Things That Only I Can Do

I'll have you know that my position in this household is assured. I have job security. I am made aware of this regularly. Because there are things that only I can do in this house. I have hypothesized this formulated upon the following postulates:

1. I am the only one who does them.
2. My darling husband looks at me blankly when I mention them. 
3. He actually tells me that he's waiting on me to do them. 

Ignore bad handwriting. And water spots on my bathroom sink.
And terrible photography.

But in all fairness, there are things that only he can do, too. Not because I'm incapable of doing them, necessarily, although that is the case regarding things that my current level of education/knowledge doesn't cover.

Like automobile repairs. I could probably learn how to do that stuff, but it's not my thing, and it is his thing. Sometimes it's because I'm forbidden to do them, on pain of stink eye.

For instance:

• I am not allowed to take out the trash. I'm capable of this, and if it needs to be done, occasionally I'll do it just to get it done. But, and here's the really wonderful thing about my darling husband, I'm not allowed to. So I get the "that's my job" speech, while he gives me the stink eye, and takes the garbage can out of my hand and empties it. He actually prefers that I tell him that a trash can needs to be emptied, rather than emptying it myself. Isn't he a dream boat? 
• I'm not allowed to mow the lawn. Or run the weedeater. Not because I can't do those activities. When I was single, I did them. Because they're in his domain. Not my problem. He doesn't want me doing those tasks. He doesn't even want me thinking about them. His domain. I am allowed to help with weeding, plant watering, etc., and occasionally, we'll do outdoor, lawn, or garden projects together. But he runs the yard. 

Getting back to the origin of this post, however, my job security as a housewife is not in question. (Not that it was ever going to be, anyway.) This is why.

• Only I can purchase toilet paper. Way back in the day, when I was single, I got hooked on soft,
  three-ply toilet paper. I always preferred the extra-cushy stuff, but when I became an Amway IBO, I started using the brand they carried, and it was three-ply, pillowy softness. It came to my door on a regular basis, and I got in the habit of knowing it was there, not having to think about buying it. When we got married, I quickly got my new husband hooked on it, too. He didn't even know there was such a thing as three-ply, until I introduced him to it. Poor thing. 

  

  My new TP holder that my darling husband installed for me.
  It pivots on a hinge instead of doing the squeezy bar thing.
  I love it. 

  But then, Amway stopped carrying the paper products that I had become reliant upon. I found myself venturing into aisles of the store I hadn't traversed in years and wondering what was most similar to what we were accustomed to using. Through lots of trial and error, I finally found the toilet paper (and paper towels, napkins, etc.) that we are now using. Ordinarily, because he's still working full-time and I'm not, I do the shopping, but occasionally he will go with me. This week, that happened. He watched me, mystified, as I rooted around in the toilet paper aisle, finally coming up with a case that matched our preference of brand, type, and roll-size (mega-rolls don't fit on all our TP dispensers), and was budget-friendlier (because of the case size). I looked up and realized that if I was ever in a coma, he would be clueless about how to provide for the needs of his tushy. Clearly I need to educate this man. 

• Only I can make doctor appointments. My darling husband tells me that the moment we were wed, his brain dumped all of the information and ability it had to locate new medical service providers, therefore, if I don't find him a doctor, he won't have one. We moved to Kansas from South Carolina almost a year and a half ago. We're due for checkups, dental cleanings, glasses prescription adjustments, etc. He claims complete ignorance (while calling it "delegation") of what to do to find these professionals. So, I'm finally getting around to doing that. We're still in a standoff over who makes the appointments, which I will explain. 
• I, as you may know, occupy the far, hermit-end of the introvert spectrum. Talking on the phone is anathema, unless there is a really good reason to do so. Also, the really good reason must be on my end. Answering calls from numbers I don't recognize is the technological equivalent of picking up a hitchhiker. Now that I'm no longer required to answer by an employer, it's never gonna happen. Also, I keep my voicemail full, so that I don't have to worry about ever getting new messages and having to deal with them. I carry a smart phone. I text. I use it to google stuff so I don't have to actually converse with anyone. There are apps for all kinds of things. It is a phone call prevention device in my hand. I'm available via multiple routes on my phone that don't involve talking to anyone. YAY for technology! I need to find us doctors who allow appointment scheduling via website, app, or text. Hmmmm... Surely doctors do that now. Right?
• He, as you may not know, will go to an appointment, if I make it. But he will not go out of his way to subject his body to regular maintenance. When we got married, I made appointments for him to have a medical checkup, an optometry appointment, and all of his dental care/prevention/and repair. He hadn't gotten around to these things for some time. I found the doctor. I found the optometrist. I found the dentist. I made the appointments. He went. The thing is that he has the schedule of meetings for his work, and I don't, so I'm going to use that as a reason for him to make his own phone calls. So there. 

Of course, he takes excellent care
of the yard.

I could continue about all of the activities that I prefer to do myself, like laundry (which is my favorite chore), and all the things that I like to do but aren't strictly necessary (insert art/craft of choice here), but you get the gist. There are, of course, all the necessary evils that we toss back and forth, along with applicable guilt-monkeys, like washing dishes, and the tasks that we each accept as assigned to one or the other, without having strong feelings about either way, and the tasks that we share, in the interest of mutual benefit. But some things are mine to do. Mine, and mine alone. Because only I can do them. 

Co-dependence is really working out for me.

Much love,

LL~

P. S. Of course, my darling husband is an adult, and he is perfectly capable of all of the tasks that are necessary for his life and maintaining a household. He did them for years before I was ever around. He just chooses to allow me to add value to his life. I don't mean to give the impression that he is a bumbling fool without his obnoxious wife keeping him going. He's amazing, talented, capable, generous, and kind. But he lets me think that I'm helping, and that makes me feel good. :)

Creative Ventures

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been in creative mode, since we've moved into the new house. Sometimes, I've even allowed that urge to take precedence over getting things unpacked, organized, put away, etc. Should I be chagrined about that?

Surprisingly (to me, anyway), much of this creativity has come out in paint. I've never been much of a painter, but it seems to be something I do these days. Part of the problem is that I can see what I want something to look like, but I don't have the technique down to get that out of my head and onto whatever it is I'm painting.

Now, I have not been exclusively paint-bound, but it has accounted for the majority of what I've done, lately. I've painted concrete, canvas, fabric, and paper. I'll show you a few of the things. Please pardon the cell-phone pictures. I don't have a good lighting/photography setup in the new house, yet. None of it is great, but there are some bits and pieces that I'm pretty proud of. It'll take some time for me to be proficient enough to do this well, though.

  

The first two projects were before we moved into the new house. My mom needed her paper towel holder repaired and repainted, which I did, though I didn't take a picture of it. And my aunt was getting rid of a concrete garden frog that she no longer wanted.

I took him off her hands, and took him home. He was just bare concrete, and I didn't take any before or during pictures. Wish I had, now. I had originally used some yellow paint that couldn't stand up to the elements, and it washed off the first time he got wet. I have since redone his belly (much better) with the proper type of paint, and he's clear coated and everything. He lives on my front porch and greets visitors with his big grin.



I was surprised to be invited to join a friend of mine at her painting class, on 6/30. When I got there, I found out that it was watercolor painting, which, elementary school aside, I've not done. I didn't have any supplies with me, or for that matter at all. Except paint brushes. I have tons of cheap paint brushes that I've bought over the years for various craft projects. At the class, my friend handed me some supplies, pointed me toward a stack of "inspiration" pictures, and told me to get started. That was very humorous to me, since I had no clue what I was doing. But, I did as I was told, and wound up with something that, while not great, I'm not too ashamed of.

I think someone said these are plumeria. Is that right?
Not too lousy for a first attempt at a new medium
without any instruction, eh?

I'm continuing to attend the painting group with my friend, and I'm working on quite a few other things at home, too.

Since my handsome husband and I are both nerds, I have been trying to figure out how to add elements of the nerdtastic to our home decor. Our lovely new abode is a 105-year-old stately old lady of a home. I truly want to do her justice, and therefore I am feeling somewhat torn between keeping everything true to her era origins and the reality of the fact that houses change to accommodate the years. Fortunately for me (and her), she feels like the sort of house that morphs into what her family needs her to be. She's not SO Victorian that it seems impudent to do anything non-Victorian. She's not fancy, but she is stately.

Another watercolor attempt. 

Due to the alterations to our budget, both by my layoff and by virtue of the move, I am doing my best to not purchase decor for our house. That leaves me three options. The first is to not decorate, leaving holes for things I can purchase as I budget accordingly. The second is to make do with what I have and pretend that it's fine. The third is to make, preferably with supplies I already have, anything I need to use as decor. Truthfully, I'm doing all three. There are things that I'm leaving holes for, until I have them made or bought. I am making do with what I have (read as "no new furniture or shopping sprees"), though not pretending that it's fine. And I am creating. Oh, so much creating. :)

One of the things I've done lately was to paint a few nerdy items to add to our decor. Still to come on the nerd-front are some needlepoint/embroidery pieces, which feel era-appropriate to me, while still making space for my inner geekdom. Smile.

I have long planned to do a post about fandoms and creativity and how that intersects with faith, specifically Christianity and the Judeo-Christian God. Hold tight on that. I will get to it. It might go on Choosing Holiness instead of here, but I will write it. I am writing it. It's just not finished yet.

My nod to the TARDIS. Attempted
watercolor on canvas. Not great.
Not horrible. 

Anyhoo, we are participants in multiple fandoms, as well as being Christians. Some of them are Firefly/Serenity, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Discworld (me), Star Wars (my husband), Stargate, Lord of the Rings/Hobbit, Narnia, Sherlock, etc. So, it's only natural that some of these things creep into our surroundings. They make us smile (and cry and scream and sigh and laugh and stuff...), and they point us back to our infinitely creative God in their own ways.

I have started several projects, not pictured here, and have planned several others in great detail. But these two I did before I learned enough about watercolor to know that I couldn't do them. Well, at least not the way that I went about them. Heh heh. Funny how things get done when you don't know that they can't be done. Now, admittedly, there are things that I could have done to make them turn out better, had I some of the technique information that is now at my disposal, but for creating out of sheer ignorance, I'm not too upset. I will probably either do some more work on or entirely redo the TARDIS picture at some point in the near future. I wasn't thrilled about how the sky under the clouds turned out, and that's one of those technique things that might turn out better if I knew what I was doing.

This little dragon is from the Discworld series (by Sir Terry Pratchett). His name is Errol, and his original artist is Paul Kidby, who is the official artist for Sir Terry's work. My apologies to Mr. Kidby, but I love his artwork and this is one of those "sincerest form of flattery" things. I'm pleased with how this one turned out. Kidby has done some really great Discworld art, and there are many pieces that I'd like to use for practice in developing this skill set. Now all I need to do is some sort of protective clear coat to prevent Errol from being damaged.

I'll prepare some other posts for some of the other projects I've been doing. Right now, my Pinterest boards are burgeoning with ideas for various things, for my home, to develop talents and skills, and to figure out how to make some additional income. (More on the income topic is coming soon, too. See? I told you my brain is bristling with blog post plans...)


Much love,
LL~

New Home!

There's a really good reason it's been so long since I posted. I promise. We recently completed a cross-country move! This is our new house. Isn't she pretty?

The New Home, stay tuned for her new name!

Well, I say completed, but that's a little tongue-in-cheek. Our stuff is now at this beautiful old home. It's in there. It's not organized and settled yet, but it's in there.

In August, we put our home in Greenville, SC on the market, it sold and we moved to Kansas in December. We stayed with my parents until we were able to find, purchase, and close on this lovely home (name announcement coming). In April, we closed, about two months after we had a signed contract, and now we are settling in.

As you might suspect, anything that is over a century old needs some TLC, despite the fact that this particular house is really in great shape. We've done a few minor projects, so far, but mostly just to make our lives easier. We have bigger projects to come, and I will be creating DIY posts for some of them.

The first big organizational project on my list is our home library, which is around 500 books. When we boxed up our old house, I began cataloging them with an app on my phone and tablet, and now I'm working on an organization system to keep track of them all. I can't wait to get it finished and share it here!

One of the (minor) difficulties in our new home is the lack of shelf space, and the lack of wall space for the shelves we brought with us. Thus, the "big" bookshelf, is in our upstairs bedroom (that being one of two spaces in the house that it would fit), and the two smaller ones are downstairs. At some future, unknown point, I hope to build-in some lovely, era-appropriate shelves in some way that will provide an unbroken organizational structure for the collection. Today is not the day, however.

Wish me luck as I figure this out (without the luxury of having the office stuff un-boxed and organized) and haul books up- and down-stairs as appropriate.

I'll say one thing for my gorgeous new two-story house... It's a good workout! (Actually, I have lots of wonderful things to say about it, but that's the only one you're getting for now.)

Blessings,
LL~

Sewing with Lovey: Baby Stuff!

My dear friend, The Full Time Wife, gave birth last week, and I was so excited for the arrival of her baby that I went a little crazy making fun baby stuff. I pulled some tutorials (via Pinterest), made alterations as I felt like making them, and wound up with a box of stuff. Time will tell how useful it will all be, and I'm hoping she'll tell me so that if/when the time comes for me to have babies, I'll have the benefit of her experience. :)

I thought I'd share some of what I worked on. Any thoughts on the usefulness of these items, moms & dads out there? Any suggestions to make the next go-round even better?

I made her this nursing shawl:

From thecoterieblog.com via Pinterest.

It's essentially one cut and one seam. So very easy, and looks like it would be perfect. The idea of having a nursing shawl you can wear as part of an outfit, or put on just for nursing that doesn't scream to everyone in the vicinity, "HEY! MY BOOB IS OUT OVER HERE!" :) I used a light-weight black knit, extremely similar to what's pictured. I tried it on, and was even more impressed with the simplicity of it at that point.

Using this tutorial (from thecraftingchicks.com-- they also have a simplified version) for the blanket, and this tutorial (from www.coletterie.com) for the bias tape edging, I made this blanket:

I had never used minky before, had never machine-quilted before, and had never made my own bias tape, before, so lots of fun learning for me on this one! I was really pleased at how it turned out, especially considering all the technique new-ness. Besides, the imperfections prove it was home-made with love. :)

I also used this tutorial (from tutorialadventures.blogspot.com), and created my own tag, which I put on the blanket, too. Yay.

I used a combination of this tutorial (from walkingwithdancers.blogspot.com) and this tutorial (from diymaternity.com) to make washable, contoured nursing pads. I think I ended up sending her 10 pairs. I thought these were kind of fun to make. It's easy to churn out a batch of these with very little fuss. I used a variety of types of fabric including fleece, knit, cotton, and flannel for the pretty side, and a variety of thicknesses/layers on the absorbent side, cut from a 10-pack of cloth diapers I bought at Walmart. My darling husband is going to have to wait until I get another package of them to start using them as cleaning, waxing (car and boat), and outdoor sweat/work cloths. Sorry, love.

I think the fleece monkeys are my favorite. :) 

Using this tutorial (from diaryofaquilter.com), and this feedback about modified burp cloths (from thehomesihavemade.com - she said that adding a strip of fabric down the absorbent middle of the cloth diaper inhibited the absorption and made them essentially useless), I made a batch of burp cloths from another ten-pack of cloth diapers. Since the complaint about absorption made sense to me, I tried to keep the embellishments off the center section, so that they'd still be useful, but also let me play with them.

The gray & pink flower fabric on the left is what I used to
make the bias tape for the blanket.

I had come across this "Latchy Catchy," which is listed in the latchycatchy Etsy shop, and apparently has patents pending. Basically a strip that you put on the edge of a door, wrapped around both door knobs to keep the door from slamming and waking up the baby. Seems like a good idea, so I'm not really surprised about the patenting. I guessed at how to make it (since I didn't have a tutorial to go by, for this proprietary design), and wound up with this.

Definitely not perfect, but I was pleased. I did the same little bird in the center, front and back. I did check, and the encased elastic stretches far enough to go around both door knobs. I had to fiddle a bit with the inside of the middle part to make sure it was sturdy enough to hold the latch back and not just be an exercise in futility. A little iron-on fabric strengthener, and an extra layer made it work.

I thought this was a similarly excellent idea (Mammary Minders from dazzlebyd Etsy shop). Basically, a magnetic ribbon to put on your bra to remind you which side you need to nurse next.

I learned quite a bit while making these, and the third attempt (one on the right with sequins) was definitely the best. The most obvious thing that I should have figured out before I goofed up the first one I finished (on left, cream-colored) and ruined a couple other attempts is that super-strong magnets are lots of fun to try to sew around with a solid steel sewing machine. Heh heh... The 2nd and 3rd, I left the pockets unsewn on one edge of the inside and added the magnets after I was done sewing. I still think I can do better, but I'm not horrified by the finished product on these. I will definitely make another attempt on another day to perfect this. I really liked the idea.

I still have a batch of fun things I'm making or wanting to make to send her, but we will see if/when time permits.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts or insights about these. What are your favorite homemade baby/maternity items?

Much love,
LL~

P.S. All of the tutorials listed above were found via Pinterest, but as Jessica Hill said on this post, Pinterest isn't responsible for all the work that went into the tutorials-- the original creators/authors/bloggers are, and I want to give credit where credit is due. Pinterest has made them much more accessible to me, though, so yay for it, too! And yay for babies!

My Clean Home: Part 2

If there's anyone out there who still peeks in on me from time to time, I apologize for my absence. It's been a complex year. Both I and my darling husband have spent some time being sick and in recovery--amounting to the bulk of this calendar year, surprisingly enough. We're still working on home remodeling projects, and between those things and the full-time job stuff, time seems to get away. Forgive me? Love me anyway?

Does this cute picture of a sloth help?

Recently, my "spare" time has been occupied by a lot of organizing/reorganizing projects. I'm down to one big one, and a couple closets. I got to thinking about it, over the last couple of months, and decided that I needed to make some headway. This is partially due to the fact that I'm feeling better than I had been. It's also partially due to the fact that while taking sick time (much more than I had envisioned), lots of things went undone in my home. That's depressing. It's hard, when you feel unwell, to even know where to start, after things have gone downhill.

Additionally, I've noticed a trend in my family. In a recent conversation with my Mumsy, we were talking about how we always do things to stage a house when we're getting ready to sell it, or the way we try to get things all organized to pack up when we move. In a family of semi-nomads who move every couple of years whether we need/want to or not, the next move is something that starts coming up (at least in our minds, if not in conversation) after we've lived somewhere longer than a year. Anyhoo, the tendency I noticed is that we tend to get things done so that it's the way we want them to be, right before we move. Then everything's a disaster at the new place, or situated to "make do" until we get to those projects-- usually right before we move out. Why do we do this?

My brother's family is the black-sheep of the nomads in two respects. 1) They don't move every couple of years. They only move if it's necessary. 2) When they move in, they move everything directly into its forever home in the new house, eliminating anything that doesn't have a home, and never "making do" (I think this is because they don't know if/when they will ever move again, and they don't save stuff they can't use in this house, just in case it might work in the next one). If they decide to do a project, they just do it. Weird. I know. :)

So, based on the above, I thought that maybe I should do some of the pre-move work so that we can live in this house the way we would like to... Visionary! Here's the thing. We've always known that we're not going to live in Greenville forever. We have said, all along, since beginning our relationship, that we'd probably spend a few years in this house, then move closer to the Midwest and our extended families. We're coming up on our two year anniversary, so in theory, that move is creeping our direction. Sometimes it feels like it's rapidly approaching. Sometimes not. Either way, shouldn't our house function the way we live? Shouldn't we enjoy our home? Even if it's only for another year or so?

I got to thinking about all this and started looking around with different eyes. If I were staging this place to show prospective buyers, what would I change? How would I incorporate the elements that don't appear to fit so that we could actually live here while being prepared for short-notice showing? What's different about the way we live and the way our home functions?

I have to learn to take pictures as I'm working through these processes. Sorry, but I don't have many pictures for this.

I started with the living room, because it's an easy one. We actually spend quite a bit of time in there, and aside from life stuff, it doesn't get particularly messy. Some big thoughts for the living room:

• We don't own a television, so that (and its accompanying paraphernalia) is not the focal point, and is rather conspicuously absent to those who expect to see a huge screen gaping at them.
• We have a fireplace that opens on two sides. Not back and front. Front and side. It's incredibly awkward to decorate around. It's also flush with the floor and doesn't have a mantle. 
• Our furniture is a conglomeration of stuff we've collected over the years, and most of it has at least one story. 
• The room is an L shape, with a long, thin main portion and a weird little skinny, short lip (with the 2-sided fireplace on the corner). 

Please forgive the grainy phone picture. Nearly finished re-org of shelves.

I have two IKEA Expedit bookshelves, 5x5 and 4x4 (also a matching 2x4 that currently lives in the kitchen), side by side on the main wall. I suppose they could move, but it'd be a pain, so I decided to plan around them. I started with the bookshelves and pulled everything that wasn't a book off them, just as a starting point. Then I went through the house collecting books that didn't have a home (and some that did).

Since I'm a reader and I acquire books like a freshly washed windshield collects splatters during lovebug season in Florida, there tend to be books in every room of my home, stashed in boxes/on furniture/in closets, and randomly dropped here and there near every comfortable surface I might use for reading. I tend to be in the middle of multiple books at once, so many of them have bookmarks, (gasp!) folded page corners, or an ink pen keeping my spot. Unfortunately, I'll get sucked into another one, and I don't always finish all I've started-- especially if I misplace them or start researching a new topic.

All that to say, I found a ton of books that didn't live on the living room shelves. This caused a spontaneous reorganization of the living room shelves. I have two methods to my madness when it comes to shelves. 1) I want books organized in some way so that I can find them when I want them. My memory is not eidetic, but pretty sharp, so I do tend to want to look things up later for exact reference. 2) I want the shelves to be visually pleasing. With the square boxes, I have 41 individual spaces to organize, with the overall larger squares of 25 and 16 spaces, respectively. That gives me lots of options. Yay, for my inner nerd. :)

All the books that hadn't previously lived on the shelves got shuffled into what was there, things got reorganized to accommodate the influx, and we wound up with books filling every cube but three. When I lived in Florida, I had the 5x5 in the living room, and had books in every other cube (13 cubes) in a checkerboard pattern. I had attempted the same thing, here, but wound up filling more cubes initially. When I pulled pretty much everything into the living room, this time, I started to realize the volume of our collection. Considering the office and the master bedroom have their own bookshelves and collections, the quantity in the living room becomes fairly impressive, even to me. I'll do another post with more detail on the bookshelves another day. 

Since the shelves are now mostly filled with books, the ephemera (candles, decorative items, etc) ended up in the guest room, temporarily, until I can decide how to redistribute or store. I like what The Nester says about "shopping" your house, occasionally. I just don't tend to do it. Cutting down on clutter is giving me a better idea of what I really want the decor to be, though, so I'm not really sure how much of what has been removed will return, or at what point. We'll see.

More pictures, and the continuation of the living room on another day. Since this post has been sitting here waiting for me to finish it for more than a week, I'm going to stop here. :)

Much love,
LL~

Christmas/Winter Decorations

My little tree, as decorated at my home in Vero Beach.

Historically, I have had a mish-mosh style of Christmas decorations. Most of my decorations were gleaned from my parents' collection, or varying other gifts/re-uses. This year, I knew we were buying a new tree (to replace the one I had purchased right out of college that was small enough to work in little apartments), so I knew I wanted to re-think how I decorated the house.

Our new tree!

We also have mostly completed the interior of the house (except the kitchen - yick!), and I wanted our Christmas decorations to look like they belonged with the rest of our home.

Aside from the bathrooms and kitchen, the entire house has wood floors, and we've done the main portion of it in 2 shades of the same gray, with white trim. (Gray is neutral, and much prettier than beiges and creams, as well as less clinical/stark than straight white. I hate, hate, hate beige. It looks dirty. It's depressing. I refuse to do beige in anything. Blechth!) Most of our accents throughout the house are purples and greens, which is partially borne of our wedding which was pewter gray, silver and purple. We've been able to use a lot of the wedding decorations in the house, and it looks like we meant to do it!

Jingle bell ornaments on our kitchen
cabinet doors are from the dollar
store. I call that a win. :)

 All of that adds up to mean that our new Christmas decor was going to be tied together with silver and purple. Beyond that, I like to decorate and have my decor be seasonal, rather than based on a holiday. I went mostly with a snow/snowflake theme, so that even when the "Christmas" decor comes down (trees, ornaments, etc), the winter decor can remain until it's time to usher in spring.

Cute, huh?

I started early. I wanted the decorations to be mostly in place before Thanksgiving, so that we could enjoy them when my parents were in town. I also wanted to take my time and not just rush to put things up. We bought our new tree in October, and thus it began.

I went to the dollar store, and they had all kinds of purple decorations, so that helped me begin to incorporate the color scheme I wanted into the decor throughout the house.  My kitchen cabinet doors are festooned with cheerful jingle bell ornaments from the dollar store, and these pretty purple tinsel trees (above) were there, too. I made a little snowy vignette with them on top of the living room shelves.

We have this monstrous kitchen, of which we seldom make adequate use, so I decided it was a good place for my little tree to live, since the new one is now in the living room. I wrapped the pictures hanging on the walls on either side of the tree to make them look like presents, and it really made the kitchen feel like it was supposed to be part of the house, for the first time.

Our front door always has
a wreath, with a cross in
the center.

 
Having been inspired by something I saw on Pinterest, I had been contemplating making a snow-flake tulle wreath, but I couldn't figure out how to do it in a sturdy enough way to put it on the front door, so I went with our regular evergreen wreath on the front door. At the orders of 2 of my friends (our teen-aged neighbor girls), I needed a wreath for the wall inside the front entry, so that's where the snowflake wreath was destined to be. I'm still making adjustments to it, and now that I look at the pictures I took, I see more that I want to do. Here it is at it's current point (below). My darling husband is gracious enough to allow me to put girly-looking decorations right in the front entry where everyone sees them. That's a man who is secure in his manhood, let me tell ya. Smile.

One of the things that I've been giving a lot of serious thought in the last months is the reality of the eternal spiritual world and what impact it has on my day-to-day life. (Some of this will be in another post.) You know, the just day-in and day-out living? What impact does eternity make on how I take care of my body? Washing my face, brushing my teeth, fixing my hair, getting dressed? What impact does it make in how I decorate my home? Present myself? Act in public and in private? How much am I willing to cede to the world, as opposed to living peculiarly in this world? (Titus 2:7-15)

New cross that will remain
out all year.

When it came to Christmas decorations, I had to consider how much of my home I'm willing to cede to frivolity, not that frivolity is entirely bad, in itself. It's just that if I'm living a life that's eternal, shouldn't my home show that? So, I very carefully considered what we kept from prior years' decorations. I gave thought to each Santa/Father Christmas or Frosty themed item, each instance of secular folklore, and was careful to weigh them against what we really celebrate in the Christmas season.

A Christmas gift 2 years ago,
from my godparents. 

For that reason, things that might be considered "seasonal" didn't make the cut this year. Things that didn't have sentimental value or a reason for being displayed were taken out of consideration. That helped me to severely curtail the clutter, too, and it left me with a much clearer picture of why we believe that this world is better because of the coming of Christ, and why we celebrate it every year.

This year, there are more crosses, because that was the point of His birth-- His redeeming death and resurrection. This year, there are at least 5 nativity scenes, drawing our eyes and minds to that ineffable moment when God became a little, helpless child, entrusted to the humans who were created in His image, so that He might experience life as we know it, live it fully in submission to the Holy Spirit, as we're called to, and ultimately take my place in a brutal death to pay the price for my sin.

This nativity scene is a year-round decoration in our living room book case. My dad had it carved for me in Sierra Leone, West Africa, and gave it to me some years ago. I love the image in my mind that he described of the little old man with his carving knife creating his view of the birth of my savior. It makes me smile, that He was here for all of us!

Great gift!! Wish the picture was
better.

A dear friend of ours dropped by to bring me a birthday gift, this year, not knowing that these were the thoughts I was mulling. She brought me another reminder that, yet again, the Holy Spirit was doing His mysterious work and tying together the thoughts of two of His girls, without aid of our communication with one another. She brought me this lovely silver cross, with the nativity scene in it. How perfect is that!?!

I am working on finding the perfect place to hang it for year-round display in our home. It's so loaded with imagery that I don't think I could bear to put it away for most of the year. For now, it's lying on our coffee table, as a focal point in our living room. I love it!

As the night closes in and we turn on our lights, I'm reminded of the Light that came to this world, and of the light I'm supposed to be in it. As I walk through a lovely home that was entrusted to us for our care and keeping, I think of all the little miracles that I've witnessed in the creation of this story woven around my life and marriage, and I pray that God will give us opportunities to extend His hospitality and love to those around us. As I survey the decorations, I think of the purple robe of the Eternal High King of Heaven, and the precious metals that show the abundance of His wealth and generosity to us. As I go from piece to piece, I remember the people whose lives have touched mine, however much or long, and the places that they occupy in my heart and the Heart of their Creator.

Our entry table (under the snow-flake wreath)

When this Christmas has passed, and the trees come down and the ornaments get packed away, I will leave the snowflake decorations up until spring to remind me that God creates us to be unique expressions of His Image, and the "Christmas"decorations that remain around our home will remind me, as we move through the next year of the inscrutable mystery of the birth of God, when the Eternal Creator became a normal guy and got dirty and had to trim his toenails and lived and breathed and died and rose again to save our souls from eternal death.

May the breath of God be on your face. May you see His hand at work around you. May you marvel at things that are too great for us to ever wrap our minds around. May you be blessed by the simple faith of little children experiencing the joys of this season for the first few times. May you learn to know Him, grow to be like Him, and become holy as He is holy.

With love and Christmas blessings,
LL~