Patriotic Craft Time!

My husband can finally see something come from one of these old windows I've been carting around through the move, hahaha, yay!

I've had this project in mind for a while and I was glad to finally get around to it this weekend! I used all leftover or free materials: Leftover acrylic paint from a painting party for a friend quite a while back (a great idea for a housewarming party for a friend's first place, fyi), a wooden star as a guide shape, leftover tape from garage sale, and a neighbor's old window that they left curbside when they got new ones.

After thorougly cleaning the glass and frame, I started by measuring out stripes.

If anyone knows how to effectively clean "chippy wood" without breaking off the paint chips or soaking the wood so that it swells or needs a long time to dry, please let me know. I may love shabby chic decor, but I am not one of those people who thinks shabby means dirty. I want things to look antiqued, but not dirty. Going into this project, however, I knew that this was destined to hang on a wall outside, so I didn't stress too hard over the dirt that was super-stuck in the cracks of the paint.

Then I taped all the way across. I made sure to start with red paint first and do the white second because I knew if I painted red on the backside of a white stripe by accident, it might show through.

Now if you're doing this project yourself, you might want to invest the dollar into a foam stamp for the star. I just happened to have this wooden shape handy and really didn't want to hike it to the mall (my nearest craft store...yarg mall parking) just for a stamp. So I used this to give me my outlines, then painted them with a brush after that.

Obviously it's pretty important to make sure your first layer of paint is dry before painting the next color. With the acrylic a few times I thought it was dry, went to add a second coat and then accidentally messed up the first, non-dry coat. Woops. That's the great thing about this style, though, streaks are at home.

Let it dry in the near-summer sunshine....

Grand reveal.....
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Ta-da!

Definitely a little more schoolhouse-style than I was going for, but that's alright, I still like it!

Now to add some hooks to the backside and hang it up outside!

Hope you had room to have some creative fun this weekend, too!

Our First Big Fundraiser!!!!

many of you know, we've been asking people to donate things to our "adoption rummage sale" for quite a while now. We figured that we'd try to start out with the fundraisers that required the lowest amount of cost or effort from other people, and what could be cheaper than the stuff people were already planning on getting rid of?

I have to say, I was incredibly humbled and am incredibly grateful for this fundraiser. We picked a sunny forecast, which turned out to also be the weekend of the Little League Baseball Parade across the street.

My mom came down to help, which was a huge help! She's so organized! It was also cool because she got to stay with us for a few extra days and she was here for Mothers Day :)

People donated tons of stuff, all throughout the weekend even, and came by to help organize, shop, and offer encouragement. How blessed we are with a beautiful, supportive community!

I was honestly surprised how much little stuff we sold. When I was a kid, the town we lived in was the kind where the "big ticket items" in your ad were the things that brought people out, and a few other people would come by for kids toys etc. Here it's the complete opposite: people come out to buy clothes and little stuff, and all of the mid-sized things were gone by the end, but we had most of the big stuff left. That's great though, because now we can sell it online or use it again in our next yard sale in late summer/early fall. Because with this kind of success, who wouldn't want a repeat?!

I was also very surprised by the success of the bake sale we did at the same time. I had at least 4 pans of cakes or brownies, 3 dozen chocolate chip cookies, 2 dozen oatmeal cookies and 4 dozen cupcakes all out the first day, and had to bake more that night because we ran out!

It was nice to socialize the pups with lots of unknown people at their house. I was proud of how well they did, especially our little scardy-cat Kiwi who actually came out to visit people on her own accord!

So, the results? Drumroll please....

With a garage still full of items for next time, this fundraiser brought our adoption fund up over the $1,000 mark!!! WOO-HOO!!!!

A New Kind Of Bucket List

There are bucket lists floating all over the daggon internets. Today I even saw one on a friend's facebook that was a to-do list by the time you turn thirty. That means I only have a few short years to complete a list of someone else's priorities and ideas of "fulfilled life." Yikes, I'd better get on that!

Ok clearly you hear the sarcasm in my voice. As a midwest minister's wife, who works with kids, loves to bake, has 2.5 dogs and hopes to be at least a half-time stay at home mom, I'm the quintessential traditional female role. Not because I felt pressure, but because it's what I really truly wanted.

That being said, I'm constantly fighting to find contentment. Everything American says to long for more, aim for bigger, higher. When I'm indulging in girliness (read: at a bar or perusing Pinterest), there are women and websites giving all the new lists on how to be more fit, what to do by the time you're 20, 25, 27, 30. When I'm indulging my home-making side, I'm barraged by the newest products, the running to-do list of projects and diy that my home should be in seemingly everyone's eyes. At work everything is about the newest method, the latest training, and how many letters you can rack up to follow your name.

The problem is, the calling of the kingdom is to contentment. It is to sacrificial love, to making future plans only based on your current calling, to prioritizing others over what you would like to do, and others' needs and desires over your own.

But that doesn't make it less exciting or less fulfilling. It only makes it more so.

So then, I'm going to keep a new kind of bucket list. A list of all the wonderful and ridiculous things the Good Lord has allowed me to experience before I kick the bucket. A list of what He has brought me to, not a list of where I will go. Because where I will go is unknown and that is exciting and wonderful, because the One who holds my future is perfect and exciting and magnificent, and so my life with Him will be those things also if I am obedient to His calling.

So here it is so far....


My Bucket List:

Fall madly in love.
Completely relocate to a new place almost completely on my own.
Completely relocate to a new place to follow my husband's calling.
Change my Friday-night plans to eat dinner and drink coffee with a (probably schizophrenic) homeless women who was moments before cursing at me and the rest of traffic and the world at the top of her lungs.
Work in a scary at-risk area.
Let a homeless stranger move in with me.
Make friends with random neighbors, and piss random neighbors off by being trashy.
Learn to use gum paste.
Learn to make an icing rose.
Visit another country (3)
Visit another continent (1)
Go to a ballet
Go to an opera
Get a real black eye.
Ride a rollercoaster.
Adopt a dog (2)
Go on a mission trip (4)
Learn another language (Spanish)
Go to extensive lengths to rescue a stray (3 flea baths, 2 car rides, and bug bombing my car for one: currently on month 2 of housing another)
Commit to something totally out of my comfort zone and follow-through. (VOD choir, Zumba)
Pick up and move to another state for a strange job I have only been promised/told of.
Be a camp counselor.
Be a manager.
Learn to make espresso.
Learn to cook. Like, foreal cook.
Learn to ballroom dance.
Stay in a hospital.
Preach a full sermon.
Move in with strangers. (housemates!)
Pay someone's rent.
Get in a car wreck.
Go snorkeling in the ocean.
Hike a pyramid.
Get cussed out by a friend in a public place.
Gain weight. Lose weight.
Pray with a dying man.
Pray over a man while he died.
Seen someone healed of cancer.
Gone foreal camping. (boundary waters)
Give a recital.
Graduate college.
Heard a child's first words.
Give a testimony.
Been a waitress.
Been a nanny.
Have an P.O.Box
Helped with disaster relief.
Ride a bicycle built for two.
Balance my checkbook.