One of Martin's recent projects

Well, here I am, putting in a blog entry as well. My little entry here will be very brief. The last few months I have been working on a little bar that we could put in our youth room at church - a place to hold the food and drink and some other misc. stuff. More importantly, my hope was that it would be another way or place or setting to have conversation. So, I tackled my first project with Eddie Visscher - one of the junior high youth in our church. We got together a few hours every month and just did a little bit at a time - having a lot of fun while we did it. We were satisfied with the end product as we are both amatuers at this kind of thing. I give most of the credit to Eddie for his work on this. He did almost all of the nailing - while i just held everything in place. I forgot to take pictures of the progress - but here is a couple of the finished product wn in our youth room at church.

A few fun little changes...

Not that they're super exciting or anything, but I thought I'd show you anyways! Whenever I take down our Christmas decorations, I get this urge to change up some of the decor in my living room... and this year was no different. The changes aren't huge - all the furniture is still in the same spot... but I changed my coffee table centerpiece, and made some changes to one of the corner shelves.

I had found this basket on clearance before Christmas, intending to fill it with pine cones and a candle in the middle. I got a candle in it, and an evergreen garland around it, but somehow the pinecones never made it! Oh well. I decided to find a way to use the basket for the rest of the year too, so this is what I did! I got the garland as a Christmas gift, and then just bought the wicker and some other kind of cool looking balls. Then I took some strips of fabric and wrapped some styrofoam balls to finish it off. I'm happy with how it turned out! The pictures of my coffee table are a little deceiving... it's not usually totally clear like that. It seems to be the collecting area for any books or magazines we're reading through... but for the sake of the picture, I cleared off the table!

As for the corner shelf, I had seen some pictures in a scrapbooking magazine, and came up with this. I found the twigs for the vase at a greenhouse, and just added a bit of color with the "pick" from one of my favorite little home decor stores. The quote on the front of the album says "And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years" (Abraham Lincoln). We saw it at my cousin's place when we were there, and liked it - and I couldn't decide on a picture to put in the spot, so I figured the quote would be just right!

Happy New Year!

We are looking forward to this year! Of course, we don't know what will all come our way, but somehow a new year just feels like a "fresh start" and we're excited about that! I'll be sure to keep sharing "glimpses of us" every now and again.

I thought I would start this year off by sharing a message that I read recently. It's by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, from Revive Our Hearts ministries. She is a gifted speaker and author - I have been so blessed by her ministry! This message spoke to me... putting things in perspective once again. Before I share that message, I also want encourage any women out there reading this to take part in the 30-day True Woman Make-over that she put together as well. It's a study through Proverbs 31, 1 Timothy 2:9-10 and Titus 2:1-5. All you have to do is sign up, and you'll get an email with the link to that day's message everyday! It's taking me longer than 30 days, as I'm not able to do it everyday, but I am learning a lot from this series so far!

Anyways, on to the message I mentioned earlier:

"Are you content not to be recognized, not to be appreciated, not to have people make a big deal about what you’re doing because you’ve accepted the goal for your life that you will make Him to be known? Your goal is to make Him to be seen, to be great, and it really doesn’t matter then what others think about you.
When Mary prayed her great prayer in Luke chapter 1, verse 48, she said, “[God] has been mindful of the humble state of his servant” (NIV). She did not see herself as worthy of the favor of God. She knew that it was all of God’s goodness and His grace that He was using her. She really had the spirit of John the Baptist. Remember how he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30, ESV).
Are you willing to decrease—to be less known, to take the place of humility—in order that He can increase? You can never go wrong on the pathway of humility because it’s not about us—it’s all about Him. It’s about what God is doing through His Son Jesus in our world, and we’re just instruments.
Some time ago I remember meeting a woman who was a well-known violinist in an Eastern European country. She talked about this matter of humility, and she held up her violin and she said, “It would be foolish for this violin to think that it is anything.” She said, “What makes it something is when someone who knows how to play it begins to play it.”
Then she said, “We are as that block of wood in the hands of God, and if any beautiful music comes through our lives, it’s not because we were anything. It’s because the Master knew what to do with us and how to use us as simply an instrument in His hands.”
So we realize it’s not about this block of wood. It’s about the Lord who wants to make beautiful music through us, reflecting His glory to others."

God bless you as you go into 2009!!

A little trip to Nelson

A few weeks ago, we went to Nelson to spend the weekend with my cousin. It was a nice relaxing visit. We did some hiking (of course), some shopping in the "cute little town", went to Ainsworth Hotsprings, and did lots of reading! We didn't take a lot of pictures, because we forgot the camera, but we used Monica's camera when we went on our hike, so I thought I'd show a picture of that.

Amazing encouragement!

I know, I know, I'm really not so good at updating this blog regularly! Sometimes it's lack of time, and other times, it's lack of imagination... and I don't know what to post! Anyways, this time, I thought I would just share something that I have been so encouraged by lately. We are in the middle of making a pretty big decision... and we so much want to do what God would have us do in this. We have been making a conscious effort to bring this to God, and these are some of the things I have "stumbled" across this past week.

Psalm 16

"I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."

Psalm 25

"To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in You I trust, oh my God.

Show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths; guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God, my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long.

Who, then, is the man that fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him."

Isaiah 30

The beginning of the chapter, God tells us that there are consequences when we just choose our own plan - not following Him. But then, look at these verses!

"Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him!

Oh people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious He will be when you cry for help! As soon as He hears, He will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'"

I am overwhelmed by His promise to lead and guide all those who trust Him. It was just such an amazing confirmation to us that God hears our prayers, and will give us direction! We truly serve an amazing and loving God!

Over-wintering Geraniums

Hello!

It's been a while, so I thought I better get back on here and update bit. We've been doing a bit of our fall clean-up around the yard, and I remembered that I told you before that I would tell you all how I saved my geraniums over the winter last year. It totally worked, and this year I had beautiful, big geraniums. I'll definitely do this again and again. A friend of mine told me how, so I won't take the credit myself - but I figured it was info worth passing on!
Step 1: In the fall (any time now), dig the geraniums up, and shake off the dirt. Then set them in a box (not too tight, you want air to be able to get at them). Store the box in a cool, dry place. That's the first step... pretty easy!

Step 2: In February, (sorry, I don't have any pictures of this step), you'll need to cut the roots back. They will be fine (like hair). After that, plant them in pots. If you have a sunny place to put them, that helps... but they need to stay inside. Water them as needed.

Step 3: In March, you need to give the plants a "haircut". They will have grown quite a bit, and you want to cut them down to about 3-4" plants. Don't throw the stalks that you cut off away... those can be set in water, and they will root. The plants in the pots will make big plants, and the stalks will make smaller plants that are perfect for window boxes, planters, etc. Still keep them inside for the most part. I put them outside if we had a sunny warm day, but then took them back in at night. Once the stalks have rooted well, and there's no more frost, they're ready to be planted outside! Enjoy!

Just before the "haircut".

After the haircut.

The stalks are rooting...

And here are a few pictures of what they looked like at the peak of the season:

Murtle Lake - Day Five

I'm finally back to tell you about day five!

It had rained all night and the rain continued off and on until early afternoon. Because of that and the fact that we knew today was a shorter paddle, we decided to give ourselves a bit of a later start. We were back on the water at about 11, and canoed for about an hour. It was the one day we had to have our rain gear on for the trip - which was way less than we were expecting!

The wind started to pick up a bit, but it was going in the right direction for us, so we decided to stop and rig up a sail for the canoe.

Wouldn't you know that it stayed windy for the entire time we were making the sail, but as soon as we got back on the water, the wind died down. We kept it up for quite a while, hoping the wind would pick up again, but that didn't happen, so eventually we took it down (it was a bit hard for Martin to steer, and for us to keep our paddling coordinated with the sail in the way).

We got to the same campsite as the first night at about 2:30. After debating if we should just go home this afternoon already, we decided to set up camp again, and just spent another relaxing afternoon here. The sky actually cleared in the evening again, and we enjoyed our last night on the lake.

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There's not a whole lot to say about Day 6, so I'll just include it here. We were up early, because we wanted to get the portage over and done with. At first we tried to carry the canoe while we carried our packs with all our gear, but that didn't go so well, so we still ended up doing it in two trips. The handle system we had figured out on Day 3 worked pretty good, but it was still awkward. We added some straps to it and placed those over our "outside" shoulder - that distributed the weight a bit better, and we managed to do quite well after that. It still took us about 2 hours to get everything back to the truck.

When we were hiking on Day 2, we had gotten pretty excited about what kind of "real" food we were going to eat on our way home. We had decided on eating at Triple-O's for lunch/supper in Kamploops and then having icecream at DQ in Merritt. We had totally looked forward to this, and we were not disappointed! The burgers and ice cream tasted so good!

We arrived home by late afternoon, cleaned everything up, and had a good sleep in a "real bed"!!