Maybe I’m Not The Only One With Dust Bunnies

Maybe I’m Not The Only One With Dust Bunnies

Remem­ber when I wrote about dust bun­nies and my fan­tasy of hav­ing a blog ded­i­cated to home décor? I’m still work­ing on my issues.

But, I came across two blog posts from The Nester which dis­cusses this very topic. Do you know The Nester? She has one of those great blogs that shows won­der­ful dec­o­rat­ing ideas, but stresses that “It doesn’t have to be per­fect to be beau­ti­ful.” I love her. She speaks my language.

Any­way, I thought I would share the links here so that you can read some of her sim­ple ideas to help your house look even better.

One of her ideas that I par­tic­u­larly loved was the idea that you can take your screens off your win­dows. Okay, I should know this one already. When we lived in Eng­land, we had no screens. I adored not hav­ing screens. Every­thing looked so clear and beau­ti­ful look­ing out. You didn’t have to look through that dark screen to the out­side. It just adds so much more light. But for some rea­son, I never brought the idea back home to the US. Where we live, we don’t really have bugs. Oh, except dur­ing moth sea­son. Hmmm. I’ll have to rethink that one. Think “The Birds” only in minia­ture. Scary. Not that I have actu­ally ever seen “The Birds,” but I can imag­ine. Any­way, if you don’t have a moth sea­son like we do, it might work for you. It’s glorious.

nester windowsthe nester

The first blog post is Three Weird Rea­sons My House Looks Decent Online. I couldn’t help but won­der if she was talk­ing to me. Like she knows I exist. Yeah, prob­a­bly not.

The sec­ond one is actu­ally my favorite of the two: 3 Ways My House Looks Worse In Real Life. Maybe she just makes me feel bet­ter about where I’m at.

nester messythe nester

Oh, and did you see the idea about the fire­place? It points out one impor­tant thing to me: I am a rule fol­lower. Who knew you could take the glass out of the gas fire­place? Seri­ously? I would never have con­sid­ered doing that! But I have always hated that glass. I scowl at it often. It just takes away so much from the effect of the fire­place. I have dreamed of mak­ing that fire­place pretty when not in use. Which is about 6 weeks in the sum­mer, on good years. Assum­ing win­ter ended early and starts late. Yes, I exag­ger­ate. But not by much. I thought I was stretch­ing things when I took all the brass accents and painted them black. I am not a fan of brass. But I love black accents. It made a huge dif­fer­ence. After the fact, we won­dered if we used the right paint, was it going to melt and get paint all over the floor…So far, 6 years later, it is still black and no paint on the floor. I guess we did okay.

So, in addi­tion to learn­ing some great ideas for improv­ing the way my home looks, I also learned that I need to think out­side of the box more.

Which is the cat­a­lyst for another post com­ing soon. I went to Good­will and found some­thing cool. And I am try­ing to think out­side of the box about it. More details to fol­low soon!

Talking Modesty

Talking Modesty

While we were trav­el­ing, I had the time to relax with a cou­ple of good books. I will be review­ing them over the next few days and weeks.

Today, I’d like to intro­duce you to the best book I’ve read that per­tains to mod­esty from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. Aptly named  More Than Rules, Bambi Moore tack­les the com­mon, and not so com­mon, ques­tions that are raised con­cern­ing Chris­t­ian modesty.

Let’s face it: few things strike a chord in women and girls like a con­ver­sa­tion about their mod­esty {or lack of it}. We get defen­sive, or smug I sup­pose. But I think mostly defensive.

So often I hear ladies say that peo­ple are judg­ing them for their attire. And this is from peo­ple on both ends of the spec­trum as well as those in the middle.

We are so insecure.

In my lim­ited expe­ri­ence, most peo­ple aren’t think­ing about you, or me, or any­one other than them­selves most of the time. It’s how we are.

But some­times, we need to have that talk, those words of coun­sel that point us in a more godly direc­tion when it comes to how we dress. I think it is an area that seems some­what con­fus­ing to many of us. That may seem odd, as I think most of us can iden­tify what *isn’t* mod­est. How­ever, it’s in the nitty gritty that we may need a bit of direc­tion. And that’s where More Than Rules comes in.

As the title hints, we aren’t talk­ing about a book that lays out the check­list of what you can wear and still be mod­est. Or what you can’t wear in order to be mod­est. You won’t get off that easy. Besides, Bambi will be the first to tell you that she isn’t your stan­dard for mod­esty. She doesn’t even give us much of a hint as to what her family’s “rules” are in this area of life.

She makes you dig a lit­tle deeper. She wants you to develop an under­stand­ing of what mod­esty is. But also what it isn’t. Some­times we can get so focused on the exter­nals that we for­get that the ori­gins of mod­esty on a per­sonal level begins in the heart. Who are you try­ing to impress? Your hus­band, your friends, the cute boy you see at church, the reflec­tion star­ing back at you, God? What moti­vates you when you pull out your clothes in the morning?

More than rules header

Bambi asks some hard ques­tions. She intro­duces you to some immod­est women. She dis­cusses what Chris­t­ian women ought to be adorn­ing them­selves with. And, she also dis­cusses why we need to have grace for women who don’t seem to have got­ten the memo about modesty.

I don’t know how she did it, but Bambi man­aged to dis­cuss these dif­fi­cult issues in a way that endears the reader to her and her topic. So, put your hack­les down. {In my quirky way, I first typed out shack­les. Haha. Maybe that word is just as applic­a­ble for some of us!} I highly rec­om­mend this ebook for every Chris­t­ian woman. Moth­ers and daugh­ters will be blessed to read it together. I look for­ward to read­ing this book with my daugh­ters as they grow into matu­rity. It will also make a great book for dis­cus­sion in a ladies’ group, either infor­mally or in a more for­mal set­ting. Or even one on one with a younger/older woman, what­ever the case may be in your situation.

My one com­plaint is that it is more of an Ebook rather than an eBOOK.  In other words, she left me want­ing more. I found myself engrossed in the book, read­ing parts of it aloud to my hus­band, “Lis­ten to what she says here! It’s bril­liant!” And too quickly I came to the end. Don’t get me wrong. She cov­ered so much in the book. It isn’t that I felt short­changed. It’s just that I truly enjoyed her writ­ing style, and the way she cov­ered this touchy sub­ject. I wasn’t quite done learn­ing! Although admit­tedly, I can’t think of what else she could have added.  I want to read it again to soak in some of what I may have missed in the first reading.

You can pur­chase More Than Rules from their web­site, which is linked through­out this post in the images of her book and the book title pages. {Oddly, the hyper­links aren’t ter­ri­bly clear in my posts, but just click on the title More Than Rules and it will take you to the page for order­ing.} It’s only $4.99, and avail­able in PDF or Ama­zon Kin­dle for­mat. Nook for­mat com­ing soon.

More Than Rules

Full dis­clo­sure: I am an affil­i­ate for this fan­tas­tic book. Only because I believe it is an excel­lent book though. The links included in this post send you to my affil­i­ate page. Thank you so much!

 

Strike!

Strike!

We are still trav­el­ing, but I wanted to share a quick video of Faith bowl­ing. This is how she bowls every. sin­gle. frame. She is just a happy lit­tle girl.

Wouldn’t you love to approach life with such joy­ful aban­don? She inspires me to bub­ble over with thank­ful­ness and joy. Which reminds me: through­out our trip I believe she has uttered the words, “Thank you, Mommy” no less than 10 times a day, every­day. Where does she get it from? I fear that I am not thank­ful nearly enough in my life.

Thank You, Lord, for the gift of this silly, won­der­ful, thought­ful girl!

Ain’t It Grand?

Ain’t It Grand?

On the sec­ond day of our annual field trip, we ven­tured to the Grand Canyon. Admit­tedly, I was a lit­tle ner­vous. Last time I was at the Grand Canyon, I had three lit­tle boys, aged 4, 6, and 8. Plus a sweet lit­tle six month old daugh­ter who was strapped to my body. Boys and canyons that are opened wide for falling just aren’t a great mix.

I was pleased to see that some mother was able to influ­ence the pow­ers that be in the deci­sion mak­ing and money spend­ing realm of the National Park Ser­vice because this time, they had rail­ings and fenc­ing every­where I looked. A boy would have to work hard to hurl him­self down that canyon to cer­tain death.

And I know it was a mother because a father doesn’t tend to notice such things. In my experience.

Have I ever men­tioned my insane fear of heights?

Seri­ously. I have often con­tem­plated just dri­ving off of a high bridge that I am dri­ving over, just to get it over with. I KNOW I am going to end up falling off any­way. So far, I’ve made it across all bridges unscathed.

Mike rec­om­mends just stay­ing put when I have the option. We were vis­it­ing in San Diego once. He had meet­ings. I had the day to explore with the kids. Huge bridge to get to the beach. Me freak­ing out as we drove over. It was a wild ride. He sug­gested an alter­na­tive plan for the next day…

Any­way. Back to the Grand Canyon.

grand-canyon

It was spec­tac­u­lar. The rail­ings were helpful.

But I think that going with lit­tle girls and an older son made it much more peace­ful for me.

image

 

We made it safely out of the park. Not even a close call this time. We con­tin­ued our drive to King­man.
And we even got a sur­prise for din­ner:
image

I feel like a hero.
It’s been a good day.

Old Route 66 and Drive Up Motels

Old Route 66 and Drive Up Motels

We left Col­orado in the early hours of the morn­ing on Mon­day, dri­ving through New Mex­ico and on to Ari­zona. My hus­band had pre-planned our trip and made hotel reser­va­tions for me. He takes such good care of me that way.

I remem­ber him men­tion­ing that in Hol­brook the pickin’s were slim, but that the hotel he chose was rated the best in town, and it had great reviews. He said some­thing about me not freak­ing out when I got there. I was only sort of pay­ing atten­tion. I guess I thought he meant some­thing along the lines that it was prob­a­bly more of a Hol­i­day Inn rather than a Mar­riott or something.

Um. Not quite.

We glee­fully made our exit off of I-40, arriv­ing into Hol­brook, AZ, after a long day of dri­ving. As we drove the 1/2 mile into town, real­iza­tion set in. Um…

Wait? What? The reser­va­tions say Glo­be­trot­ter Inn. Does that sign say… Oh. Wow. Well…

We ten­ta­tively entered the park­ing lot. I snapped this picture:

image

I fran­ti­cally called Mike.

No answer.

Google… I looked at the reviews. All four and five stars. 186 of them. One 3 star rat­ing. Noth­ing below that. Gulp.

I grabbed my strap­ping son to go into the lobby with me. Jes­sica, the adult daugh­ter of my dear friend who hap­pens to be my trav­el­ing part­ner, waited in the car with the girls.

I braced myself, put on a brave face, and told the kids that we were going to be adven­tur­ous. It was all a farce. I was shak­ing in my boots.

Oh! The lobby was adorable. And clean. I think we can do this.

We were greeted with smiles and sweet hos­pi­tal­ity. We were shown our room, which actu­ally had two rooms in it. Per­fectly clean and retro. Adorable.

We moved in for the night. Jes­sica went out­side to call her mom. She ven­tured to the pool area, which I had told the kids was not on the agenda for the night. I could only imag­ine what that was like. Old, dated motel with one of those old pools. If you lived in the 70s, you know what I’m talk­ing about. Right?

Well, Jes­sica came run­ning in excit­edly. “You’ve got to come see this pool!” Really?

I’m a bit slow on the uptake. It was adorable like the rest of the place. We all moved out­side to pool­side. We lounged on chaise lounges: beau­ti­ful, wood chaises. We dipped our feet in the pool. We swung on the swing. We chilled. It was glo­ri­ous.
image

Even­tu­ally, we had to tuck the girls into bed and turn in ourselves.

Morn­ing greeted us with a lit­tle con­ti­nen­tal break­fast. The fam­ily who owns the motel is from Aus­tria, it turns out. Break­fast was delightful.

Thus ended our stay in a motel I would have never slowed down for had I made the call for the night. I have to admit, it gave me the courage to even con­sider the other option we could have had, just across the street:

image

Ok, who am I fool­ing? I could never stay there…

By the way, those old cars in the first photo…they are just for show. They are there to give the feel of vis­it­ing the old Route 66 motel. Clever. Even if it did make me ner­vous when we arrived!

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