Voice of Truth

I was driving my son to an appointment yesterday and I was listening to 104.7 the Fish when one of my favorite songs came on. Here are the lyrics... Love it!

Voice of Truth
by Casting Crowns

Oh, what I would do to have
the kind of faith it takes
To climb out of this boat I'm in
Onto the crashing waves
To step out of my comfort zone
Into the realm of the unknown
Where Jesus is,
And he's holding out his hand

But the waves are calling out my name
and they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times
I've tried before and failed
The waves they keep on telling me
time and time again
"Boy, you'll never win,
You you'll never win

But the Voice of truth tells me a different story
the Voice of truth says "do not be afraid!"
and the Voice of truth says "this is for My glory"
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

Oh, what I would do
to have the kind of strength it takes
To stand before a giant
with just a sling and a stone
Surrounded by the sound
of a thousand warriors
shaking in their armor
Wishing they'd have had the strength to stand

But the giant's calling out
my name and he laughs at me
Reminding me of all the times
I've tried before and failed
The giant keeps on telling me
time and time again
"Boy you'll never win,
you'll never win."

But the voice of truth tells me a different story
the Voice of truth says "do not be afraid!"
and the Voice of truth says "this is for My glory"
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

But the stone was just the right size
to put the giant on the ground
and the waves they don't seem so high
from on top of them looking down
I will soar with the wings of eagles
when I stop and listen to the sound of Jesus
singing over me

But the Voice of truth tells me a different story
The Voice of truth says "do not be afraid!"
And the Voice of truth says "this is for my glory"
Out of all the voices calling out to me (calling out to me)
I will choose to listen and believe (I will choose to listen and believe)
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

I will listen and believe
I will listen and believe the Voice of truth
I will listen and believe
'Cause Jesus you are the Voice of truth
And I will listen to you.. oh you are the Voice of truth

Irish Toasts

Health to the men, and may the women live forever!

 ~ ~ ~

Saint Patrick was a gentleman,

Who through strategy and stealth,

Drove all the snakes from Ireland,

Here’s a toasting to his health.

But not too many toastings

Lest you lose yourself and then

Forget the good Saint Patrick

And see all those snakes again.

  ~ ~ ~

'Beannachtam na Feile Padraig!'

(Happy St. Patrick's Day!)

 ~ ~ ~

May your home always be too small to hold all your friends.

 ~ ~ ~

 May your casket be made from the wood of a 100 year old oak that I shall plant tomorrow.

~ ~ ~

There’s still time left before St. Patrick’s Day so I used 3 of these toasts to put together some little cards to drop in the mail or deliver with some treats.
 

I don’t know if you can tell from my photographs of the ones I printed out and put together but the “That I shall plant tomorrow” is being used as the inside of a folded card with the “casket” part as the front of the card. The other two are just flat cards. I printed mine on regular paper and then cut out the separate pieces and mounted them on cardstock. To print one of the cards, click on the image to make it larger and then save it to your desktop. Then open it or import it into a program to print it out. If you try printing one of the individual cards just from your browser, I’m not sure if it will let you size it down properly. The size they should be is about 3.5 x 4.5. The way I printed mine was all on one page like the image below and I just sized it to “fit the printable media”.

I hope you enjoy these fun sayings. There are a ton more Irish Toasts out there, these were just some of my personal favs.

New Glasses

A few weeks ago Alexander finally finished his strategically orchestrated demolition of my one remaining pair of glasses. I also have contacts but I don't wear them very often and I especially don't like putting them in first thing in the morning unless I have to. So I hopped online and Coastal Contacts was doing a deal for a free pair of glasses to the first one thousand people who ordered. Apparently I have expensive tastes though because literally every pair I found that I liked on their site was either excluded from the deal or already sold out. 

So I gave up shooting for the free pair and went to Zenni Optical. I picked a few different pairs of glasses I liked and I used the zenni frame fit "mirror" to see what they would look like on me. I will not be sharing the picture I uploaded to their site to do that because I was not looking hot that day but that little feature helped a lot in my decision making process.

I ended up ordering two pairs and paying under $30 total. The glasses are manufactured in China so it takes a little longer to get them to you but I don't think I actually waited more than a week. The quality of the glasses is great. Although I think next time I'm going to pay the extra couple bucks and add the anti glare coating to make them even better.

I don't have any good pictures of the glasses actually on my face yet but if I get one I'll post it later. The ones on the right are a little different than what I'm used to wearing but for the price I figured I could afford to try something new. And those are actually the ones I wear more often now.

Yay for saving money and switching things up! Good times all around.

To The Rescue

~ *Note* This is not a happily-go-lucky "look what I just put up on my wall to make it prettier" post. It's a personal gospel insight post that may or may not lead members of my church to take action in their own lives. If you don't know anything about the church I belong to, a lot of my references won't make sense. Feel free to leave me a comment if you want clarification or visit Mormon.org for more information. ~ 

I'm the 2nd counselor in the Primary presidency in our ward and lately I've really enjoyed having the opportunity to go to several leadership training meetings. At almost every one the theme seems to have been "Rescue".

At least three different speakers used this painting in one way or another in their presentations. The painting is called: *deep breath* 

Lifeboat and Manby Apparatus going off to a stranded vessel making signal blue lights of distress

Apparently, Joseph Mallord William Turner didn't understand back in 1831 that a picture is worth a thousand words and he didn't have to put those thousand words in the title. But me calling someone wordy would be the pot calling the kettle black and besides that's not really the point. The point is President Monson spoke about this painting in a general priesthood session back in 2001 and I'm told he has a copy of it hanging in his office today. You can read the whole talk here.  He "abbreviated the name of the painting in his mind" and refers to it as To The Rescue.

All the leaders who shared this painting talked about how he compared the people in the stranded boat to people struggling in the gospel, either because of sin or for any other reason. They talked about the men in the lifeboat as being members of the church who go out of their way to reach out and help those people back into activity. And the woman and children on the shore are those who are desperately praying for their family members to be brought home safely.

The most impressing note I remember was when Elder Duncan of the seventy spoke at our Stake Conference over the weekend. He talked about how he served many years in Chile and how when the earthquake struck there a few days ago, every missionary that he had served with there and that had since returned home, called his cell phone and practically begged for ways to help. They talked about leaving school and work and going to Chile to do what ever was necessary to rescue as many people as they could. Elder Duncan went on to say how he was impressed at the time with the thought that, as wonderful as it is that people are willing to sacrifice and travel immense distances to help others in times of natural disaster or other physical hardship, how many more people are there immediately around us that need all the spiritual help they can get. The love of Christ is universal and it's a basic commandment to assist the poor and needy, but temporal items are of little importance compared to lifting a downtrodden soul. 

His point really struck me. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that maybe part of why we like jumping to the rescue when physical disaster strikes is because we're not really putting much on the line then. Anyone can see the need, we don't have to explain ourselves, and we can pretty much expect our help to be welcomed because the recipient is humbled and out of options. On the other hand, when we see someone who is lost spiritually, we have a tendency to hesitate. "What if they are offended because they think I'm judging them?" "What if I don't know what to say and they ask questions I can't answer?" "What if it's hard for them to change something in their lives to follow a commandment?" "What if they get mad at me?" "What if they're just not interested?" 

"I might get embarrassed."

It's a difficult pill to swallow but I think if we really step back and compare our reactions to a regional natural disaster and a personal spiritual disaster we might have our priorities a bit skewed. I am not AT ALL saying that we should be less concerned and helpful when an earthquake or fire or hurricane hits, but just that we need to be that much more concerned about relieving spiritual anguish. This mortal life is fleeting, and as Elder Duncan pointed out, the resurrection is going to take care in the end of all the physical saving we'll need. But God wants more for his children than that. He wants us to come home and go into the family business. He wants us to grow and become all that He is. He wants us to be HAPPY. And he weeps as He looks upon his children and knows even better than we do how unhappy we are as we walk around ignoring one another. 

I feel that I'm the worst offender of all when it comes to this; getting caught up in myself and putting my comfort before the needs of others. I wouldn't have shared any of it if it didn't apply to me first and foremost. In my most honest moments I wonder if I'm really shy or just a snob. And my most frequently used excuse is that I can't presume to know what's best for other people and telling them the church is true would be stepping on their toes. The problem with that is, the church IS true and denying it won't do any good. God himself has shown the way and calls it the only way. He doesn't want me to just blow off people's true feelings but when it comes to sharing the gospel, his message is universally one of help; and making up excuses just to save myself face is pretty ludicrous. How can I expect to grow up to be just like my All-Knowing Father if I can't be bothered for the time of day to learn a person's name? Or to be like my All-Powerful Father if I can't speak with boldness as I testify of the truthful necessity of the principles and ordinances of the gospel? And how can I possibly hope to be anything like my Ever-Merciful Father if I can't look at a "less active" member of the church and forget all my stupid pride so I can fall down on my knees and beg them to allow me to wash their feet?

I might be wrong, but I don't think "I never got embarrassed" is going to be the password to get in at the "pearly gates" of the Celestial Kingdom. If it is, I definitely won't be getting in anyway.

Amy the enabler

So I got a call from my aunt Nina last Friday saying she was on her way over to my aunt Erika’s house to help her clean out her closet. They were planning on getting rid of a bunch of stuff so she thought I might want to come over and pick through the spoils for something to take home.

Now let me tell you a thing or two about my aunt Erika. She is a full on thrifting guru. She will walk into a thrift store and come out having maybe spent $50 but in her bags she will have (for example) four Ann Taylor dresses (probably with the tags still on), six pairs of designer label jeans, a Gap leather jacket, and a mint condition fossil handbag. And mind you that all of the above will change based on what’s *in* that particular season. She has the ability to look at an item hanging from a Goodwill rack and know exactly how much it retailed for and how much it should be worth now. And since all of what I know about fashion could probably be crammed into a teacup, raiding her closest is in my top 3 preferred ways to shop for clothes. She never minds just giving me anything she hasn’t worn in a while and if I really like something she *does* wear she’ll let me borrow it for a while anyway.

And so we come to this layout of clothes on my bed. I’d say I came away on Friday with about $500 worth of stuff. There was more to choose from but one hitch to this system of finding clothes is my lovely aunt and I have very different taste in some things (she looooooves sweaters). And then there’s the fact that her feet are two sizes bigger than mine. So those boots in the back only got there because they’re a little too small for her and I can wear thick socks to make them fit me.

I’ll have to do a post sometime to share some of the tricks she’s taught me for thrifting but for now I just wanted to show you my loot and talk a little about my fabulous good luck in being the proud niece of a thrift store junkie. We give her a hard time about it when her closet overflows but I can’t really complain because that would be like shooting myself in the foot. I’m a thrift-store-junkie’s-closet junkie.

Love you Aunt Erika! Thanks!

Nothin' Fancy

I mentioned yesterday that Kevin was putting up some shelves in our master bathroom. Here’s just a couple shots of the end result.

We don’t have anywhere in our bathroom that would be ideal to install a towel rack so up to now we’ve just had a hook to hang our towels on right outside the shower. Now at least there will be a place besides the side of the tub to keep extra towels off the floor. Gotta love new storage space

A place to sit

This is our kitchen table.



Ok, you caught me, it’s really not, but it IS a table that looks just like our table; and it got me out of having to clean the kitchen so I could get a full picture of the real thing. Let’s just pretend our table could possibly have a vase with flowers and apples and glasses on a nice clean runner without a certain 2-year-old pulling the end of said runner and bringing it all down for a nice abrupt meeting with the linoleum.

As I was saying, that’s our kitchen table. It was Kevin’s bachelor pad table that he inherited when one of his roommates moved out. The table itself has held up remarkably well but as for the chairs…well, not so much.


Luckily I was the one sitting in this chair when it met its end (it happened during craft night and the lady who had been sitting in it had just left). The next day I showed Kevin the wreckage and we decided it was time to spring for a new dining set. Well, we got online and looked…and looked…and looked and could not for the life of us find a set that we liked better than this one:

Look familiar?

Yep that’s our table, just darker. And somehow we couldn’t justify to ourselves spending hundreds of dollars to replace our perfectly good table with another one just like it. A little sanding and paint and stain and our white/natural table can become a black/oak table, no problem. So we decided just to get some new seating and keep the things we have that still work.

We only have three chairs left since the death of the first and at least one of those remaining is headed for eventual disaster as well, so we decided to get two new chairs; we’ll have five for now and four if that one ever bites the dust. I also liked the idea of a bench like the one from the darker set picture so we found one just like it on amazon and ordered that too.

    

We decided to stick with the white/natural color scheme so we don’t have to worry about getting the paint and stain to match perfectly old to new. That also means that I have no idea how long it will be before the color change happens but Kevin was pretty excited about the idea. He seems to be in a home improvement groove since the weather’s warmed up; he’s in our bathroom putting shelves up right now and he installed two medicine cabinets in there yesterday.

He's so awesome.

Maybe I’ll go do some laundry so there will actually be some clean towels to put on the shelves when he’s done. Probably would be helpful…

Kayak plug

I assume everyone here has heard of Kayak.com and it's spiffy keen-o travel searches. But, if you haven't, I'm here to tell you they kick some serious money saving booty! Back in January, as soon as the June date was set for my SIL's wedding out in Cali, I found a deal on a flight ($228 from ATL to LAX) that we waited about an hour too long to jump on (shot up to $270 while we were mulling it over). So then the hubby and I both signed up for kayak price alerts and decided to wait for the next great deal. And ever since then we've been watching the prices rise to $295 and $318 and $325 with conversely sinking hearts.

Now, I'm not promising that this same thing will happen to you, but, just as we were beginning to seriously lament our lapse in judgement for not scoring the $228 tickets months ago, Kevin sends me an instant message from work at about 8:30 this morning saying he's in the process of getting us tickets for $218! He'd checked his Kayak alert and there it was, the deal of the year just for us! I shot Kevin's GA resident brother and sister an email right away, letting them know about the deal and hoping against hope they'd get online (I'd tried calling, but to no avail). The deal died about 30 minutes after Kevin found it but we got our 3 needed tickets and Kevin's brother got my email and got the same deal for his family of 5! The other great thing about Kayak is the prices they list include taxes and fees and everything. Our itinerary says our tickets were $178 but going through Kayak we didn't have to be surprised when the real price was $40 more.

Moral? Maybe there isn't one except to share my rejoicing for our awesome find. Or maybe it's that if you're vigilant enough and take advantage of some of the great email alert systems available out there, fabulous deals can come your way too. Yeah... I'm pretty sure that's it. :-)

Who-elation in Whoville

My submission was accepted!

Ok, you can think I'm a geek but I haven't been this psyched about anything in a while! I am such a huge fan of HowDoesShe and all their affiliate IShare sites; so when I finally hit the submit button for my first IShare"Printable" I couldn't help but refresh the page like 2 minutes later to see if it would be there. And when I saw my design pop up on their front page a few minutes ago I about lost it! I'll have to upload a better picture for them to use next time because my whole image didn't fit in the little square but that's my own fault so I'm still pleased as punch. So yeah, you gotta check out these girls' sites. They're homemaking goddesses, I swear. Hence their main button having the top spot under my "Homemaker Inspiration" line up .

So, here's thanks for letting me take a spot on your page, IShare ladies, it's an honor I won't soon forget. :-)

St. Patty’s Day Iron-on

I was cruisin’ through Targét with my boys the other day and I got a kick out of this little Irish tuxedo T-shirt they had for sale. I had no desire to pay the $15 they wanted for it and I knew I had a little plain green Hobby Lobby t-shirt at home that I’d actually been saving to use for just such an occasion.


So I came home and did a little web surfing for some more inspiration. I found this design at Cafepress...

...and I liked the button (it says "I'M HERE FOR THE GOLD") but not too much else about it. So I grabbed a couple more examples…

 

…imported them into my Corel program to give myself something to look at, and started creating my own design free hand.

Click to open larger in new screen if you want to print for use.

The clover is the W from the Scrapicons font from dafont.com. I used Photoshop to make a nice beveled button and then brought it back into Corel to put the text on it (I don’t love the resolution on text in Photoshop). And there you have it. To complicate (and simplify) the matter a bit further I decided I wanted to make this into a Print & Cut for my Silhouette so I wouldn’t have to worry about any white outline left behind by me and my scissors. So I imported it into my Silhouette Studio library and played with the trace function, etc, etc, until I got the cutline to do just what I wanted it too. (So if you have a Silhouette and would like the Print & Cut file I made, shoot me a comment and I’ll gladly email it to you.)

In order to keep the white parts of the design white on a green shirt, I used the HP Iron-on Transfers for Colored fabrics which meant when I selected “T-Shirt Transfers” as my media and my printer automatically mirrored the image, I had to cancel printing and start over and figure out how to NOT mirror the image. Wouldn’t have mattered if there wasn’t any text but having that button means you gotta make sure you print it out according to your iron-on package instructions (some need mirroring and some don’t).

Anyway, after letting my transfer dry for 30 minutes, I hooked up my Silhouette and sent my transfer through for cutting. Then I followed the package instructions for ironing my design to my little green shirt.

And then it was picture time!

My Little Leprechaun

They’re really good at hiding...

but if you ever catch a leprechaun...

you get to make a wish.

I know because these two help mine come true every single day.