Silence

 

Silence, isn't it a nice word? After the rush and busyness of December, I find that January is nice to rest and have silence. When it is foggy here, the fog, like snow makes sound not travel and makes everything hush.
I have lost my voice so there is something else that brings silence. I have to really think of what I want to say before I speak. Not a bad thing. My words have to count. I think I need this in place all of the time. It also gives me time to think and listen deeper than normal. The one thing I do miss, is singing. I guess when I go about my daily routine, I sing to myself. Not being able to sing makes it seem very quiet.

 

 I think silence, helps my brain to simplify my thoughts.  It also helps me to think deeper about plans for the future. It also in a odd way makes me content to be at home doing all of those things that I really do love. Being a keeper at home. A helpmate. Have you ever thought about how in the beginning after God created the world and it was perfect. God made a garden and put Adam in it. What a beautiful garden it must have been. Then after naming all of the animals, there was not a helper suitable for Adam. I always think that God must have known how deep was Adam's longing for someone to talk to and be with. So God created Eve. In a perfect world, God made two perfect people for each other. To Adam he gave Eve. His counterpart, as a gift to fill all of his needs. Not the other way around. As a woman, I find my joy comes from that deep feeling of joy, when I am giving up myself for the well being of others. I really do love being that helpmate to my husband, anticipating his needs and putting his needs before my own. 

 

I don't do it all of the time, very well. I get selfish and self-centered and my will more often than not gets aggravated and short and I do want my own way. Keeping silent though, has helped me to think more about it. It has made me slow down and look at my goals as a woman. I have always wanted to have a gentle, and a quiet spirit. One of my favorite quotes by Elisabeth Elliot goes like this .

“The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self-abandonment. 'If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,' Jesus said, 'he will find his true self.' A Christian woman's true freedom lies on the other side of a very small gate---humble obedience---but that gate leads out into a largeness of life undreamed of by the liberators of the world, to a place where the God-given differentiation between the sexes is not obfuscated but celebrated, where our inequalities are seen as essential to the image of God, for it is in male and female, in male as male and female as female, not as two identical and interchangeable halves, that the image is manifested.”

 Just some of the things I have been thinking about as I have gone about my days. Trying to get to the bottom of that question that will forever haunt me. Home-making verses Working outside the home. Even now, I find that all of the things I thought I wanted out of my life as a young girl, even today as a woman, still causes me to ponder"well what is it that you do all day? "
The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman.” Elisabeth Elliot

I guess it is time to make these fingers of mine to be silent as well. I cleaned out my pantry yesterday. I actually had spices from the 1980s. Isn't that amazing. I just kept them for the bottles. I have my own hoarder ways. We have went through three moves and I still kept them.

I hope your day is a wonderful one. It is going to be a pretty day here. Thank you for stopping bye today.

~Kim~

 

“Maturity starts with the willingness to give oneself.”
  "Elisabeth Elliot---Let me be a Woman"

Now Back To Normal

 

Are you feeling back to normal yet? I have decided that there is no such thing as normal. Which is good I think, because I might get stuck in normal and never want to come out. I think the nicest thing was getting up at the normal  time, watching the sun rise and getting chores started at a normal time. I really enjoyed sleeping late, having slow mornings and enjoying having Ron home for two weeks. We both needed some down time and it was pure bliss.

 

My list of things I would like to get accomplished for January continues to grow at an alarming rate. Cleaning closets and cleaning out my cookbooks, and moving bookcases. It is time to get more organization into my life. Every where I look I see places to clean. I think the hardest thing about any chore is just starting don't you?

The strawberry on the strawberry tree.

I do love the sounds of home. The sounds of the heater purring away, the dryer clinking and clanking. Jeans always make such a busy sound. The Flicker is trying his best to make my hens think he is a hawk. The flicker has got very brave. He has got comfortable enough to come down where I am but always flies away when I point the camera at him.

This is the kind that is around here right now. The bigger one wasn't this kind.

The other day, I saw some crows dive booming something. They were very agitated. I grabbed my binoculars and watched this drama. There was a red tail hawk on the ground with his prey. He had what ever it was clutched in his talons. The crows were not happy about it and kept diving at him. The red tail hawk intent on his meal wasn't paying much attention. I guess neither was I because the next thing that happened was a different, much bigger hawk dropped out of the sky and hit the red tailed hawk at full force. I yelled by the way as I was so surprised. So were the crows. The bigger hawk which I couldn't tell what kind he was started fighting the smaller one for his prey. The little one fought back and finally the big one decided it was too much trouble and flew on its way. For one thing, I have never seen this happen on the ground. Watching them fight was shocking as it was so violent. The crows flew off  chasing the bigger one, and the little one finished eating in peace.

 

I was watching this little fat hummingbird yesterday. He is so fat he looks like a circle with a long stick for a beak. He is dark green and always sits in a tree above my head making that sawing noise. Last year at the time I couldn't even see him only hear him. I can spot him every time now. I think he liked it better when I couldn't see him. When I look at him now he flies to a higher branch waiting for me to move on. I have been watching him this year so I can see which tree he lives in, but as of yet his house is safe as he is wise to my tricks.

Stock photo from my computer. We don't have spiders like this.

 

 

I hope you have a lovely day this first Monday in January. Today, I am filled with such thankfulness,
that it is a new year, full of new dreams and new memories to be made. God is good.

~Kim~

 

"The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure.
---Francoise de Motteville---

Odds and Ends

 

One of the places that had become increasing more chaotic and a terrible place to visit was my chicken coop. Having three roosters had made the hens edgy and bad tempered. There was noise of fights and squabbles and not the peaceful coop I enjoy. My largest rooster had come of age. When they start staring with unmoving eyes and planning my demise it is time to call for a end to this. Ben and Megan, have wanted to learn how to butcher chickens so they came yesterday and took two of my roosters home. They told me yesterday they would do it this morning.

 

Except, this morning when I got on Facebook there was a picture of my rooster looking like a store bought chicken all bagged up. He dressed out very nice. I admit to feeling a bit faint. You know you raise these chickens, and I know I totally put out of my mind that chickens are made, well you know from chicken.

Today, peace reigns in my coop. California passed that law that chickens now have to have so much space to live. Here so many chicken farmers have gone out of business. Eggs are now costing 50 cents per egg. My hens are worth their weight in gold.

I wanted to share with you one of Ron's latest projects. He loves these stylized horses. He decided that he was going to try and make one. It was a perfect day, it was cold and rainy and we had a fire going in the fireplace. I think it is just the coolest thing. It is a sculpture of a Greek Horse.

He is making another one now. When our oldest daughter was young and in art class, her teacher took me aside and told me that she saw things in 3D. I had never heard of that. I always pondered where she must have got that  gift and now I realize it is from her Dad. I watched him and he was making the armature and he can do the same things that I used to watch her do with her hands. She is a sculptor among all of her other things she does.

So far so good on this day in January. Having my coop be peaceful again is a wonderful start to the new year. I hope your new year is off to a good start as well. This has been the nicest week.

~Kim~

" The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time."
---Abraham Lincoln---

Let's Get This Show on The Road!

 

Well Hello there 2015! So good to meet you this morning. I hope you are a good year this year. Your predecessor had lots of twists and turns and ups and downs. I am glad that so far, your slate is pretty clean.

Not to mention, so happy to meet you Miss January.  Especially since you are giving us a winter. I have missed winters. Rain is very nice too. I can stop being mad at the weatherman and his dire predictions.

 

I thought that there is no better way to welcome a new year than showing you this surprise of  tiny bits of green coming up already. Last year, being so dry, these didn't even come up. I was so surprised at this gift. I don't make resolutions. Mainly as I hear these verse in my head. From James 4:13-15

 "Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 

I always feel like I should just say, " If the Lord Wills." 

I do have a word or two for the coming year. 

 

I have two words this year. First this one. Creativity. Isn't that a lovely word? To create. To make something. 
 I admit to hearing the words in my head. " We need the room in this class for students that have creativity. In my years of teaching, I have never met a student with no creativity." 

When I was getting my new calendars ready for the new year, I ran across this quote in my Susan Branch calendar. " Hear your inner voice. If it's not saying nice things Change It... Its yours and it is trainable. 

I sat just astounded. You mean, I can train it. That thought never dawned on me. So I will be training that inner voice to say nice things, so the fear of failure becomes the joy of creating and enjoying the journey.  I can only change those thoughts as I renew my mind. Romans 12-2

"Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. reasoning and to destroy false arguments."

The second thing on my list is my what I create. I call this the year of samplers. When I was young, I had my new house. A new baby and a new life. In that house, I wanted to make samplers. Here is the first one I made.

 

I was looking at it and I remembered I wanted to make lots of samplers then. I thought maybe 2015 would be a year to make good on that wish I had.
Here are my patterns for this year, 2015

Stacy Nash House of Berry's Chapel Road Miss Baxter's House

"Ann Womack 1838"  Shakespear's Peddler

His Eye is on the Sparrow, Heartstring Samplery

Of course there will be rugs to hook. I tell myself, I will hook a rug a month. Not to mention my list of books to read. Keeping my hands busy and my mind busy is a good thing. As my Granny would say, " Idle hands are the devils workshop." But as the Lord Wills.

I am excited about welcoming a new year. One filled with hope. I know that sadness will come. I know there will be hard things that happen. I know that there will be surprises, and u turns and different roads to go down. I know there will be new doors to open and as always there will be good byes. My heart says though, that every day can be a new beginning. Every morning a new adventure. Every sky can have a bit of blue even if there are clouds. All of it can be for good. I am so excited to be blessed with a new year. I wish the same for you who take your time to visit and I am so thankful for your friendship and the kindness you shower me with daily.

Happy New Year 2015
~Kim~

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart;

do not depend on your own understanding.

Seek his will in all you do,

and he will show you which path to take."

" Proverbs 3:5-6"