PINTEREST NIGHT AT DISCOVERY CHURCH!!

Okay - so it's here! It's time! YAY! Ladies Night at DC and we've decided to do Pinterest Night. Fun, right!?


WHEN: Friday March 2nd
TIME: 7:00 til we drop.
WHERE: Discovery Church www.dcclive.com 750 Cross Pointe, Suite L Gahanna WHO: YOU and whomever you'd like to bring.


So, here are the crafts you can choose from ORRRR you can check your own pin boards and bring one you want to work on.

RIBBON WREATH

For you to gather:

• 12″ foam wreath form

• 24 yards 1 1/4″ black grosgrain ribbon (or less if using a wider ribbon) (I'D SAY FIVE SPOOLS OF RIBBON or you could use a yard or two of a Eastery tulle fabric!)

• Scissors

• Measuring tape

Steps:

• Cut 45-50 16″ pieces of ribbon.
  

• Tie one strand of ribbon in a knot around the wreath. I used a “messy knot” — right over left, then right over left again, pulling in the opposite direction. It doesn’t really matter how you do it as long as you are consistent all the way around. Repeat with the knots, pushing them close together, until you fill the wreath.
  

• Cut one long piece of ribbon (48″) and tie one end to form a knot. Leave a long loop for hanging and tie another knot onto the wreath.
  

• Trim any frayed or long ends. (I like clipping the ends into two points!)
  

LETTER BLOCKS

For you to Gather:

• 3, 4 or 6 blocks (depending on word). Our blocks measure approximately 3.5 inches. (Check Hobby Lobby!)

• 3 coordinating scrapbook papers to match theme (more to cover top and bottoms of block)

• Decoupage Glue - We like ModPodge's Matte Glue (Check with your friends - we may be able to share!?)

• Printer - Our Lovely Brittany has offered to bring her Cricut machine!!
  

• Scissors

• Foam Brush

• Sandpaper

• Sanding Block (Not really needed, but it goes a long way to saving your hands during the sanding process!) (LOWES has a sanding block with the sand paper in one!)

• Pictures formatted to fit your blocks.Distressing ink (If you'd like to there is a photo wizard linked below to help you. I think for time sake this time I'd just trim my own photos by hand. I'll be bringing a scrapbook paper trimmer and a large self healing mat and rotary cutter.)
  

STEPS:

Step 1:
Determine the theme that you want to display. Our Letter Blocks .pdf provides letters for the following words...OR we can use the Cricut machine.
L-O-V-E
F-U-N
B-O-O
J-O-Y
F-A-M-I-L-Y
Pick coordinating paper to match your word choice (i.e. fall colors for BOO, red's and green's for JOY, etc.). 12x12 scrapbook paper works great.

Step 2:
Prepare your pictures. You have two options here. Either print each picture to be at least as large as your blocks. Use the edge of the block to trace around each picture and cut away the excess. Or, you can use the Photo Wizard to get your picture to the exact size that is needed for this project. Cut each picture to size.

Be sure to print your pictures using a LASER printer! Ink jet colors tend to smear when they get wet!!

Step 3: The cut ends of the wood absorb more glue than the grained ends. Before beginning this step, apply a thin layer of glue of glue to the ends with the rougher (cut) surfaces. Let glue dry.

Apply a thin layer of glue to the first side of one block. Place picture over glue and press in to place. Remove any air bubbles. While the glue is drying, repeat the process for other blocks. Check for overhanging paper edges. It is important to WAIT for the glue to dry before attempting to remove any excess paper. Add picture's 2 and 3 following same procedure. Once all of the picture are in place, add one letter square to each block. Complete this step by adding a decorative top and bottom paper square to each block. Don't worry about matching sides. A random look is great!

Step 4:
Once the glue is dry, carefully sand the edges of each block. Add a distress look by rubbing ink or chalk along the sides of each square to darken the exposed wood and remove any white paper edge.

Remember, sky is the limit on creativity with these projects. It's not cookie cutter crafts, so bring your own flavor to the table. Got questions!? Let me know!! scbaker@insight(dot)rr(dot)com

Can't wait to see you there!

Dear Dad,

It's been a month now since you've been gone and we are all still sad. It's been so very hard on Nita. She's so lonely and unsure and missing you so badly. Dad, will you give her a sign that you are there? Will you remind she's not completely alone and beckon the angels to release peace over her during the hardest, quietest, loneliest times? She needs to tangibly feel the presence of the Father and of you to comfort her broken heart. Dad, we miss you so much.

Did you see that I framed some pictures of you on my coffee table? I keep the one from your funeral on my kitchen counter so that I can look at your face every day. It was so very hard to see you laying in that casket, not moving and void of life. As your body laid there Nate and I stood by you not really sure what to do, say or think. Your two kids, barely adults ourselves thrust into losing a Dad and forcing us into a new phase of life. A life without a Dad.

I love you, Dad, and I am SO thankful for the time we got to have this year. Thank you for the memories and for the amazing legacy you left behind. I hope that I make you proud with the way I live life and love others around me. Watch over me Dad. Remind me to BE AMAZING and live this life to the absolute fullest. Your passing so early made me realize that I really need to make the most of every week I'm given. I don't want to spend my weeks focused on laundry, cleaning up the house and managing the bill. It's made me think more about what I'm focusing my life on, standing up more for what I think, believe and want. God has a plan for each of us, an individualized plan that will grow us as individuals, as givers as we bless others with the overflow of our abundance and as believers as we step out on faith each time you call us out of our comfort zone. Dad, remind me to not become complacent in life. Remind to trust the Spirit as He asks me to go further than I want to go. Remind me to love bigger and more selflessly.

I have faith that you are in Heaven helping to prepare a place, a beautiful mansion, the perfect place for Nita, Nate, Andrea, Jordan, Mackenzie and all the rest of us that you love so dearly.

Love you, Dad!

Christmas 2011

So I'm ALLLLMOST done shopping and it's two days before I need to be ready for Christmas. I've shopped, I've baked, decorated, done the parties, the ornament exchanges, the Christmas programs and I've shopped some more. I've wrapped a few presents and made candy, and you know what I didn't do...I didn't send out a single Christmas card. I KNOW!! It's awful!

There's that "Good Girl" of mine, the perfect Christy in my head that stands off in the corner smirking at me and reminding me of how I could have done it better and all the things I'm NOT doing. Gawd, I'd like to punch her. I was making such good strides learning about how I cannot be perfect and all the striving to be as close to it as I could was really hurting me mentally and spiritually. And then Christmas season hit me like a Mack truck. I keep reminding myself that these things are really all materialistic and people will forgive me if I don't send them a gift or a Christmas card, or a thank you note for the lovely cookies they dropped off. But Perfect Christy keeps needling me about every detail. WHAT IF my mail carrier is secretly hoping that I leave a small token of my appreciation in my mailbox and bc it's not there he'll actually be "accidentally" misdirecting my important mail? What if he is harboring this ill will all year round and every time I wave to him he's actually thinking about how insensitive I am. *shaking my head* It is a sickness I tell ya. I'm loopy. :) He's not thinking that! But these are the things that Perfect Christy reminds me of in these hectic times. And she never gives me credit for all the good and generous things I DO do. Perfect Christy can stuff it, bc you know what? I've done really good things this Christmas season and all my friends and family KNOW I love them all year round and the most amazing Christmas gift isn't going to make or break my relationships with them. Christmas presents are wrapped and ripped open in minutes, but the relationships and the memories are not built on gifts it's what I do with the people I give the gifts to. Boom! That's called keeping it real.

All that said...I'm whipped. I'm done shopping. I'm over the hustle and bustle, the lists and the pressure of Crazymas. I'm ready for Christmas day to be here so I can relish the day with my family and kids just lazing around in our PJs, eating, watching Christmas movies and just enjoying each other.

Merry CHRISTmas to all my friends, family and followers (yes, all seven of you!)

Hiding

I'm hiding from my kids right now. Shh, don't anyone make a sound or else I'll be forced to punch you in the neck. And.I'm.Not.Kidding.

*sigh* I really don't know what's going on with me lately, but I cannot get enough alone time. I find myself trying to nap more, drive more, steal away from the children more and it's never enough. Add on top of that the fact that our children are quite honestly going through an upswing of hyperactivity, and I'm basically ready to split. Not split as in, pack up a bag and catch a Greyhound. No I mean crack, go bonkers, go to the dark side of Mommyhood. I can feel myself griping, pushing them away and hollering for them to QUIET DOWN a lot more and it's not totally just me being tired of it all, they are really acting up more as well. Scott even mentioned it the other night, like "what the heck happened to our kids?" Tonight I took my bowl of lentil soup and tried to sit quietly on the front porch step while I ate it, but the Winter chill was too much and forced me back inside. I hung on as long as I could ducking behind the dead straggles of Clematis hoping it would break the wind enough, but not even close, so in I went. It was the first time this year that I've had that thought "Oh God, this is going to be a long, hard Winter, isn't it?" and panic streaked through my heart.

I don't want to feel this way.

I really don't blame the weather either. I know many mommies have a hard time when the clock falls back two hours and the sunny, warmth retreats to Florida, but it doesn't seem to affect me like that. It's just that I can't seem to get away. I can't get a rhythm of my own bc there is always someone right there with me, begging for attention. Even now as I type this Zach is screeching from downstairs, "MOOOOM. Mooommy. Mom. Mama. Mooooooom? Moooooooooom!? " It's not until I say "For the love of all that is holy, Son, WHAT DO YOU NEED!?" that he'll lower his voice to a whiney girl pitch and ask/tell me what he wants. Ugh.

Lord, I really need your grace during this season. I'm leaning into what I'm feeling, but also acknowledging that it doesn't have to be this way. I don't want to be miserable and crotchety with my kids and I do not want a long hard Winter. Speak to the hearts here and change the moods in this household to LOVE, JOY and PEACE again.

Chicken Noodles For The Soul

Oh man, what an amazingly wonderful day here...weatherwise, anyway! I have to chuckle because yesterday was one of THE WORST days I've had in a long time. It was one of those go back to sleep and wake up tomorrow kind of days. But today...*big inhale and exhale*...today is fine Fall day here in Ohio. It's cool and overcast, and you can just taste the apples hanging in the nearby orchards. Today is the kind of day you want to pull on some comfy socks, a floppy sweatshirt and make comfort foods with lots of butter in them. Mmmm...butter.

So that's what I'm doing. I decided to go on ahead and make up some homemade egg noodles. I've never done this before but I've seen my mom do it a few times and I know my hubby's grandma could do it. She's actually given us gallon sized Ziploc bags of her homemade noodles and man, they were tasty. So here's the egg noodle recipe I use and instructions.

2 Eggs
2 Cups of Flour
2 Pinches of Salt
A splash of milk

Beat the two eggs with a splash of milk and combine with the flour and salt. Knead the dough until it's fully combined. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes (it's pretty hard at first.) Roll the dough out on a floured surface until it's quite thing (remember, the dough will plump when cooked). Use a knife, noodle cutter or pizza cutter to cut the dough into strips (as skinny or wide as you'd prefer). Dust both sides of the noodles lightly with flour and air dry them (I really don't know how long, just until they are dry or you REALLY need to cook them. LOL)

I'm not a die-hard homemade noodle fan, but my hubby is and he even said as I was making them today "if you can make super yummy homemade noodles, I'll be yours forever." Ha ha ha, silly boy, I had you at "I could do your laundry."

So I hope you're having something soul-filling and yummy tonight, whatever it may be chili, chicken noodles or something warm, gooey and baked at 350!!?

Happy Fall/Autumn!

I think if we polled the church, a big chunk of us (myself included right now), would say we don't spend an ample amount of time with God. That's a first big step in a relationship. When we realize that spending time with God, actually in His presence, feeling Him exchange His love with us as we confess His wonderfulness in our lives and beseech Him his power in our lives...then the DESIRE, the appetite wakes up inside to spend MORE time with Him.

I use to wonder...how can ANYONE spend an hour, let alone hours, praying? I wander off after ten minutes! But when it stops being a list/something you NEED to do and becomes an affair that you are stealing chunks of time away from this life to relish Him, to drink in His pure, intoxicating measure of unadulterated love...He opens up something inside of us, opens our eyes more clearly to His words to His intentions in our lives, it opens the communication wider. Then is becomes less of something you NEED to do and more of what you WANT to do.

It's quite like any other relationship in our lives...if we didn't talk to our child or our spouse all day, but we thought about them and had good intentions of talking to them or spending time with them, the relationship grows cold. It's the interaction, making the relationship a priority, getting in there and feeling the soft skin of your child's face, taking time to hear the twinkle in his/her voice, listening to the knock-knock joke the 50th time and really laughing at it...spending time with a person allows you to understand who they are. God's no different. Don't allow the pastor on Sunday to be your only experience of God bc that's not YOUR experience! God has a dance card with only your name on it.

Spending time with Him (whatever that looks like in your life - it's different than mine) is going to allow you to hear Him and give him the opportunities to wipe away corrupted teachings and replace it with His pure words of adoration, admonition and truest love.

There is but a golden thread that weaves it's way through my day. It strings the events together to create something beautiful and one of a kind. Some of the events seem so miniscule and insignificant and others so shattering that my heart hangs low to the ground as I wait for renewed strength to go to the next event.

This golden thread is all that holds me together some days and on other days it's working in and out sends vibrations through the fabric of my day that encourage me to such heights that nothing seems impossible.

What is this amazing rivulet of thread that binds the pieces of me into a patchwork of such brilliance and durability?

How awful would it be to look back at all the stitches of my life and see just one broken, a threat to the whole creation. One broken stitch has the potential to, if given too much stress, break a hole in the entire stretch of events and stages of my life that have collectively become who I am.
No. I see no broken stitches along the seams of my life. Every stitch has been carefully and skillfully placed to create a masterpiece that is to be offered to a worthy recipient.

Today I feel the sting of the needle poking through the events of my day, but I trust the Tailor. I trust the thread's strength and purpose. I trust that the events of today and those of my tomorrows are all going to be part of the unique tapestry of my offering to the Tailor. I am being stitched into something that will bring glory and honor to the One who created me.