Sweet Thoughts on Valentine's Day

Although this week has had its share of "unsweet" moments, I'm trying hard to see all the "sweetness" in life because there really is a lot! Here are some "sweet" snapshots of joy shining into my day. 

Hope you have a sweet Valentine's Day!

Mia with  May May and May May's sister, whom she had just finished "nursing."

My smiley boy!

A sweet touch added to the living room this morning.

30

Guess what! Today I am 30!

After I woke up, I had this thought, "30 is the new 20." Well, that's debatable, but it's my new reality. And unlike many people (including me last year), I am really excited about it. The 20s were great, but I'm looking forward to this decade of being 30.

A lot happened in the past 10 years. I took on some new and major roles - aunt, wife, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law, mother, and mother of two. That is a lot of adjustment and growth. Oh and I moved 22 times!

I don't know what these next ten years will bring, but I'm hoping for a deeper kind of growth - a maturity in these new roles I acquired in my 20s.

And on the fun side, here are a few "roles" I'd like to acquire while in my thirties:

• skilled fermenter
• soap maker
• pasta maker
• cheese maker
• canner
• candle maker
• home owner
• photographer
• seemstress
• woodworker

One a year and maybe I can do it! :)

I'm gaining a new outlook when it comes to my birthday and holidays. One that doesn't expect the day to be "perfect", but just another day with an extra reason to be grateful. Because all days have reasons to be grateful.

And today, I am simply grateful to God for giving me life - for creating ME - as unique and flawed, yet perfect in His design, as I am. I have to trust that He knew what he was doing and he didn't just allow my creation, but willed it - chose it - and that He loved be even before I was.

2013 Projects

I want to start blogging again because I’m super excited about some projects I want to work on this year. Now that I feel more adjusted to having two and figured out just how much time I have to do “me” things, I feel I can really get some things done, including writing here once in a while.

My disclaimer is that what I write is going to be simple and far from perfect. I won’t be sharing the inner workings of my heart (although there is so, so much going on) – I don’t have the brain capacity or time to articulate all that. What I write won’t be clever. And there may be a lot of misspellings and grammatical errors. Forgive me. I’m sure you are all smart enough to know what I mean anyway.

Instead I want to share the progress in my projects. Maybe more so for myself so I can see the progress… and look back on it.

So what are these “projects”? I’ll just share the first in case I don’t even get to the others!

I want to redecorate our home. We are staying here a little more long term than we had originally thought (thankfully!). When we moved in, I basically took what I already had and did whatever I could. It’s really hodge-podge.

This is what I mean by redecorating:

1.       Take each room and identify “problems”
2.       Come up with solutions that are cheap (or free)
3.       If I have to spend money, try to use it on things we can take with us when we leave.

Recently my friend Rachel gave the advice to pick five words to describe how you want your house to feel and focus on that. It was given to someone else, but I took it to heart (and took it literally – so me…) and here are my five:

1.       Cozy – think comfortable, coffeehouse, and homey
2.       Colorful – Color just makes me happy.
3.       Tidy – I’m not going to strive for spicky clean, but I don’t want clutter.
4.       Functional – As in things are in practical places so we can just get on with life.
5.       Coordinating – Not matchy-matchy, but not clashing either.  I don’t want people feeling like they are going from one scene to the next when walking through the house!

First room: Kitchen. I pretty much know what I am going to do, but still looking at ideas.

I have no timeline – not sure when I’ll get it finished. But when I do, I’ll post before and after pictures and talk about it!