Worth Sharing This Week: December 14-20

We've been watching the newest season of "The Crown" and in episode 9 of season 3, this music blew me clean away.  I looked it up the night we were watching the episode and I've listened to it for long stretches each day since.  That I listened to it first on a rainy fall evening when heavy showers were pounding the roof didn't hurt a bit.

Rainy foggy cold days are really what winter is mostly about in our area.  The day we went with Sam and Bess to take the boys to see Santa was just such a day.  I think in the six years we've done this, it's rained all but one day.    I so enjoy this little tradition that is ours to share with them.   There's the walk up to greet Santa, then a merry go round to ride, games to play and silly things to see like talking reindeer and a couple of mischievous elves to laugh at.  There's toys and candy canes and legos and Lincoln logs and so much for children to enjoy.

This year we ate lunch before going to see Santa which was likely very wise of the parents.  The boys were very nicely dressed and quite sweet in matching plaid shirts, dark pants and red sweaters.   They were careful while eating their lunch not to mess up their clothes.  However when we got ready to leave it was pouring rain.  Bess and I had umbrellas but the boys were worried about their hair getting wet (Daddy had put stuff on it and made it look very nice...glad to know vanity comes in all ages in this family, lol!).   Josh and Isaac were carried to the car by Daddy and Grampa.  Grampa popped his cap over Isaac's head to keep it from getting wet and Bess and I laughed  at his sparkling eyes and huge smile as Grampa ran him to the car while he looked over his shoulder at us with that ball cap turned sideways on his head.

The area where we had lunch is a huge 'outdoor mall'.   Really it reminded me of  an old fashioned downtown shopping district.  There were cross streets and medians and rows of stores and restaurants much as there had been in the old downtown section of that city.  It's really a nice area, though it's well away from our usual shopping grounds.  This is the big city for us, and we'd not visited this side of that city in a couple of years or more.  Astonishing all the changes we saw!

The rain didn't bother us but there's a  rather tricky spot on the interstate where two major interstates come together and it's been under construction for the past five years at least.  There was a closed lane on either side so three lanes from one highway and four from another were bottlenecked into two.  It really made us nervous and we were happy to take a more familiar and less hectic route home on another interstate.  On our way down the main highway that leads home we discussed how we might do this next time without even taking that route.

Here't the sole reason why we were in the city on a rainy, cold and messy Friday:

I watch two cooking channels on YouTube and only two.  One I shared earlier this week in "The Week Ahead" post, Mandy in the Making.  I don't know just why I like Mandy so.  Perhaps because she's a Southern girl like me.  I won't say she's a frugal cook but most of what she makes sounds pretty good to me.

The other one I enjoy is NikkiVegan.  I'm not a committed vegan and she is, but I will say her recipes sound delicious and I've actually tried a few and they were good, which is a bonus.



Joy...That's something I wanted to 'find' this year.  I wanted to stop feeling dour and  stern and rigid.  I wanted to experience joy.  I found out this week that like most things, if you want  something then you must give what you want to find and I can say truly that for all I worried and fretted, I was happier over all this year than I have been in a long while.

In reading The Frugal Girl's post this last week I was struck by this statement: "And all of us, no matter our familial, financial, or health situation in life, can choose to bless someone else, even if it's something as small as smiling at a stranger."

So I challenge you this week: smile.  Tell someone they look lovely or that their smile was the highlight of your day.  Say "You did a great job!" to someone who might not normally hear those words.   Take a small gift to a neighbor who isn't expecting any thing at all from you.   Never underestimate the power of the simplest words like "Thank you."  Spread Joy.


I like to read Debra's point of view on her blog.  One of her posts last week had this Dave Ramsey quote:
"What you do at your house matters a whole lot more than what happens at The White House...If you will use God's and Grandma's common sense, you will prosper in good times economically and you will prosper in down times economically..."


I am not a Mormon, but I do enjoy the wisdom to be found in the words that Becky often shares on her blog.  This week she shared a complete address from 1980 that I went to read and I must say that I thoroughly agree with many things said within this address, especially in relation to debt.

One thing said was about investments not being the wisest course for those of small means.  Our house payment was not a large payment by today's standard.  However, when my grandmother's home sold and my share of the proceeds was given to me, John and I decided to pay off our house.  We went to our bank associate and said that was what we desired.  Although she'd have earned a commission had we bought any of the services she was meant to push, she looked at us for a moment and looked over our bank account which was on the screen before her and said "It's against everything a seasoned banker would say to do...But I believe it is the right decision for the two of you."

We vowed to save that house payment each month and we have.  In fact, we've done better and saved that house payment and the amount we'd formerly paid for a car loan as well, most months.  True this year we found ourselves in a place where we couldn't save every month, but we fully expect in the year ahead to be right back at saving money once again.

At one time we did try investing and we lost money.  We lost so much money that the group wanted us to give them money to cover the deficit balance!  When John told the representative that we couldn't afford to lose this much his reply was that he had clients who'd lost a whole lot more and ours was nothing!   Well let me tell you, to us it was something.  Those losses represented money we'd set aside for our future and it was gone.  Gone.  There was no getting it back.  It wasn't disposable income that we might have spent anyway on unneeded items.  We vowed then and there that we'd not invest any money unless we heard directly from God to do it.  It's a radical move but I assure you it's how we've gone on.

Do we have all the money we saved over the years in not making the house and car payment?  No.  We have about half of it. We lost some of it that year we tried investing.  The rest paid for medical bills, cars, improvements on our home, or car repairs that extended the life of our vehicles. Those were the sort of 'investments' we have found to be the most worthwhile.


And because I often elude to it but you all might not know the story behind our paying off our house I'll share it here once more.  In 2008,  with my Grandmother's house still sitting empty and unsold, John suggested one night that I sow a seed towards the sell of the house.  We decided on $250.   We mailed off the check and within a week my brother, who'd dragged his feet horribly on this portion of cleaning up three estates, came to me and said he was ready to sell the house.  The next week, he came to tell me we had a buyer.  He seriously undersold the house but that's not the point of this story.  The point is that the house went on the market and sold and was in final closing in three weeks total time.   Unheard of!

So the day we were meant to go to the lawyers and sign off on the sell, I asked John to call our mortgage company and find out the pay off on our mortgage.  I said "Don't tell me how much it is...Just write it down and put it on the dining table."  I walked out of the house without looking at it.

When I came home, I told John, "First I want to write out a tithe check."  He and I prayed over that deposit slip in my hand, I wrote out a check for 10% and then we sat back.  I subtracted the tithe from the deposit.  "Well...I guess I'm ready to write a check to the mortgage company...Hand me that slip of paper."  "I don't know if we've got enough."  "Never mind, just hand me the slip of paper."  I looked at the figure on the slip and said "Well yes, we do have enough..."  I wrote out that check and said "We've a little left..." and I subtracted that amount from the deposit.  We had $250.09 left.




Carolyn shared this video with me this weekend and I really enjoyed it.  Do give it a look.



We watched "Seven Days in Utopia" last Friday night.  We are all for a Robert Duvall film most any day and this one didn't disappoint.



Ok, back to Christmasy sorts of things.  Aside from Christmas classic movies and stories (one of my favorites is in Little Women, and Christmas tree lights, egg nog (Organic Valley has a lovely, absolutely lovely carrageenan free nog), there's cold weather and hot cocoa to enjoy, right?   I loathe mixes.  I do. I'm not a fan either of the thick French hot chocolate drinks either.   I used to love the hot cocoa Mama made on the stove top...I found this recipe last weekend on "The English Kitchen", the only food blog I follow.  I'd love to find cute snowman marshmallows like she found but what I have are Ghost shaped ones I bought after Halloween...Ghosts of Christmas Past perhaps?  I didn't have heavy cream (even the organic brands have carrageenan in them) but I did use half and half and wowza!  Good hot chocolate!



Joy Clarkson's post on the Second week of Advent was pretty powerful stuff.  Her first segment on the blog is about Mary and her vision of Mary has forever changed how I shall look at her.  I've always been disturbed, not by the innocence, but by the implication that Mary was uneducated and untried.  Yet Luke 1 tells us a great deal about her.  To begin with the angel Gabriel says "You have found favor with God."   That is not an untried soul which has found favor!  And Mary says later in verse 46 "My soul magnifies the Lord."   She was an experienced worshiper of God.   Young she might have been but indeed her soul was mature.  This I can believe.


A new to me blog is Craftberry...Her post on how to make Dollar Store items look high end in gift baskets is well worth paying attention to this season...and you can use her tips for birthdays, hostess gifts, Mother's Day, etc.