A knock at the door.  O-no thanks, we don’t really need any.  But o my aren’t you just so cute and it is so cold out there and you are learning to be a good and caring citizen and can probably win a reward if we buy some and…O – wait!  Are those Thin Mints??? BAM!  They get us again.

Can’t resist the Thin Mints.

Those Girl Scouts, I’ll tell ya.

Off to Chicago in a few. Looks like a super full flight.

I love Pinterest.

I think I may have mentioned that before?  Much as I enjoy it, sort of the coming together of all the best stuff on the web, I also love all of the poking-fun-of-Pinterest things popping up on boards.  I enjoy the humor and can laugh at myself.

Here are some Pinterest thoughts that make me smile.

To be the first one of the people who follow you and whom you follow to pin something?  Delightful.  Feign to deny it, my friends!

There are some major super-achievers not only pinning, but actually doing {EVERYTHING} they find.    I’d have avoided it more if I’d known what an extreme-domesticity-DOing it was going to command.  But luckily, I am past the sheer drive to do, and just enjoying the gathering of my interests.  Just looking at my boards makes me happy.  {click here so you can be happy, too} However, I’d like points for a lot of the wedding stuff I did, please.

Actually, I applaud my peeps who have started madly getting things done – all the projects and recipes they have discovered on Pinterest!  However, for me, Pinterest is what my “idea notebook” has always been: interesting and powerful images for {inspiration}.  I may not replicate what I see, but it will all eventually impact the things I create, design and yes, even eventually do.

BEWARE :: After awhile, they all come back around!

At least I will be organized somewhere.

If you’d just look at my Pinterest boards, you’d always know what you could get me!  Haha.

The conundrum.

Pinterest does indeed make me feel creative.

This is when Dave would put his foot down.

I cannot deny it.  A slight addiction going on.

And my favorite, although please remember: we really did have a wedding to plan and there is much fun to be had with the grand-boys-and-girls.  And I refuse to give up my dream-home dreams…on a big farmable acreage…with my very own park shelter…and horses…and self-sustaining gardening…and a go-cart track…plus an indoor hockey rink…a giant playroom with lots ‘o dress-up clothes for the girlies…great light through massive windows…a slide from the top floor down…a swing in the family room…in a big, red barn.  No, no – you can’t take that away from me!

I should mention, I have been invited to my very first Pinterest-Party. I wonder if I can win an award for having the most pins with the fewest actual follow-throughs?

Pinterest = Inspiration

I used to hate when some one would trot out that scripture from Ephesians 4 that included the phrase “Instead, speaking the truth in love…” because its’ reference usually preceded a round of scripture-ammunition aimed to pierce the heart and kill the soul.   BAM {huge criticism fully bloated by cynical opinions = you are a big-fat-failure} + followed by  “I’m just speaking the truth in love.”  *Harumph.

If you read that last sentence and winced from the memory of it, it has probably been hurled at you, too.  If you looked it and made a mental list of people you’d like to speak-the-truth-in-love to, you are probably the BAM-aid.

It is sad to see such an amazing exhortation reduced to a justification for calling out the slightest infractions against fellow believers when in fact, Paul was inviting us to encourage and motivate one another about the reality of our high and holy calling in Christ, which was what the whole first part of Ephesians was about.  This is how we HELP each other – we remind each other (because of love) of our amazing and glorious place in Christ!  See Ephesians 1-4, s’il te plait.

What Ephesians 4 actually says is:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.

Instead, speaking the truth in love,

we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.   From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

And I am finding that my words are never more true than when they are spoken from the depths of my love.  Then, even though  they are hard to say and possibly even  difficult to hear, they set people free.  They loose the chains and bondages the enemy has been heaping on.  Speaking the truth in love-with love-because of love-by love causes people to grow (life surging through their veins), green and fruitful, established and strong.  Speaking the truth in love brings a maturity in those around us, a connection to Jesus rather than a condemnation that sends them running the other way with fear and shame.

And the truth you speak in love?  It is your truth.  Tell on yourself.  Admit your own stuff.  Tell your truth so you can help others avoid your pitfalls.  Tell your truth about how the enemy has come at you so other people won’t feel like they are on the ledge alone, but then be sure to tell the part about the faithfulness of God who has never left you nor forsaken you.  When we come clean, speaking the truth of how we are weak (and He is strong), of how we have failed (but He has been faithful), about how we have been the biggest sinners (and He has become our most wonderful Savior), then – we will become the “body,” the Body of Jesus Christ…

joined

and held together

by every supporting ligament

growing-growing-growing

being   b u i l t   up in L O V E

as each part does its’ work

And guess what?  Speaking the truth in love is a ministry of all of us Jesus-loving, New-Testament believers.  We get to join our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in shattering an accusation-ridden religion we can never hope to keep and step into the power of an overwhelming love from a Father who will not let us go.  Oh wow.

Here is what I have against Dave’s new TV, his Apple-TV thingy and the Netflix subscription (all Christmas gifts) is – OMYGOSH!  There is all this great stuff available.  What should I have been doing early this morning?  Well, probably something much more fruitful than watching Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain in “People Will Talk,” which is just-so-mid-century-BEAUTIFUL and cute and romantic and touching and ridiculous and lovely and c’mon – CARY GRANT!!!

What should I be doing now besides deep-conditioning my hair, catching up on some house stuff,  and making a packing list?  Well, possibly not watching Frank Sinatra {Sinatra: The Classic Duets, where he performs with Ella “Moonlight in Vermont” Fitzgerald and Dean Martin and pretty much anybody from the Rat Pack, his daughter Nancy, Elvis Presley, Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee and more!!!},

but I. can’t help. myself!!

I am wholly and thoroughly distracted by great music.  O yes, I am !!

Singing along.  I am Ella.

bitey :: sarcastic :: cautious :: self-aware :: overly “good” :: suspicious :: insecure :: controlling :: “sassy” :: manipulative :: guarded :: walled-off :: angst-y :: super-cool :: under-cover :: stands-with-a-fist :: guarded :: dismissive :: know-it-all :: superiority :: amused indifference :: distant :: contemptuous :: detached :: scornful :: prideful :: high-pitched lilti-ness :: the eyes roll :: the mouth smirks :: the arms are crossed :: the muscles are rigid :: the heart is gripped in terror :: pervasive hopelessness :: isolation :: …

This is what fear looks like.  Fear rooted in pride (I hope no one finds out) grows this way.

Don’t ask me how I know.  Or why I am an expert, able to spot it a mile away.

With God, anything is possible.

So we say with confidence, “The LORD is my Helper.  I will not be afraid.  What can mere mortals do to me.?”  Hebrews 13.6 niv

I jest – sort of.  But the truth is, even I can’t make my own ways work perfectly all the time.  I could if I were the only person in the universe, but the fact that there are others I live with, love, work with, socialize among and co-exist with, well, that changes the whole ballgame.

The Fifteen-Puzzle at Grandma Baker’s house

I actually never heard it called a Fifteen-Puzzle, but that’s what Restoration Hardware calls it (above). Though they were just little red-plastic squares with white movable numbered tiles and I probably had at least a dozen of these over the years,  for whatever reason, I most associate this puzzle with being at my Grandma’s house on York Street in Des Moines in the mid-1960s.  She had a few of these around and the cousins and I would play with them until we solved them.  Or not.  I recall so wanting to finish it every time – always starting with great-great hope, but being aggravated  by it, too.  The numbers would be mixed up and you had to move, one space at a time, to try to get them all back in order.  I always hated the times I would have the whole thing almost right, but would have to undo other things I had done (that were already in the perfect spot!) to put a stray number in and it would end up messing up 3 or 4 tiles and take me an extra 16 moves – for just that one numbered-tile.  Grrrrrr….

I had one like this, which I found on ebay.  The tiles were glow-in-the-dark for playing after lights out!

The sliding tile puzzle as a metaphor for life.

The pieces have restraints, connections, they must stay on the board.  They “rub elbows” with other pieces.  And even when you know you want to get the number {two} from the bottom row second from the last block to the top row in the number {two} position, you can only slide it up or over one square at a time.  Maybe you slid it up, but then you have to move the one beside it to the right and down to make space for the one above that to go to the right and down  so you can keep moving the {2} tile up.  Every movement you want to make {the most sensible and obvious move} will inevitably involve lots of other moves to get it there, some that even seem counter-productive.  And, {gasp}, there are even times you have to move backwards, actually undo progress, to make the path ready.

But eventually, you keep at it and it works and it is {whew!} finished.

In life, in love, in relationships – you decide a plan and you can see exactly how it should go, but there are conversations to have, misunderstandings to overcome, celebrations to dance at, roses to stop to smell, there is give and take, tit for tat and concessions to make for the sake of peace.  Some days it’s two steps forward and one step back.  But other days it may ever be harder.  Eye on the prize, though, we just keep going.  We rub each other wrong, we bump elbows and move a little spastically by accident.

In the end, we get there.  Everything lines up, everything is where it should be.  Deep breath of satisfaction – we did it.  We solved it together.  A good moment in time.

Then some crazy kid picks it up and scrambles the numbers again.  *sigh.

Note to self: Gotta get some of these for the grand-boys and maybe Guini.  It is time they experience this puzzle.

Except it isn’t really carved wood.  That is me looking through it, there on the left.

The M-O-B and the M-O-G (mother-of-the-bride and the mother-of-the-groom, me and Tammy)

I needed a good-sized,  ornate-ish frame for the old-fashioned-family photo booth and just didn’t have time to go shopping for one.  So one afternoon when Hunter came over.  We decided to make our own.

I grabbed a large, wooden frame from the garage that had seen better days and had already been sprayed white for a previous event.  First we hot-glued some gimp around the inside trim.  Yes it is called “gimp” and no, I do not know why.  It had been in the fabric tote since about 1995.  Much like the frame, it was saved from a certain junk-heap-discardation in the near future.

Then we glued lace scraps (cast-offs from the balloon-lace-ball project) to the main surfaces of the frame using a white-glue and water mixture (2 parts glue to one part water).  Imagine it as a decoupage-type project.  The pieces were random and that is fine.  Then I discovered I had some Mod Podge in the craft cabinet and we added a little of that, too.

Then with our glue-Mod Podge mixture, we tore strips of paper towels, twisted them, dipped them in the glue and rolled them into “leaves” and rosettes.  We put them aside to dry on some wax paper.

When the lace on the main part of the frame had dried, we took the hot glue gun and just made curly-qs, some loops and swirls all the way around the frame.  The combination of this 3-d texture on top of the lace is going to create the idea of an old-fashioned,  carved-wood frame.

When everything was pretty dry, we hot-glued the rosettes and leaves to the corners of the frame and then took it outside to spray paint it.

We sprayed it silver.   On grandpa’s utilitarian-garage-side…which was good because we got a little out of control.  But it could have been brown or white or whatever color…and may still end up that way!

After a few minutes of airing it out and letting it dry, we brought the frame back inside and then made a purple “glaze” by just watering down some paint.  We used paint brushes and paper towels to put the glaze onto the frame and get it into the crevices and then sort of wipe of the excess.  This also makes it have a more textured, carved look.  It creates shadow and makes the various materials look like one aged piece.

A couple of hours later, voila!  We had a faux, carved-wood frame for the photo booth.

That is it the “open” frame on left.  This is Ryan and Tredessa “trying out” the photo booth a few days before the wedding when we were at the barn decorating.  When I was finished, I realized that I really could have accomplished the same effect with a much larger “frame” by using a piece of foam core or cardboard cut into a frame shape.  Just a little FYI on the DIY!

Some of my fav wedding-photobooth shots~

Niece, Elise posed in honor of her lover-husband who could not attend.

Dana and Jason hammed it up for quite a few good shots!

Two of my grandbebes, confetti girls Gemma and Averi with Ryan’s little flag-boy, Cody.  CUTE!

Picture-perfect!