Cure for the Common Life & Thanks

Good morning everyone.

First of all, thank you all for your kind thoughts and prayers about Hurricane Irene. As of now, she is staying well east of us and I hope she continues to do so. It would be great if she just kept off shore and kept heading east, but they are predicting her to make landfall in NC somewhere. My heart and prayers go out to all of those in the Bahamas, and other islands as she passes over them and also to those in NC who will be effected. Your comments were greatly appreciated.

One of the books I’ve read over the past few weeks is this one by Max Lucado, ‘Cure for the Common Life’. I was greatly encouraged and inspired by reading it, and highly recommend it.

We are all ‘fearfully and wonderfully made” by God and His works are marvelous. Ps. 139:14

I was pointed to another bit of scripture while reading this book "He has filled them with skill”. Each and every one of us was created with skills unique to us. What we do with them during our life is up to us. They are gifts to us. Being thankful for them and doing our best with them is a joy to God.

I love to cook and bake, have since jr. high school. It is something I truly enjoy. I also love to work with threads and have since a child. Knitting, crocheting, embroidering. I love to grow things and one of my hopes when I started gardening here at Plum Cottage, was that passersby would feel the love of God through the flowers, foliage, colors, etc.

No matter what we do, from the lowliest thing like cleaning toilets, to the highest, doing it with love and thanksgiving to the Creator of all gifts will fill our hearts, minds and lives with joy and peace.

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This morning we’re going over to Walmart to see if they have the book 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp. ~ Back home now and neither Walmart nor Target had the book. Boo hoo.

We are having a thunderstorm, and had to run inside from the car with rain and flashes and booms. Glad to be inside where it is nice and dry and cool.

It’s almost time for lunch, so I’ll close with pics of my latest finished embroidery piece and the next one I just started.

My work surface, cluttered as usual. These are just ‘some’ of the beads I am working with so far.

Oh yea, last night for supper I first marinated a large chicken breast in lime juice for several hours. Then I cut it into thick strips, beat up and egg and dipped the strips in that and then coated them with shredded coconut. I gently fried them in Light olive oil. Oh my goodness, DH and I both loved this and I’ll definitely be fixing it again. Oh, and I happened to have a jar of orange marmalade, so we had a little of that for the chicken too.

Tonight I’ll be fixing tacos, my all time favorite comfort food.

Guess that’s it for now. We’ve had lunch and I am starting to feel like a nap.

Thank you Sharon Lovejoy

What a wonderful surprise to see that I won your sweet little drawing.  I can hardly wait to read this book.  It sounds delightful, encouraging and uplifting.

For info about this book ‘The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating’ by Elizabeth Tova Bailey you can read it by clicking on the picture below.

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"Snails don't walk.
They slither and slide
Along wet pathways
Gleam and glide,
Squeezed between
The grasses green,
Polished houses shell-like gleam."
Theresa Heine

***

FlowerLady

Thank You

I want to say thank you to all of you for your kind, encouraging and uplifting comments today. They have been a blessing all day long.

Some of you told your own stories that touch my heart. We all go through different happenings in our lives and hopefully we grow through them into better people. We were not promised a perfect life.

I received a wonderful reminder of truth today that touched both DH and myself. It is so easy to forget truths when you are under fire.

Here is the wonderful verse sent from Sherry.

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For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;

but of power,

and of love,

and of a sound mind.

2Ti 1:7

***

I just found the following quote and will close with this.

Wishing you all a good night or good day wherever you are.

***

"Life is huge!

Rejoice about the sun, moon, flowers, and sky.

Rejoice about the food you have to eat.

Rejoice about the body that houses your spirit.

Rejoice about the fact that you can be

a positive force in the world around you.

Rejoice about the love that is around you.

If you want to be happy
,
commit to making your life one of rejoicing."

Author Unknown

***

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Thank you

Good evening Folks,

Hope you had a great beginning to spring, although I've read that some of you are still getting snow. Hang in there.

I want to thank all of you for your kind bday wishes. I had a lovely day spent with DH and enjoyed making sherried beef in the crockpot, and a cream cheese blueberry pie. I will post recipes in a later post.

We've been lifting some 'heavy' stuff lately, and I ended up with a pinched nerve, or whatever it is, in my right back hip area, so that last night it was miserable to sleep. But as yesterday it got progressively worse, today it has gotten progressively better. I am thankful.

I've been reading blog posts and one that touched me today was this one from Rene at Miss Gracie's House. I love her blog and I love her. She's graceful, her style is lovely and gentle and I come away feeling blessed and inspired. I can relate to needing to declutter. We all have stuff laying around or hidden away, that needs to be dealt with.

We are all humans with our frailties, we all have our ups and downs, we are all alike more than we know. None of us are perfect. We all have dreams, desires, feelings. We live different lives, and each of our lives are unique. We live in different homes, areas of the world, with different amounts of money, yet, we are all related, living our lives as best we can.

That's it for now. I'm going to go get horizontal to relax and read before sleep. Tomorrow will be a new day.

***

Give us Lord, a bit o' sun,

A bit o' work and a bit o' fun;

Give us all in the struggle and sputter

Our daily bread and a bit o' butter.

From an inn in Lancaster, England

***

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

My first Give Away

Dear Friends,

Here it is a little over two years since I started blogging, there are 120 followers, and over 3300 comments. I am a rather shy person, so did not know what to expect when I started blogging. I was timid to say the least, but just started sharing pictures and bits of our daily life.

You all have encouraged me in more ways than I can count. Your blogs have inspired me in so many ways from cooking, crafts, gardening and plain old 'living life'.

As a THANK YOU, this little give away is an embroidered piece that I just finished. The inspiration was from the book 'Embroidery for all Seasons' by Diana Lampe. I have two of her books on my wishlist and look forward to owning them. The book I have at the moment is a library book, which will be returned shortly.

I love working with thread and my first experience with it was when I was 10 years old when the lady next door to us taught me to knit. My stitches were too tight, and I also dropped a lot of them, but that is where this love started. My step grandmother taught me to crochet when I was 15. I also started embroidering around this time.

Over the years my love of working with threads has continued, even though sporadic at times. Recently I've gotten into embroidering once again and love it.

In this little piece there will be a little bit of DH too, as he is the one who showed me how to do a bouillon stitch. I was having a hard time and just couldn't get it. He has never embroidered but he does like to figure things out and asked me for a threaded needle and I gave him a piece of fabric in a hoop, and we read the directions and looked at pictures. It was while reading the directions out loud that I saw where I had made my mistake. I was taking the thread to the left instead of the right. He made a little bouillon stitch and I am happy to give him credit for teaching me this stitch. He has encouraged me many times in our life of over 40 years together for which I am eternally thankful, he is my love, my soulmate.

So, here is the deal, all you have to do is comment in this post, to be entered into the give away. I will number each comment from the first to the last, then I will use random.org as the number generator.

I will make and post a list of every commenter and attach a number. When the deadline is over I will post the list, so that you all can see it and the number you've been given, and hopefully I will get it right. DH and I will go over the list several times to make sure it is correct, but will give you all a chance to see that it is right. Then I will post the number of comments to the number generator, and someone will be the winner. Let me know how I can contact you.

For a closer view click on the picture. The overall size of this piece is 3 3/4 inches by 5 inches. The size of the embroidery is 1 3/4 inches by 3 inches.
DH made the frame from molding left over from our picture framing days.
The fabric is ecru/cream colored with flecks of darker threads here and there.

The bouillon stitch is the outer stitch of the sunflower petals. You wrap the thread around the needle so many times then pull the thread through and go into the back of the fabric. I am happy to have learned a new stitch with this project.

The deadline for entering is a week from today,
20 October 2010,
midnight Eastern Standard time.
I will post my list of numbered commenters the next day,
and on the 22, will put the number into ramdom.orgs generator.

Thank you all for visiting my blog and for your comments.
I do appreciate your time and thoughts.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

What a surprise ~ Thank you Blotanical

Good morning everyone. I want to say a big thank you to the folks at Blotanical, for all the picks for our anniversary thread. I was totally surprised and pleased to say the least. I was really surprised to hear from Stuart too as he's on his sabbatical right now, or at least I think he still is.

I've not visited Blotanical as much as I did in the past, and I need to do so again, to be inspired by all the gardeners around the world. I can't keep up with everyone though, not enough hours in the day.

Now that our weather 'should' be cooling down, I look forward to being out in the gardens more. It's been a rough summer, I don't do well in heat and humidity these days.

Anyway, thank you again for the picks and the comments.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Thank you all and good night

Just a quick note to thank all of you for your wonderful healing, well wishes. I'm going to bed to read for awhile. I just took a half of a pain pill, as the first pill has worn off. Will see how a half does. These pills definitely make one feel woozie, hopefully a good night's sleep will make me feel good as new tomorrow.

May you all have a good night and a great day tomorrow.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

True Confession

Good morning blogging Friends ~ I've been thinking about something for quite awhile now, it's about computers and blogging and how they have made changes in my life.

The good changes are the friendships made, information shared, the inspiration that abounds. Pictures have been wonderful. Pictures of gardens, individual flowers, critters, recipes, crafts, people.

The bad has been my feelings when I started viewing other gardener's colorful, flower filled gardens. Viewing lovely homes.

In the gardening dept. I had been quite content before seeing all that's out in the wide world, with my own humble little tropical/cottage gardens. Then I started feeling like mine didn't quite fill the bill, and I wanted more and more. My flower beds grew as I bought more plants, on a shoestring. I also traded seeds with other gardeners, and traded some plants with other FL gardeners as well. My work in the gardens increased.

At first, I was a tad 'green' with envy viewing all of these overflowing lovely gardens. Shame on me. Then as time has gone on, with posting pictures of what I can grow down here, and receiving all the great complements, I've been learning contentment, and happiness once again in my own little space.

This morning I went out and worked for about an hour, pulling weeds, raking up debris, laying some roofing shingle tiles as path material, feeling thankful for another day. We can't all live or garden the same, we all have different circumstances. But, we can all create beauty in our own way, in our own spaces.

I want to thank all of you for your lovely gardens and homes, and for the inspiration your pictures have been to me, in spite of the 'green' that moves over me on occasion. I've seen nice simple changes in my gardens and in our cottage because of you, and eagerly look forward to working in my gardens and in our home with each new day.

I will end this rambling post with the following with thanks to all of you.

"I've heard it said,

That people come into our lives for a reason

Bringing something we must learn"

Lyrics from For Good, Wicked the musical

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Thank you

Good morning Friends ~ I want to say once again a heartfelt thank you to all who visit my blogs, for comments left, and also for the inspiration and encouragement you all share so freely.

For my Blotanical friends I want to apologize for not visiting regularly each and every one of your blogs. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that needs doing, plus the fun, enjoyable stuff.

I just had 19 people pick my post about the St. Vincent lilac vine, but only 5 of them show up in the list, so I have no idea who they all are, but I appreciate the picks.

Blogging has opened a whole new world for me. There are lots of friendly people who are willing to share parts of their lives in whatever they are interested in, gardening, cooking, crafts, home and child care, life in general.

Today looks to be a gorgeous day the way it is starting out with sunshine and warm temps. We are supposed to have heavy rains a little later, I just hope it happens while I'm not going to and from work.

I wish you all a great week wherever you are. I know a lot of you are getting excited about spring and I love seeing all of your gardens coming to life.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Thank you Cameron

What a wonderful surprise I woke up to this morning. I woke up around 5 and couldn't go back to sleep for thinking about things I wanted to do in my gardens, so I got up. In my email box was a note from Cameron of Defining Your Garden, Home & Travel blog. She had had a scavenger hunt where we were to find answers to 12 questions in her blog and the winner would receive this book, The Perennial Care Manual

The scavenger hunt was fun, challenging and brought back memories from seeing her photos of Paris. I look forward to reading, learning, enjoying pictures and being inspired by this book, to keep on working in my little gardens.

Cameron and I first met, via the internet, in the forum Cottage Gardens.

I have been inspired over the years by the beauty and colors in Cameron's gardens. The blues and purples draw me like a magnet. Visit her blog and see pictures of her lovely gardens by clicking on her picture below. Her posts are filled with wonderful information and stories as well as pictures.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL