Third Thursday Blog Hop: Balance with Scrapbooking

Which weighs more 100 lbs. of feathers or 100 lbs. of bricks?

They weigh the same they are both 100 lbs.  It doesn't matter the contents or size of the weight, 100 pounds is 100 pounds.  Who does more work a stay at home mom or a working mom?  They are both busy from 8-5 with extra work overflowing in to the evening and a laundry pile that never goes away.

Balance, one of the greatest challenges of motherhood, your job is to serve your family and the list of tasks is never ending and the number of interruptions is endless.  Whats important is to make time for yourself and your own interests.  

One interest I have is scrapbooking.  I was hesitant to jump in to scrapbooking because of huge amount of stuff that comes with it.  Then a friend introduced me to a new trend digital scrapbooking.  Its genius!  You have your pictures digital and you download JPEG papers, and PNG elements, in kits to make your pages using either digital scrapbook software such as My Memories or a photo editing program like Photoshop. I use GIMP, an opensource photoshop like program, its free!  When you are done with the pages you can print them at one of several digi-scrap printing stores, my favorite being Persnickity Prints.  

ABCs, Digilicious Designs

My Life, Nibbles Scribbles

What helps me guard this "me time" is that I work for 2 designer on their creative teams.  I make pages and promote their products in exchange for free products.  This gives me a schedule to make sure I'm getting some "me time" to scrap.  I get my books caught up and they get their products promoted.  Its also let me gain practical skills I can transfer for other graphic design projects as well.  Now if only I could turn it in to a paying work-from-home job...

I share my scrap pages at CyScraps!

Pretty as Peacocks Digilicious Design

Check out some of the other Hearts at Home bloggers 

as they share about finding balance in their lives. 

Third Thursday Thoughts: Super Mom with the Power to...

Life is just beginning to settle into a routine for our family after a cross country move at the beginning of the month and my husband being employed full time outside the home for the first time in nearly a year.  In the moments of high stress, I have daydreamed what it would be like if I had a super power, much like the characters on my daughter's favorite show Super Why!  I wish I could move things with my mind.  I could just think that the box would be unpacked and it would happen.  That instead of spending 3 days in the car driving to our new house we could wave a wand and be there.  It would be so much less stressful don't you think?

It would be wonderful to say the magic words Bippity Boppity Boo and have my kitchen come to life to make dinner and the boxes of books unpack on the shelves.  Oh what a dream that would be. 

Oh but alas, The process of unpacking has reminded us whats important.  The kids haven't even noticed that less than 1/2 of their toys are unpacked,  sitting at a folding table for dinner means we are all closer together to talk and share the day, and garage sales are for finding hidden treasures.  

Hearts at Home has a devotional book called Ordinary Mom, Extraordinary God, by Mary Demuth

You may feel like an ordinary, everyday woman, but you're not. You're a woman with an extra ordinary call on your life - motherhood - and you have an extraordinary God to run to when you need emotional, mental, and spiritual renewal. 

Writer, speaker, and mom Mary DeMuth creatively focuses on the gift of motherhood as she considers:

• resting quietly in the Lord, even on crazy–busy days.
• being thankful for the duties as well as the joys of being a mom.
• offering God a heart to prune so that it can continue to bear good fruit.

God knows you and cares about your burdens. Let Him call you to Himself and fill your days with peace, light, and joy that will show up in the most unexpected and extraordinary ways.

Bible Stacks: Scripture Wealth

We're linking up with the other OneVerse bloggers today, check out the other posts and add yours at Meredith's blog!

We bought Lydia, my daughter her first Bible recently, it made me consider how many Bibles we own. I mentioned this to my family. So we went on a hunt. We gathered them from around the house, we even pulled a box out of storage. We had Bibles of all shapes and sizes, different translations, one with pictures, one on CD for use on the computer and many were sitting in a box unused. Scripture Wealth.

It wasn't until our family got involved with Wycliffe that I began to realize how much I take having the Bible for granted. While we have extra Bibles sitting in a box collecting dust, there are people around the world who can't wait to get their hands on even a portion of scripture in their language. For Aksamina, a language helper for the Berik people of Indonesia, it was her dying wish for her husband, Essau, to help finish the translation for their language.  Essau saw their New Testament dedicated in 1993.

JOIN US!
I challenge you to discover how wealthy you are in scriptures.  Do the same exercise and share your thoughts with us.  One lucky person with get their thoughts shared on the OneVerse blog and get a free t-shirt.  You can link up with us at Meredith's blog or if you don't have a blog you can share with us on the OneVerse Facebook Wall. What are you waiting for, go discover your wealth and show the world!

400 Posts!

Wow!  I have been blogging for a long time.  I started this blog in 2007 as a way to keep our family involved in our lives when we moved away from home as newlyweds.  Its had many transformations and its growing still today.  I'm taking the time to highlight the top ten popular posts on the blog in celebration of my blogging milestone.  Enjoy!

10. We Made It to Illinois!
9. Cynthia's Thoughts: Change vs Transition
8. ICC - Date Change
7. Cynthia's Thoughts: "I am the same God"
6. The stuff in our lives
5. We're Official!
4. Third Thursday Blog Hop: The Power of the Sun...
3. Birth Story- Caleb Robert
2. What's Next: Dealing with Depression
1. Replaceable

Linking up with

 

Third Thursday Blog Hop: The Power of the Sun & some Lemon

Today you can hop around our blogs and gather all kinds of tips for your home.  We are sharing our secrets for cleaning and organizing.  I want to share what I have discovered about the power of the sun when it comes to laundry.

As a cloth diapering mom, I have discovered a magic way to remove poop stains, SUNNING!  The sun's rays are a natural bleach.  Hanging my diapers outside not only saved our electric bill but left my diapers looking bright white.  I hang them out ideally in the morning and by mid afternoon they are dry, white and fresh smelling.  If you have little ones out of diapers its still great for stains on other clothes as well.  

SUN+LEMON JUICE

This year I learned more about the power of the sun when our washer broke.  I had rust stains on several articles of clothing.  I was able to use lemon juice and the sun to remove the rust stains.  

1. Find a flat place to lay the article in direct sunlight.
2. soak the stain with lemon juice, (I used a bottle from the grocery store)
3. let dry in the sun for at least an hour.  
4. lauder as normal
5. repeat if necessary.  

For more ideas on getting organized check out Karen Ehman's book "The Guide to Getting and Staying Organized"

New Chapter, New Blog

This blog has been a place for me to share and write for the last 4 1/2 years.  I started writing before blogs were nearly as commonplace as today.  It was a place for me to write about our adventures as we moved away from home as newlyweds.  We used it to share pics of our kids when they were babies with family hundreds of miles away.  Most recently, we have used it to record the adventure God has taken us on the last 2 years to support Bible Translation.

Right now our family direction is changing and this blog will be, too. I believe God is giving me new inspiration and ideas of how to use this blog to go beyond our family.  You may have noticed a few new things popping up on my blog recently.  Last month I participated in my first blog-hop with Hearts at Home.  Its a ministry to moms that has touched me through their books and resources.  A friend in Florida gave me "Real Moms, Real Jesus" around the time Lydia was born and changed the way I thought about motherhood. Second, Moments to Remember is a link up with a couple of the homeschool blogs, (1+1+1=1 and Homeschool Creations) that have been great resources to me as I begin to do some learning activities with Lydia.  I'm also beginning to write blog posts for OneVerse.  I am excited about this because it's an opportunity we can continue to use this blog to raise awareness of the importance and significance of Bible Translation. OneVerse is a project related to Wycliffe, and their goal is to see scripture projects sponsored one verse at a time.  It only takes $26 to translate one verse of scripture, which takes the overwhelming needs of Bible Translation around the world, and breaks them down into bite-size chunks. Finally, don't worry, I'll continue to include the adventures we have has a family on top of all these new activities.

I have developed a hobby or addiction, depending how you look at it, to digital scrap-booking.  I use GIMP, a photoshop-like open source program, to manipulate virtual papers stickers, ribbons, buttons etc.  to create my pages.  I post my pages and promote a few designers at a second scrapbook blog, cyscraps.blogspot.com, so as not to clutter this blog.  Check it out!

Moment to Remember: Reading with Daddy

Moments to Remember was developed as a simple way to look back on our week as homeschoolers and find photos that encompass the memories we want to remember.  The week may have been tough, there may have been more bumps than smiles, but in the end these are the moments that keep us going, the ones we need to remember.

Caleb is more and more interested in reading.  We got "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day" from the library and Caleb has taken a liking to it.  Daddy likes to embellish the story too!