I bet y’all thought I forgot about today! Well I didn’t…I just had to have some success first so I could write about it.

AND I DID!

In taking this picture, I learned that
the only good pictures of feet are
those that involve sand!

I finished and submitted my Accounting Mid-Term with two days to spare! WAHOOO!

I have also gathered all the base pieces to the kid’s Halloween costumes and found Jackson a warm and cozy all-over winter time jacket thing for $8.

I had the most glorious morning getting a hot stone pedicure with my mom at Mia Bella. Thanks to Groupon, Mia Bella and my awesome mom, I now have lovely feet and toe nails that are rockin’ “Affair in Red Square” Red…I am totally sporting open toed shoes even though it is chilly!

So how about y’all? What were your successes this week? What are you going to try harder on next week? 

Friday Thankfulness

Oh, there is so much I want to say…and so much more I want to know.

Let me start here though….Ladies, we need each other’s support and friendship. We need to build each other up. We need to encourage each other. We need to be present for each other. We need to be welcoming and embrace each other. I know…I know this because I have been blessed by these very things this week, and without the women who have encouraged, supported, made time for and been friend to me I would be lost.

I have been invited.

I have had fellowship.

I have been supported.

I have been encouraged – by strangers and friends alike!

I have been consoled.

I have been inspired.

This week, I have been thrashing around some old hurts this and without the encouragement and support of other friends I don’t think I could have held on to the here and now, even as little as I did. The encouragement and support, the welcoming that I received wasn’t even directly related to those old hurts, but it was an important counterbalance to that darkness.

You know that George Strait song, I Saw God Today? I don’t know that I saw Him, but I certainly felt His presence through the wonderful women who touched my life this week.

Thank you to each of you.

How have you been encouraged this week? Were you supportive of others? Were you a positive encouragement, or did you use that moment to deride someone in need? Did you use your strengths to call others up or to hold them down?

Surprise Mid-day post...ETC

You probably don't know this about me, but I love ATC (artist trading cards)...It is a creativity and experimentation in a bite size that I can handle. Unfortunately, right now I am too far from the ATC swap I had become so fond of at Quilting Adventures in Richmond, VA.

But today in my slacking I found out about something call ETC - Embrace the Camera! I love it. Real snap shots of me and my family...today its the kids. ( By the way I found this a what looks to be an absolutely wonderful blog called The Anderson Crew! Check it out and all the other fun ETC's linked from there!)

I can tell you from my own personal experience that the only pictures of my mom from my childhood are when she thought she was thin...and let me just tell you that was not nearly as often as she was actually thin...and I don't care what size she is or thinks she is....I WANT HER IN MY PHOTOS! Photos with me, photos with my dad, with her sister, with her nieces and nephews...she exists and there should be pictures to prove it... and so I embark on ETC...so that my kids can't say the same about me.

I also don't think that life should be cataloged in the un-real moments or the specialist of occasions. I want to remember the nitty gritty...

So...TIAMO ETC week 1....The playground

Vintage Button Bracelet - Item of the Week plus a great find to share!

I have been totally slacking this morning. Well, aside from sending my daughter to school dressed for Yellow Day a day early…but who’s counting, right?

Today’s post is the item of the week. I have decided to create a separate blog page for this. So here is the link. Or you can check it out at the TIAMO shop, here.

And in all my slacking I found something to share with you on another great blog. So check it out here.

And have a Happy Thursday!

Wrong Words Wednesday....

My husband has been suggesting songs all week, but I can’t just pick a song for Wednesday. Picking a song for this is personal. More often a song picks me. I want to share with you songs that moved me – made me think of and praise God unexpectedly or in an unexpected way, or made some piece of my faith clear or more in focus.

Chalk Drawing By Grace, 4 1/2

I had a song in mind and was searching out the precise lyrics. (I am notorious for having the words wrong!) Well, my search opened a can of worms! The song I love and that speaks to me so clearly of God’s love and ways is apparently all but heresy and certainly blasphemy.  

The writers’ words still have not totally sunk in.  How could a song that I grew up singing at Church not be worshipful and praiseful?

 The point that most of the writers seemed to make was that song I had in mind, as well as several others, was not in-line with the purpose of a church service. Each song gave God’s voice to the singer, as in the singer was singing words that were attributed to God.  They explained that in worship we should be in praising God, not speaking for Him, and that we are at service to hear God through his word and hopefully, also through the message of the preacher.

I am no theologian, but that makes sense to me, and yet I still find the songs beautiful and moving and prayerful – even praiseful.  Some of my favorite songs are songs that are God’s words or remind me of God’s word.

I love the opening of Wayard Son by Kansas.

Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more

I hear God speaking to me in those words, even more so when I sing along. Granted, even with some serious re-writing that is not a song I ever expect to hear at church, but for me those words are God’s words and it is powerful to hear them.

Now, I am off to re-think every church song that I like…

Happy Wednesday!

Tuesdays Treasure – Grace

Treasure can be lots of things. Today I want to share with you the treasure of my baby girl – Grace.

She has been experimenting with names. She wants to be called Olivia or Sarah – the name of the last person she played with or the character in her book*.  Every time she tells me that she wants to be called something else, I remind her that her name was the first gift her daddy and I gave her and that it is a very special name.

Of course she wants to know why her name is special. I explained to her that Grace is a beautiful gift from God, His forgiveness and love, His amazing power to make all things possible.  I told her that she is a symbol of that Grace to her daddy and I – a living breathing example.

And do you know what she said?

Shouldn’t everyone’s name be Grace then!

She is smart and witty. She is a full of life and love. She can be a bull in a china shop, but she is compassionate and tender. She is strong willed, but soft of heart.

She loves dancing and moving. She loves books and stories. She sees and hears everything.  She feels everything.

She has her own style and way about her.

Like the three graces in mythology, she is Mirth, Splendor and Good Cheer.

Grace is a treasure to me.**

Who are the people you treasure?

Visit my etsy treasury to see a collection of things that remind me of my Grace!

*We just read Little House on the prairie and she asked to be called Mary, not Laura, but that is Grace!

** Don’t worry mom, Jackson is on my list to write about too.

Made of Monday...

This Monday morning I am made of GERMS! YUCK!I thought I had missed getting whatever this is that made life miserable for my husband last week. Alas, I have not.

Germs aside, I am  made of shyness…in a big way!

I am shy, horribly, painfully at times - shy. I am the kind of shy that comes across as aloof, but there are many layers to my shyness. I am the traditional quite in a new situation, nervous to meet new people shy, but there is more to it than that.

She is not shy very often!

I am not a jump right in kind of person. I like to see how things work. I am not going to do something until I know I can do it right. I don’t want others to think poorly of me, even others who don’t know me. I don’t want to be the person who did something wrong. I want the opportunity to watch and know before I do. It is even better if there is someone to show me the ropes.

I am weary of over stepping my bounds or treading on some else’s territory. I am the kind of girl who won’t volunteer for something because I don’t want someone else to think that I think they can’t do it…or that I think I can do it better.  I won’t ask about your day, because I don’t want you to think I am noisy or that I assume we are more familiar that we are.

I am impressed by people who know people. People who run into people they know at every turn. People who have made the world their “Cheers.”  I, on the other hand, will see people I know at a distance and not approach them for fear of interrupting, or that they won’t recognize me.  I  don’t want to look foolish or over eager. Similarly, I am slow to friend people on Facebook because I don’t  assume they want to be friends with me.

Yet, public speaking doesn’t bother me, so long as I don’t have to sell anything.  Back in the day, I worked for a program that was doing a campaign to get parent’s to talk to their children about sex in the context of relationships, health and safety by emphasizing opening lines of communication early about friendships and concerns that are easier to talk about. I spent months talking to parents, teachers and community leaders about things that made nearly all of them blush or get tongue tied – and nothing I said was graphic or sexual!  I enjoyed that job. I enjoyed the work I did there. Maybe it was that I knew each of those conversations was the beginning and the end. They didn’t have to like me forever, just long enough for me to share our program with them. There was a general script, and I was the subject area expert.

I don’t want to be shy. I wish my shyness was like a sweater that I could just take off and hang in a closet and be the “me” I really want to be: the kind of girl who says hi, who asks how you are doing, who can easily relate to other, who jumps in with both feet.

I watch my daughter being shy (on a rare occasion) and I desperately want her to not be shy, like me. I want to do everything I can to help her overcome that shyness now. I try so hard to not instill my fears and my anxieties in her. I love her and who she is, and I want the world to know her and share in her joy.

So there you have it…this Monday morning I am made of two things I wish I wasn’t made of…germs and shyness.