An Interview With God

I just watched this video called “An Interview with God”. Something that really stood out was “a person is not rich who has the most , but the one who needs the least”. That really struck home with me. Also, something to the effect of we spend so much time worrying about tomorrow that we live neither in the present nor the future. We have scaled down our life a lot since I lost my job, almost a year ago. But I have experienced how God does provide our DAILY bread.

My goal for 2012 is to live in the present moment – not to gulp down my coffee, but to sit and enjoy the smell and taste of it. To see my children as the gift they are and, when they interrupt my spinning or knitting, to stop and play with them. Too soon they won’t ask me to play or read to them or hold them. I want to take a walk and just enjoy the beauty that is around me. To look at my husband like I looked at him when I first met him. To not take forgranted that he will be here tomorrow. To enjoy the talent that God gave me to create beautiful fibers and yarns and not look at it ever as a job, or a chore. To love the Lord and respect the choice that He made to die such a horrible death for me. To not ignore Him in my day, but include Him on everything. To take care of my body and not bring disease on myself by lack of exercising and bad eathing habits. To just enjoy life and be content with what I have for the day.

We are looking at Christmas a bit differently this year.  With money very tight, our family, kids included, are coming up with alternatives to normal Christmas toys.  Yesterday, Ben decided he would like as his Santa gift, an art party.  So we are going to invite some of his friends over for an afternoon of creating art.  Gracie is so content with what she has, she isn't in that "I want" stage yet.  Although, she is really enjoying preparing for Christmas.  She and Ben decorated our tree almost entirely by themselves!

Life is good in the ETSY shop.  Lots of sales and special orders!  Ben created his first yarn.  He got my fiber scrap box out and carded up a bat and then spun it!  It's really nice. 

Isn't it pretty?  I thought he did an excellent job.  His second one, I'm actually using as a border for a scarf.  I'll post that as soon as I'm finished.  I'm using his yarn on the ends and I'm knitting with roving for the body of the scarf.  It is very interesting.  Almost looks woven.  I believe it may be a Christmas present.  Not sure yet. 

I made peanut butter pie for Thanksgiving and boy was it good!  You take peanut butter, cream cheese, cool whip and mix that all together and put into a graham cracker crust.  Then top it  with chocolate syrup.  YUM!   Here is the recipe.  It's from Aunt Bees Delightful Desserts; p.158 Miss Crump's Peanut Butter Pie:
1 cup peanut butter
8 ounces cream cheese
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons softened butter
8 ounces whipped topping, 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 9 ounce chocolate or graham cracker crust
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, optional

Blend first 6 ingredients until smooth.  Pour into pie crust.  Refrigerate overnight or until pie is cold throughout.  Garnish with peanut butter cups, if desired.  I swirled a chocolate topping over the top, or you could swirl Hersey's syrup over the top.  Either way, the bottom is what counts and boy is it yummy!

Enjoy the preparations for Christmas with your family.  May God bless you with His peace and comfort.

Kim

Decluttering and Loving It!

I spent all of last week, well between spinning special orders :) , decluttering!  We were living in total chaos - piles everywhere.  Everytime you walked down the hall, something would fall off the bookshelf.  "Mama, where are my ....?" was a daily occurence.  "Kim, do I have any clean underwear?"  Boxes of fiber filled our bedroom.  The kid's playroom was so cluttered with toys that they didn't even play in there.  I dreaded everytime I had to go into the pantry, because I had to step over and on stuff in the floor.  And if I got a can off the shelf, 2 more would fall on the floor.  I had about 47 jars of pickles I had canned from 07 that had turned to mush.  My dishwasher and table were catch all places for more piles.  YIKES!  So, last week, I don't know if it's menopause setting in, or just the good Lord chastising me for this total failure in being a keeper at home, I decided "THAT"S IT!"  I wished I had taken before and after pics, but I didn't.  We have given 3 carloads of stuff to Habitat for Humanity and thrown out 2 truckloads of trash.  Now, I am seeing the light!!!  I love it!!  I can relax, well as much as I can relax!  When Gene came home and saw the bedroom with no fiber boxes or homeschool stuff, he started running from one wall to the other - jumping and skipping around like a school boy, saying "I can walk , I can walk, I can walk!" 
I moved the kids bedroom into the playroom and got rid of a lot of the toys they don't play with anymore.  They love it!  They are spending more time in there creating and reading!  Who would have thought??  There clothes are all folded and organized and Gracie comes out every morning dressed and ready for the day! 
I made their bedroom my fiber room and homeschool storage.  That room is a mess right now, but that's the only one!  I will tackle that this week.  Then deep cleaning and we are all ready for the holidays!!  

Pantry - note floor and organization of canned goods!

Cleared top!

No clutter!

My linen closet.  It has a floor!  I haven't seen that in years!  This is a closet where you would pull something out and close the door quickly by leaning into it with all your weight until it latched!

If I can do it, you can do it!!!  And I can't begin to say how much joy and peace come with the hard work.  Word of warning:  Your home will look much worse in this process before it looks better.  Decluttering is a messy business, but so worth it.  God made us women to be keepers of our homes and that is to be taken seriously.  When we have a clean home we bring honor and our Lord and to our family. 

Take care!
Kim

Oh my gosh, it's NOVEMBER!!!

Only 51 days til Christmas!!!  Where does the time go???  I declare every year time is faster and faster.   Why is that?  When you are a child and teenager, time creeps..then BAM!  What happened?  Kids, life, busyness?  Oh well, I don't care for the speeded up version of life very much.

I am in the process of spinning dog hair for a customer.  It is so beautiful.  It's from a Huskie and, while it is short, it is making beautiful yarn.  Unlike the matted mess I had been working on and am now expecting back from the fiber mill any day now. 

Homeschooling is going great...now.  Ben and I were having some attitude issues in math, but it's amazing what 2 superhero figures and a scrabble can do to boost enthusiasm!  I was the bad guy in one corner, and Iron Man was Ben's figure in the opposite corner.  The star square in the middle was the city I was trying to take over.  Iron Man had to beat me to it, or doom and gloom.  We are working on addition and subtraction with 3 digit numbers.  Everytime he answered a problem in his workbook correctly, he got to move the number of ones.  For instance, 100 + 209 = 309, so he got to move 9.  If he missed it, I got to move 9.  If he took longer than 1 minute to answer, I got to move a square.  It was great.  He made it to the city first and I had only advanced 4 squares!  Thank the good Lord for the inspiration!

We are doing pretty great on our budget.  I would still like to cut the food cost back some more.  I spent 64 last week and 46 this week.  I would like to make it to 25 or 30/week.  If I would sit down and do a plan, that would probably do the trick!  I need to get back into that. 

Next week, after I get my special orders done, is going to be dedicated to decluttering in a major way!  I'm going to document our progress.  We have wayyyyyyyy to much stuff!  Especially toys and kid's clothes.  Yikes!

Well, back to spinning!  Take care!

Kim