Thoughts in My Head

I know I haven't been the best blogger lately. Going on too many trips, swamped with all the packing and unpacking. Desperately trying to keep the house kept up. And there's been a lot on my mind.

Some of you may remember that we moved back to Arkansas just a year ago this month. This is the first house that we have lived in that we haven't owned. Other than renting an apartment for the first two years of our marriage, we have always owned our houses. So this year has definitely felt different. It has been good though, the house has worked well for us and our landlord has been wonderful. We had been hoping to be able to lease for one more year, but now that's not looking so promising. Our landlord has decided to sell this house as soon as he can and although we have the option to buy that's not what we want to do~or can do~right now.

The past two years have been such mixture of experiences, emotions, challenges... Through it all God has been utterly and completely faithful. Even when I felt discouraged and unfaithful. I can't even imagine walking through the valley~or mountaintops~of life without Him. This recent phase of our lives began very unexpectedly and has definitely continued longer than we ever thought. But we keep reminding ourselves that everything is not in our time, but in God's time.

For the past two years we have been self-employed. That really has its ups and downs! The ups include having Vince work from a home office and readily available to be with the family, having a flexible schedule and being your own *boss*. The downs are more along the lines of not knowing where your next paycheck will come from nor when it will come. It has been a true walk of faith for us. While I have been taught about and believed in *walking by faith* my entire life, it is a whole different ballgame when you're really living it!

So right now, with this new sign in our front yard, we are earnestly seeking God's will for the next step in our life journey. We have the liberty to continue renting this house until it sells~in fact, the owner would much prefer it that way and we are happy to oblige. I'm certainly not chomping at the bit to start packing boxes {again}. But I would also love to move to a home that we will be in for a long, long time. And if that door were to open, I would gladly start packing! I'm just not excited to move just to be moving to another temporary home.

So there you have it: the stuff swirling around in my head.

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while. It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it. However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it. Plus it's a little bulky. When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it! It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make. I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course. They have these little wooden door hangers for .79. I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each. I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing. I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had). Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...

Making Notebooks

Recently I tried out a new craft idea~and it was SO much fun!! And extremely frugal, too. That's always a bonus, right? So here we go: 1. Take your basic composition notebook (purchased at the back-to-school sales for .99 each). 2. Go to your craft supplies and get your Mod Podge ready, along with a good paintbrush. 3. Look through all those scrapbook papers you've been randomly collecting and choose some. 3. After choosing your paper for the cover of your book and trimming it to fit, start *painting* the cover with the glue. Next, give the back of your paper a good coat of glue, too. (I left the binding uncovered so that I could use a contrasting paper there later on). 4. Glue it on! Remember to smooth out any air bubbles under the paper. 5. Flip the cover open and make a few cuts on the corners so that they will fold over nice and neat, then add a little more glue to the edges of the inside cover and a little more to the paper edges. 6. Fold them over and press...

my blessed life

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