" - and then she actually DID write the paper! It was an ethnography on the Yanomamo Tribe - for my Introduction to Anthropology class. Why in the world I took an intro to anthro class is beyond me. I needed an elective. I was told it would be a fun course. And it was - caused me to actually consider becoming an anthropologist for a second or two. But I digress. My friend did such an awesome job on the paper which I turned in with my name on it...that I received an "A" grade. An "A" grade on a paper which I never wrote. (Don't think that this hasn't bothered me for years - decades even! - for it has!)

So now, in just a few short days, I will be embarking upon a graduate studies career. And I will have to write papers. A LOT of papers. ...I'm wondering if my friend would consider writing my papers. I know where she lives. I could ask... ugh.

And then I started to think that perhaps I need to change my perspective. You see, the Lord has called me to do this Masters thing. It's not anything I came up with on my own. So...He equips those whom He calls. Right? Right. So writing all these papers will not be such a big deal. When I take a few steps back and look at it from God's perspective...it's a small thing.

Sorta like the wind turbines we saw while visiting Brillo Man's family in New York. Small? No. HUGE! They tower approximately 533 feet in the air!! But when one steps back...they don't seem all that menacing.


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This is a small thing in the eyes of the LORD...
-2 Kings 3:18
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In the Secret....

..in the quiet place...

...in the stillness, You are there...




Merry Christmas! May the Love of the Lord always be recognizable to you! For His love is always present...He is always near!

A Giveaway!!

One can never have TOO MUCH yarn. Trust me.

Brillo Man, however, would greatly disagree...just ask him how many times he's moved boxes and bins of yarn that I have stored in various spots in the house! On second thought, don't ask him. It will just get him going...and for heaven's sake, we don't need that!)

Anyway....I've entered a contest to win MORE YARN! Yahoo! You may enter also at the Red Heart with Love Yarn Giveaway site.

And now, since I've shared this with you, I get an extra entry! Yahoo!! Perhaps I'll win! Wouldn't that be great? Of course, then I would have to buy more yarn - because what could one possibly create with only three skeins...hmmm...I'm thinking that's their point...give us a few skeins and then we buy more! It's all good...for after all, one can never have TOO MUCH yarn!

It's Finished

The painting has been finished for quite some time....finished it the week before Brillo Man and I left on our cruise. Many updates to follow...but for now, here's the final photo.

My cup of tea

So...It's Monday morning and in an hour from now I'll be leaving to teach my women's Bible study. I thought I'd have a calming cup of tea and perhaps lose my headache somewhere between now and then.

On Friday I purchased several sample tea bags from a little store in an an adjacent town. I wish I had thought to take a photo of the store - but alas, I did not. The Happy Egglant is our new favorite store, one in which Brillo Man and I visit almost every Friday during our "date day." There we have discovered, among other things, some amazingly flavorful Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar. The glass flasks are refillable and the oil is imported directly from Italy. Being of Italian descent, I have a slight affection for anything Italian. Not to mention that it's the best olive oil that I have had.

But I digress. I started out talking about tea... The Pomi-Berry Tea Sachet from Two Leaves and a Bud just may be my new favorite! The description on their website reads:

"Pomi-Berry might be the Goldilocks of herbal berry tea. With a combination of calming chamomile, zippy forest berries and fruity strawberry, it doesn't hit you over the head with berry flavor, and it isn't too herbal. It's just right."

It is a very good tea. And I'm thrilled that it didn't hit me over the head with berry flavor because, after all, I do have a headache...

Anybody Need a Chair?

I was SURE that long ago I posted something about Brillo Man's amazing auction win. 63 Filing Cabinets....Does that ring a bell with anyone? I can't locate the post - so perhaps I didn't post it...but I was sure I did.

Anyway...to recap...he was absolutely thrilled to have won an auction of 63 government surplus filing cabinets. Then he had to rent a HUGE U-Haul to bring them home - and then rent a storage space for three months to house them while he decided where he would put them.... He then bought a very expensive shed to house them - so he could store "stuff" in them. ??!

Yesterday he arrived home with these:



Goverment surplus chairs....
We are NOT buying another shed.

The Queen of MisMatch

As part of Red Ribbon "Say No to Drugs" Week at school, Olivia was encouraged to dress all Mismatched today. Her teacher said that "she won!" - For sure she is a kaleidoscope of color and patterns!



We even mismatched her hair!

Not Enough Time

I have come to the conclusion that there simply are not enough hours in my day. And how is it that I've come to this earth-shattering conclusion?...it's 10:33pm as I'm typing this and I still have a bazillion blogs I would like to read and a dozen things I need to do before I turn in for the night....not to mention that since we had church tonight, I didn't get the dishes done... I also neglected to help Olivia choose her outfit for mismatched day at school tomorrow. Which means we will probably be rushed in the morning and she won't be nearly as mismatched as she could have been had we chosen her outfit earlier.

I spent over an hour today trying to get through the next level of Angry Birds. Who invented that horrible time-sucking game anyway??!! And why could it not have been me??!

One hour was spent in preparation for our youth group lesson - we gave the teens a spiritual gifts test. OH!...what fun we had...not to mention the interesting things we learned about our small group of teens!

One hour spent overseeing Olivia's homework progress. She did fairly well on her own - which was good (because I was preoccupied trying to solve ANGRY BIRDS!)

Ten minutes was spent on the phone with the bank begging for mercy in hopes that they'll reverse the THREE overdraft charges that hit today when I realized that I paid bills out of THE WRONG ACCOUNT!!! What was I (NOT!) thinking! (Pray for favor please...they will let me know tomorrow if they are able to forgive any of those charges...) Ugh.

I know one thing upon which I didn't spend enough time ....eating. It's official - I'm hungry. My stomach is growling. I think I need to go heat up a bowl of that ham and cabbage soup Brillo Man made yesterday...

Yummy Deliciousness!

I returned home after a long day...led a Bible study this morning - then spent some time encouraging a friend during a long, extended lunch - then picked up Olivia from school - went to the bank....thought I would have to cook dinner when I returned since I knew that Brillo Man was gone all day... only to find that Brillo Man wasn't gone all day! Change of plans! Yahoo...and he made dinner! Have I mentioned lately that I love my husband?

Trunk or Treat

Olivia donned her blonde wig and off we went...to the New Beginnings Church Trunk or Treat Celebration.









Olivia was disguised as Taylor Swift and was elated that most people guessed correctly when she asked them to guess who she was.



She had fun collecting a ton of candy. She painted a pumpkin, went on a hayride and won a Webkinz duck. She was thrilled!






And as the afternoon was winding down, they drew names for some prizes for the adults. I said to myself, 'it sure would be nice to win a gas card,'...and then they drew my name for a $10 gift card for the gas station. God is good!

...and Now I wait...

I have finally taken the steps to do something that the Lord has been calling me to do for a number of years. I will pursue my Master of Arts degree in Professional Counseling beginning in January.

All paperwork is complete...now I just wait for a response from the Veterans Administration regarding financial aid (as the wife of a disabled veteran, I qualify for education benefits!) Today I received a letter in the mail stating that they have received my application and due to "a great number of claims, action on mine may be delayed." Fun. Whee. So typical of anything having to do with the VA...ugh. Hopefully, the finances will come through BEFORE the admissions office will require payment for my classes. If not, I'll be taking out a student loan to get me through the interim. At any rate, I'm believing that the Lord will work out all the details. He has called me. I'm trusting He'll equip me.

So for now...I wait.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words....

...or so the saying goes.

Our Pastor Marty is an amazing woman of God (Her name is Martha...but most call her Marty.) She is in the midst of an incredible sermon series entitled, "Thy Kingdom Come" and felt inspired to commission me to paint a "coat of arms", if you will, for our church. I am honored to be using the gift that God has given me.

This painting is about so much more than the coat of arms...it goes deeper...the Lord is doing a work in me through it...He is working on the canvas of my heart with each stroke of the brush. When I'm finished with the painting, I may share more about what the Lord is doing in my heart. But for now, just know that God is amazing....and I am a work in progress...just as this painting is a work in progress:

Pencil Drawing Sketch of THY KINGDOM COME
I spent considerable time reading
the scripture references which
Martha has chosen for her series.
And then spent some time in prayer...
and this is what the Lord gave me
(drawing time on the actual sketch: 20 minutes)



Adding a grid so I may transfer it to the canvas



Drawing on the canvas begins (Canvas measures 30"x40")
It took a little more time than 20 minutes
to 'grid off' the canvas
and transfer my drawing to scale



Filling in the background
Randy suggested the color...very good choice


The background complete


The start of the tree


More of the same


The tree complete...for now
Revisions to follow, I'm sure!


The ribbon...


And that's as far as I've gone thus far. I will be painting some more today. Just as this canvas is a work in progress, so is my life. The Lord is painting on the canvas of my heart...changing me, refining me, perfecting me, conforming me into His image. The goal being that I will reflect His character. It's a process. As an artist, I am reminded that at times the design comes easily and the paint flows freely and quickly, but often times, it's a more arduous task to make the painting look like the vision that is in my head. My prayer is that I may not be resistant to the work that He is doing in my life - and that I allow Him to create in me a masterpiece.

...more of the painting in upcoming posts.

Book Review: Stained Glass Hearts

In Stained Glass Hearts, Patsy Clairmont sheds a different perspective on our lives. In showing us how to keep our eyes on Jesus, when the things of life attempt to cloud our view, we may see that the beauty that awaits on the other side of those clouds is well worth the patient wait.

You will laugh (as well you should expect when reading something by Patsy Clairmont!) You will cry. You will definitely be moved to think about your life in a whole new way.

The message is powerful and inspirational. I was especially fond of the fourth chapter, entitled: Enough to Make a Stained Glass Heart Sing. Being a lover of music, I greatly appreciated Ms. Clairmont's ability to "lift my perspective through Creation's music."

The book is filled with marginal quotes from famous people including Maya Angelou and Robert Frost. And there are links to helpful websites as well.

Stop and smell the roses. Be grateful in ALL things. Look at things from a slightly different perspective - and don't be surprised when you see the Light shining through the stained glass!

All in all, this book gets five stars!