Marie Madeline Studio Giveaway

Aren't these quilts absolutely beautiful?! Go over to Marie Madeline Studio and enter their giveaway to win one! Just hurry, as the giveaway ends on December 13!

Blessings!

In The Garden

I come to the garden alone

While the dew is still on the roses

And the voice I hear falling on my ear

The Son of God discloses.

>:>:>:>:::<:<:<:<

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,

And He tells me I am His own;

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.

>:>:>:>:::<:<:<:<

He speaks, and the sound of His voice,

Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,

And the melody that He gave to me

Within my heart is ringing.

>:>:>:>:::<:<:<:<

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

>:>:>:>:::<:<:<:<

I’d stay in the garden with Him

Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe

His voice to me is calling.

>:>:>:>:::<:<:<:<

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Image courtesy of Google images.

Simple Thanks

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Enter into his gates with thanksgiving,

and into his courts with praise:

be thankful unto him,

and bless his name.

Psalms 100: 4
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Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and everyone is preparing for the festive day. Tomorrow, many people will be sitting down to a lovely, warm meal with their families, and enjoy another beautiful holiday. I wonder how many of them will take a moment and think about how truly blessed they are.

Tomorrow, many people will be cold, lonely, and hungry. I wonder how many of them will take a moment and ponder what it must be like to be so incredibly blessed. Yet, each one of them has something to be thankful for.

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But I am poor and needy;

yet the Lord thinketh upon me:
thou art my help and my deliverer;

make no tarrying, O God.

Psalm 40:17
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Each blessing is one to be thankful for, no matter how small or insignificant it seems. Often, it's hard for me to count my little blessings, but I try to. They make me realize how wonderful the especially beautiful ones are.

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O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good;

for his mercy endureth for ever.

1 Chronicles 16:34
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Just a few of my many blessings, but ones that I am especially thankful for:

My wonderful family; each person is so unique and beautiful, I have the most wonderful family ever. None of us are perfect, but I love my family members all the more for it. My life is such a great adventure, and I am blessed to share that adventure with them.

My friends; in the last few years, I have met some of the most amazing and lovely young ladies (and their families!), in person, and through blogs. I am so blessed to know each one of them. They enrich my life in a special, beautiful, incredible way.

Our home & farm; I love it so much, and am so blessed to live in/on such a lovely one. With 22+ acres, many animals, space, and freedom that only country folks enjoy, I am so thankful to live here. If the Lord chooses to move us elsewhere, I will be happy to live wherever He wants us to, and look back on this home with fond memories.

The Gift of Salvation and Eternal Life; I stand in awe every time I think about the incredible future before me, with my family and Saviour, and that's only the beginning. I can look forward to seeing my Grandparents, my baby brother Thomas, and so many others when my life on this earth is completed. I especially look forward to seeing the Lord Jesus, and to live in joy forever.

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And let the peace of God rule in your hearts,

to the which also ye are called in one body;

and be ye thankful. Colossians 3:15
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Some of the littler blessings that I am thankful for:

My warm bed, my sewing machine, a camera that works, vacations, Callaway Gardens, my violin, hot tea, my blog, crocheting, books, conferences, fellowship with friends, watercolor paints, kittens, fuzzy socks, wild blackberry perfume, my hope-chest, flowers, candles, a clean house, tree swings, our animals, laughter, babies, beautiful music, precious memories, gifts, undying love, pictures, a beautiful, free country, kindred spirits, creativity, pretty fabric, aprons, my Celtic heritage, prayers from friends, encouraging Bible verses, and so. much. more. I have been so incredibly blessed!

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Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name,

make known his deeds among the people.

1 Chronicles 16:8
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May each one of you have a wonderful, lovely, joyous Thanksgiving day. I hope you take a moment and look at all of the things you have been blessed with, and truly thank the Lord for what He has done for you. The last few years, I have really come to see what a beautiful life I have been given. And Lord willing, it's just the beginning. What an incredible gift.
The Lord bless and keep you, my friend.

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Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits;

who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;

who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving

kindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things.

Psalm 103: 2-5
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All images courtesy of google images.

Irish Blessings

May the road rise to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face.

And rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

۞

May love and laughter light your days,

and warm your heart and home.

May good and faithful friends be yours,

wherever you may roam.

May peace and plenty bless your

world with joy that long endures.

May all life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!

An Interview With The Brookshire Ladies

Recently I asked Emily Rose and Breezy Brookshire, creators of the Daughters of His Story Paper Dolls and founders of Noble Rose Press, if they would be willing to do an interview with me. They graciously accepted.

1. What gave you the idea for Historical Paper Dolls?

We were working on paper dolls for the Girlhood Home Companion Magazine, when Mom came up with the idea that we could sell our own historical paper dolls of Christian women from history.

We planned to sell them in an Etsy shop, but as things progressed plans changed. A friend suggested that we try to see if Vision Forum might be interested in them and then began the process of having to answer several important questions, such as how the dolls would be packaged, printed and priced to name a few. Through that process we were able to develop a larger entrepreneurial mindset for the project (and future projects).

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2. What inspired the name of Noble Rose Press?

It was suggested to us that we have a business name which would be the umbrella company and publishers of the Daughters of His Story Paper Dolls. Our family sat down and each began proposing company names. We first settled on Rose being in title because of the feminine appearance of the flower. Then when Breezy mentioned Noble, they seemed to fit together. In the 1828 Webster's Dictionary, Noble means: ready to receive truth of the best kind; choice; excellent. With Noble Rose Press we desire to glorify the Lord through providing excellent products that inspire girls in biblical femininity and that proclaims the truth of God's Word.

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3. When did you first become interested in being Entrepreneurs?

For a few years now we've thought about becoming entrepreneurs, but it was not until last year we set up our Etsy shops to sell art prints and hand-made items. Starting with Etsy helped us learn some basics such as using PayPal, figuring out packaging, getting familiar with shipping prices, etc.

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4. Would you mind sharing some of the hardships you faced while creating/designing/producing the paper dolls?

While creating the paper dolls we had some extra long days, and at times we would grow a little weary, but those were the days God was especially teaching us to lean on Him for strength. Once we had everything for the booklets completed, we had to correct a few color issues with the company that printed our collections. It took several tries to get a few of the colors to come out just right, which was a little discouraging at the time. But now we are more familiar with how things work, and we learned more about the process that way than if everything had gone perfect the first time.

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5. Is there any advice or resources you can give to young ladies embarking on a similar journey of entrepreneurship?

Seek out wise counsel from your parents. The wisdom of Proverbs 11:14 proved to be invaluable as we were so blessed to have wise godly counsel.
A few resources that were greatly helpful to us throughout the process of creating our own business and producing products was Vision Forum's Entrepreneurial Bootcamp CDs, and New Venture Lab. These will help you look at the big picture of starting a home business. If you want to start small, Etsy is a great website that hosts online shops at reasonable pricing to get you started with an online business.

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6. Along with the Noble Rose Press website, where else can the Daughters of His Story paper dolls be purchased?

At this time, the Daughters of His Story Paper Dolls are also available from Vision Forum and Remembrance Press. We are hoping to expand to be able to reach more families.

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Emily Rose & Breezy Brookshire are lovely ,God-fearing stay-at-home daughters with a Proverbs 31 woman vision.

They are ingenuitive entreprenuers and are a constant source of encouragement and inspiration to many young ladies. You can read more about them on their blogs; Emily Rose at Simply Vintagegirl, and Breezy at A Bowl of Moss and Pebbles.

Thank you so much dear friends! I'm sure everyone enjoyed reading more about Noble Rose Press and the Daughters of His Story paper dolls.

Blessings,



P.S. You can vote for Emily Rose & Breezy here, and here, if you so wish. I know they would apprciate it. :)

Another Laughable Piece Of Our Family's History

Here is a continuation of a few stories that my Dad wrote about our experiences with pigs.
In my humble opinion, it's not as funny as the first one, but I think you'll get a laugh or two from it. Enjoy!

We got our piglets home and into the pen. The problem now was what to feed them. We did what most people would do in that situation; we went to a local feed store and bought a bag of pig chow. Kim and I had heard of all of the nasty things that happen on a commercial hog farm like feeding pigs hormones, anti-biotics and animal bi-products, not to mention forcing them to live in cramped, polluted quarters. After I had fed them a few times I finally read the ingredients on the bag. The first ingredient listed was Bacitracin, which I knew was a topical antibiotic for humans. The rest of the ingredients read like a Twinkie's bar.
I called around on Monday and could only find one local feed store that sold un-medicated hog feed. They mixed it themselves and it was relatively cheap, so that was that. Watching them eat it, I noticed that it seemed pretty dry and would get up their snouts, making them sneeze and cough. I told Kim that the book says that pigs love milk, so wouldn't it be great to find a supply of milk to add to their feed. I started the next day by going to a major supermarket in town. I spoke to the dairy manager and asked him what they do with expired milk. He said that long before it expires they pour it down the drain, several gallons every day.

I asked if I could come by sometimes and get a few gallons before they threw it out. He asked what I needed it for. When I told him I was raising hogs I got the usual raised eyebrows, followed by the, but why? look. "Nope", he said, "Can't do that". I asked him why not. He said that if I got sick from drinking it, the store could get sued. "But I'm not going to drink it", I said, "the pigs are". "How do I know that?", he asked, "Because I just told you", I said. Obviously in the world of food regulations my word wasn't good enough. I tried again to reason with him, but to no avail.
It was the same story at every store I went to. Finally, almost as an after thought, I stopped at our local family owned grocery store. Here the manager was interested in my endeavor and we talked for a while about it. He told me about how his father had raised hogs when he was young too. He agreed to give me whatever day-old milk they had on hand whenever I stopped in, and wished me luck. After that I had an endless supply of milk to go with my all-natural feed. Our two pigs got a gallon at each feeding, which they devoured; like pigs.

This went on for a couple of weeks. Owning livestock was a new experience for us and was not at all like I expected. It was somewhere between having pets and children. You feel obligated to check on their well being far more often than a pet, I mean after all you're going to eat them. Whenever we would come back home we would drive the van through the pasture back to the pig pen to check on them. They would always run scared to the back of the pen, then once they recognized us they would come galloping up towards us, their ears flapping over their eyes as they ran.
One night we came home late. I drove to the back of the pasture and pointed the headlights into the pen; no pigs. Kim and I got out with a flashlight; we climbed over the hog-wire and started looking around. There was no sight of them until we got to the very back, where the pen started to slope downhill. Here we found them both dead. It was a tragic sight, something or some-things had clawed them completely from head to hoof, they had even ripped the tough skin open in several places. We stood there looking at them for a minute trying to make sense of what had happened. I figured it had to be wild dogs, because coyotes would have at least made a meal of them
We now had our second big failure as self-sufficient homesteaders. If it had not been for the impending Y2K question we might have given up. Instead we spent all day on Saturday raising and re-enforcing the hog wire fence, doubling its height in the process. This was something that we wanted very badly, something that we felt like we were being led to do. On Sunday we drove back to Mr. Floyd's.

So now we had two more piggies, encased in a virtual fortress of hog and barbed-wire. Up to this point we had discouraged our dogs from hanging around the pen, we weren't sure if they posed a danger to the pigs or not. Now, however, we would bring them with us whenever we went back there in the hope that they might patrol that area of our land while we were away from home. The extra-high fencing would also keep them at bay if their tastes ever turned to pork. One morning before work as I was walking the feed bucket back to the hogs. Abbie, our German Shepherd, went with me. While I was feeding the pigs, Abbie began to lower her head slowly and she got very stiff. She then started a long low growl that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. She was staring into the woods beyond the pen. When I looked in that direction all I could see were trees. But then I could barely make out two white figures on all fours standing perfectly still, looking at us from about 75 yards away. I could see that they were two neighborhood pit-bulls, who had obviously been sneaking up to the pen when they heard us coming. I told Abbie to go get them and she took off running, growling and barking. The pit-bulls took off and thankfully we never saw them again.
Mr. Floyd had told us to make sure we wormed the pigs after a few days. Of course we said o.k. not knowing exactly what he was talking about. After it looked like our newest ones would live we called the vet again. He arranged for us to come by and pick up a couple of syringes. He noted that these were sub-cutaneous wormers, where you needed to pull up a flap of skin and inject it, avoiding any muscle. It just so happened that the day we were going to worm the pigs, Kim's brother David showed up at the house. I was kind of surprised, especially since it had only been a few weeks since the pig incident. As he walked into the house he looked at me and said Killed any pigs today?" I just smiled and said, "The day's not over yet", and what follows is the second reason of two that David does not come to our house much any more.

I told him he was just in time to help me worm the pigs. "No way", he said. I explained that these were just two little 30 pound piggies in a relatively small pen. All we had to do was hold them down and inject them with the medicine; he could take one and I would take the other. After a while of arguing he finally relented and agreed to help. We went back to the pen and David and I climbed in. It did seem like a much less intimidating task than the prior fiasco in Alabama. That is until we tried to catch one.
Pigs are fast. David and I spent about five minutes just trying to get close to our individual pigs. They would wait until you were about three feet from them and then burst away in trail of dust. The feeling began to get all too familiar. "Alright", he said, "I'm not doing this again". We agreed to focus on one pig at a time; we would both catch it and I would hold it while David injected it. Even this took several minutes of chasing and squealing, until finally David had one blocked from the front while I snuck up from behind. I leapt onto the piggy's back and then held on for dear life.
It was like jumping onto a small rodeo bull. It's amazing the strength of an animal that small. I was shaking and rocking; the pig was squealing for it's life and David was standing there enjoying it all. "Come on, Come on!", I yelled. David laughed and got down on his knees next to the little pink hog and I. "Quit moving, I can't stick it if you're moving!", he said. "Quit moving!?, Are you kidding!?" I struggled to hold onto the pig, his thorny little hairs made It feel like hugging a porcupine. David was having trouble pulling out the skin while trying to inject it at the same time. I had a good grip, so I pulled out some skin for him. "There, go go!", I said. David pushed in the plunger and we were done, I jumped up and Mrs. Piggy ran to a far corner.

"You're right, this is easier than running a pig down dead", he said with a smile. I took a few minutes to catch my breath. Kim gave me the other syringe and we started trapping the second one. Of course this was going to be much harder since she had already seen what had happened to her sister. After about five minutes, David was standing behind a tree while I ran her by. He jumped on her back and the pig went crazy. He didn't think it was nearly as funny as when I was holding my pig down. "Go, Go!", he shouted. I had the same problem of trying to get a piece of skin, the pig was so tense that its skin became as hard as steel. "I can't get any", I said. David was being thrashed about, the pig was screaming a long ear-piercing screech and I was fumbling for just a little piece of skin.
David finally pulled out a piece for me and I quickly jabbed it and pushed the plunger down when suddenly the needle bounced off. I quickly stuck it in again and pushed it the rest of the way. Another scream rang out, but this time it wasn't coming from the pig, but from David. "Ow!! That was me!!", he yelled, as he sat up and the pig ran off. "Uh oh", I heard Kim say from outside the pen. David was holding his hand and looking at me with a half-crazed grin that said "You did that on purpose". I realized that the first stick of the pig was actually a stick of the brother-in-law. I asked him if he was okay, but he just climbed out of the pen and started walking towards the house. Kim was checking his hand and wondering out loud if pig-wormer could be dangerous to humans.

Again Kim called the vet. I could just see his assistant telling him those crazy pig-people were on the phone again. He assured us that there was no danger to humans. Even David agreed that there was some consolation in knowing that he would be worm-free. We see him mostly at family gatherings now, and though he still does all of our heating and air work, he prefers to come over when he knows we won't be home.


I hope you enjoyed that story, I always do when I go back and read it.

With smiles,

The Winner Of The Giveaway

Now, the moment y'all've waited for all day (please excuse my tardiness):
The winner of the Autumn purse is................

Lissie Darcy!!

Congratulations Lissie!
Please leave a comment with your address (it won't be published) and I will send you the purse.

FYI: (For Y'alls Information)
I will be having another giveaway soon, maybe a purse with different fabric.
So, you all will have another chance at winning one!

Thank you to everyone who entered! I had a wonderful time reading y'alls sweet comments!

Blessings,

Great Is Thy Faithfulness

Great Is Thy Faithfulness

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Great is Thy faithfulness,

O God my Father;

There is no shadow of turning with Thee;

Thou changest not,

Thy compassions, they fail not;

As Thou hast been,

Thou forever will be.

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Great is Thy faithfulness

Great is Thy faithfulness

Morning by morning new mercies I see.

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;

Great is Thy faithfulness,

Lord, unto me

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Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,

Sun, moon and stars in their courses above

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

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Great is Thy faithfulness
Great is Thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness,
Lord, unto me

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Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth

Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside

.:. .:. .:. .:.

Great is Thy faithfulness
Great is Thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness,
Lord, unto me

My 100th Post & A Giveaway!

Hello all!

Well, I finally reached my 100th post, and I decided to have a giveaway!

This giveaway is for an purse/tote I made.

The pretty rustic Autumn colors are perfect for the season! It has a zippered pocket and a little snap at the top to hold it closed.

FYI:
The zipper and snap are from circa 1950's. The zipper was bought at a yard sale from an older man selling his Mother's sewing notions. We bought the whole box, which included zippers, binding, ric-rac, buttons, needles, and many other things, including a pair of motorized scissors! The snaps came from an antique store that was selling little notions. When we asked what the price was on a card of snaps, the man at the counter said price as marked. Well, the price was from the 50's! It was marked 25 cents (!).

This bag is perfect to use as a purse or as a tote to hold your crafts. The red paisley-like fabric is recycled from a dress I used to wear. The tan material has a slight burlap feel to it, giving the bag a bit of a rustic look.

To enter:

There are two ways you can enter:

1. Leave a comment.

2. Post about it on your blog and leave another comment. You are welcome to use any of the pictures.

Please leave a separate comment for each entry!

Anyone from the US or Canada can enter.

The giveaway ends on Saturday, November 7th, 12:00 PM Eastern time. I will announce the winner on the Monday after it ends.

P.S
In case you're wondering, my family and I are in Ohio on Lake Erie! The pictures were taken off the deck of the cottage where we are staying. We arrived last evening and Lord willing, are going to stay for a day or so more. Pictures are coming soon!