Week Two - Mud or Stars?

Thanks for continuing on this journey of contentment and calming my anxious heart with me. Once again, if you're looking for a crafty post, this is not it. Unless you count working on myself as a craft, which it definitely is. Learning to be content and not anxious is a process and one that I believe I fail at most days. I strongly urge anyone who has problems with being anxious or lack of contentment, read this book! If you have a Kindle, it's only about $10. You spend more than that out to eat! If you do not have a kindle, you can order it online for roughly the same cost. Anyway, enough free publicity...let's move onto what I've learned this week.

When we categorize the circumstances in our life, they fit into two categories, "positive" and "negative." What list do we spend most of our time dwelling over? In the book, this example is used

"Two women looked through prison bars, one saw mud and the other saw stars."

Wow, how important our perspective is for our lives and circumstances. What do we choose to focus on, the mud or the stars by lifting our eyes? To me, this was such a powerful metaphor. How often am I, personally, looking down at the mud and not lifting my eyes to see the stars? How often do we go about our daily lives thinking about what's next or what if's when we should be focusing on the then and now.

This chapter in the book was learning to be content with our circumstances. We all have bad things that happen in our lives. How we respond to them can really make an impact on others. I have had my fair share of tragedies and storms in my life, just as everyone has, but rather than focusing on the pain, I pray that my circumstances will allow me to focus on God even more. I want the pain to not be wasted, as mentioned in the chapter, but I want it to be used to draw me closer to God and to allow me to help others who have or will go through similar storms in their lives.

The main thing I took away from this week's study was that learning to be content is not only a heart choice but it is a process, something that takes practice. Practicing a skill is not always easy, think of any sport, activity, etc. you've learned over the years, they didn't always come easy (at least not for me). We have to make a conscious effort to pray rather than be anxious. I do not know about you but for me, this is hard work. As mentioned in last week's post, I am a control freak. I admit it and I am not good at letting go. I am working on this daily and to some degree, I have improved (well, some days are easier than others...). I want to learn to pray about the problem rather than worrying about the problem. Why waste my time and energy worrying about something I have no control over? Worrying leads to complaining, something else that is an undesirable characteristic trait.

In Philippians 4:7, God promises to us that if we pray to Him when anxious or worried, He'll grant us peace.  Well, for me that is awesome for the two minutes after I pray right before I start obsessing again. This happen to anyone else? I pray, feel relieved, then I worry again. However, this does not mean God is not doing His part. It means I am relinquishing on my end of the bargain, you know, the part where I'm not suppose to worry?!? Yeah, totally failed that two minutes after my prayer and conscious efforts. However, this book gives a clear example of this happening to the author too. I am telling you, it is like I wrote this book with all of the examples she provided. The author explains that when this continues to happen to her (which it always seems to happen at night, do you notice that too?), she will pray again, then if she is still worrying a few minutes later, she gets out of bed and makes a list of everything she is thankful for and dwells on the positives, then she is ready for bed. My prayer is I remember to do this tonight when I inevitably cannot sleep because I am worried about 100x things.

While studying this week, I was reading the verses suggested in the book but then I must have transposed a number or God really wanted me to read a specific verse because I read this and felt it fit right in:

Romans 12:12 "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer."

As I am reading this post, I realize the majority of it is a jumbled mess. Sometimes I wish I could be more eloquent with the words I wish to get out of my mind but my fingers appear to type faster than my brain can formulate what I want to say. I'm not going to change it, I feel it is more real this way.

This week, I'll continue my journey to contentment and I'll try to leave behind my anxious heart. I know I'll fail daily, but thankfully, I have a God who will help pick me back up and forgive me. I'm going to practice shifting my attitude rather than trying to change every negative circumstance in my life. I am going to practice these four things that Paul suggests in Philippians 4:6-8

1. Choose to give my anxieties to God
2. Choose to pray specifically
3. Choose to be thankful
4. Choose to dwell on the positive

My question for you, as it is for myself, are you going to see mud or stars?

Week One - Contentment is a state of heart, not of affairs

This blog entry and the weekly ones to follow will be of a different structure than my previous entries. I have recently joined a Bible Study, which starts tonight, where we are reading Calming my Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow. I do not know about my friends, family members, and random internet readers but being anxious and discontent is something I often struggle with, often without even realizing it. When I discovered this Bible Study was being offered at my church, I immediately purchased the book and decided to dive in. I am going to try to restrain myself and participate with the others by reading only one chapter per week, as instructed but I do not always follow the rules as I have been reading ahead for weeks and months in my current book club, so we will see how it goes. Anyway, if you're looking for a post about my craftiness, those might be mingled in among these entries but the sole purpose of this blog for the next few weeks will be my journey to calming my anxious heart and learning to lean more heavily on God. Feel free to join me if you'd like, if not, my feelings will not be hurt, mostly because I will not know if you read it anyway :)

Week 1 - From control to content. 

Wow. What a heading. 

When reading this first chapter of the book, I instantly thought...did I write this? Are these my own thoughts filling these pages of my Kindle screen? I knew instantly that this book would be something I would gobble up and retain. This book is applicable in every sense. I do struggle with anxiety whether that is anxiety to follow a schedule, my timeline of events in my life, my work, my grad school, or just every day tasks. Anxiety can consume a person and unfortunately, at times, it has consumed me. The constant nagging of "what if?," "what now?," "how?" plagues me. However, what I did not think about was the link between anxiety and contentment. I strive to be content, I really do but at times, I find myself constantly thinking what next instead of focusing on the here and now.

One quote that stuck with me from this chapter was "contentment is a state of heart, not a state of affairs." Wow. You do not gather contentment from the amount of material items you surround yourself with or even the advancements at your job. While these can be great blessings from God, it does not define who I am as a person or my level of contentment in my life, relationships, etc.

For anyone who knows me, this might come as a complete and total shock [sarcasm], I am a control freak. I admit it and isn't that the first step to being able to fix the problem? I like my schedules. I like my timelines and to-do lists. While this is not always a bad thing, letting it consume you and getting your panties in a twist when something goes off schedule can cause anxiety and can lead to complaining. I don't mean it to but sometimes that train goes off the track and I do not catch myself quickly enough. However, if Paul [Philippians 4:11-13] can learn to be content with his surroundings and his life, why can't I? For a person who loves to be in control, I know it is hard to relinquish it and honestly, at this point, I feel like I am going to fail more than succeed but I hope I can take what I am learning from reading God's Word and apply it in my life. 1 Timothy 6:15 explains that God is the controller of all things, not me. This is a hard concept to grasp when you want things on your own time.

When studying this week, one of the study questions asked us to define contentment in our own words. Contentment to me is the idea and state of being happy and satisfied with what God has given you, good or bad. It is easy to praise God when good things happen in our lives but it is difficult to praise him in the storms. My prayer is to be content with what I have no matter the size or situation. In the book, a missionary listed her five steps to contentment. Among them being "never complain, never compare your lot with another's, never picture yourself in any other circumstances or someplace else, never allow yourself to wish this or that had been otherwise, and never dwell on tomorrow, those are in God's hands." I know which of these I struggle with, how about you?

Edit: I've recently started Bible Journaling :) Here is a picture of week one below:

The past few months in a quick recap...

So, a lot has happened in the past few months which have kept me from posting in my blog. Also, I do not feel like we have really done too many house updates or repairs as of late. The majority of things we have done include buying new appliances, not redecorating. Owning a house is ridiculously expensive but I'm enjoying the experiences.


First things first, we had to buy a new dryer due to our other one catching on fire and burning a few towels in the process. Thankfully, everything was fine. The dryer just got too hot and decided to char a few of our towels. Of course, these were the nice towels I had just bought a few months ago to decorate our bathroom, but it could have been worse. Seth and I had been looking into buying a new washer and dryer for quite some time but this wasn't the way we wanted to buy them. After searching and bargain shopping, we finally scored a great deal on an Electrolux front loader washer and dryer. So far, they have been great appliances. No fires, so that's a plus.

Next, our microwave died, so we needed a new microwave. This is also an appliance we had wanted to buy for quite some time. After shopping and hunting for the best deal, we settled on a Panasonic microwave, which I think is too big for our counter but my husband loves, so whatever. It does its job, so I can't complain too much.

The above purchases put a hold on a few of the household projects we wanted to begin. The list is about 15 pages long but I keep telling myself we have the next 30 years to make our house a home. However, anyone who has talked to me for five minutes knows I am not the most patient person. I'm working on it. Isn't admitting it the first step and all that jazz?

As many of you know, this winter has been crazy. I am thankful to say that our pipes and furnace all worked very well this winter. That is a definite blessing. We were unsure of how things were going to be our first winter in our a new home. Well, one one of the many snow days, my husband and I began to tackle a project that we figured would be pretty easy, paint the trim. Nope. Not in the least bit easy, it unveiled a more expensive project we have to tackle very soon. The trim in the dining room, we noticed had calk around it. My first thought was to leave it alone because I felt like they did it for a reason. However, we decided to scrape at it because surely, someone just calked it without knowing what they were doing, right? Wrong answer. the reason there was calk between the baseboard and plaster wall was due to a crack along the plaster wall that has a small gap. So instead of the painting the baseboards, we are now looking up ways to fix the plaster wall or we are going to redo the walls in the dining room. Needless to say, this project has been added to the 15 page to-do list.

Moving on into the living room. I decided, there must be something I can do it in here to decorate my home. You know, just something small that makes me feel productive on my snow day. I had already binge watched Netflix and read three books. The struggle to feel productive was real guys. I decided to decorate my mantle and my bookshelf. It was well past time to put up the rest of the Christmas decorations.

Book shelf 

We finally hung the present from my grandma! 

After trial and error, we decided this was the best placement for this beauty. 

We could not put in the entry way, the stucco has a cement wall behind it, and let's just say..there are two tiny puncture holes in my stucco now for no reason. Grrrr...you live and you learn.

With spring rapidly approaching, thank goodness, I decided this afternoon would be a perfect time to clean out my flower beds. Of course, I accidentally killed a few bulbs as I did not realize they were flowers. Cut me some slack, this is my first spring in the house! I tried to replant them but I fear they are not long for this world now. Also, I touched too many worms for this lifetime. Why are they so squishy and disgusting? Ugh. Also, the snails!! Oh my goodness, so many snails in the dirt. I had the intentions of cleaning one flower bed and then taking a nap in between church services but, the sun felt too good and it was a great stress reliever. I can always take a nap this week, spring break baby!

Before

One of the nasty snails I kept touching, I failed to capture an image of the worms....ugh.

After

After

Second flower bed, I didn't capture a good before but this is what it looked like when finished, yay.

Before

Before

After.

Hopefully I can spend my spring break planting some beautiful flowers without killing them.

Stay tuned......next Spring Break project is my office. Wish me luck :)

Brightening up the kitchen

Okay, so as you know from the previous posts, I finally got my turquoise kitchen with white cabinets. I love these colors because they are so easy to decorate! I wanted a small curtain for my kitchen window above my sink. I didn't want to pay a lot of money for one so I decided to make my own. Only one iron burn later and it is done! I don't have much $$$ in the project either so I strongly urge you to make your own if your heart desires!

Materials & costs:

Tension rode $2 - Walmart
Fabric - $3.00 - Jo Ann Fabrics, I bought clearanced fabric, of course :)
Iron on adhesive hemming tape - $3.00 with coupon at Michaels

So, as you can see, a total of $8.00 and I have a custom window curtain. The best part? I was able to pick whatever fabric I wanted and didn't have to rely on specific prints found at the store.


First, I had to measure the window so I could purchase enough fabric. Once you have measured your window, add 2-3 inches onto all the sides because you'll need to have extra fabric to hem up your sides. Cut your fabric to your desired length.

Next, fold over the top of the fabric, leave enough room for the tension rod to slide into the hole after it has been hemmed. Now, if you're like me and too lazy to get out the sewing machine for a small project, you can use iron on adhesive hemming tape. This was my first time ever using it and I loved it. You just place the tape along the inside of the folded fabric. Simple! Then you iron over the fabric, holding it for about 3 seconds before moving it to ensure the adhesive holds. I hemmed the sides first, then the bottom, then the top to ensure I had enough fabric.

As mentioned above, I have $8 invested in this project and it took about 10 minutes. However, I did burn myself when reaching across the table for my iron on adhesive hemming tape. Oops.

 

Until next time, stay classy :)


Next blog: Fall Owl Wreath

Reupholstering!

My husband and I have been looking for nice dining room furniture. We have found plenty but the problem is....we don't want to pay the high prices for it! The prices on furniture are ridiculously high. So we decided to find chairs we could refinish. We found 6 chairs are the Re-Store in Huntington. If you haven't checked out this place, you should. This is also where we found my antique typewriter desk that Seth refinished.

We found the chairs and they were in great condition, other than the hideously colored and stained fabric. The chairs are solid wood which means we can stain them later if need be. In the meantime, we decided to reupholster the chairs using fabric we found on sale at Hobby Lobby.

Our dog Polly decided to photobomb the picture.

As you can clearly see in the picture above, gross stains. 

Reupholstering the chairs was simple. We went to Hobby Lobby and picked out the perfect fabric after measuring the chairs. We then cut the fabric to fit on the chairs, leaving extra to staple onto the cushion/wood bottom. We flipped the chairs over and used a screw driver to take out the screws holding the fabric and chair cushion on. 

We didn't remove the old fabric. We left it on there; no need to waste your time pulling out staples when it isn't necessary. We wrapped the fabric around the cushion, pulling tightly before stapling it down using a staple gun.

After stapling it, we popped the cushion back into the seat frame and screwed it back together. 

The chairs and fabric match the dining room color scheme and hardwood floors perfectly. Seth is going to make a dining room table to match. We can make the table for a lot cheaper than we could buy one. Also, isn't it better to have something custom made? I think so.

In the meantime, we are purchased a table from the Re-Store in Huntington as well. Our goal is to sand it and stain it. Pictures of that project will be posted later. The table will work until we can build our own.

 

Finished project :)

The dining room is not finished yet so stay tuned!

Exploring the world of flea markets and antique shops

Over the past week or so I have been trying to pick up pieces here and there to decorate our home. I want to decorate my house but I want to do it as cheaply as possible because I am a frugal type of gal. Since my husband and I bought a huge house, I feel overwhelmed to get it all decorated. However, once I stepped back and realized I need to take it one room at a time, I discovered I felt much more comfortable with the task. Plus, it is loads of fun!

I found the following items at the flea market in Milton, WV. My friend (shout out to Jessie!) and I went flea market shopping last Friday. Unfortunately, we discovered most shops aren't open during the week :( A variety of closed shops didn't deter me from finding a few cute items for the home, however.

The first item discovered was the set of 3 copper plated canisters. These were found in one of the many primitive stores featured at the Milton Flea Market. I have been looking everywhere for adorable canisters. I have plain silver ones but I wanted something to help tie the vintage colors in my kitchen together. These look great paired with the turquoise in my kitchen!

The next item discovered was an adorable turquoise magazine rack. This was found in yet another primitive booth at the flea market. I am going to use this in the kitchen to store cook books and cooking magazines. I'm not sure where I am going to station it but as of right now, it looks cute in the corner!

The final item I found at the Milton Flea Market was this adorable "Old Glory" sign. It is made out of half of a table leaf. It has two metal stars on it that pop. We have a building out back and decided it would look nice there. When washing dishes, you can see it out of the kitchen window. Adorable.

This item, I found when perusing local antique shops in my neck of the woods. I love to find anything vintage Marshall possible. I am starting quite the collection. I was browsing in this shop and noticed a price tag that said "jug lamp." I had never seen a jug lamp before so I decided to move items out of the way and discovered a vintage Marshall lamp. SCORE! I had to have it. Of course, I haggled the price down some :) The lamp shade needs replaced; I'm thinking a kelly green lamp shade :) 

That was the end of my shopping excursion. However, I do regret not scooping this guy up when given the chance. 

I'm joking. Kind of. This would have been an excellent conversation starter and it is reminiscent of a Seinfeld episode. If you're a true fan, you'll know the exact one I am eluding to.  

After shopping, we had to have our weekly girls' craft night session. I discovered that much to my dismay, I didn't have a cute wreath to hang on my door. I made a 4th of July one but seeing as it never made it out of the trunk of my car, it never made it on to the door. Whoops. Oh well, there is always next year ;) So I decided to make a summery wreath to welcome visitors into my home. All the flowers and the cute bird came from the dollar store. I stole this wreath from Jessie so all and all, I had about $8.00 in this wreath total. I owe her $4 for the wreath so we will call it an even $12 in the wreath. Per a friend's suggestion on Facebook, I may be adding a nest for the bird. I think that would be a nice touch.

Pool and Money Pits :)

Ever heard the saying, "a pool is like a large hole in your yard that you just throw money into?" Yeah, well, it is kind of accurate. When we bought the house, we were not privy to the issues we were going to have of the pool. The pool was not properly winterized so let's just say it was gross. The previous owners had slung a tarp on it; not an actual pool cover! On top of the tarp, was water a swamp and mosquitoes galore. Our first step was to drain the nasty water. We did this with a sump pump. However, the hose to the sump pump did not want to stay in the pool so we tried to secure it with a cinder block. My mother-in-law and I are in the kitchen trying to square away the shelf liner (see previous post on my hatred of shelf liner) when I notice that I can no longer see the sump pump hose. I run outside to see that it has fallen in the pool and for at least an hour, it has been doing nothing but circulating the already disgusting water in the pool swamp. 

Okay, so now we have all of the water out of the pool, except for the small amount suggested to leave in by other smarter pool owners than ourselves. Now, we have all this NASTY, NASTY, NASTY junk on the bottom of the pool. Junk including: algae, mud, rocks, and even a wrapper or two (what?!?). How in the world do we get the bottom of the pool clean? We are told to scrub and shock the heck out of it. Okay..... So my husband gets in it and begins to scrub away. Yes, that is right! My husband, the once germaphobe gets inside this nastiness (albeit with his socks on) and begins to scrub away and start sucking the nastiness out with a Shop-Vac. The story of my mother in law and I trying to assemble the Shop-Vac is for another day. So as my husband is sucking out the nastiness of this pool swamp, he begins to see these red bugs swimming in the pool. He asks me to Google it and my brother in law discovers that they are blood larva. Now while that sounds very ominous, they were not dangerous to humans. They are related to mosquitoes but they only eat algae. Thank goodness. However, as you can see from the picture above, it does not look like they were doing a very good job.

All right. We have all most of the stuff sucked out of the pool. Now, we have to fill it. Yes, folks, that is right. Even with it looking disgusting, we now have to fill the entire pool to see if the pump works. Now, this is a huge gamble because if the pump and filter do not work, we have to replace that ($$$$$) so we were taking a giant leap of faith to see if all the mechanics of the pool worked. So we fill the pool and this is what it looked like once filled:

It looks like I went to the Ohio River, scooped it up and dumped it into a pool in my backyard. Okay, so now it is filling up. We check the pump. Good news! The pump works. However, the filter part of the pump has a plastic lid that must stay on but guess what? It's broken! Okay, not a big deal, we will replace it. For a whopping $40! A PLASTIC LID!!!! Okay. We purchased it. We think we are in business. Now we notice that there is rust along the frame where the return box is. The return box is moving away from the frame which is causing the water to leak out of the pool. All right. Now we need to fix it. 

So my husband and his uncle devise a plan to fix the rusted area. They purchase a piece of sheet metal and cut out a new hole for the return box. They secure it and voila, it is fixed. Then they use sealant to secure the area and make sure no leaks occur. Now this has all been fixed. The frame and liner are secure. We start to get a closer look at the hoses and realize they need to be replaced because the elbows and other areas are leaking. We go to Lowes for the 189th time in two days and buy the pieces needed for the repair. All that is secure. Starting to see a pattern? Oh I forgot to mention that we had to drain half the pool (yes, after filling the whole flippin' thing up) in order to pull back the pool liner and fix the rusted area! Now, we refill the pool. We bought tons of shock. We begin to shock the pool while still sucking out the nastiness. All the time we are vacuuming out the pool, we have to have new water being put into the pool. $$$$$$$$$$$$!!!! 

Within 15 minutes of putting the shock into the pool and vacuuming it out, our green, swampy water begins to turn a cloudy blue. YAY! Progress! By day two or three, I am able to put my feet in! PROGRESS again!!

Within a week, all our hard work began to pay off. It took us a total of 3 weeks to get it up and working and crystal clear but it was well worth the wait. 

Needless to say, I have been in this pool almost every day. It was worth the trouble but I am still scared to see the water bill. I hope I'm not home that day ;)

Until next time.....stay classy :)