My Parable of the Frog, a story Uncle Si would enjoy!

I've never heard of what I'm about to share, so please be advised, it's about to get as gross as High School Biology Lab day.  In fact, I remember that week very clearly.  I was already familiar with the smell of formaldehyde from my dad's taxidermy, but it is still never became a pleasant smell to me, especially when the class is right before lunch period.  I hated the frog lab week and I really despised the lab rats.  In fact, I was so disgusted with each lab exam, I made a horrible grade on all those 'parts' we had to label and sometimes stick a color coded pin into the flesh.  I was often day dreaming of a class where a living animal was the source of inspiration for a painting or drawing or at least the images for a little boys room design, never an investigation into a dead, bloated animal corpse!  And I certainly would never eat fried frog legs, or boiled frog legs or any sort of frog part.  Recently watching Duck Dynasty has enlightened my knowledge of such people and their delicacies.  I love the country fresh air and the freedom it brings and I realize that some people like to literally live off the land, but I would rather 'hear' those frogs than to see them on my plate.
Uncle Si would enjoy coming to eat the frogs I've discovered in our backyard.  Here are the images I found today:

Yum, CRISPY!

Guess these critters were trying to cool off from the mist of the a/c unit and ended up getting fried instead. Oops, should have been down at the pond!

So, to my story of our A/C unit I now go.  In the spring when the first hot day came, our A/C would not come on so we called the repair service and they were out within a few hours.  Within a few minutes, the service man said, with a quirky little smile, "mam, it's up and running.  You see sometimes frogs like to get warm where the wiring is housed and they overheat the wires causing them to short out and then trip the breaker."I said, "so it was a frog huh? I guess he's, well.....fried?"  He responded again with a quirky smile as I looked at our 5 year old son, "Yes mam, I pulled him out and repaired the wires, it was black inside the panel from the sparks and he was a crispy little critter".  He said that this happens a lot, but it's an easy fix.

Wow! What a vivid biology/science lesson for Landon, what a 

costly little varment & what a dumb animal.

 I remember the fact that frogs cannot respond to hot water if it's 

heated slowly, they just don't realize the heat is getting too hot and 

then forego their need to escape because they're simply only 

concerned with their selfish need to get warm.

That reminds me of the way us Christians can somehow get caught up in a place and through merely trying to stay 'comfortable' they end up stuck.  We try and conform to that place and seek refuge with something that's not our natural habitat.  How we might be trying to seek comfort with things that weren't meant for us and in effect cause ourselves to adapt to the heat until it's too late.
It's easy to find alternative answers for our needs in life and basically become self sufficient.  We can get so far away from God and relying on him that we alternatively burn ourselves up by self gratifications and self sufficiency.  

There have been times in my life that I found myself floating in Christianity until I became comfortable, unchallenged and not growing in God.  Then, God decided it was time to stretch my faith and he then allowed some hard challenges to come my way.  It was for my own good so that I could learn to rely ONLY on him, so I could not even boast about what I was doing, but could only turn to him.  It was then that I learned the different capabilities of God, I came to know him as Healer, Provider, Sustainer and sometimes only Friend. For if it wasn't for these lessons, I wouldn't be able to explain how God is any of these things.

Here is a song by LeCrae that would fit this particular attitude of boasting in God and not in ourselves.http://youtu.be/4Ec7ofMOqVM
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4Ec7ofMOqVM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I think if we find ourselves in this position, we need to evaluate who we're relying on mostly and turn things back over to God and let him handle things for us.  We certainly don't have any business getting into a place that is grounds for compromising God's word or blending into the worldly views of today.  After all, we're living to please God and not man. Many people are just 'fans' of Christianity and not a true follower of Christ.   There is a difference and a great explanation of this is found in the book, "not a fan".  If you  watch the video along with the reading, you will find it an overwhelming realization of what it means to follow Christ in this generation.

 I'm afraid that getting on the worldly wires to save our lives or our

 reputation of being a "Jesus Freak", will only end up with us losing

 our eternal life in the presence of the Almighty.

Thoughts for today.
Please feel free to write your thoughts here, I'd love to read them!

Livia Brielle's Nursery Design Plan, Born 11.11.11

After much delay, I have finally pieced together excerpts of Livia's nursery design concept with before and after photos. I was ecstatic to discover my wish had come true of being blessed with a baby girl.

 I had the idea to purchase a little sister & little brother onesie and we let the Tech. tell Landon which shirt to hold up when she discovered which we were having.

So, then started this HUGE undertaking of finding the 'perfect' fabric to set the base for my design in the nursery.  I discovered this Braemore fabric in Tulsa OK at a small fabric store.  I had already collected several samples and had a design board started, but this fabric was the 'one'.  It was like finding the perfect wedding dress all over again.  It just allowed options for several girly colors and extended the option for using these colors for a little girl upate later on.
Here is a list of my projects and estimated costs & where I found them.
1. Solid Wood Bed. Church Friend's Sister sold it for $100 with mattress and pads, etc.  I already had a waterproof mattress, so I sold the mattress and the waterproof pads.  I had my husband and his handyman friend paint the bed with a professional sprayer a Simply White, from Benjamin Moore, which was color matched in a Sherwin Williams paint which was during their 40% sale. Score. 

2.  Bedding.  Found in Tulsa, OK at designer fabric store, $30 dollars a yard. I bought 1 1/2 yards because it was the most important thing on my list to splurge on and still within budget of $500.  So, sewing at night and in between L's temper tantrums, I finally finished the bumper pads, crib skirt and crib sheet. I used the braemore colors as a guide.  

TIP:  On most designer fabrics, if you look to the far right or left of the fabric, you'll see a color chart using dots of the colors used in the design.  In this fabric were coral pink, gray, white, charcoal, rasberry, light pink and dark pink.  A beautiful color pallet to work with.

I found accent fabrics from www.fabric.com on sale and here they are:

White Dot Minky (very hard to sew)

Pink cotton

Dark Pink Cotton

Pink Mini Dot Flannel

Bird patterned Courdory

White Cotton Duck

Ric Rac charcoal gray trim

Pink pom pom trim

I also found a great store in Barling, AR called

www.interioroutlet.com

She had some brown/white polka dot cotton duck I used for piping on the bedskirt

I reupholstered L's car seat from a Boy brown/blue plaid to this beautiful coral pink/grey using Outdoor fabric, which paid off nicely when things got wet!

The rest I used my coupons/sales at Hobby Lobby for pillow forms, poly stuffing, thread, etc.

I was able to recover my Mom's childhood antique rocking chair and here are the before & after photos:

 Here is my pottery barn book shelf find at the Riley Farms Annual Sale for $23 and my hard wired lamps I had in storage.  I took the shades of the lamps and added white whispy feather boas with hot glue and added a small butterfly. Here you can see my color paint sample against the beige wall.  
   TIP:It's always best to take he color samples home and put them on the wall you want new paint.  Different lighting can affect the way it looks to the eye and different times of day can change that look.  I am experimenting here with the accent light using different  type bulbs: daylight, bright white light with 1100 lumens and a soft white.  I used the day light to eliminate any yellow hues.

I ended up with a light neutral grey, after trying a french grey, which had too much blue and looked purple, so my paint man custom fixed it and made it neutral for me to match the background in the fabric.  I painted 3 walls in this soft grey in a flat paint and then added vertical stripes in a semi-gloss in a shade slightly lighter.  This added a subtle, but striking effect.

Here is the rocking chair I found at GK's sale. It was slipcovered with a brown suede and i used it as a pattern to make one out of white cotton duck fabric and remade the cushion cover with my design fabric and used white piping.  Warning: time consuming and gives you flash backs of geometry class, which I liked a lot, but still struggled to get this right.  I ended up pining it to the chair to finish and sewed when I finally figured it out.)
I used velcro around the bottoms to tighten the fit later which had pre-fabricated strips on the chair already! Handy!

 The 3rd wall got a coral pink flat finish with semi gloss polka dots.  I just used a round cookie cutter and painted the insides of the circle. I measured exact distances from each center, vertically and horizontally and put a small 'x' and then painted each one in the semi gloss.  Time consuming, but nice finish.  I should have used a shade lighter to make it more noticable.

This dresser was once laquered black and had doors and was topped with a buffet hutch. I got this solid mahogony wood piece at an estate sale a long time ago when I worked for an interior designer. It was a wood stain before  the black attacked it!

This is before my husband repaired the hinges, which left a brutal finish, since he painted over them, instead of removing them to paint.  (this is why I would rather do it myself, but I was preggo and didn't want to be around this paint, even though it was enviro safe)

Here is my favorite feature in the room, besided the fabric:

These letters were at Hobby Lobby, 1/2 off and I painted them using a glue stick lid for the dots and a small brush for the faux birch letter, the floral pattern and the stripes.  I just used acrylic colors found in the base fabric.  I hung them from this amazing birch limb from A to Z with gross-grain ribbon and found these owls and hot glued them on.  I added this delicate greenery with pink blossoms along the branch and attached some to the fishing line I used to secure the limb from the ceiling with an eye hook.

I used a pin striped pink cotton and covered my chandelier shades on the diagonal with a hot glue gun.  This chandelier, from Lowe's, was on clearance when Landon's nursery was designed. (which now, I have to blog about that one, when I find pics)

These sheer drapes I copied a pottery barn idea and used ribbons to sew into the top pocket and tied them onto the rod.  The fabric was found at Hancock's on sale, of course and I used the colors from the inspiration.

  

I found this at Hobby L. and added more color to the scroll and accents.

 My dear friend had this personalized.  It's a hair clip organizor and it's made of wood, tulle and ribbon, so perfect.

So, after all the fabric, paint, furniture, etc. we came in under $500.  I was so pleased.
Other accents in room not detailed: picture frames, I later painted to look like faux birch wood, shag rug from Hobby L., pottery barn pop up storage bins, Penny the Owl, Pottery Barn,  white shelf from storage, not sure where I got it, satin nickel curtain rod with glass finial-used from Landon's nursery and white roller shade from walmart.

I won Grand Champion in the Home Ecs department with my courdory bird pillow with pink dot flannel and pom pom trim. I was not expecting that, but so excited.

I'm sure there will be more posts with some tutorials on these things.  If you have a question, please leave it below, thanks for reading!


Please feel free to write your thoughts here, I'd love to read them!

Angry Birds Birthday Ideas

Angry Birds 5th Birthday

Yes, I am just now blogging about my son's 5th birthday way back in December.  His birthday was celebrated at Cherry Berry Frozen Yogurt Bar in Fort Smith.

We had to postpone due to sickness, so not everyone was able to come, but those that did come had a blast!

Here's what we did:

Made an angry birds pizza!

We used pepperoni's, olives, raisins, and cheese slices on top of a cheese pizza!

Cherry Berry has a party room and this is what Landon wanted to do. The room colors couldn't have been more perfect, less decorating for me!  I researched free printables and found them online. Here is the link to those:

I used brown sacks for the 'TNT' printouts and used them for goody bags. Inside were angry bird stickers and a couple other trinkets.

Landon's personal cake.  It had melted and it was a downpour all afternoon, so it got a little wet. I used blue glitter sprinkles, candy corns, candy eyes, red and black sprinkles and green icing for feathers.

I made mini cupcakes and put them in an 'egg' container, lined it with angry bird wrapping paper (found at Target during Christmas) and used green tube icing, candy eyeballs and green skittles for the nose, and purple skittles for the 'black eyes' on the pigs. I used a few orange sprinkles for accents, but simply did not have time for all the details.  I used white tube icing for their teeth and mustache's.

You might recognize these big containers as a regular breakfast staple, oatmeal.  The tubes were just papertowel rolls and the other boxes were in my stash of craft recycleables.

AI was able to get a free photo book on shutterfly.com during one of their promotions, to celebrate his 4th year.

It's so hard to choose which topping.  There is a few more bars of toppings not pictured where you can add syrups, fruit, candybars, gummi worms-pretty much all a kid could imagine!

Livia wasn't sure about this 'cold' stuff, but she wanted more after a few bites.

We all got angry bird shirts. We found all of them at Walmart last fall. Right before the market went crazy with 'angry bird' stuff.  I didn't even know other people were doing angry bird parties, so this was a lot of research trying to find free materials.

Landon got a 'Y' scooter. He was not expecting this!

One of his presents was an angry bird space game. They played this for a few minutes, but they found greater joy in the real game of throwing the angry birds at the cardboard lifesize pieces.

Livia found someone's pig and couldn't figure out what was on her hands!

strategy

Strategist Joshua M. prepared the towers for the kids to demolish.  

Please feel free to write your thoughts here, I'd love to read them!