Our home; the Entrance.

 Integrated into this entryway is much of our life. The quilt on the wall behind the bench, was made by my oldest daughter Alyssa. Many pieces from our jumpers, blouses, and dresses and other creative projects from previous years are sewn into this wall hanging quilt.

Two special pillows on the bench in the entryway. The "Rejoice" pillow on the left was made for me for Christmas by my youngest daughter Ana. The "Give Thanks" pillow on the right was a gift from friends who live in Vermont. 

 

Then in an opposite corner; pantry shelves of some of our bulk food alongside gardening and animal care books.  These shelves tell a lot about our days here... living the country life.

Several friendly books have helped us with many an animal and garden crises.

I am thankful for this multipurpose room where many visitors are greeted.  

Two new links on the side to take note of...

• One is the lovely picture of a young lady I recently learned about who needs prayer!  On Jan. 11, 38-yr-old Joanne suffered a major stroke.   She has been kept in a drug induced coma waiting for swelling of her brain to decrease. Currently they are trying to slowly bring her out of the coma. Her doctors have cautioned that the outcome seems not very hopeful.  Click on the picture at the side here and it should take you to her blog that now her husband is keeping up, with postings of how all of this transpired and how it is progressing ~  including prayer requests.  If you can spare the time, I urge you to go back in the blog entries and read the entries that her husband has posted. Read his prayer requests and see if you can get through them without tears. I found them very touching!  It has made me realize how thankful I should be,  regardless of how life seems to be going.!  From one day to the next we really have simply the "right now".   Tomorrow is not a "given" ~ either at all or in its often expected sameness with today.  I invite you to read; then pray for these sweet folks.

• Lastly,  there is a study in the book of Titus by Alistair Begg called Guard the Truth..Getting It Right. We listened to one on the radio while traveling home from town the other day.  It was so good.  I am hoping each one is ~ so far I have found them to be so.  I decided to put access to them on my blog partially for myself so it's easy for me to get to. Also, so anyone who may want to be challenged along with me can easily access it by a simple click.

Cold memories from Amy's birthday.....

"Only 2 months until spring!"...was a comment heard at breakfast this morning.  It is very cold, today especially. (-15 degrees F.)  This brought to my mind back to the year Amy was born, 1985.  It was also very cold on these very same days.  I remember going to the hospital shivering, and in labor.  It was so cold (with the wind chill, it was at least -50).
I just read a sweet post  on winter and the cold,  from a young lady and wanted to share that here too. It is well worth reading!  (A Bowl of Moss and Pebbles is the name of the site.)
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Yesterday.............

We had a lovely day yesterday celebrating Amy's birthday.  She requested lasagna made with homemade noodles and a side lettuce salad. Alyssa was in charge of the meal and Ana made the dessert/birthday cake: peanut butter pie.  Everything was very tasty!
In the afternoon she asked if we could watch the movie "Amazing Grace" which told of the life of William Wilberforce, an English member of Parliament, regarding the slave trade in England and the world.  The scenes go back and forth in time to tell how he came to have the convictions that he held and stood for. We had some good discussions afterward. One topic was: standing for right-causes will not make 'one' popular nor be easy.  His health was failing and he was letting up on trying to eliminate the slave trade in England. Then he met a lady and married her.  The movie portrayed her as being very influential in helping him regain momentum to get back on track and persevere. She helped him keep going. The ending was very sweet and heart warming.

  I think Amy had a very nice day yesterday.

Happy Birthday, Amy Joy !

....Amy Joy.............

      Happy Birthday today to you sweet daughter!

                          The joy of Christ shines in your life...

....may it ever be so!

"..and the joy of the LORD is your strength."

Nehemiah 8:10b

Think on this..

Me when I was little. 

 

Salvation is a helmet,

not a nightcap.

~Vance Havner~

Winter beauty and a summer flower

A photo from this winter; our tree swing in the light of the setting sun

A  poppy from this past summer.

"...determine to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 

Remember what the gospel says about us:  

We are more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe 

but we are also more loved and welcomed

than we ever dared hope." 

~Elyse M. Fitzpatrick~

Money saving idea..

 One money saving devise that paid for itself by the year end is this water filter system:

~ the Big Berkey~

If you google the name you will get many places that promote it so you can check into them. We used to buy our drinking water and now we don't need to with this system. It requires no electricity and very little care. Below is some technical information on it....rky® Water Purifiers in Stainless Steel
Stainless steel is the classic look of Berkey® water systems. These durable, beautiful stainless icons of purity have produced safe water for millions of people around the globe for decades. Equipped with the new Black Berkey® purifying elements, Berkey® Stainless purifying systems function at the same incredible rate of efficiency as the Berkey Light® systems shown above. The wide range of available sizes makes a stainless system ideal for many Berkey® users.

Unequalled Effectiveness: Berkey® purifiers using the Black Berkey® purification elements are proven to reduce pathogenic bacteria (including E. Coli, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Giardia and Cryptosporidium) by 99.99999%. The Berkey Light® System has been tested with the highest pathogenic contamination levels that can be produced in a laboratory. When contamination levels exceed one billion pathogens per liter of water (10,000 times the density of contamination used in the standard test protocol for bacteriological removal) they're classified as "TNTC" (too numerous to count.) Under normal testing protocol, one pathogenic organism is tested at a time, each with a fresh purifying element. For this test, however, the laboratory was directed to combine three separate pathogenic TNTC cultures. Tested under this extreme contamination level, absolutely no pathogens were able to make it through the purification elements. The laboratory then incubated the water, and nothing grew. When the filtered water was viewed under an electron microscope not even in-viable (dead) microbes were detectable — nothing was present but pure H2O. Furthermore, contaminants reduced to below-detectable-limits include Trihalomethanes, Radon 222, and volatile organic compounds including Benzene, 2,4-D, Heptachlor, MTBE, Styrene, Tetrachloroethylene and Toulene, among many others.

New Year's Day....

full moon ..in the northwest sky

 The calendar is different but the day seems a lot like yesterday.

a New Year's cake ...

spreading the topping..

There are new opportunities each and every day. ....

...make the most of them ... aim not to waste them!

Waste = To use, consume, spend, or expend thoughtlessly or carelessly.
antonyms of waste= save, rescue, reclaim, redeem, deliver... 

These are some things I am thinking about these days.