I Can be Your Friend

A few weeks ago, I made a sock monkey for my cousin's baby, Liam (who you may remember from their recent visit).

After I finished, I did some thinking and decided that button eyes are probably not the best thing to put on a toy for a 9 month old.

Rather than simply taking off the button eyes and sewing new ones, I went to Target, bought more socks, and started over, ending with this cutie:

 Sewn on felt eyes... much safer!  And I just love the Zebra print.

When I got this pair of socks, I got a little grabby looking at all of the cute ones... After I got too far into making 4 sock monkeys at a time, I kind of regretted it (quite a time consuming project!!) but now that they are done, they are cute!

Best friends!

I mailed my child-friendly monkey off to my nephew (or third cousin twice removed... "nephew" is easier!).  I hope that he likes it and that his mama can have peace of mind leaving him in a room with it!

I'm now left with these guys...

I'm considering making an Etsy shop down the road... probably pretty far down the road...  do you think anyone would want to buy these? 

 

Simple Gifts

This year, I am in charge of the volunteer room for our VBS volunteers.  We'll have a designated room for those who are helping to come and store their stuff and get a little snack or drink, and we wanted to have something special for them every night so they know how much we appreciate their hard work and time!

I set a budget of $15 a night for 45 volunteers. VBS isn't not for another month, but I just finished up the four nights of "gifts" so I wanted to share them with you!

"We appreciate you S'more than you know!"

They are jumbo-sized marshmellows, a mini-Hershey bar, and two graham cracker halves.

"Thank you for being an Egg-Cellent volunteer!  You have made this year's VBS Egg-stra special!"

Inside the eggs are 2-3 pieces of chocolate candy... an assortment of Kit-Kats, Snickers, and Reese's.  I bought these Jumbo eggs when they were 80% off after Easter!

"Our volunteers are Extra- ordinary!"

I found 6 different flavors of Extra gum, wrapped in cute colorful ribbon.

"Our volunteers are the Stars of our VBS!"

Inside are 10 Starbursts.

I think they turned out pretty cute!

 

Stairway to Heaven

The bad news is that I don't have any shifts on the schedule until my coworker has her baby. He is due next week and I was going to go home this week but wanted to make sure I was "just a phone call away" in case he came. Turns out I should have gone home!

The good news is that I have had so much time at home as of late, that I have gotten fairly caught up on blogging! I even have not one but TWO posts scheduled to post automatically so that the new blogs are more spread out haha! As you can tell, not a lot is going on here, but I wanted to share our latest home renovation (that we did over a month ago and I just took pictures of).

These were our stairs for the first 11 months we lived here:

"unfinished" would be an understatement.

We got an estimate of $550 to finish them.  We made several trips to Home Depot the home improvement store and talked with at least 5 of their employees before coming up with a creative and honestly, genius way for us to fix them ourselves for under $100.

It's still not totally done but it looks a million times better!  The cracked and uneven spaces, or even gaps, are all covered and it came together nicely.  We still need to stain the railing and the entryway the same dark color as our stair treads and floor.  We have all of the stuff to do but staining such a large, prominant area is intimidating!

 

Lovely Cruise

For our anniversary trip, in October (well, 5 nights in October) Steven and I will be aboard this boat:



The Carnival Destiny!

We have stops in Nassau, Bahamas (where we went on our honeymoon), Half Moon Cay, Bahamas, and the Grand Turks.

And it's official now because we bought our air-fare today!  We didn't buy it the day we booked the trip a few weeks ago because it was SO expensive... today when I checked the prices had gone down $80 a person AND we got a price guarantee from Orbitz so if the price goes down again they will reimburse us!


We've never been on a cruise before, so it will be fun to do this first together.  We want to do something at least overnight every year on our anniversary and I am so thankful that we get to go.  We definitely debated it for a while...  it would be way cheaper to go to Chicago or something (though we did get a great deal... Cruising in October isn't exactly in hot demand).  But we decided that NOW is the time to go on a trip like this.  It's just the two of us.  The time alone together... away from the phone, computers, and other obligations... time to just relax and rejuvenate... is very important and we need to make it a priority.

I also spoke with some friends/coworkers who gave me some good points, like that RIGHT NOW is the time to go on a trip where you pay-by-the-person...  to go to the beach or get a hotel room somewhere, you pay by the room... so it's the same price whether it's the two of us or if we had two kids too. Cruising is by the person so now is the time for us to go.

Also, I was chatting with one of the ladies at church yesterday and she was saying that when she was newlywed, they were so concerned with saving money (which is obviously responsible and good to do!) that they never travelled and she really regrets not spending that time before kids to do those things... because once you have the kids there is always something going on or the financial need is greater somewhere else.

We are SO very thankful that GOD has provided the funds and our financial sense of saving money for us to take this vacation.  We work hard at our jobs and live pretty frugally- sticking to our budget, shopping with coupons, buying groceries at Aldi, and living within our means- but we know that we are very blessed to have a little extra at the end of the month to save, and put some of it towards some special "us" time.

We're pretty excited.  :)

 

PS Here is a little "comic" I found on FB for your enjoyment...  just reaffirms the decision!  :)

The Time of Your Life

I am trying to make a more conscious effort to see the beauty in every day.

I am so thankful for what God has given me right now.  Steven and I will have a limited time of it only being the two of us, but we want to make it count and make memories and do special things.

Last week, it was a beautiful night and Steven helped me cross one thing off of my "Do before I turn 23" list.  We slept outside on the deck.

We blew up our two twin air mattresses.   As you can see, Dallas is hiding from Barkley underneath my pillow.

Barkley was excited to spend the night with us outside, but he was SO confused.  We (Steven and I) went to bed around 1, but Barkley kept moving from Steven's bed to my bed, to his spot where he looks off the deck, to running down the stairs, to running back up the stairs. He couldn't settle down.  Finally, after about 1.5 hours of that (and me freezing... and being worried that Steven was also freezing because he'd given me his blanket) I woke Steven up and told him let's go inside and sleep!

We tried.

Steven is also preparing to get his CDL so that he can drive a shuttle to Camp.  One of our partnering churches owns a bus and a shuttle, so after he got his CDL Permit, we went up there so he could practice.

Not gonna lie, it was a little scary riding in that school bus!  It was a stick-shift, and even though Steven knows how to drive a stick (his first car was one), he hasn't done it in a long time.  Not to mention it's a 53 passenger bus. 

But after driving the bus, the shuttle seemed like a piece of cake!  Hopefully he will be able to take (and pass) the test soon!

Lastly, back in April we planted our FIRST tomato plants!  I have always wanted my own home grown tomatoes...  We spent hours outside digging out clay and putting in a soil mixture.  I had very low expectations because, though this is the best area for us to plant anything, it doesn't get as much sunlight as I know the tomatoes would like.

But look at them now!

We were able to "harvest" our first tomatoes tonight!  The little one on the left actually had the first ripe ones.  The one on the right was the "Early" plant we bought.

Here's Farmer Steven with all of our tomatoes!

Reflections

I have learned a lot from working at a nursing home.

To be with a group of people at such a challenging and final stage of their lives can make you think.  It's not a part of life that anyone really wants to think about... but because I work there, I do.   And I keep coming back to this passage:


¹⁹ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: ²⁰ But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: ²¹ For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

We have all heard this a million times...  "you can't take it with you when you die."  But working at the nursing home has reminded me, that you can't even take it with you to the nursing home!   If I am storing up treasures in things of this world- having the most fashionable clothes, newest car,  going on fancy trips...  I am going to be left with nothing in a very short amount of time.

If I am storing up treasures in building relationships, encouraging others, serving others in Jesus' name...  then and only then do I really have anything that will last for any amount of time.

We have a lady who never married, never had any kids.  She inherited a great amount of money and used that money to go on shopping sprees and literally became a hoarder.  Now, she is in the nursing home and I think I've seen her have visitors twice in the 9 months I've worked there.   She never leaves her room without her "purse" full of 40 pounds of stuff.  That is what she has now... this 40 lb bag of stuff... no people, just posessions.

We have another lady who also never married and never had any kids.  But she evidently spent her life enriching the lives of others.  She was a "mom" to each of her nieces and nephews and gave, gave, gave of her time and was active in her church.  Now she has visitors all. the. time.  She is miss popular.  She has deeply loved so many people, who in turn deeply love her and visit her.  She has impacted their lives in a positive way.

I want to be like lady #2.  I want to spend my life loving others and not wasting time on things that won't last.  I've heard this before but it has just started really "clicking" with my heart.  When I'm 90 and in a nursing home, I want someone to have been effected by my life.... I want to have impacted lives through our Lord's love.

I just pray that He will give me eyes to see the needs, ears to listen, a mouth to speak encouragement, and a heart to love on ALL of those He puts in my path.  And a boldness... because putting having the confidence to do so doesn't always come naturally to me!

 

They Say it's Your Birthday

My birthday was last week, and I just now uploaded pics from it!

Honestly, it was a pretty low-key day.  I turned 23 and I already feel like I am "too old" for bdays to be a big deal, which is sad when you think about it but just the way life goes I guess!

I went to lunch and shopping with my friend Lauren.  It was a beautiful day to be shopping at an outdoor shopping center!

Then Steven took  me to The Hill (this authentic Italian neighborhood in St Louis) for dinner.  We tried our first restaurant there, Zia's.

Oh my goodness...  SO good!

We had fried artichokes as an appetizer, then your meal comes with a salad and a side of pasta.  I got the garlic/butter sauce on my pasta and Steven got the cream sauce... the cream sauce was probably the best pasta sauce I have ever had!!  It was SO SO good!

When we got back to the car, we discovered we were 2.5 miles from Ted Drewes, a custard place here that has been around since 1929.  We have been told by tons of people that we needed to try it, so even though we were stuffed, we managed to find room for Custard (the HUGE line gave us a little time to digest our dinner)

See how much bigger my Regular concrete is than Steven's Regular sundae??  Crazy.