This Week In My Home: Home Days

This week in my home I...

...changed  my blog motto for 2018...Did you notice?  I knew this was something I wanted to do, but just like last year, I had to wait for it.  It gives me a new twist to work with all through the year.  "Bringing riches from an ordinary life."

Really my mottos are all just variations on a theme but at present I'm in a place where what we need to do in our home requires big (as in BIG) bucks.  It would be really easy to get downcast because although we are saving for these jobs it's slow going.

The Heart

I was reading Psalm 19 this week and found myself drawn into a bit of thought.  David is writing about how the Torah helps him daily.  He says it renews one's life, makes the inexperienced wise, makes the heart glad and makes the eyes light up.  

I was drawn into the imagery of how the heart is glad and the eyes light up.  The heart is tied to one's spiritual being.  If my heart is glad, my eyes will be filled with light.  

David goes on to say, "May the words of my mouth become connected to the meditation of my heart."

Then When?

I've just changed up my blog motto.  I'd been sort of looking for something that rang true with me but after last year, I felt sure that the phrase would come up at the right time.  I found it today.  I changed the words only slightly from the original.  To bring riches from the everyday life...It says quite a lot doesn't it?

Way back in the 1990s I got into the solo artist Tracy Chapman.  I bought her first album and listened to it repeatedly.  One of my favorite songs was titled "If not now..."  The first line went "If not now then when?  If not today, then why make your promises?"   In a world of waiting until tomorrow to begin to change or to keep a promise to yourself or someone else, it was a particularly poignant song.

As I've embarked on this new journey into business for myself, I've been reading a good deal of positive thought mottos and listening to inspiring motivational speeches.  One thing that stands out over and over for me is the phrase, "If you don't change today, then when?"  "If you want to live your best life and you won't start today, then when?"

It's been food for thought that's for sure!

Coffee Chat: Snow Days and Sunshine

Come on in dears.  There's coffee and hot tea.  Take your choice, with a piece of fruit cake perhaps, and have a seat. I'm ready for a neighborly chat, aren't you?  

It's so nice to have nice weather once again though it is a bit cloudy.  Yesterday we might have sat on the porch it was such a pleasant day.   I threw open the windows all over the house and let it air.  It seemed a fine thing to do when the weather  once again became rather mild.  I confess that I was happy to have snow and happy to watch it melt right away.  I loved the cold weather and hope we are going to have more of it...but a nice mild day is equally as nice and I took full advantage of the fresh air to get the winter doldrums out of the house.

In My Home This Week: Winter Joys

In my home this week...

...I saw snow this week.  It's not something we see often but every now and then we have a dusting.  It lasted only a few hours though the temperature plummeted after it fell.  Sunlight is a powerful thing when the snow is only an inch or two in depth.

Maddie had no idea what to do.  She sat about looking miserable but wouldn't come in from the snow.  No she sat in it.  She stood in it.  She walked about in it.  Samuel, who had tried to make it west of us, had to turn around and come back home, finding it harder going than he'd anticipated.  He sat in his car for a bit and worked and told me he watched Maddie play in the snow as well.

Misu was the least amused one.  She does not like snow.  For whatever reason, like Maddie, she ignored her house.  Instead, she sat on the front porch welcome mat and groused at us about it.  I knew from past experience she would not go potty anywhere else, so I fixed her up a litter box.  I'd bought the litter a couple of years ago after a snow storm had her frantic for relieving herself.   I provided her with a box of earth then.  Litter is just easier to deal with than frozen dirt.

Balance Beam

As I was working in the kitchen earlier today, I was contemplating a sales ad sheet that I'd moved on my desk. My eye fell upon a certain fruit cup that John likes for his lunches.  My frugal heart truly believes that putting individual servings of fruit in a reusable jar and putting that in his lunch is the very best thing to do.  However, here's another place where I compromise with my husband.  Why?  

Because NOT having the occasional fruit cup that is pre-packaged and overpriced makes him feel  we haven't made a bit of headway financially over all these years.  In vain do I tell him that we've done what we have just because of such swaps as these.  So I bought him fruit cups now and then, though I daresay they tasted no better than those portioned out at home.  

He also liked those little individual cups of cottage cheese. One day I discovered he really liked fruit with a serving of cottage cheese on top.  Can't buy those in a cute little individual cup...so I compromised again.  I bought cottage cheese and went back to portioning out cans of fruit into individual jars with a scoop of cottage cheese from a tub.  Even buying canned fruit and a tub of cottage cheese was less than buying just the individual fruit cups.  I went right back to saving money.

In My Home This Week: Busy Season In Full Force

In my home this week...

...I certainly feel I've been dog paddling hard this week.  However, the party is over at this point and I'll have been down to clean house for Bess and Sam and come home again by the time I get to post this.

The party went well enough.  I quickly saw mistakes but too late to reverse them.  However, mistakes are for learning and I'll be sure and correct those that I saw this first time out.   I have booked three parties off this one and I hope it is the mere beginning.

Let Go

Jeremiah 34:8-16

I purposely did not write out the whole passage from Jeremiah but I wanted to share what I learned this morning as I was studying this passage.  

I've been in Jeremiah for a few weeks now.  

While captive in Babylon, the Jewish people were told by Adonai to release their Hebrew brothers and sisters they had taken into slavery.  These were people who had given themselves up to slavery as payment of debt but they had long since served their time.  The Jewish holders refused to release these slaves into freedom.  At long last, they did release them and the people went free.

Gleanings from Sudoku

Sudoku is a puzzle game that is composed of 9 squares which each contains 9 squares and the numbers 1-9.  In order to solve the puzzle one  must place the numbers 1 - 9 in each set of squares as well as 1-9 in horizontal and vertical lines (and in some complicated ones in a criss cross as well!).   I love these brain teasing struggles but I have learned something in doing them and what I've learned might surprise you.

This past week as I finished a puzzle, I thought about my early days with Sudoku.  I started playing with these puzzles because a girl I knew had started doing them.  I'd always been a little stumped by them but when I realized that this  girl was solving them, I felt encouraged to try, as well.  So I bought a book and began what became a leisure activity I have enjoyed for years now.

In My Home This Week: Comings and Goings

In my home this week:

 

...I finished the old year with company in the house.  Surprise!  And what's more had another who was jockeying to come in for an extended weekend stay.  

Well here's the New Year, and John's recognized that we are in a pattern of hospitality.  He asked me today if we could just say "No" now and then  And I expect he's quite right.  It's lovely to have so many assume we'd welcome them and that they might stay an extended length of time, but it's not always the best time for us.   Currently our youngest son will be here one or two nights every week until he and his family can settle into the area.  In the meantime, he must be in the area to do his job and it makes no burden upon us to have him here.  He comes in after work, usually works a bit and then goes to bed.  He leaves early and is always quiet.  We must now consider him as well as our own work and life schedules and plan accordingly.

His being here means more time with his family.  I can't say it's altogether a bad thing but as I reminded John today, "It's a season."

Coffee Chat: Bundling Weather

Oh hello dears.  Do come on in for a bit out of the wind.   We've had some cold winter weather as well we might since it is January.  Unusual in that it's lasted a full week and is meant to continue on through the weekend.  A friend who lives a bit south of me and I were laughing over the fact that while we might be seeing weather in the teens this week, we're just as likely to see them soar to the 80's in a week or so.  It's very difficult to know sometimes, in Georgia, how to dress.   I've seen days that were so sunny and bright and beautiful and I worked up a hard sweat doing yard work in the morning hours and by afternoon I was shivering mightily because the Arctic winds blew in and dropped the temperature 40 or 50 degrees.  Brrrr!

Oh my goodness...Where are my manners?   Hot coffee or tea?   There's an absolutely lovely orange cranberry nut bread on the counter, just cool enough to cut.  When John came into the kitchen and asked what I was making he said "Oh" in that sort of deeply disappointed voice but you know what?  First out of the oven there he was saying how good it looked.  Well it IS good.  I gave in to his request for a warm piece with butter and there was no disappointment in him at all about it being Orange Cranberry.  I bought those cranberries especially to make that bread and I meant to get it made!  I haven't made it in YEARS, nearly 40 years.   Why?  I recalled all these years that it tasted good when I made it but I've never tried it again.