Little Special Things

Good morning my sweet friend! 

What a glorious day it is today!  The sun is finally out!  It was only sunny 3 days out of the first 29 for the month of December here, and the bright sunshine is a welcome sight today.

Today I want to share with you a couple of our Little Special Things :).  Nearly every family, I would hope, has little things that sort of bind them.  I find more and more that these tiny little acts of kindness and love are like super glue--just a little dot of time but binds the family tightly together :)

I must confess:  I am not a perfect wife or mother :).  MANY is the morning that TWS needed a shirt or socks, and I prayed down the hallway to see if I, by chance, happened to wash some without realizing it (and thank the Lord, I always found some for him!).  The children have an absentminded professor for a mom so, while sometimes our days are awesome and filled with deep geeky/spiritual/etc thoughts and fun, sometimes I forget that it is youth group night or to put money under their pillow for teeth (nothing like having your 6 year old come in and say "Mom, you forgot the money under my pillow...again." Yikes!)

Of course these are things that I work on, but thank the Good Lord, He has provided ideas for "Little Special Things"--those little tiny habits and traditions that seem, on the surface, to be nothing much at all on my end, but carry a surprising amount of weight in the minds and hearts of my family.   

For example, I remember when I was young and would go to my grandmother's house.  She kept a spare freezer right inside from the carport.  In there went typical things like extra pecans and vegetables, but ALSO there was always chocolate of some sort.  Her freezer was always a place of hidden treasure and happiness.

So I decided that I, too, wanted to do that when we moved back down south (with a carport and a place to put a spare freezer inside the house!).  I buy packs of regular Hershey bars and tuck them into the door of the freezer.

You know what the BEST part of this is (besides 24-7 access to chocolate hee hee! )?  Precious has added to the "event" of getting chocolate from the freezer by breaking each bar into fourths and offering a piece to all of us.  I have gotten into the habit of that too, and find it is a sweet, kind, gentle way of bonding the family.  So a couple of times a week, generally at about 2 or 3 pm when we are all a little slumpy, one of us will go to the freezer, and pass out a little bit of candy to us all.

Another Little Special Thing is our Cake Plate Treats.  This actually stems from two things:  a)I have a glass covered cake plate with no extra storage in my kitchen in which to tuck it away and b)Empty cake plates sitting on the table look so .....sad.  Depressing.  Stingy, even.  I mean, you KNOW that at some point there was a cake or something in there.  And you know that, hopefully, sometime there will be a cake again, but at that moment you missed it and just look at a cold, empty piece of glass.

So I decided to start making sure there is something nice under that dome.  Sometimes it is blueberry muffins.  Sometimes a cake.  Sometimes I just whip up a bag mix of cookies.  Rarely is it anything too involved.  My only rule is that I do not make any more Cake Plate Treats until the cake plate is cleaned :)  Which brings me to the realization of how much and how quickly my family started seeing this as a "thing" for our family....one day The Wonder Sweetie made a big show of play-pouting and looking at the empty cake plate.  I reminded him that it needs to be washed first, so he started leaving notes for Precious to remember to clean the cake plate :)

What about you?  Are there any little special things that you do for your family or friends or even strangers?  Any bits of God-love that make their way into your habits and life?  I would love to hear about them!

Wheat Planting Day!

Hello again my darling friend!

Technology is a blessing and sometimes a huge frustration for me.  After months of not being able to post photos with this blog (and bearing false witness against google!), I have discovered that it was actually Internet Explorer that was being difficult.  So I downloaded a new browser and am excited that I can now seamlessly add in photos to my blog posts again.  Forgive if I am a bit "posty" for the next weeks :)

I am thankful that I can plant winter wheat here!  In fact, the winters do not seem to be a time of "cold and dead" but rather "cool and still busy"!

HEADY with our dried corn success of the past summer, we have decided to plant winter wheat in a test plot.  I had ordered a ton of awesome seed from Canada but received only an empty envelope with a note from customs.  I contacted the person I had ordered the wheat from and he said he had never had trouble, but refunded my money.  

I did manage to get some wheat from Baker Creek (which we love anyway), plus some local wheat at our neighborhood feed and seed (which is what we used for our test plot).  I am saving the "good" wheat until spring planting.

Our Test Plot

 Raking In The Seed

 The Wheat

Update 29 December:  We looked, STRAINED, to see the wheat and thought we might, possibly, not sure, but might have some sprouts.  Or the grass and weeds are just growing.  Stay tuned :)

Winter at Lemonrock And A Big Decision

Good evening my sweet friend :)

I hope Christmas was blessed for you!  Ours was incredibly quiet, which we often prefer.  

Now that the holiday is past, though, I am left at a bit of loose ends of what to do next (DON'T say laundry!).  The ground is too wet to till (almost 3 inches just from this past rain!), it is not time to prune, we already did the dormant spray (by the by, if you want a copy of our schedule for pruning, fertilizing, etc various trees, just let us know), etc.

One project I have been working on is choosing our meat and egg chickens.  We have our "show chickens", our Japanese Black Tailed Whites, with two separate brooders of chicks that hatched since the day before Thanksgiving.  

However, I have been wanting to grow our own meat.  We don't use a LOT of eggs, but we eat a huge amount of chicken--in fact it is our main meat (at least for me).

We are going to build another, larger coop and runs that will house our more-meat chickens and our more egg layers (both being dual purpose).  For our eggies, we are planning on orpingtons.  For our meaties, we have narrowed it down to 3 breeds:  Naked Neck Turkens, Langshans, and Sulmtalers.  We were going to go with Jersey Giants, but realized that waiting 1.5-2 years for them to get to maturity was going to be ENTIRELY too long :).

So if you have a vote of the three, please let me know :)  We have already discarded most other of the more popular breeds (mostly because we want calm roos since we are going to be raising a lot of meat).  BUT I am glad to hear what you have to say!

Baby Chicks!!

Good morning my sweet, wonderful friend!  I hope this finds you having a pleasant day :)


I wanted to share a photo or two of our hatchlings.  We have Japanese Black Tailed White Bantams named Myka, Victoria, Chandler, and Elise.  One of the three girls (we are not sure who) laid for us many eggs (about 13?).  We put them in our Brinsea incubator (excellent purchase, btw!  Worth every penny.), and two never developed (which happens), two developed but did not hatch (which happens with this type of chicken--the gene that causes the desired short legs in this bantam is also a fatal flaw if the chick has two short legged genes.  They get almost to hatch and die in the shell), and one chick died several days after hatching.


That leaves us with 8 adorable, impertinent fluff balls :).  We moved them from the incubator to a small cardboard brooder (with another Brinsea product--a SAFE, gentle heater), but then they outgrew that so we moved them into the guest bath tub.

They are getting their "big boy feathers" (though some of them are girls, we just call it "big boy" :) ) on their wings and their little tails.  The black on their heads is sharpie marks so we can tell them apart :)

We have another clutch of 8 eggs in the incubator and hopefully will have a few more chicks in about a week or so.  Then we will be done with the eggs for this year :)

An Encouragement

My darling friend,

I have been neglecting you here, haven't I?  I have not meant to.  I have been spending much time on facebook and pinterest and too little time here.  I have even started a paper journal with the thoughts that maybe any grandchildren will enjoy reading about their grandma.  Or perhaps it will just find its way into some garage sale and be picked up by someone who likes to read old writing as I do.  I have a box of letters from a soldier to his mom that TWS bought for me.  I have not even read most of them, but I am touched by them deeply, and there is a part of me, silly perhaps, that values the pen and ink love of a son to his mother and feels that it needs to be kept safe.


I had neglected the blog for the reason I always neglect my blog--I wonder if it is doing any good in the world, if it is what the Lord wants from me, if it is a waste of time or not.  Do people REALLY want to know how I built a crawfish trap or how I yearn for the restoration of relationships or how the Lord is guiding me to better-than-I-am?





This evening, though, TWS called me into my office (which is his office, the aviary, the craft room, the orchid house, and now the indoor garden for trees too tender for winter as well) and had me read a note from an aunt of his (and mine by marriage).  We might have met a few times tops, but her words about my blog were so sweet and so kind and so tender and encouraging, that it made me think that I should not be so quick to bail.  Oh I am not some oracle or sage (or rosemary or thyme--ugh, sorry about that :D), but maybe it is ok if I write, if I bare my soul like the overturned soil in our garden, working in deep the amendments of the Word of God, the land He has given, my sweet family and friends, the sorrows and joys and daily life of someone as small as I.  Maybe something good will grow.  Maybe the fruit is bitter to some, but maybe it is sweet to others and nourishing.
Maybe it is ok that I am not the best photographer with Pinterest worthy photos :)  I am not the best cook.  I am not the best farmer.  I am not the best gardener.  But I am honest, here, with you, and maybe that is enough. :)

Chicken Coop Of My Dreams

My sweet friend, good morning!!



TWS loves chickens. He has a particular soft spot for Japanese Black Tailed White bantams.  When we returned from Alaska, I wanted to make getting him some chickens at the top of the list of things to do--he works so hard for us, is such a good husband and father, and has been through enough that I wanted him to be able to have his chickens as soon as possible.  Of course we had some infrastructure we had to do when we moved to our little piece of paradise first, but this spring I urged him to start thinking of a small coop.  We are planning to build a much larger coop to house meat and egg layers, as well as what I call his "show chickens", but that requires more time and money than we have at the moment.  I didn't want him not to have his chickens until we could build a large coop, so I encouraged him to build a small coop beside the barn.  Of course the little coop that we had envisioned became much more complex than we had originally thought, but our motto is "If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing"--and his craftsmanship shows that.  So late this spring we started building our little coop.



We finally got our chicken coop done just as summer ends.  It was a labor of love and took all summer but I think it turned out wonderfully.  TWS engineered it.  We ladies got to put our decorating ideas to work.  All four of us (but mostly TWS) built it. 



Every part of this coop was built with three things in mind:  health and enjoyment for the chickens, ease of use for us, and cost savings.  We could have built a coop out of scrap wood, but we wanted it to last for many, many years.  Additionally, I wanted it to add visual appeal to the land.  Plus a lot of choices we made look frivolous but have specific purposes (for example, painting the wood obviously allows it to last longer). We scrounged and scavenged what we could.  We built from scratch, looked for bargains, visited the ReSale Store, etc.  



Today, TWS and DD are returning from picking up the chickens!  Let me give you a tour before the new tenants move in :)

The Outside of the Coop.  The cupola is functional--it has a bathroom vent in it to reduce the moisture in the coop and promote air flow.

There is a little stoop and a bed that is filled with chard, lettuce, herbs for us or for the chickens :)

(Because the ladies need a place to get fan mail :) )

To the right of the coop photo above, you can see the gate that we can use to enter the back, enclosed area that you are now in....

 There are two separate runs that the chickens can use.  This allows the grass to regrow in one run that we keep closed off whilst the chickens can be in the other run.  That light green strip of grass is the "chicken lettuce" we planted for fun :)

 To your immediate left from entering the gate, you see the back of the coop, the dust bath pan, the feeder that TWS designed and built, and a place for them to be out from the elements.  You can also see the gates to each separate run to your right and the back of the coop to your left.  The ceiling here and on the front porch is painted blue to discourage wasps and dirt daubers from building nests.  It is a Southern tradition.

A close up of the dust bath pan and the feeder.  

The larger opening you see is the vent to promote air flow inside the coop.  In the winter there is an insulated panel that goes in there to keep the heat in. The smaller opening is an automatic door that opens in the light and closes when the sun sets.  There are also motion sensor lights in case anything gets in.  We worked hard to make sure that the chickens were safe, including sinking wire deep into the ground, putting a concrete floor inside the coop, completely enclosing everywhere the chickens can go in wire or net to keep the hawks and owls out, etc.

 This is a view from the other side of the coop.  The coop abuts the garden, and I fully expect a bit of snitching of the beans we plant on the shared wall, but that is ok...we are good about sharing :)

A closer look at the larger of the two runs.  You can see the several different types of wire and netting we used to discourage predators.  The little outlined hatch at the bottom of the coop is the clean out.  We can open that hatch and just sweep the entire contents of the coop out of there to make cleaning easier.  

Speaking of inside the coop, let's go look!

This is the view as soon as you enter the coop.  This is the work area for us folk.  It is a bit of a tight squeeze :).  To the right is the work table.  This is one of the fabulous deals we were able to find.  Lowes was getting rid of a display of Corian countertops.  TWS was able to buy all the counter pieces for a song.  This provided the counters for the coop AND provided an excellent counter and sink combo for my catfish cleaning station (which is our next project).

On the right are the nesting boxes.  The open from the back for easy egg removal and cleaning.

 This is an antique egg scale that TWS got me.  The basket, though, melts my heart.  TWS is a practical, no fuss kind of guy.  Easy going and loooowwww key.  But he just couldn't resist ordering himself a proper egg basket <3  Too sweet!

This wall is immediately on your right in the work area.  There is a pegboard for implements, the candler, etc.  He can keep an eye on how hot or cold the coop gets as that thermometer registers highs and lows.  The chalkboard (upon which he wrote "Welcome Home" <heart melts>) is for keeping track of medications, notes, etc.

Under the table is storage for grit, feed, medications, etc.  All organized and orderly (that would be his doing)

Awww!  Even tough military guys have little tiny tender places tucked here and there.  What a treasure when you discover one!

These are the nest boxes.  He designed them, again, for ease of use and chicken comfort.  He used a long "leaf" artificial turf to keep the chickens comfy and to make it easy to clean.  The boxes and the bottom of the coop itself are lined in a material that is slick like plastic but has no off-gassing of chemicals.

As you stand in the doorway, the door to the coop itself is on your immediate left.  It only opens inward.  The waterer is made out of a water cooler from Lowes and a special attachment that fits the spigot for the chickens to drink from.  This will keep their water clean.

Above is a closer picture of the waterer.  The red nipples encourage pecking so the chickens can find the water.  It is also easy to clean.  This is inside the coop and I am getting ahead of myself :)

Let's go inside!

Through the coop door. Yep, that is what it looks like.....

A chandelier!!!  Ok, I admit that this was entirely my doing.  I just felt that The Ladies needed something pretty (I adore chandeliers and would have them all over my house, but the right sized ones for our house are pricier.  This was a tiny little powder room chandelier on sale from Overstock--I couldn't refuse.)

Here is the roost.  You may have noticed the mahogany walls.  No, we are not pretentious about the chickens :).  Actually this was the cheapest thin plywood we could find!  It just happened to have this wonderful, beautiful mahogany top ply.  I wish you could see it in person--it shines like satin ribbons.

This is the view above the nest boxes.  These are taller ceilings than many coops, but it was cheaper and easier to just make the coop the height of the plywood.  No waste, no cutting.  This is what I mean about looking like we are spending money when we really were saving it :)

Ok, besides the chandelier, this is my favorite part!  Curtains on nest boxes serve some extremely important health, safety, and comfort functions.  They make the chickens feel secure.  They both encourage brooding (if the chicken lays) and discourages brooding from non-laying chickens (who can't see the brooding chicken).  It helps prevent cannibalization of the eggs, and (TMI warning!) it keeps other chickens from pecking at the red cloaca of the laying hen which could could seriously injure or kill her.

But why just tack up burlap (which is stringy and I am not sure is healthy) when I can scavenge for incredible deals on vintage linens and use those instead? :)

On the wall to the left of the nesting boxes is the back wall.  Here you can see a better picture of the vent which, again, has an insulated insert for winter.  To the left of that is the automatic door, and you can see the white smooth lining of the bottom of the walls so we can just hose out the coop.

This is the clean out panel right under the roost.

This is the inside feeder right under the window.  We got an incredible deal on the window!

And we are back at the door of the coop!

I hope you enjoyed the tour!  

Roasted Watermelon Seeds

Good morning my lovely friend!


Today's farm experiment:  Roasted Watermelon Seeds


I was cutting up a watermelon yesterday for the freezer for out-of-season smoothies.  I save the red part AND the white part of the rind, which gives bulk to smoothies and is flavored by whatever juice or fruit I add.  I hate that I do not have something to do with all the seeds and the hard dark rind, so I googled what to do with watermelon seeds and got this recipe.  Apparently watermelon seeds are very high in minerals, protein, and good fats.


Generally I buy seedless watermelons for this, but since we have grown several of our own seeded watermelons this year, I needed to find a way to remove the seeds.  I found a great hack for how to cut the watermelon that leaves the heart and flesh intact, and makes it easy to scrape the mushy seed flesh away.


Last night I rinsed the seeds and put them in my dehydrator to dry for a couple of hours on the lowest setting.


This morning I tossed the seeds with a bit of Olive Oil and sprinkled with kosher salt and baked them at 350 (the exact recipe is 1/2 cup seeds, 1/4 teaspoon of olive oil and 1/4 tsp of salt).  It was supposed to take about 10-15 minutes, but I could not hear the timer when it went off, so it was more like 20 minutes.


The result?  They were excellent but a little hard to eat. :)  I tried eating the husk and all, but then realized they were supposed to be eaten more like sunflower seeds--crack the hull with your teeth, evict the kernel, then spit out the hull.  The kernel tastes wonderful, but I really want a better way to remove the kernel from the hull without mouthing it.  On the other hand, just like any other seed or nut, roasted watermelon kernels are a bit higher in fat than a snack I want to eat lots of, so having to crack each seed with my teeth does slow down the consumption rate enough that I get satiated before I eat too many.

There is another process of roasting them in a pan which might yield a softer (or more brittle, which would be helpful) shell.  I might have to try that next.

Spring at Lemonrock Farm

Good morning my dear friend!!

I am sitting outside this morning on the screen porch.  It is finally warm enough to do so...at least for a few days :)

Spring is here and that means busy, busy, busy!  We have cleaned out the greenhouse and prepared it to start this year's seeds.  We are a little behind, but that's ok :)

Our fruit trees are (for the most part) starting to bloom and we have started a spraying and fertilizing cycle.  Last year we had a lot of bug and some disease damage.  This year I hope to avoid most, if not all, of that nonsense and have a decent tiny harvest.  Most of the trees are not big enough to produce much, and I would really like them to focus more on being vigorous for this year, but if I happened to get a peach or two, I would not mind :).

Speaking of which, it looks like a few trees have not made it.  Our winter was brutal this year according to locals.  Some of our trees were a bit weak going into it and seemed to have succumbed.  This morning I will be digging out those trees and getting them ready to take back to the stores they came from.  Most stores are good about a one year guarantee, so we will exchange those for some others.  I need another cherry tree to cross pollinate with the black tartarian cherry I have.  I would also like to get more peach and nectarine trees.  I have pretty much decided that apricots are too fussy and will not buy another one.  We have one that seems to be trying not to die, so of course he can stay, but we will not buy more.

Our apples and pears look wonderful!  The asian pears make me so happy because they are large trees and it makes me feel good to have to look UP to a tree :).

Peach tree blooms.  I think this one is Belle of Georgia

Plum tree in bloom.  Bradford pears are in the distance.  They are GORGEOUS in the spring and everyone has them but they smell very unpleasant if you get close to them!

We have a few new projects going on this spring.  We will be planting bamboo.  There is a bamboo farm not far from here that has wonderful specimens.  I have chosen 4 typesK  arrow (for making arrows and plant stakes with), water bamboo (because it tolerates wet), moso (a towering bamboo that has gorgeous canes and is edible and used for making furniture and flooring), and sweetshoot (which is the best to eat for shoots).  We will start slowly as these are pretty pricey, but are making a plan to definitely harvest shoots for our consumption and perhaps to sell at the farmer's market.

We also will be stocking one of the ponds with....CRAWDADS!!!  This has me so tickled, I cannot even tell you!  The pond is pretty mucky and vegetative and not that fun to fish.  I want to work WITH what we have, be it mucky pond or swamp ground, and crawdads will fit the bill perfectly.  I even already have one client lined up who will buy them from me! :)

Speaking of dealing with swampy ground, we are going to plant mayhaw trees!  They are very wet-tolerant, are not very well known here, and mayhaws make the most wonderful jelly ever!  I could very easily see us going into mayhaw production if these first trees do well.

Our farm is all about diversification.  If we have a late damaging frost so that the peach and plum trees won't produce, then we have muscadines and grapes to fall back on.  If there is a virus that attacks the grapes, we have black and blueberries to fall back on.  If we have a bad season for all plants, we have fish and crawdads to fall back on.  Lots of corners and niches that we want to explore so that our farm is well rounded and resilient.

I have not even begun to talk about my strawberries (which have returned and look wonderful!) and my asparagus (which has not returned yet lol) or my ten new rose bushes!  Perhaps soon, my sweet friend, we can chat about those :)

Have a blessed day dear one!

Forgiveness and Love

My sweet, dear friend!

I have been thinking about you :)  I hope you have been doing well!

I wanted to share with you something that the Lord taught me (again!) today regarding forgiveness and love. :)

You see, I do not have many people that I quarrel with.  I am an intense person, but I am pretty laid back in terms of holding grudges or being angry.  I have a quick temper, but a slow fuse if that makes sense.  I get irritated quickly, but I do not get ANGRY at people quickly.  And when I do, it normally fades into hurt feelings instead of anger.  So generally the concept of "forgiveness" does not come up a whole lot, to be honest.

However, there are a few souls in my life with whom forgiveness is the word that I must bind upon the relationship.  I do not want to get into details, but suffice to say that there is deeply wounded feelings (I am sure on both sides).  I know their heart is hurting, and I know mine is too.  I know that I have tried to repair the damage I have caused, and I know they are still to angry to hear it.  I know that I have to be ready for them to repair the damage they have caused, and that I must ALWAYS be ready, at any moment, to hear and forgive them.

That really, I do not think, is going to be too difficult.  The Lord made me to be happy with people who are nice to me.  Apologies go very far with me, perhaps because I have made my share of mess ups or maybe because staying angry in the face of an apology is spiritually dangerous and damaging, or maybe because I just don't have the energy to nurse a grudge in the face of a proffered bandaid.

So I don't get truly angry at people easily, and I generally readily accept apologies and just want everything ok, but what DOES get to me, my weak spot, is......silence.  That period of time, perhaps years of time, between war and truce, between battle and healing, between sin and forgiveness.  It is excruciating to me.  I either want everything hashed out in battle or resolved in peace talks.  The heavy, oppressive days, months, or years of silence when eggshells cover the ground are horrible.

And the dumb part of it is that other people seem to have no problem during this time.  Some of us enjoy the silent treatment, the nursing of wounds in the dark and secret, of completely ignoring the existence of the person who hurt or angered us.  Some of us  are fine with knowing there are people out there that we are not talking to.

But that is not me.  I hate drama.  Even silent drama, like a silent poison, spreads through my days and imagination.  It is during this time that I, still on guard and waiting for a sign for either war or peace, will imagine conversations in my head.  I will assume I know what the other person is thinking.

TWS says they are not thinking about me at all.  They simply do not want us in their lives.  I am actually ok with that!  I just want the official declaration, so to speak :)  I want to be told frankly:  "We are severing ties with you.".  While I would hate that, at least I would stop hoping for reconciliation OR bracing for the next salvo.  I would simply nod and move on.  I have a full circle of good people, I do not have need for others who do not want to be part of my life BUT I also love people and want to welcome everyone who does want to be part of my life.  Those who turn their backs at the fringes--staying just in sight enough to remind me that they are not talking to me--hurt and disrupt my happy little world lolol.

However, the Lord uses these pillars of people, just a few of them, to make me practice ongoing, unappreciated forgiveness.  As He forgave people even as they were celebrating His death, we, too, must forgive even when our enemies (ohhh I hate to use that word!) are celebrating our trials.  We must forgive even when those we love do not love us back.  We must forgive when our enemies (ugh!) show us their disproval by not supporting those whom we love who are innocent--children, family, friends.

I will be honest.  I want to list the blame, the reasons I have to be upset.  In some cases I have the "right" to be upset because either the "sin balance" is in my favor or I had not sinned at all, and this is just a personal thing on their part.

I go through bouts of steeling my heart toward people.  Then the Lord makes me take down each and every brick.  It is not about them.  It is not about me.  It is about Him and His work which cannot flow through our hearts if we have walled them off.  Yesterday I made a wall in my heart, in my mind.  Today, the Lord had me tear it down--every brick.

So yes, even when we know it is going to hurt to remain soft to every insult or slight or attack, soft we must remain, pouring out love where they pour out anger and hurt.  We must offer them cool cups of water when they offer us cups of verbal or nonverbal poison.  We must fill the void of their silence with prayers for them.  We must pray for them, earnestly and whole heartedly, for the Lord to soothe their wounds, to soften their hearts, to turn their hearts to Him....and then hopefully to us.

Seeing Old Blessings with New Eyes.

Do you ever get so overwhelmed by the incredibleness of the blessings that the Lord has shown to you that you just break down and weep?

I will be honest, I am not a weeper.  I cry when I am frustrated or angry (which bugs me to no end!); I cry when I am hurt.  But I am very rarely so overwhelmed with a wave of gratitude that I sob.  I see people in church who are moved to open, streaming tears and, honestly, have felt a little guilty that I did not feel whatever it was that they were feeling that made them break down in joy.  I have felt the exultation of the Lord in church many times, I have felt conviction and forgiven in church, I have felt peace and happiness in church pretty much every time we go, but rarely have I had such realization of a blessing that I could not contain it.

This morning, as I was folding laundry, of all things, I was talking to the Lord (me doing most of the talking :) ).  Suddenly I realized the magnitude of some blessings He had given me, and my heart was so overcome by the kindness and mercy that tears were the only response.  Not a tiny cute tear to dab daintily in the corner of an eye, but pouring, streaming, choking, unabashed tears of a person who just realized they were healed from illness and wounds they thought they would never be healed from.  They were the tears of a parent whose lost child has been found.   They were the tears of a soldier holding his new child for the first time after returning home.  They were the tears of reprieve, of a clear medical test, of forgiveness received, of finally being safe and out of danger.

The funny/tragic thing is that these blessings that had moved me to tears today were blessings I have had for a long time.  I received no news today that would change my life forever.  The Lord simply opened my eyes, stilled my mind, long enough for me to truly see.  Even now, when I let that little door of my heart be opened, I am blinking back tears.

How I could have spent so long being thankful but not THIS thankful, THIS aware, I have no idea.  Chalk it up to life, to being jaded or expectant or busy or foolish or distracted....I don't know.  All I know is that today I am so thankful to the Lord that I do not even know what to say to Him.  I am so overwhelmed that I do not know how to react but to tell you about His goodness.  All I know is that I am SO terribly sorry that I have not praised Him as much as I could have for what He has done.  My gratitude would have been pitiful compared to the blessings, but I could have tried harder :).  I wonder what other overwhelming, incredible blessings that He has given me that I have taken for granted?  The thought both troubles me and heartens me.  I am troubled that I do not/have not/can not see all that He has done for me, but I am heartened and excited that He might break my heart open just a little bit more so that I may fully embrace His blessings and know His love for me, His unmerited, undeserved love that He pours out on ALLLLLL of His babies.

So today, my dear friend, look at Him.  Ask Him to show you how much He has blessed you and be ready to open your mind and heart and spirit to it.  So often we get bogged down in the roughness of the bark of the trees that we do not see the incredible, magnificent, soul soothing, heart breaking, body strengthening, spirit nurturing forest of our life that He made specifically for each one of us.

Bread Baking Station

Beautiful One!

Today has been a day of blogging, I tell you what!  I type a little, cook a little, take a few photos, type some more, cook some more.  It has been a busy and productive morning :)

I feel so much better being productive, don't you?  I do not think work is a four letter word...but I think Lazy is (and I have indulged way too much laziness in myself!).

Anyway, back to today :)  I am making some bread today and thought I might introduce you to my bread baking station!!!  I am so incredibly tickled about how beautifully it turned out :)

New Projects!

My darling friend!  How are you this morning?

I have had a wonderful nap (see earlier post :) ), and am now (almost) ready to get this party started!

I am bubbling with ideas of things I want to learn and do!  I am praying that the Lord will stop me from any foolish wastes of time, but I am not making myself nervous waiting for Him to actually slip me His schedule for my day.  :D

That being said, let's run down some of the things I am pondering and you can tell me which you like!

First of all, cheesemaking.  I would love to start making my own mozzarella cheese from time to time.  I may not become a "cheese maker" but I would love to have the skill.  I ADORE planting little seeds of capability in myself!  I might make these seeds grow, like the bread baking that, if I do say, I am fairly decent at.  Or I might sprout them but let them lay dormant (like soap making) until I need them again.  Spending a weekend trying a new skill makes it so much easier for me to take up that skill if I need it in years to come.  I think I will try a batch of cheese for instant gratification that uses vinegar instead of rennet.  In the meantime, I will order some rennet and citric acid to make mozzarella. 

Secondly, I want to redo the screened porch.  It is sort of.....brown.  Like flat brown paint with a weary off white ceiling.  I made the mistake of buying some curtains that I thought would make it look updated but actually just made it MORE dated!  The curtains are fine, but the valances are sort of scalloped and look very grandma-ish.

Now, I love grandma houses!  Don't get me wrong!  I just am not a grandma yet and am looking for something a little different. :)

My plan is to paint the supports of the screen and the ceiling bright white.  I want to paint the floor a happy, bright grey.  I am kicking around what color to paint the wicker--either white or black, I think.  Probably white.  Summers get hot here (at least that is what the rumor is...last summer was very cool! lol), so I want the screened porch airy with teal accents.  I plan to take the ruffled valances and put them at the end of the curtains as a)that will look better and b)the curtains don't reach the floor!

TWS has also offered to put us in a summer kitchen in the screened porch because my stove will not support the pots for canning!  I am designing the screen porch like a little studio apartment with an eat in "kitchen" with stove and running water.

This is where the kitchen will go......TWS can link the water and drainage right into the pipes that feed the kitchen on the other side of the wall. 

 

(that folding door is going to be painted and something nifty done with the inserts)

Do you see where the Louisiana basket is on the wall?  I am thinking about putting the daybed perpendicular to that wall.  I can't put it against one of the screen walls or people will get wet.  I like the idea of using the back side of the bed to delineate where the kitchen stops.

My other choice is to put the daybed towards the end of the room where the table and chairs are now.  I can use that as a seating area, with the bed having its back to the table and chairs which will go....

 

....a little further out from the swing.  I would like to keep the swing--it is fun :)  But we will have to see.  I might move this swing onto the front porch with the other swing that is there so everyone has a swing to sit on :)

If you go to my pinterest board (if you are interested) you can see the look I am going for.  I tried to post the pics here but that would have taken more time than I was willing to spend today--I wanted to get this posted for you :)

Here is the link to my screened porch kitchen board:  http://www.pinterest.com/atropine/screened-porch-kitchen/

It is going to have to warm up for us to do much though--it is too cold to paint.

Do you have any big ideas happening?  Any pinterest-y stuff to get trying?  Let me know! :)