Never Say Never

I've heard this saying my whole life, but NEVER has it had more meaning to me than this year. I'm almost afraid to use the word again!

I was NEVER going to have an inside dog....until now. It all started when my oldest daughter made a Christmas wish list for her Mimi. She said that she wanted a dog, but that she knew she probably couldn't have one, because  "Momma says no inside dogs". 

Upon hearing about this wish, I began asking her questions about why she wanted a dog. As I listened to her, I suddenly had the overwhelming desire to give that baby a dog!

When I approached my husband about the subject, he stared at me in disbelief and said, "Well that was unexpected!"  After thinking about it for a few days, Josh finally decided it would be alright. 

So, Mimi began the long process of finding just the right dog.  With a little girl who suffers with asthma and has had to spend weeks on a rescue inhaler after a sleepover at a home with dogs, we knew we had to be careful. This daughter has spent quite a bit of time at a good friends house who has a Coton de Tulear (Coton). This never seemed to affect her asthma, so we asked the friend for the name of the breeder of their dog. After a lengthy process and Mimi being "interviewed" extensively by the breeder, she was finally able to go pick up a puppy. 

Then came the planning process for the biggest Christmas Eve Gift my children have ever had. Mimi worked hard to keep the surprise and make it a magical moment for the kids. I think that she felt the efforts were worth it!  The reactions were priceless. 

So here we are, loving a sweet little dog IN the house ❤️

Stay tuned for part two of my "Never Say Never" story!

Mistle"Toes"

 

One of my favorite Christmas ornaments is my little Mistle"toes" that I made when my little boy was a baby.

 

To make your own, use two packs of green oven baking clay from a craft store, flattened to the size of the baby's foot.  Press the foot firmly into the clay to make a good impression.  After you have the impression, use a sharp knife to cut around the edges of the impression and an ice pick to make a hole in each heel.  Follow the baking instructions on the package of clay.  After baking and cooling, use a hot glue gun to glue the feet together, making sure to match up the holes.  Add some tiny red berries or a little red bow to decorate and put some jute twine through the hole to hang.

 
Now you can reminisce on how tiny your little ones feet once were each Christmas!

Flip or Flop ~ Modern Country Style

Today, Josh and I had our very first open house on our very first "flip" house.

This is a goal that we have been working toward for a while now. Figuring out how to get a house, finding a house that was a great deal, buying the house, finding a great contractor and getting it fixed up and ready to be a great home took effort!

I even had to have an assistant at the closing. 

Here are the exterior before and after pictures.

 

All of the paint selections are from Sherwin Williams. The main exterior color is Network Gray. The trim is Pure White and the shutters are Black of Night. I wanted the door to be a modern accent color, so I choose Raindrop. We also made the porch light and house number into a modern country design. 

The interior was a big job. All new flooring throughout, new cabinetry and trim, new fixtures and everything painted were items on the punch list. 

Inside, the wall color is Mindful Gray. The trim is Pure White and the cabinets are Mineral Deposit. A couple of the bedrooms were painted a deep purple, so this was a big transformation. 

The bathroom was almost a complete redo.

I am really excited about the bathroom tile!

We had a family morning of cleaning today before the open house. The girls cleaned all of the windows and swept the floors and the sidewalk. We even got a little bit of work out of our three year old. 

Everyone was rewarded with a trip to Donut Palace!

Overall, it was a great day!  I hope this can be a happy home for a family very soon!

Make Your Own "Chalkboard" Ornament

Last month, I saw these ornaments at Bealls in Tyler. I thought that they were really cute, but didn't want to spend $6 a piece on them. I decided that I could make my own. 

I looked for black shatterproof ornaments (who wants glass ornaments in a house full of kids??), but couldn't find any at a reasonable price. 

Finally, I found these clear plastic ornaments at Walmart for $.97 each; just my price!

All I needed was a can of black satin spray paint and I was ready to make my own black ornaments. 

First, I removed the silver ornament toppers to keep them from being painted. Next, I found a piece of cardboard and placed push pins into it to hold the ornaments upside down for painting. Then, it was time to paint. 

Once the paint was dry, I replaced the silver ornament toppers and the ornaments were ready to be decorated with my white chalk pen. 

I had a basket full of these black ornaments at a Christmas party for my girls' Destination Imagination team. Each of the girls on the team got to decorate an ornament to take home as a party favor. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of the girls at the party (which is so unlike me; I must have been very distracted that night).

At the end of my ornament project, I had ten ornaments for about the same price that I would have paid for two of those I had seen at the store. I'm pretty pleased with the outcome!

Love to Decorate: One Wreath ~ Three Ways

I found this great wreath at Hobby Lobby at the end of August. I was instantly drawn to it's sparkly simplicity. 

For the two fall wreaths, I used a cream and grey chevron burlap ribbon for the hanger with a natural burlap bow.  

The first occasion that I needed to decorate for was a gender reveal party. I found some sweet, little boy and girl silhouettes on Pinterest and added them to red and teal burlap ribbon. Then I made the "boy or girl" pennant sign and strung it across the middle. 

Once the reveal party was over, it was time for a fall wreath. I really tend to be a "less is more" kind of girl, so I just wrapped a felt leaf garland around the wreath. 

Now that the Thanksgiving holiday is over, it is time for a Christmas wreath. I decided to change the cream, gray and natural hanger ribbon for some gold glitter chevron burlap ribbon. Then I wrapped a red berry garland around the wreath and "voila", all ready to welcome guests for the Christmas holidays!

So there you have it, one wreath, three ways. It is still to be decided if there will be new life for this wreath in the new year. Who knows what will greet guests at our home in 2016. 

Homemade Cornbread

At my house, the way to make sure a meal is a winner is to serve it up with some good, old fashioned, homemade cornbread, just the way Mammaw used to make.  This is the savory cornbread recipe, not a sweet one.  And bonus, it is gluten-free, so the celiac sufferers in our family can eat it, too!  We have cornbread with stew, jambalaya, soup, and lots more.

I am NOT a fan of cooking, so trust me when I tell you this is easy, almost as easy as opening up a box of Jiffy and whipping it up, but SO much better!  Only 6 ingredients  and an iron skillet needed.

1 cup Buttermilk
1 Egg
2 tsp. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/4 tsp. Baking Soda
1 cup Corn Meal

(I like to save used baking powder cans to keep salt and soda in, because it makes it so much easier to measure out.  And it keeps my cabinet more organized!)

 

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.  Then place your iron skillet on the stove on medium-high with the bottom covered in corn oil.  Let this heat up while mixing the batter.

I am all for using the least amount of dishes/bowls/etc. when I cook, to cut down on clean-up time.  So, I use my quart sized measuring cup to mix the cornbread batter.  First, measure out the cup of buttermilk.  Then add the egg and beat in well.  Next, I stir in the baking powder, salt and soda.  Last, stir in the cornmeal.

By this time, the oil in your iron skillet should be sizzling and your oven heated up.  Pour the batter into the iron skillet.  The hot oil is what gives you the crispy bottom on the cornbread.  Take the skillet off of the stove and place into the oven to bake for 22 minutes.

Serve hot from the oven; good plain, even better with butter!  YUM!

And don't forget, DO NOT wash your iron skillet with soap!

ALL Lives Matter

 

 

ALL LIVES MATTER

 



This is something that has been on my mind for a while now, and I want to follow Paul's words given by the Holy Spirit to the Corinthians and preserved for us today in the Bible.

 

1 Corinthians 16:13-14 says, "Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.

Let all that you do be done with love."

 

I want to be brave and stand for LIFE, but I want to do so in a way that is kind and considerate.  This is a big struggle for me.  I never want to avoid God's Truth, but I also don't want to cause anyone to reject His Word because of my presentation.  This means that often, I end up saying nothing, which is not helpful to anyone.  I want to be "speaking the truth in love" as in Ephesians 4:15.

 

A few months ago, driving trough town with my mom, we saw a sign that said "Back the Blue".  We commented on how it is nice that people want to support our law enforcement.  My mom said she thought that it was good to use that phrase instead of the "Blue Lives Matter" phrase.  We agreed that using the "Blue Lives Matter" slogan is being divisive.  It is not just showing support for one group, but choosing to antagonize another group who are using the slogan "Black Lives Matter".  She then said that she wished we could stop having all of these separate groups and just have one big "ALL LIVES MATTER" campaign.  I loved that idea, but didn't really think about it again until last week when I read Benjamin Watson's book, Under Our Skin.

 

Here is an excerpt from page 118:

"Life.  I am in favor of it.  Yes I am pro-life.  And yes, I mean that in its usual sense - that the unborn fetus is a life to be protected.  But I mean that in a different and larger way as well.

If we are in favor of the unborn life within, should we not also be in favor of the lives of people on the streets, in homes, in churches, and in our neighborhoods?  In other neighborhoods?  In the hood?  If we are pro-life, should we not embrace young black lives as much as young white lives, and vice versa?  If we are pro-life, should we not be about protecting life whether it is a fetus or a six-year-old or a teenager..."

 

I wish, no I PRAY that this country would protect all lives!  Especially those lives of precious, tiny, unborn babies who can in no way protect themselves and who are made in the image of God!

 



 

The only way to spread the message that ALL LIVES MATTER is to start telling it to all those around us.  If everyone who believes this would take a stand, I believe that we could make a real difference.  This summer, I came across the Stand for LIFE website.  Their slogan is "Choosing Life, One Story At A Time".

Here is their Mission Statement, from their website:

#StandforLIFE is a Christian non-profit platform that exists to unite those who believe in choosing life through social media story-telling. Our goals are to redirect the conversation of abortion into one of grace and inspire others to transform their convictions into service.

The Stand for LIFE organization has a "LIFE filter" that allows users to show in a graphic way that we support LIFE on our social media pages.  I love it!

 

 

While Benjamin Watson's book is not about ending abortion in America, it does cause readers to stop and think about how we should be valuing ALL lives.  He also sells shirts that have a very positive message:

TRUTH > trend

The trend in this country over the past 50 years has led to millions of babies being killed every year.  We need to tell people the TRUTH about this!  God's Word is TRUTH and we need to spread this message.

Psalm 119:160 says "The entirety of Your word is truth,

And every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever."

 

Happy Garage

When I was growing up, my parents always had a neat and clean two-car garage, where they parked BOTH vehicles.  They never made a big deal out of this, but being the organization-lover that I am, I noticed.  I also noticed when we would pass by houses with two-car garages packed full of stuff;  so full that only one car could park, or even no room for cars.  I always wondered why "those people" had so much stuff and couldn't clean it out to park their cars.

Well.....I married one of "those people"!  Here he is hard at work on one of his many projects, (probably something for ME). 
 

 

 

 

 

Where else is he supposed to work, he has no shop.

 

He does try to keep me happy by neatly stacking things to the side between projects, so that I can always park in the garage.  And he even built a wall full of shelves to please my need to organize.  Here is a picture of my "Pinspiration":

 

But he said that he was not "pinterested" in that, so here is what I got. 

 

 

To help me have a happy place in the garage, my sweet husband built a special nook for me.  I just painted it and finished organizing some of the kids shoes and soccer things.  I like to think of it as a sort of mud-room space in the garage.  I now feel so happy when I park in the garage and see this!



 

 

Every garage needs a happy place!

 

 

 



My Secret Garden

Our house has a funny little fenced area along the side of the garage up to the master bathroom window.  For years, I have wanted to do something to make this area look pretty. After all, I do have to see it out of the bathroom window EVERY day!   I finally drew up a plan to show my husband and the plan did not involve him having to do much work.  His favorite kind of plan!  Usually my ideas of what "we" need to do involve A LOT of work on his part.

 

 

First, I had to clean out all of the weeds that had taken over the side-yard.  This took quite a bit of sweat, elbow grease, raking the dirt to get it more level, and some help from my adorable little helpers.  Next, a trip to Lowe's with my favorite handy-man!  Getting the stones to border my flower beds was one of the small jobs that I needed some husband help with; he's the one who drives the pick-up after all.  I used a tape measure to measure exactly where I needed to outline the flower beds, using my nifty little graph drawing, and had another helper to set the stones.

 



After setting the stones, I used eight bags of potting soil to fill the beds.  Then I was ready for my plants.  One bed has a Lavender plant, flanked by two Mexican Heather plants. Another has two Rosemary plants.  In the three remaining beds, I planted two each of Peppermint, Marjoram and Spearmint plants.

 

At this point, I had run out of the money that I saved for my project, so I had to wait a couple of months to add the rocks to the path.  During this time, we received an unusual amount of rainfall.  The Marjoram and Spearmint have really thrived, but the rest of the plants were not as happy with all of the rain.  Rosemary, especially, does not need to be so wet! 

 

 

I had one more job that I had to have my husband and his truck help with;  getting a half-yard of river rock to line my pathway.  We were finally able to finish my "Secret Garden" this past weekend.  I added a Basil plant and a Parsley plant to a couple of pots that had previously been home to the last of my Pansies.  It finally got too hot for the Pansies to survive.



I am so happy with how this project turned out and it was exciting to finish a project with very little help from my husband!