the doggie quilt

After my last post I figure you all need a smile :) I made our dog Pug a quilt for her little bed. Not that she needed it, mind you. My need to create something crafty superceeded her needs :) I did make her pose for these pics (she's just too darned cute but doesn't like to stay still when happy!) but she then drug he quilt over to her bed, daddy (scott) fixed it for her, and she's been sleeping on it every night since :) Too cute. Anyway, happy Friday!

ps - yes her tongue normally hangs out like that. She is also blind in her left eye and has a tumor on her hind quarters. She is remarkably very healthy (minus a really bad spot two months ago when we thought we were going to lose her) and very happy! She's playful and has a blast with the boys. She's a "rescue" dog by way of my parents. My mom thought she might be allergic to Pug so we took her in. Best decision we've made! Pug completes our family. Her outward looks reflect our inward goofiness. She fits in perfectly with our goofy little family :)

i have to stop

I need a break. Not from you, not from blogland. Just a break. From a certain situation in my life. In this situation I can not bee who I am. I can not think how I do. Every move must be calculated. My heart must be saran wrapped. Many times shrink wrapped. In this situation I am not who I want to be. In this circumstance, I am not who God made me. I am fake. I say things I know I shouldn't. I let things be said to me that I would not accept otherwise. I ignore things that cut deep. I allow my shrinkwrapped heart to take a beating. I basically doormat myself and turn into someone I do not recognize. I like to think that who I am in that situation doesn't affect who I am outside of it. I trick myself into thinking that being two people works for me because that one area calls for it. It is a must in my life. Fakeness keeps me safe in that situation. Only God has opened my eyes and I see the black ink stains seeping into other areas of my life. It affects other areas I'd been blind to. God's shown me that because of my attitude and actions in that one area, others are going downhill quickly. So a few weeks ago I stopped. Stopped being who I could no longer be. It hurt. Me and others. It hurt deep. But not as deep as what I'd already been through. This is a necessary hurt. This hurt is a healing hurt. I have stopped being who I'm not and have not allowed myself to go back. It's been tempting to step back in that awful role I'd become so comfortable in. But the blessing has come in realizing what I was doing to myself and then in allowing God to heal me. Things will not be the same. I'm okay with that. I have realized that to not be me does an incredible diservice to God. He made me to be ME at all times, not just in the times it's safe. He made me to be ME and that's all I can do. So goodbye wrapped up, scared, nervous, girl. I have to stop so that I can begin. I am who I was created to be and that is amazingly healing to my heart.

i finished

And it is gorgeous!! I finished the quilt last month (took me about 6-7 months), but today I made the shams and pillow cases to match it. :) Scott loves it, I love it, the boys have been laying on it for over an hour now. So much fun! The only thing I need now is some sheets to match (bright green I'm thinking) and some curtains with matching material. I love the brightness and the summery feeling of the bold colors. I love to brighten things up, and this bedding set does just that. Plus, it's all handmade and that makes it SO much more special to me. Scott said he's not sure if he can lay on it all. :) He makes me smile. Here are the finished pictures. Tonight, we shall be sleeping very carefully on our new bedding. Yay!

Here's the whole set. The squares on the shams are the same size, the one on the left has an orange bar that blends in with the background :)

Here is one of the shams. I used the last few extra squares from my top to make the top of the shams. :)
And here are the pillow cases. I used the last little bits of fabric I had left to make the little bars. It helped the cases blend in with the quilt top and matched everything up. :)

I am beyond thrilled with this set! I love how it all turned out and I love that it's something I worked really hard on. And I, of course, love that Scott likes the set as much as I do. Somehow that makes it even more special. :)

The Lost Get Found- Britt Nicole

This is one of my favorite songs right now. I love it. I love the line "Don't be afraid to stand out". How far did Christ stand out for us? I can only hope to stand out as much for Him in return! Listen to the words, it's a call to witness. Love it. "Don't let the fire burn out! Somebody needs a reason to believe!"

paid in full

Oh yes. Those are becoming my new favorite words. I love to hear them. Or rather to see them. Pretty little letters in pretty little envelopes. :) They make my day. You see, like many MANY others, our credit is not so great. Early on in our marriage we made so not-too-smart choices and well, here we are. With debt. It stinks. And up until this point we've not been able to do very much at all about it. But, God blessed us with the ability to pay our van off and that started the ball rolling. Along with the van we've been able to pay off two more additional debts and are working toward paying off another. We're not done, won't be for a little while, but we're working on it and it feels good y'all! It feels great to get this "weight" off our backs. If we can stay on track we will have all our debt paid off in a year, aside from my student loans. I can't tell you how free-ing it feels to be done with a few and working on the rest. Feels like we can see light. Like there is a way out. Lol. I know it sounds funny, but oh well. :) I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel this way about debt. So tonight we're praising God. Not only for a great first week of homeschool, but also for a great few weeks of knocking out 3 debts and working toward another. It's a fantastic feeling :)


How's your week going?

homeschool day 1

Things are going very well today! Minus one thing - I gave David too much work. Didn't realize how much is in a lesson! He got a little overwhelmed with Math so I am planning on cutting back on how much work I give him. He's almost done with all his work for today though so that's good :) Dano READ his first small story in his Hooked On Phonics work book! Oh my stars that was really neat! He was very excited. I think he will do great at homeschool. He just needs constant positive reinforcement. It gets a bit wearing, but if it keeps him excited and moving forward I'm all about it. So today is a good day.

On another note Scott called and found out we've paid off our car! Yay!! We thought we had one more payment left but apparently we do not :) SO excited about that! Neither one of us has ever not had a car payment. It allready feels free-ing to not have to write that check! We should have the title within a week. :) Too cool! We're working on getting ready to buy our first home so this is definatly a step in the right direction! Go us! :)

So how about y'all? What are you up to today?

I think swimming is in our future... our very near future. :) Like... after naptime future. :)

can the blog world fire you?

Maybe they should write me a reprimand? Goodness friends I didn't realize it had been so long since I blogged. Alot's gone on. We went on a much needed vacation to San Antonio, SO much fun there! Then we had VBS and who has a solid mind to write after a few hours with all that screaming and fun. Then came the tiredness. I'm just tired y'all. All the stinkin time. No amount of naps or resting works. Hopefully it'll pass soon. :) I finished my New Testament class with an A and now it's onto English Lit. Not so excited about that one but hopefully it'll be okay. Loads of reading. We're planning another small mini-vaca for November. Scott's got 3 more days to take so we're taking the boys to the Nascar race in Dallas. I think they'll like that. David is really into racing right now. We put a t.v. and playstation 2 in his room and all he likes to do now is play his Movie Car racing game. He is all for going to see a real race. :) Scott is still working, but now that it's summer he's able to see the boys more. We've been able to do a LOT more as a family now that summer has started. We're going to adjust our home school schedule to allow for more family time as well. Speaking of which we will be starting soon on homeschool. We're going to take advantage of the 100 degree temps and do some school work during the afternoons when the boys can't go out because of heat. Daniel is ready to start learning to read and the fact that he gets to work on the computer makes it even better. :) He's starting on Hooked On Phonics and allready loves all the little books that come with it. Well I have to scoot but here are some photos from our vacation and from our 4th. I hope you all have a GREAT week and I will try to write more often:)

We went to the Rain Forest Cafe on the Riverwalk our first night there. Daniel did NOT like the thunder and lightening show and kept his hands over his ears almost the entire time.

We went to the Alamo and David was thrilled. We'd done a unit study on the Alamo during our last few weeks of homeschool so he was really excited to see it in person. He loved all the statues and artifacts. Especially the ones with Bowie's name on them. He was David's favorite in all the books and stories about the Alamo. It was fun seeing him light up and point out everything he'd read about. :) That's him in the red shirt by the doors.

We went on the Shamu Up Close tour and at lunch, Shamu got CLOSE! The boys were so excited. We were too! It was way cool :)

We spent quite a while trying to get this bird to stand on David and finally it did! Of course it started walking off of him right when I went to snap the picture. :)

The boys after playing in the sprinkler at Nana's house on the fourth. We bought loads of kid friendly fireworks and spent the afternoon out there playing in the water and popping some loud loud fireworks. The boys had a blast! This was their first year to pop their own.