WINTER RESPITE...

I love a warm sunny day in the middle of winter!  Helps me get me through the cold, dark, dreary days!  We had the most wonderful Saturday here in central Oklahoma - 72 degrees!  I'm told the lines were crazy at the car wash and the parks were full capacity.  We got outside and thoroughly enjoyed it!  Truth be told, these are some of my favorite things to do:

 A short bike ride around Fox Lake

 A little ride in a convertible my son and the Hubs are working on...

And a little wienie roast and s'mores for dinner!

MY LITTLE VALENTINES...

I always enjoy displaying my old Valentine collection from the 1940's!  Most of them were my Dad's sister Myrna Rae's valentines.  She had a heart condition and died in surgery at age seven.  Consequently, my grandmother kept almost everything belonging to her little girl.  I always have fun figuring out how to display them!

I also enjoy the little kiddie valentines and making goody bags for all my college kid friends!

Do you have any special traditions for Valentine's Day?  I know one of my friends always makes strawberry shortcake for her family.  The shortcake is made in the shape of a heart.  We do different small gifts usually, but really, I do not need the chocolate this year!  Hopefully my family takes notice.  If not, there's another couple of workouts I'll need to do.  :)

SPA DECOR...

While decluttering sometimes I get distracted...but it 's okay to take a little break now and then!  We have a surplus of hotel soaps from the Hubs' travel, and I have a surplus of jars too!  I decided to make a little spa decor out of all that!

P.S.  I think I convinced the Hubs to quit bring soaps home from the hotels!  We've got enough for the next five years!!!

BIBLE JOURNALING NIGHT...

So when I was a kid coloring in your Bible was taboo.  Well, no more! 

Tonight we learned about Bible Journaling!  My friend McKenzie came to our church and gave us some helpful hints and tips on how to use paint, markers, colored pencils, etc. to accent our Bibles and meditate on parts of scripture.  

A slide from her powerpoint

I love to see what other people have been doing with this.  What a great way to share your faith!  One friend of mine who has gotten into Bible journaling this past year said one reason she is doing this is so when she is gone her children and grandchildren will be able to see some of her meditations with God and the scriptures that were important to her.  

Have you gotten into Bible Journaling or Adult Coloring Books?

PAPER PROBLEM. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL...

I really want to get this messy scrapbooking room under control.  Hint:  there's more than scrapbooking stuff in this room!  But I really don't want to spend much of my time anymore organizing, sifting, and memorializing the stuff I have. What to do?  I certainly don't want to leave it and goodness knows when I'm gone have my children cursing me for leaving it!  So I'm tackling it.  A little at a time.  It gets too overwhelming otherwise.  My resolution for this year is to only spend money on food and experiences.  So hopefully that will help me not bring anything MORE into the house.  In the meantime, I'm cleaning, purging, decluttering, donating, however you can describe it.    I suppose I could just pitch it all without looking.  But I just can't.

Got this one area cleaned and looking good!

I decided this filing cabinet has got to go.  It is full of files.  90% of them I haven't looked at in years. College work, files from my teaching days, Bible lessons, files from trips we've taken, piano lesson books from three kids, home warranties and appliance instructions from things purchased back in the 20th century!  Crazy.

My advice to all you 20somethings:  Don't let it get out of hand.  Schedule one or two days a year to work on things like this.  Send the Hubs and the kids away and tackle it.  Then you won't find yourself in your 50's with less energy and more junk than ever to have to sift through! I suppose since you have grown up with computers you will probably have less physical papers and files anyway.  But you never know.Also, don't get a big house with extra rooms!  In our busyness, I tended to throw things in a box to "deal with later."  Well, later is here and it stinks.  I really wish I could do more things that matter or just more fun.  But this is necessary.  And January is the perfect month to tackle this mess!

IT'S A TOUGH JOB...

deciding which picture to print of this beautiful new couple in our family!  :) 

Son #1 took these photos of our daughter and son-in-law in celebration of their first anniversary out at the ranch where they are now living.  The bus isn't ready for living yet, but still in progress.  They're in a little house on this beautiful property, along with Tucker the dog, and the cows, deer and armadillos!

A BLESSING AND SIGH OF RELIEF...

This past Wednesday was the beginning of a Wednesday night class that had come together just a couple of months ago.  I loved the concept, but didn't know how others might think about it.  I didn't have any idea if there would be many people there, or if I was the only one interested.

Well, my fears have been relieved and God gave me a resounding blessing to the tune of 50 ladies!  We actually could use a bigger room!

The title of the class is "Getting Creative with God," and I asked a different person each week to do a 20 minute presentation on something creative they do that brings them closer to God.  Following that we will do some form of activity (about 20-30 minutes) related to their topic.  I know each one of these people and knew that they had done some of these creative things from conversations and Facebook posts.  We are exploring topics like:

Choosing your word for the year
Making the Psalms personal
Faith Journaling
Meditation
Spiritual scrapbooking
Scripture Doodle Art
Quiet Time Practices

So for the first Wednesday night of the year, my friend Gail spoke about "Choosing a word for  the year."  She recommended two books:  My One Word and One Perfect Word. Last year she chose the word "treasure."  She meditated on scriptures and songs about treasure.  She had a treasure chest bulletin board picture posted in her closet so she would remember to "treasure each day." She said she had a plan for things she was going to do with her word, and some of those didn't work out, but the Spirit led her to do some other interesting things with it.  One example:  Her father-in-law is in his 90's and he was going to have a serious surgery.  Since her own father died in her 20's, she realized how much she treasured her father-in-law!  She wanted to show him and she did by making up a prayer calendar for 2 months after his surgery.  She asked his friends to pray for him on specific days.  She put their pictures on the calendar.  She gave it to him and they were blessed by knowing just how many people loved him and were praying for him.  It was really a great way to live out her word, "treasure."

We worked for 15-20 minutes on a worksheet she made up that had some helps to guide us toward what our own word for the year might be.  There were Bibles and songbooks on each table if ladies wanted to browse through them for ideas.  You could have heard a pin drop while we were working!

I don't know if the rest of the lessons will go as well, after all, it is a creative class.  Each one will be a little different.  My theme verse for the class is:

 Ephesians 3:16  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being...

This scripture has come to mean a lot more to me personally as I pray it for the class.  Nothing we can do - any creative activity alone - will strengthen us.  Only by the power of His Spirit will we be strengthened in our soul!  I pray that there will be a tidbit of something that we will do in the class that sparks the desire in women's hearts to draw closer to God and allow His Spirit to work.

WALLPAPER BE GONE...

Since the Hubs was off for a week after Christmas, I was thrilled that he took my suggestion to update our powder bath just off the kitchen.  We had this wallpaper put in 15 years ago when we moved in -   I admit I still liked it, but it was very dark.  Too bad there is really only room for one person to work in there at a time...

Removing the wallpaper was no easy task since there were two layers of paper and texture in-between those layers!  He retextured the wall before painting.  We kept our antique vanity and mirror  that holds the sink.  We thought we would also keep the light fixture but it broke as i was trying to clean it.  We did re-use the globes on it and just bought a new base.

It's so much lighter and brighter! It's Valspar Buzzy Brown but really looks like white with a touch of green in it.  Found a new rug and pictures that blend that I really liked, too!  The little pictures of Rome over the toilet are from my Dad's office long ago, and they had light green matting on them already, so I really like them in there.

So nice to start off the new year with a fresh look in here!

LAST CHRISTMAS POST I PROMISE...

My side of the family has been having theme parties the last few years...my cousin hosted this time and it was a Masquerade party!  Kinda fun and fancy.

At home on Christmas morning we had a good time with all our kids - lots of funny gifts. 

I couldn't resist that mug since he loves big coffee mugs - all the ones I would use for soup!

Probably the prettiest sugar cookies I've ever done, so they deserve a look.

Houseshoes were the gift I decided everyone needed this year!

He asked for "swag" stuff - so I wrote SWAG on a bucket and filled it with junk.

At my Mom's on Christmas day...I was excited that I found a way to wrap my sister's step ladder - and it was almost as big as she was!

Finally, an afternoon with the Hubs family - and the big news from my nephew and his wife that they are expecting their first baby!!!  They're on the right. 

Such fun family times that are not to be taken for granted!  I hope you enjoyed your various holiday activities and are ready to begin a wonderful new year!