If you disagree with me, our way of life or anything on this web site... do the better thing and not talk about it or tell me. Please pray that I will be able to endure the grief that I get from some who call themselves Christian.
Eph 4:29iLet no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but jwhat is good for necessary 8edification, kthat it may impart grace to the hearers. 30 And ldo not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 mLet all bitterness, wrath, anger, 9clamor, and nevil speaking be put away from you, owith all malice. 32 And pbe kind to one another, tenderhearted, qforgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. KJV
A Day in the Life
So many dear sisters have asked what we wear during the day doing our various chores that I decided to dedicate a page to showing you what it's like in our home for a full week. So many ladies come to a decision to wear dresses only and figure that they have to dress in sack cloth and ashes... please do not believe it. You need to wear what you like, what doesn't make you look like you are in mourning or deprives your beloved husband of what is his. I'm sure he wants you to look your best and I hope that I can be of some encouragement. There are many photo's of me throughout the pages and I will always add more as we go.
11-17-07 Here I am ready for a day of shopping in town.
Got my new Birkenstock, woven, enclosed heal shoes and I'm ready to walk. The Pasmir shawl doubled as my headcovering as my beloved wanted to see my hair down and was very lovable when he asked if I would leave it loose for him. Everytime I needed to pray I whipped it up with my right hand quickly and easily. I love this peasant blouse that I got from Blair I believe,,, then I got the skirt from Woman Within. I'm in a Large! What fun to no longer need tent sizes.
LOOKY HERE! NO CHIN 1-31-07 I'm loosing weight finally. On 10-9-07 I weight 160! PTL, down from 196 POUNDS!
I'm wearing a T-shirt that I got brand new for $5.00. I lopped off 5 inches and rehemmed it as everything ends up too long on my short torso. The skirt is a cotton 8 gore that I made. You can't see it but I'm wearing the Perry town, which I LOVE because I can't ever tell it's on. I even nap in it and never have to rearrange it.
Here's Katie at her desk in her room doing her school work. She's wearing a purchased T-shirt, 4-tiered skirt I made and the versangle.
Here's Shane at his desk in his room doing his Bible study. Behind him on the floor you can see his current project. I large Victorian house that he's building for his sister. Most all of his clothing is purchased with the exception of his pajamas. I do have the fabric and a pattern for a church shirt to make for him. He has singular tastes and we can't find what he likes in the store.
This is a cork board that I fixed up first thing this morning. I needed a place to keep all of my to do lists, reminders and shopping lists. This works ever so much better then all of the post it notes I had on this wall prior.
Here I have finished making breakfast after getting Kevin out in the morning. Again, you almost can't see my Perry veil but it's light blue to match. Standard T-shirt and A-line Madras patchwork skirt from www.blair.com. The shoes are enclosed Birkenstocks, every day as I have plantar facitis. I can't tell you how freeing it is to own only those, the slip on Birkenstocks and some boots. The apron is one that I made myself. We find it better to protect our clothing then having to purchase new again. The best thing about this photo is that you get to see our great big wall of books. I love that! We all do.
My children have a chore chart and they mark off as they go what they have done. I bought the write and wipe board for all of $1.49 at the 99 cent store... added 1/4" quilting tape to make a check off grid and your good to go. This is the best thing I have found for us. I have gone through all of the papers and printing different charts and all of that,,, it just doesn't work. I even purchased one from wood with magnets it didn't work either. My little homemade one is the best. This is where we put dailies like homeschool, cat box (the letters across the top tells who has which day so that there's never a doubt), dishes, animals (which they know means water and feed all of them). At the bottom there's a place to write in once a week chores like take out trash from about the home, wash and vacuum all floors and any other things that come up. Then there's a place for writing the date we changed the liter box, the day the Kombucha will be ready and the herbs will be fully extracted. It's been a great system that really works for us and the children say that they experience a great deal of satisfaction in marking items off of the list.
The children wanted to go for a picnic today. I just popped on a vest and packed up a lunch. Fortunately we were all out of jelly so we have fresh fruits, veggies and water. In a bit I will be making up some WW zucchini bread. I can't wait for them to start coming from the garden. Every day when I rise I can see the plants out my bedroom window and I tell you they look like they are growing larger over night. We had a good time. I was able to look through the mail and the children were able to play on the play ground. That's my five hour quilt on the table... I start to completely quilted it in five hours! PTL
This is where I get to do my bible study, my DH bought me the desk and it's in my bedroom. I'm doing the one from Mount Zion here. Today I'm wearing a full circle skirt with matching covering. I did the trim on both in thread crochet. You can see my hankie matches too. I just love making feminine pieces of attire. Can you see the tea cup? It was my old mentor Jane's cup. We had a small tea party with the solid silver cream and sugar bowl that I picked up yesterday for only TEN dollars. We added those to the silver spoon that says Ireland that we got from the Scottish Festival for 1/2 off. I made Jasmine and Goddess teas mixed together in my Blue Willow pot. It was all really pretty looking on the tray. See the fan in the back? I keep it in my Bible as my new med's make me hot flash a great deal. Minor price to pay for feeling normal for the first time in years. We had to close the drapes to get the photo but out this window is my veggie garden and I had oh so many beautiful birds visit while the water was on this morning. Black, blue, yellow and red, it was quite the rainbow. They were swooping and diving to catch bugs in my organic garden (PTL for birds, lizards and horny toads) and then they enjoyed a bird bath in a puddle. It was difficult to study for the beauty out the window.
Much of this afternoon was spent in construction of this jacket that I have been collecting fabrics forever for. It's been a lot of fun and very relaxing. I have a skirt made from the sleeve fabric which will be neat to wear it together. I was thinking of adding some Victorian emerald glass buttons that I have.
Much of the day was spent on the sewing machine. I was working on two swaps till the mail came and then I worked on a block for a drawing.
I made a camp style shirt for my DS in his favorite print and then got frustrated as, although it was the largest size on the pattern, it was still too small for him.
(Shown here just before our shopping outing in the evening. This is my standard issue clothing. Knit (or denim) skirt and t-shirt. the perry matches the skirt)
So during our every other week shopping travels I purchased the only pattern I could find in a 14/16 boys size.
While we were there I was able to find the fabric for the shower curtain which I haven't seen in over a year. As well as fabric for a few more shirts. As you can see he takes after his mother. The batik swap is top left (royal blue), KS swap is the teal/white with pink heart, the WOW heart is the gold's under that. The shower curtain is the far right with the waterfall and the dove. I'm going to put a large thread crochet trim in white across the top and a thinner one along the bottom. The rest is Shane's shirts. I love the green gecko one as soon as I saw it I grabbed it and he just lit up! These are his summer church shirts. The might even make it through winter if I can find him a nice cardigan,,, come to think of it, a cardigan might be too sedate for this young man!
I just had to add this photo... this is Spike.
Spike has a history. Currently he's outside of the fence, there was a time when he was about 100' south of where he now resides, down by the horses. At first I watered him as he was the only vegetation we had on the property. Nothing ever happened with him. He was spiky and hurt everyone who came by him. The final straw was when the dogs were going after the squirrels and came up crying. That and the fact that it warmed up here and he was the perfect hiding spot for our local snakes which are venomous. So when a friend came to do some tractor work we had him take Spike out, uproot him,,, toss him over the fence. DH thought he would one day get round to taking him to the dump... wrong! See I guess Spike needed to be uprooted before he was going to show his true colors. If we wouldn't have uprooted him we might never had known for sure that he was a yucca. Never had he blossomed before this and his bottom is only supposed to be 1/10th of what it is. I was so happy to see that he had taken up residence outside of the fence and was actually blooming! Strange but true.
I had a BLAST today figuring out what I was going to do for the bathroom and GOING FOR IT! here's the curtain. It's a double wide space as it's covering a 7' Jacuzzi tub. I am making motifs for under the Fleur De Les at the top.
The curtain on the right is my window. I trimmed it top and bottom. The white thing on the fabric is a descending dove. The fabric is made by Psalm 23! Cool huh!!!!
Here's what I did with a bit of left over fabric... I trimmed them when Little Man was gone for days, this is FurBall.
Sunday is Father's Day. The children took shells and glued them to a photo frame as well as a glass jar. The jar is for pencils since he's got a desk job now (we are so proud of him).
We went to two different pounds and ended up getting a puppy from a local here to replace our Bear who died last weekend. He's ADORABLE. He's nine weeks old. Mom was a chow lab which is what Bear was and Dad's a massive mastiff. We washed "Sam" (yeah Sam!!!) right away and he's so cute under all of the dirt and grime. He's VERY affectionate. Some of his siblings were not so. We picked the perfect pup for us. Sheba (Welch corgi) seems to be fond of him already as well as is Little Man (domestic short haired cat). Furball (domestic long hair cat-black and white just like Sam) on the other hand... well, if looks couldn't kill,,, perhaps claws will!!!
Sam at 10 weeks.
Our 12th Anniversary
The children made up a lovely little dinner table complete with linens, candle, fine china and our gold monogrammed silver ware. They put sparkling Martinelli's in our special glasses which I had engraved when we were married with our names and the date of our marriage. They are cobalt blue and the table was just lovely. There were even place markers. They set up everything that was needed with all of the forks and stuff were in the right place too! We even had the coffee cups and saucers even though there was no coffee! Way neat though for a 9 & 10 year old.
They made us steak on the b-b-que, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, a lovely garden salad. Desert was a strawberry, whipped cream cake thing that DH bought. YUM It was all very nice. They "waited" on us and didn't even want to eat their own meals. Everything was scrumptious. They served the corn and salad and stuff. It was so sweet the way that they just would jump up and take care of everything.
Then they served desert and DH opened his gifts. The card went over even better then the gifts. He actually started to cry. Bless his heart, he touched me deeply,,, I guess I touched him too. I found a picture of a barn and house and wrote on the whole inside of the card the I would love for us to live in a place like that... all paid off and him get to go to work in the barn. Told him how much I appreciated him being a great provider, and how proud I am of him for his promotion. How much I enjoy having to iron his shirts and how much pleasure I take from making them as crisp as I can. Then I went into the things I have learned in the last 12 years. About how I need to chill and not react and how even when we have been on the brink that I wouldn't change anything. Told him how much he means to me. That's what got to him. This man never cries so it was a big deal.
The children were supper excited and the camera's came out so I knew my gift was a big one. I got an anniversary ring with 13 diamonds on it... they miss counted by one shucks... no bodies complaining. It's beautiful.
We had a very nice dinner and I'm so totally loved and blessed that I feel the most fortunate of beings on this earth.
THE BIRTH
Our long awaited birth happened this week as well. The baby birds were large enough to leave the nest. Their nest is in this horse stall just up in the corner. They are standing on a horse feeder. Their mother is a great bug catcher so we hope they will like it here and stay on board. We have provided plenty of food and water for them.
Check back again as there will be more photo's added each day until we have walked a week together.
The exit to our house was closed as was the Interstate... as was the canyon, we were asked to evacuate. No people nor homes were lost. PTL
My beloved at work.
A tree exploded during a thunder storm and the result was another fire.
A Jack Rabbit at DH's job site that we went to to get this photo.
So we went to the Lake and saw this little guy.
And this very big guy! He waved at DH.
The coolest I had been all during this heat wave was due to sitting close to this man made mister.
The geese were really upset by the whole proceedure. They would run towards the Lake as he was coming in and then away as he came down to pick up the water.
It was the day of the critters, as we turned into the drive home we saw this mother daughter duo eating and drinking to escape the heat. Sorry about the poor photo quality,I lightened them up for you to see. They were under the shade of a tree and it was quite dark, Momma, ever alert didn't seem to mind our presence. Note, she has her hind leg in the bird bath too cool down.
After selling our horse Katie decided that she wanted to make better friends of our Spanish Gaited Pony. So I told her he's got to get used to her and this was the first step. She's reading a horse story to him.
She made great progress. He was really getting spoiled today. He had plenty of apples and carrots as well.
We just can't seem to get away from these fires this year. This one has burned up ALL of the local Los Padres Forest, it's call the Day Fire. It's a couple of mountains away but you wouldn't know it. It's been threatening some of the local towns now.
