Sunday Meanderings

Photo courtesy of Microsoft clipart


FOOD FOR THOUGHT - A DEVOTIONAL

KINDNESS IN ACTION

Yes, indeed, it is good when you truly obey
our Lord's command found in the Scriptures:
"Love your neighbor as yourself."

~~ James 2:8 NLT ~~

As believers in Christ, we are commanded to treat others as we wish to be treated. This commandment is, indeed, the golden rule for Christians of every generation.

Kindness is a choice. Sometimes, when we feel happy or prosperous, we find it easy to be kind. Other times, when we are discouraged or tired, we can scarcely summon the energy to utter a single kind word. But God's commandment is clear: we must observe the golden rule "in everything." God intends that we make the conscious choice to treat others with kindness and respect, no matter our circumstances, no matter our emotions. Kindness, therefore, is a choice that we, as Christians, must make many times each day.

When we weave the thread of kindness into the very fabric of our lives, we give a priceless gift to others, and we give glory to the One who gave His life for us. As believers, we must do no less.

A Woman of Prayer - 365 Daily Devotionals, Freeman-Smith, LLC, Publisher


THE WEEK IN REVIEW

This past week was, by my standards, a pretty quiet week. I spent most of the week sewing things from the funky monkey fabric my sister Bev sent me. I loved all the suggestions you gave me for how to use this two and a half yards of fabric and my favorite was the pj bottoms. I chose to use it to make things for a sock monkey baby gift basket for my shoppe. I'm not quite done but will be soon. It takes a long time to make things by hand!

Using it for something for the shop seemed smarter, right now, than making myself a pair of pj bottoms. That fabric has endless possibilities when you're in the monkey business. LOL

I also spent some time on the web searching for fabric and found not only this exact design, but several others I'm pretty excited about. But it all has to happen in small increments. I wish I had unlimited resources and could just shop like crazy, but the whole reason I opened the shoppe was, in fact, that I don't have unlimited resources. :-)

Speaking of the shoppe, Susie is working on a redesign for me. We've decided that although I really wanted to keep it simple and personal, more like a blog, the blog and post format isn't very user friendly and I've discovered it's not easy to work in that format. So she's going for a cleaner shopping format. I'd like it set up so that everything I'm offering is shown on the front page with photos that link to specific information on each item and ordering information.

And speaking of making things for the shoppe, I'll give you three guesses what I'm making next.

There's a BIG clue in this photo. LOL
I'll be working on these for the next couple of weeks.


Remember week before last when I panicked because I thought the accessory kit was missing from the new sewing machine my Mom bought me? I thought I'd show you why I was completely clueless. Here's my new machine (which I love - a lot). If you're familiar with sewing machines, you're probably looking at that and thinking, "Well, it's as obvious as can be." I tried that. And it wouldn't budge.


Here's the cleverly disguised secret accessory compartment and yes, the first thing I did was try to open that, but it was taped shut and I didn't notice the tape. When it wouldn't budge, I thought, "Well, this machine doesn't have a little storage place for all the different feet and machine needles and stuff." As soon as I discovered the tape and removed it, it popped right open. Good grief.

One more word about the shoppe. This is something that shocked me. A blogger in Wales emailed me and asked me if I knew how much the shipping would be to ship a sock monkey to her. OK, I know the sock monkey weighs 14 ounces. But I didn't have a clue, so I called the postal service. $25. $25 to ship a sock monkey to Wales!!! I simply couldn't believe that. It made me sad to have to tell her that. But she came up with a great plan. She has some friends living in the states who may be going to visit her soon. If so, I can ship the monkey to them for about $5 and they can take it to her.

I really hope it works out for her because I have a couple of monkeys left and one of them has a distinctively British accent. All those monkeys and I became very close a couple of weeks ago and yes, they talk to me. :-)

Personally, I think postal rates are about as much like gas prices as they can be. Ridiculous. And that's coming from the daughter of a father who is retired from the postal service and a mother who worked at the post office for years and years before she became a nurse. Seriously, I think it would be cheaper to send the monkey on a cruise to Wales. Don't you?


IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Rob and I bought our HP computer setup in 2004. Shortly thereafter, we bought our HP digital camera and Photosmart printer. We have a really nice HP system set up in this office. And it's slowing waaaaaaay down. Which is very scary. Because we all know computers are manufactured with a built-in death announcement. They're only meant to last so long before you're forced to upgrade.

Meantime, all my photos (seriously, thousands) are stored in this computer. (I'm sure that has something to do with why it's slowing down.) I think my son-in-law Andy is going to come down here and see if he can save all of them to disc for me, but meantime, I remember what happened to our friend GiBee. When her computer crashed, she was unable to recover her photos and lost all the photos of the first two years of Hunter's life. Oh.my.word, my heart broke for her.

So I opened a free account at Snapfish. It's an HP program and of course they want you to buy prints of your photos from them, but they do a really cool thing. They offer free storage of all your photos, no limit, on line. So I've spent a lot of time sending copies of my photos there (it's going to take me literally weeks to finish this project) and it's comforting to me to know if this computer crashes I won't lose all of them. The pricing for printing photos is really reasonable, so all I'd have to do is order prints.

What I really like is that I add new photos to my computer several times a week and it's very easy to run over to Snapfish and put them in my folders there.

This is one of those things that makes my eyes pop open at 3 a.m., the thought of losing photos that are irreplaceable. That's the one and only downside to going digital I can think of. If you don't have the photos on your computer backed up, you might want to check them out. And no, I wasn't asked to promote them. My sister told me about this and I knew right away I needed to do it.


LET'S TALK ABOUT MY GRANDCHILDREN

I know. You're shocked. Barb's talking about her grandchildren again. LOL

I simply wanted to show you a couple of cute photos I took this week.


Look how big Avery's getting! Can you believe she's eleven weeks old tomorrow? She is just an amazingly sweet baby and so easy to take care of. She only cries if she's hungry. Wet diapers don't even bother her but boy, don't let her get hungry. :-)


I'm amazed how strong she already is. No more setting her in her bouncy seat on the table. No more setting her on ANY surface and walking away. I expect her to flip over any day now. Already, when I lay her on a blanket on the floor, she wiggles around in complete circles.

Is this an adorable little baby girl or what?




Here's Cameron doing his part to help us with lawn upkeep. It's so nice here now, there's no more keeping him inside when he's here with me. He and Avery were here until pretty late Friday evening. It was Andy's birthday and Krissy took him to dinner. Cameron loves playing outside when it starts getting dark. I never saw a child get so excited about the moon and the stars. LOL

Both my little grandchildren bring me more joy than I can tell you and I love it that I live so close to them, I get to spend a lot of time with them.

And guess what? Mandy told me just this weekend, it's official. She and Aaron have decided to start trying to get pregnant. My gorgeous son-in-law has red hair. OK, Aaron, auburn. So it's official - my future little Opies are in the works!



WRAPPING IT UP

I think I have a pretty quiet week coming up. As you know, I say that very cautiously any more. :-) I'm still slowly working my way through my spring cleaning. I didn't have it in me this year to go insane and do it all in two days. Still, it's getting done and that's all that matters.

I'll be sharing a cooking tutorial in a couple of days. This one is another great recipe I got from my sister-in-law Carol, twenty years ago, and a family favorite. What I really love is it's a one-pan stovetop meal. Great for summer when I avoid turning the oven on if I can.

Beginning Thursday, my getting away with not having to cook dinner ends. Rob will start working days once school is out. Seven to three-thirty. So I'm going to have to get used to cooking dinner again, something I haven't had to do during the week, for months and months. That in itself will generate some cooking turotials because I truly get sick of cooking the same old same old all the time.

So I have to get used to cooking at night and HE has to get used to The Bachelorette. Fair's fair!

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Grandmas don't just say, "that's nice." They reel back and
roll their eyes and throw up their hands and smile.
You get your money's worth out of grandmas. (author unknown)

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If your baby is "beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses,
sleeps on schedule and burps on demand, an angel of all time,"
you're the grandma. (author unknown)

~~~~~~

Grandmothers are people who take delight
in hearing babies breathing into the telephone. (author unknown)

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A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are
on Halloween. (Erma Bombeck)

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Happy new week, everyone!