Merry Christmas

The LORD bless you
   and keep you;
the LORD make his face shine on you
   and be gracious to you;
the LORD turn his face toward you
   and give you peace.
Number 6:24-26

My hearts cry - broken and ashamed

Right now it's about 20 degrees outside. I have candles lit and the furnace is humming away. Lilly woke up about an hour ago and is already laying on the floor with her toys, almost asleep. She must be like her daddy because he loves naps.

I have to be honest...I have put my one true love on the back burner. It seems lately, I have so many "more important" things to do in my day. My heart is thirsting for Him. So today I will make a new normal. I will spend more time reading the Word and other godly books to better myself for my husband, my daughter, and most importantly, myself. When I think about studying more, I get excited! I know that my Father has wonderful nuggets of truth to share with me.

Saturday night I made a quick stop at Giant. It was about 11:00 and there was hardly anyone in the store. As I was waiting to check out, the cashier was ringing up another employee. In her conversation with him, she made a remark that if "she has to be behind this (bad word) register for one more night..." And that's all I heard of the conversation but I could feel the tension she had, the disappointment, the hurt she was going through. I could see anger and rage. I could see the demons tormenting her. 

I often hear stories of customers coming up to pay and have a word of encouragement for the cashier. My best friends husband (before they were dating and before he was a christian) had a dear old lady come up to him and tell him that Jesus loves him. I LOVE hearing those stories!

And as I often do when I have a crabby cashier, "Does God want me to say something to her?" Most of the time the notion quickly goes away and I assume that I wasn't to say something but this time it popped into my head "Tell her her daughter will be ok".   .......


......


......... 


I walked out the door.




And said nothing. 


Nothing.


Well, I did tell her I hope she has a great night. That counts as saying something to encourage her, right?


I feel like a horrible person. I may have been the only way she would get to see Jesus.

 
 Please forgive me. Please help me to not be embarrassed, scared to share Your words. Your beautiful, life saving words. May they flow out of my mouth like honey to the unsaved or even just the discouraged souls. Your mercy is like a sweet cool rain. Shower it down Lord, let Your mercies flow from Heaven.

I read this morning about how we use our words for good. To cloth and feed people. To encourage the brokenhearted.

The definition of word- something that is said. Putting one's feelings into words.

 ~Sweet Mercies~
It's our confession Lord, that we are weak
So very weak, but You are strong
And though we've nothing Lord, to lay at your feet
We come to Your feet and say, "Help us along"

A broken heart and a contrite spirit
You have yet to deny
Your heart of mercy beats with love's strong current
Let the river flow by your Spirit now, Lord we cry

Let Your mercies fall from heaven
Sweet mercies flow from heaven
New mercies for today
Shower them down Lord as we pray
Let Your mercies fall from heaven
Sweet mercies flow from heaven
New mercies for today
Shower them down Lord as we pray

I love you Abba. 

i really want to win this for sure!

giveaway

In a few hours I will add more to this but Lilly just woke up and needs her mommy.

Diaper Giveaway!

I am super excited about this giveaway! It's for the BumGenius 4.0 diaper! I have the older version and I really want to see how much better theses are.
Cloth Diaper Giveaway

Thank You, Father

So tomorrow starts my favorite 2 months of the year! When I was a child, I loved this time of year when we were getting together with family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love fellow-shipping (is that even a word??) with family members and seeing everyone laugh and be merry. Tis the season to use old words! 

I just posted on facebook. My heart aches because this is such a rough time of year for some many people. This year, it seems the devil is working super hard at bringing us down. 

I know so many people that are dealing with awful diagnosis's. My grandfather was just told today that his brain tumor has started growing again after being dormant for 15+ years. He'll be 70 when we all get together to celebrate Christmas this year. 

If I'm completely honest with myself, I know that things like this are going to happen when loved ones get older. And part of me was just waiting for this to happen. Is this lack of faith? I think it is....or just fear....I don't know. 



My grandpa has had already 1 brain tumor removed, prostate cancer and 1 off the charts unbelievable heart attack.

God has been mighty in his life and I know that He can heal him just like He did all those other times. I know that God's will is good and just. And no matter what, my heart will choose to bless the Lord! 

Grandpa with his first great-grandchild, my daughter Lilly.

I just got done making a pear and apple sour cream pie for my husbands family get together tomorrow. OHHHHH please be good, pleeeeease be good! *crosses fingers and winches* It looks and smells great but I was kinda unsure about how the filling looked. I'll fill ya in on how it turned out tomorrow! 




So none of you know this (unless your my husband) but I have been wanting to buy Shaklee cleaning products for some time now. However, my husband and I are trying soooo hard to budget our money better and since I have cleaning products already, I just windowed shopped. (I'm not going to lie though, I have been letting my oven get as gross as possible so I can clean it and show before and after pictures like a lot of people do. hehehehe) 

Sooooo...(here is the good part) I follow a blog that sells Shaklee and the lady that sells this will often have giveaways or post links to other blogs that are having giveaways for samples of this cleaner.

 A few weeks ago, I entered a giveaway and low and behold, the other day I got an email saying I WON!!! 


I am sooo super excited and checking the mail box every chance I get! I will post before and after pictures once I get it and clean up some grim! 



This was kinda a random post and I promise to try harder to blog more often! I want to start taking pictures of food I cook and crafts I do. 




Have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving! God Bless!

taking care of business

Since being a stay at home mom, I have been working on being more productive around the home and not being so lazy.



(inserts laughter here)


Ok, so yes, it's true, I am NOT a fan of housework, work, jobs, responsibilities, etc... I would much rather sit all day on my blessed assurance and read or go shopping.

But since money doesn't grow on any trees around our home...I feel some what responsible to save money, earn money, and grow money.

Save Money- I have cut WAYYYYYYYYYYYY down on my spending. Like way. Dom and I have started taking a deeper look into our finances and where it was going. I felt like since I was staying at home and did not want have to go back to work and put Lilly in a daycare, I needed to make sure we were on a budget.


Earn Money- Once Lilly was born, I started cleaning my parents home. Both my parents work long hours and so they pay me a little each week or so to come clean! I'm not a big fan of cleaning but hey, it's money and that money goes into our envelopes for special things we want to buy. Those envelopes so far are 'going out to eat', 'shopping', 'parties' (pampered chef, partylite, mary kay), 'fabric', and 'sneakers'.

Grow Money- I love the feeling of going outside and grabbing some veggies or herbs for dinner! So my goal for next spring is to start a garden. Not just a few plants here and there garden, but a large garden that is going to keep me busy everyday next year. I am ready for the challenge. I am ready to rid myself of all these lazy bugs that keep coming in! Between weeding, picking and canning, I should have plenty to do. Hopefully this will save us money and not cost us money. I'm hoping that eventually we will have enough produce to sell at auctions. I also want to start up a little road side stand. There really aren't any near by us so I think it would be a hit. (Sorry weaver's store, but you will have some competition! ) 

Ok Ok, enough of this boring talk...let's look at some pictures!


Saturday, my sweet hubby did some rearranging for me! Here is what we did!

living room before

Do you see on the right wall, the one that has the rectangle picture on it? Well on the other side is our den. There use to be a door connecting the two but it was covered up by the paneling and a book case was constructed in the old door way in the den. We wanted to move the tv and couches into the den to make a cozy family room. I think we will some day open that doorway back up.

living room after


we are going to be getting a desk to put in the poor, lonesome corner on the left.
 

our new family room

Sorry about the blurriness. darn phone cameras...
See the bookshelf??? old door way!
This picture is taken from the room right beside the den. For lack of a better name, it's called "my piano room". Someday it might be made into a master bedroom. Or guest bedroom.. Or craft room...

So it's a lot bit smaller then the other room however, we'll make due! We love it so far!

So,..did you notice something on the pictures of the living room?

Take another look....

I'll give you a hint.... it involves our chairs.....

When we bought the table at the auction, they also were selling black, "weathered"looking chairs. However, since we weren't even expecting to buy a table that day, let alone 4 $70 chairs....we decided we could just redo our old ones.

here they are!
before

after


mmmm i could just sit in them all day!

well, it's time I work on earning my keep around this home!

I. love. giveaways.

Check out this neat giveaway on a really wonderful site!

A Wise Woman Builds Her Home

< widowed >

The other night I had a dream.

I woke up sobbing, so thankful to feel my husband laying next to me.

I think I had a "Job" dream, in that the dream went a little like Job's story in the bible.

I forget bits and pieces but this is what I remember.

I remember a boy that I had went to school with (I really don't know him personally or have seen him in years) come running after me and he started beating me up. I remember seeing a lady that I go to church with watching me. I tried to get her attention and she just ignored me.
The next thing I remember is being told that my husband and daughter had died. I guess I was pregnant in the dream because I also miscarried a little girl. (I wonder if this is will come to pass? Not the miscarriage part but the having another little girl part..hmm)
I still had my in-laws and my parents and siblings alive. 
I remember my brother coming up and saying that he wanted to say goodbye to the girls and for some reason I handed him 2 papers. One was completely "written" or "filled" up, I don't know what it said. The other one was not complete.

The dream was so real.

I feel kind of embarrassed for the next part...

I even thought about how I need to change my facebook status to "widowed".

For pete sakes... I think I need to re-think my facebook habits...

The one thing that really stuck out to me, and made me feel like this dream was truly a God thing was that I remember telling God that I STILL TRUSTED HIM.

How many of us would be able to say that after loosing everything?

Since I've gotten married, there have been a few times where I thought about loosing my husband or a child and I nearly broke down into tears. But I tried / try my best to let God know that I trust Him. Because I do. I'd be foolish not too. After I say that though I usually quickly say something to effects of, "But please don't make me go through that!!"

So anyways, I'm not sure what woke me up from my dream but I woke up thinking that I was a widow. It was that real. I quickly snapped out of it and felt for my husband next to me and breathed a sigh of relief. I then proceeded to cry like a baby. My husband held me and comforted me and in the morning we both laughed about it. But wow, was that a powerful dream.


Well, baby is crying out for some mommy time so off I go! Yay for the fair tonight!

neat giveaway

Here's a neat give-away! Little Miss Momma

Ohio, Here We Come!

2 more days and we'll be on our way for the (every other year. anyone know what the term for every other year is? :-) ) Miller Camp Out! I. CAN'T. WAIT!
This will be the first time Lilly will be out and I can't wait for everyone to meet her!
Well I know this is short but I have lot's to do! I am making 7dz biscotti to take out! YUM!
Have a blessed day everyone!