I love my mommy :)

As iron sharpens iron,
   so one person sharpens another.
Proverbs 27:17

My mother is just plain awesome. Our relationship isn't perfect, we have definitely had our rough patches. However, surviving the storms of life with someone makes a relationship stronger. We've certainly survived some storms of life together, and also some of our own making. Humbleness and love are key in mending relationships. Sacrificing self and pride are instrumental in healing hurts between people so relationships may strengthen in trust. God used her a bunch this week!

I'm very excited to say that she has graciously added to my fabric collection with some adorable red, white, and blue prints and has also given me a can of white paint so I can get to repainting some of our furniture!  She also showed me some of her latest finds for her own kitchen. "You inspired me," she told me. Me? Really? Wow! And here I was basking in the inspiration she gives me. It sure is nice to have someone to share all this with, and to be "sharpened" by. :-)

Praying you have some iron to sharpen up against this week! God bless you and your nest!

It's in the genes...

I'm the talker in my family. I know, I know. Shocking, isn't it? ;-)
Well, my mother has been reading my ramblings, and the blogging bug has bit her too! We truly are a family of Irish story-tellers. I helped her this morning set up her blog. Take a peek and leave her some love. Click here. I'm sure you'll notice the similarities pretty quickly. 

Wacky Wednesday

Wacky Wednesday!!! Time for my attention-span to be set free from its bondage of focus! I guarantee there will be more on my ramblings below in future blogs. :-D


 It's official - we are homeschooling Thomas for kindergarten! After much prayer and deliberation, and a God-sent afternoon with a wonderful single mom of FOUR boys she homeschooled, it was clear to me that this is the direction meant for Thomas and our family.  

 My itty bitty Focus is on its last legs. My wreck in early March blew out the A/C, but nothing else. Now the poor little thing is having problems with spark plugs and fuel injection and something my husband said about an "air-flow sensor." Not big items to repair, but there just isn't the money to fix them right now. I'm concerned about it, but I'm not losing any sleep. God knows my car is vital to our lives. God isn't surprised its not running well. God knows what we need. He will provide. 


I got all my classes set up for summer and fall. I am VERY excited that my nursing research class is this summer instead of the fall. While research can be tedious at times, I do enjoy it and it will be good to have it to focus on during the summer and not having to balance it with psych-social nursing and clinicals. 

Our annual family beach trip this year is to Pensacola, and we're camping! We have a two-man tent (Dad got it for FREE and gave it to us! I simply adore FREE.) and the trip is going to cost us next to nothing. My parents and brother and his family are renting a cabin. My husband and I are pitching our tent right across from the beach on Peridido Bay. It is going to be like a honeymoon for us and I just can't wait!

I got to dig in the backyard with my husband, son, and future step-sister-in-law (did you catch that?). I was hoping to find cool stuff like he did. Nope. I found a rusted distributor from a 50's model car. Yay. *sigh*

My friend Shayna is just plain awesome. She is so talented with so much! Check out her photography here. 

My husband and I are praying about starting our own business. I'm jazzed about it, but we'll see what Jesus has to say about it. . .

Okay, I think I'm done rambling for today. :-) Hope you have a wonderful, wacky Wednesday too!

Bearing fruit

I have a garden! My garlic and zucchini have made their debut.

 

 
Nevermind the little weed leafies. I'm weeding those out tomorrow! The big leaves are the ones that count. :-)

Onto my next discovery: I have a pomegranate bush! I was all set to pull out this scraggly shrub next to my driveway because it is EXACTLY where one would open the door to get out of the car. 

Where it is placed, I can't park two cars at the end of my driveway side by side because the driver on the left would be stuck in the car. I asked the landlord if I could take it out, he said it was perfectly okay with him. After that, in my mind the ugly thing was already gone. I no longer saw it or paid any attention to it. Until about a week or so ago.  

It started budding these strange things that looked like some kind of crazy orange pepper. When I suggested such, my husband laughed at me, and said that we'd just pinch a piece off and bring it to my mother to see if she could tell us what it is. He assured me it was absolutely NOT a pepper though. Hmph. 

So, we brought a bud over once it blossomed into this five-petaled, papery bloom. Yeah. She didn't have a clue. So we spend thirty minutes on Google Images searching the term "orange flowering shrub bud," sifting through a hundred or so images of orange flowering shrubs. I finally arrived at an image that sort of looked like what I had in my hand, so I clicked on it. Turns out, its a pomegranate bush!

My jaw dropped! The fruit ripens from the base of the bud. It swells at the bottom into the big giant fruit you see at your local grocer or farmstand. The fruit usually ripen from August to September. I'm super excited!!!


I couldn't help but remember an article I read in January from InTouch Magazine, titled "Ripening for Harvest." (Do not nitpick my citations please LOL - between my literature, psychology, and nursing classes, I have all my rules mixed up!) Read the article here. The gist: every season is important for bearing fruit. Fruit doesn't ripen all year. Apple trees don't bear apples in December, pumpkin vines in May. At the time, I was in a deep winter. Cold, dark, lonely and no end in sight. My brain knew that it wouldn't last forever, but it was a daily (and at times hourly) battle with my heart to remain hopeful. God's promises often were repeated like a mantra, if only to try to try and breach the infinite chasm between my heart and mind. God seemed so far away (or so Satan wanted me to believe) and when I read this article, the sun managed to break through the clouds just long enough to warm me up enough to keep praying faithfully and trusting in Him. I stared at the bloom in my hand and remembered the ugliness that it was - skinny, barren-appearing, tall, and all together in my way - and thought of what it is now: a full, lush, and budding fruit shrub not quite yet ripe for the picking, but promising us of what's to come. 


Some seasons in life just plain suck. If you think about it though, all four seasons have drawbacks. Rainy spring days. Hot, humid, windless summer afternoons. Blustery and mud-colored autumn mornings. Endless, frigid winter nights. And yet, they all have beauty: the blooms in spring, swimming and barbeques in summer, brilliant autumn leaves and hayrides, the glistening of snow on Christmas morning. 

Jesus tells us that if we remain in Him, and He in us, we will bear fruit. The illustration and comparison to life and fruit is not an accident. Nothing can continuously bear fruit. All things need a season of dormancy for growth and renewal. I find so much peace in that. Romans 8:28 says that all things are used for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. You can guarantee that God will use ALL of it to bear fruit. Even our seasons of coldness, endless rain, and darkness. Jesus will make something beautiful, rest easy. Nothing lasts forever. 

I hope whatever season you are in, that you trust in God and His perfect timing.
God bless you and your nest

When I "Wing It"

What happens from time to time is that I get busy (or distracted. or lazy. or stubborn.) and I end up starting a project or needing to make a decision and I end up having to answer the question, "What are you doing?" 

My reply? "I'm winging it." 

Translation: I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm doing, but rest assured, I'm praying the whole time that something good will come of my efforts. And because Jesus just ROCKS, it usually works out pretty okay. All honor and glory to Him, because my lack of plan according to the world is merely a recipe (or a prescription) for disaster. :-)

My latest "wing it" endeavor is something for my kitchen from the most darling piece of scrap fabric my mother gave me. It is buttercream-yellow with apples and little apple blossom buds. It. Is. Adorable.

Last night, my husband observed me bent over the fabric at my sewing machine, pins in my mouth, pinning the teeniest hem EVER. I asked him to set up my iron and after he did so, he asked, "What are you going to do with it?" 

"I dunno," I replied. "I'm just gonna wing it."

I cut a long rectangle out of it and sewed two hems along the longer edges before I realized I should have taken a picture of the odd shape before I got into 5th gear and started snipping. Oh well. I'm envisioning a small valance (really small) but we shall see. Mom assured me that Joann's probably has more. However, until I get the time and money to assess that situation, I'm not giving up on my little piece of wonderfulness for my kitchen. Please, Jesus, help me make something delightful.  It doesn't look like much, but I have faith in it and in You. :-)

Bacon, honeysuckle, and Jesus - my favorite aroma!

This morning my husband comes in our dining room with tears in his eyes. We were having our separate times with Jesus, he in our room and I in the dining room. During my husband's quiet time, he said the following prayer: "God, I know you will provide for us. You have already done it time and time again. Please, Lord, just provide for us to have the gas in the car for what we need to do for the rest of the week." We were running low on gas and finances this week, you see. He told me he no sooner got the words out of his mouth when he received a text message to work today. To see the glow of Jesus surrounding him was breathtaking! We just held each other for a moment and he went to get ready for work. 

While he was in the shower, I felt I needed to hurry and make him a special breakfast to love on him for this blessed day. I decided to make him some turkey bacon and reheat some biscuits from the other day and pack him a little sack of snacks to take with him. As I was standing over the stove, the aroma of cooking bacon mixed with something sweeter. It took a second for me to remember that he had filled the house with honeysuckle from the bush outside our dining room window. I had put some in a Coke bottle we found in the backyard and put it on the window sill above the sink, which is next to the stove. 

Last Friday Stephen was mowing the yard, and I went out to talk to him and while there, I asked him what the bush was outside our dining room. He laughed and said, "It's honeysuckle, babe." I was thrilled! I had always wanted something fragrant outside my home!

So, there I stood, marveling for a moment at how God answers prayers, breathing in the aroma of bacon, honeysuckle, and the very breath of Jesus in my answered prayers. I am so thankful for the sacrifice Jesus made so we could have this intimacy with God, so our sin no longer separates us from Him, and we can personally reach out to our Almighty Father. I am so beautifully humbled this morning. :-)

Birds chirping :)

Lately I've felt like the Israelites complaining about being in the desert and the manna, missing the food of Egypt despite the slavery they were subjected to. My husband even noticed the frequent references to the journey to the Promised Land in my life the past month or so. Our little house is truly an act of God I walk around in every day, but I think I have become desensitized in some ways to His miracle. Not so different from the Israelites, huh?

Getting used to being somewhat removed from the more densely populated and commercial part of our county is taking some getting used to. I lived in the same general area for the better part of 8 years - since I moved to Georgia as a mater of fact. Everything I needed was so convenient and less than 10 minutes away from my driveway.  Now, its approximately 30 minutes. Instead of cars and sirens (the firestation was near my old home), I hear birds chirping, crickets, and trains. 


I'm sitting here listening to the birds chirping in the trees outside my window, and reflecting on a thought I had yesterday: If God wanted me anywhere else - convenient though it may be for my schedule and my gas tank - by golly I'd be there. The Lord wants us here, set apart from what I know and am comfortable with. This nugget-reminder from the Holy Spirit gently convicted me of my whining. I see my rural location with new eyes now: free from distractions and influences that kept me in bondage. It's a time of renewal and reflection as I begin my new life. God wanted me here and intentionally planted me here and is giving me fertile ground to flourish in and that's all I need to know. His will is my only desire for my life.

Buried Treasure

"I want to grow some vegetables."

My mother says, "Okaaaay. . ."

That's usually how she responds when I'm about to tackle an endeavor she's has not expected. You see, I'm not that good with plants. Translation: I kill green things. However, living out in the country I've been invigorated by all this spring renewal blossoming and flourishing around me. I want to grow something. It's not time for us (yet) to talk about a baby, and while I've never given much thought to flowers and dirt and plants my little house and its huge blank canvas has inspired me. So, I set about making myself a little garden. 

Now, as I have mentioned, money isn't exactly growing on the tree we're nesting in. I'm redefining "resourceful" around here. Almost nothing is wasted. My sister is my little Green Disease, and infected me about a year and a half ago with the "Green Living" bug. I collect compost materials to bring to my mother's house (she has composter and I don't have one - yet!), what few plastic grocery bags we come home with when I don't bring enough reusable shopping bags are repurposed for bathroom trash bags. Plastic bottles and gallon jugs are cut to use as paint buckets and the scraps are recycled. I have my limits, but before I throw anything away, I ask myself: "How can I use this in the next 30 - 60 days?" That time frame keeps me accountable to not just keeping anything. That said, understand I didn't have ANY gardening supplies. No tools. No pots. No potting soil. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. That posed a problem, no? Not for my Jesus. :-)

Here came Mom to the rescue as an answer to my prayer! She gave me a handful of seed packets. Then my son comes home from a Dad-weekend with a pot of wildflowers and grape tomatoes! Sweeeeet. I'm almost there! I have stuff to plant, now I needed something to plant WITH. Hmmmm. . . 

Well, last Sunday I checked out my Sunday paper and couponing website Southern Savers and made a delightful discovery: 8lb bag of potting soil on special for 99 cents a bag for three days only at a local drug store and had $1 garden tools as well! I cried out in joyful excitement and my husband gave me The Eyebrow. I didn't care, I was gonna garden this week!


Here comes the disclaimer: the potting soil and tools I purchased for $4.00 are not the highest quality, so that means more elbow grease. According to my mother, I have to mix the soil and my plants will need more attention for watering and so forth. The hand tools I purchased are a three-prong cultivator and a trowel. I fully expect to have to replace them with something more durable, but for now it was in my budget and met my needs. I don't mind the little extra hard work. 

Moving on now. . .I already had an all-purpose mop bucket I purchased at a discount store for $2.00 and an old bath towel that had been stained pretty badly to use for something to sit on while digging in the dirt. My mom always had something to sit on and something to haul her stuff around with her, so I guess that's why I decided these were on my list of "must haves" for my own little garden. This past weekend, we were driving home and on the way, we were passing a strip of road where there has been some tree-clearing going on and inspiration hit for a border/edge for my garden: cut trees! I pulled over and my husband grabbed some pieces and threw them in the trunk of my Ford Focus and off we went. I laid them out in the sunniest piece of our property and started weeding Sunday to start burying my treasured seeds by this weekend. 


Well, little did I expect to find buried treasure! We have found an old Coca-Cola bottle bottled in Griffin, Georgia and broken pieces of china and pottery. I was out weeding again today and my husband was mowing the grass trying to beat the rain, and he found three more bottles and some broken milk glass from some vintage beauty products! Pictures coming soon! I have to wash the eons of aged dirt off. We're wondering if there was a barn or a home that burned down at some point in the past. . .now we're excited to start digging some more, in the yard and at city hall to learn a little more about the house's history. 


Oh! Here comes the rain and my husband. Time to feed my fellas and finish preparing for my sweet Spirit-sister in Christ, who is arriving tonight to stay for the weekend. God bless you and your nest!

Voila! Ugly bathroom shelf gone!

My bathroom is spacious, but quite honestly, it also a travesty. We make the best of it, and have been adding little things as we go. When my son and I moved into the house in January, there wasn't a mirror, towel bars, or a toilet paper holder. My husband and I aren't really interested in spending a ton of money on a home we don't own, so we bought inexpensive items to meet our needs even though they aren't necessarily our taste.

Well, I have a picture I LOVE LOVE LOVE that I purchased in college at Ross or Marshall's. Almost every bathroom I've had I have decorated around this picture. I really like the look of all white and grays and blues in a bathroom. It has a relaxing, spa-like feeling to me. After we got married, we received a gift card to Bed Bath and Beyond, and we purchased lovely light gray towels for my husband and son to use so they wouldn't ruin my white ones. I love them both dearly, but within two weeks of our wedding, I had to bleach towels! Ummm, yeah. Not a fan of that. So they boys have gray towels and I have white ones. Now, here is a picture of what I already had in the bathroom. I'm not in a hurry to replace my curtain or rings either, and since the color works, for now they will do. 

Nevermind Woody and my flat iron. ;-) As you can see, the linen shelves are a great feature but an eyesore. A friend had given me the idea to make Roman shades. I loved the idea, but felt a little bit daunted by such an undertaking of sewing. We went to a Joann's and I found a beautiful linen fabric with gray flowers that was was simple enough not to offend my uber-masculine husband's sensibilities. Fast forward about three weeks...still staring at the linen shelves and with more time on my hands, I set to work.

I nixed the idea of Roman shades, simply because I didn't have the finances to buy more material and notions to make them and well...I have no patience when I decide I want to start a project! Since I didn't have a pattern of any kind, this is all I had to get my shelf hider completed:

I took a BUNCH of measurements. I mean a WHOLE BIG BUNCH. How wide I wanted it, how long the space was, where I actually wanted it to fall (I wanted to be able to leave it up to sweep and mop), and added extra for 1/2" seams (for no other reason than it makes for easy math). I have no recollection of how much material I purchased, but I went down the length with my tape measure and pinned ever 8 inches or so, and simply followed the line to cut out my desired piece.

 

It didn't take too long, but I am still getting to know my sewing machine (a freebie from a friend that never used it!) and I struggled with the button-holer thingy. I got frustrated and took it to my mother's. Her sewing machine is less than a year old, and had special features that made it a cinch!  I made 5 button holes across the top to hang on silver hooks I already had in a picture hanging kit. And here is the finished product:

Much better! My husband loves it and it hides all that ugly shelving and our stuff!

Next, I think we will be painting the wood fixtures we bought a brushed nickel finish, and maybe paint the walls a gray-white.

long list, busy week

I had a tremendously busy week last week! It was my first week of my new schedule, and my intended project list grew to mammoth proportions. I had to scale it back due to its completely unrealistic "achieve-ability." *sigh* 

I have taken some before pictures of some of the projects I have planned. Since we are renting, the only permissions we have been given in neutral paints, planting annuals, and putting a gravel walk from the driveway to our back door. Presently, the only room with a definitive direction is the bathroom (we only have one in our little house). Our master bedroom we know will have dark chocolate/espresso brown, but we haven't agreed on much other than that. He hates duvets, I hate stripes, he wants a big honkin' dresser, I like damask, yadda, yadda, yadda. However, inspiration hit for the living room last Friday! We found a decor tile that closely matches a plaque my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. We took it home and put it on a small shelf I purchased at a thrift store and repainted a buttercream color. The looked so good together, for a moment my breath caught and I saw the whole room in my head! 

Saturday I found a gorgeous Pier 1 pitcher at the flea market and a small mirror for our bedroom for the vanity I don't own yet, but someday will have. The pitcher is currently on the fireplace waiting for me to decide if I want to repaint it or leave it as is. . . 

I personally feel a home should be a refuge for the family, that each room should be a reflection of the heart and soul of its members, and that a feeling of warmth and welcome should radiate from floor to ceiling. While I may not have a natural knack for decorating, or the finances to hire someone that does, God is helping me out by sending great deals and inspiration my way! Pictures to be posted soon :)

Use what you have

So I was talking to my husband this past weekend about needing to buy bread, milk, and eggs when I went out Monday. As I was discussing my errands with him, I opened my pantry and moved the three bags of flour I bought a few weeks ago to bake my own bread and I thought: "Hold up! Use what you have, silly!"

 Now, understand my husband does not like wheat ANYTHING. If he's eating any "whole wheat" product, it is under extreme duress. I am determined, however, to improve his bachelor nutrition plan and hopefully fend off the hereditary high blood pressure and cholesterol problems. Hence, I didn't exactly tell him I was baking wheat bread. 

 

As you can see, I didn't hide the ingredients from him either. He didn't say a word, but to be honest, I doubt he was really paying attention. The boys are camping out tonight, so they were busy preparing their "site" in the backyard. . .

I also caught myself about to surf the web and look for a recipe when the "use what you have" gong went off in my head again, and I turned to my favorite cookbook. It felt good to turn the pages of my old friend instead of scanning the internet for ages looking for something. 

So baking bread is just a little time consuming but totally worth it. My kitchen has ZERO counter space, but all I did was move my coffee pot and presto! Room to knead!

 So here is the molasses, butter, and milk warming on low to about 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It looked yicky, but didn't smell like I figured it would.

 

 Ready for the first rising! This is when my husband finally asked, "Are you making wheat bread?" I just smiled. I got "the eyebrow" (he often raises his eyebrow when I'm behaving impish and mischievous).

 Now, time to cut in half and put into loaf pans to rest and rise the final time. Never mind the diet Dr. Pepper in the background!

 Ta-da! All done. 

I decided to use my stoneware loaf pans since I haven't used them in ages, so my baking time was a little shortened. That was a good thing because the aroma of baking bread drew both the boys into the house looking to see when they were going to be ready to slice! My husband is now converted: during dinner, through the mouthful of warm, fresh bread and trans-fat-free butter spread he says to me, "I never want to buy bread again. This stuff is incredible. Can you make this from now on?" 

There are few things quite like the satisfaction gleaned from such a warm response to simply using what I already had. How often do we all miss out on such experiences due to a short supply of patience and attraction to convenience?

Welcome and Greetings from Spring Break!

Aaaahhh, spring break! Spring break has new meaning and perfect timing for me this year! First, I got married on my own spring break from school and my life changed gears. Now, during my son's spring break, I will be settling into that new gear and enjoying my little family in our little house for the entire week. I'm not planning on wearing my watch at all - not even for my own class on Friday. Time for me to slow down and enjoy God's goodness. . .

Spring is a time of blooming and renewal. I've learned that all seasons in life are necessary and vital for growth and fruitful living, even the cold and dark barrenness of winter. Joy can be found in the darkest and coldest of nights. Jesus lights the way and is the solid rock we stand on so our hope is not destroyed while we wait for the season's inevitable change.

Thanks for stopping by. Praying God's best for you and your nest :)