So, it's like this could potentially be a completely new and different blog. I have so much updating to do. In fact, I just updated my sidebar to include that my husband and I have been married 7 years, that my children are now 4.5 and 2 and also include a new little girl!
I've changed the title of the blog to messy.beautiful from Shimmer & Tulle. Why? Well, in the last two years, I've learned that yes, as a daughter of the King, I need to shimmer and let me light shine and there's a definite importance to remembering and seeing the beauty in everything. However, for myself, I've been on a transformation where God is showing me that it's not just the blatant beautiful things that are well, beautiful. It's in the messy details as well. My dining table that post-lunch looks like a hurricane passed through the room --- instead of getting frustrated and annoyed by it (and overwhelmed by the mundane "I have to clean it again"?! idea) --- well, God is showing me that it's a beautiful thing, for it means that my life is full of children, that we have a roof over our heads, that we have food on the table, that my kids are engaging in life and with each other, that my kids are full.of.life. (And abundantly exceedingly so!!) :)
That's just one example.
But either which way, I am the clay that is being molded.
And it's a messy.beautiful experience being in the midst of God's hand.
I love how I can somehow "journal" on my life via the types of books I read that year.
2012 was definitely a year about becoming radical in my Christian faith and the "how to's" of homesteading.
2011 was about raising children/boys and overall, parenting help.
Each year, I make a pre-set list, but the end results always vary. But I do try to read about 2-3 books a month...2012, I was able to accomplish 27 books, and in 2011, I read 34.....
For 2013, I'd like to read from a potential 44 titles....
Be bodacious
Sherlock in love
The dirty life
The band played on
Be fruitful and multiply
The way hone
Ultimate guide to homesteading
Write start
Spiritual mothering
Artistic mother
Lm Montgomery books/ journals
Girls gone wise
Keeper of the spring
Slow Death by Rubber Duck
The how of happiness
Shed your stuff
No plot no prob
Profane waste
Teach your own
Anything by Charlotte mason
A millon little pieces
She's gonna blow
Cruel harvest
Cutting for stone
Mere Christianity
The great divorce
Till we have faces
Left to tell
100 days of solitude
Same kind of different as me
1000 gifts
Reason for god
The island of the world
The problem of pain
Why Christians are Sick
Crazy Love
Ovid
Anything by D. Bonhoeffer
Gold (C. Cleave)
Our Daily Bread
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
Kim Peggy: An American Secretary
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
The American Way of Eating
A Geography of Blood
I guess this year there really isn't a "theme"...we can usually see the theme after I've finished the year, what kept drawing my attention...
What about you? What's on your must-read list?
So far, what I've read:
1. Slow Death by Rubber Duck
2. Crazy Love
3. A Cousin's Promise
4. A Cousin's Prayer
5. A Cousin's Challenge
6. SHED Your Stuff
7. One Minute After You Die
8. Made to Crave
9. The Birth Order Book
10. Before Green Gables
11. The Catch
12. The Pelee Project
13. The Dirty Life
14. Born Again Dirt
15. Managers of Their Homes
16. Managers of Their Chores
17. Managers of Their Schools
*updated November 28th, 2013
