one of the desires

Psalm 37:4 - Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Did you catch on my little profile sidebar there ---- the small, little detail that says we are moving because God answers prayers?! That's right, my little yet growing desire to move to Prince Edward Island is now a reality.
God placed in me that desire and now he is making it happen!!!

In a future post, I will give the testimony on how this all came to be. Be sure to have your popcorn ready, for the story is like some sort of sitcom! I can't even begin to tell you how absolutely excited I am about all of this. We move in about two weeks. I will continue my posts on homeschooling and everything else I already talk about, but I will also be using this blog to journal our new adventures of living in Prince Edward Island! :)

in the midst

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.

2013 Book List

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

"Stenciled" Dresser

In an effort to consolidate our stuff, I bought a new dresser. Might sound backward but we had the "his and her" dressers and I thought that we should have only one. But I wanted to find a dresser that was "big" enough to hold both of our stuff..so something along a 6-8 drawer one but not one that was this huge item in our room. I also wanted to make the room look bigger.

So on Kijiji, I found a 8-drawer dresser for $20! It was that dark brown veneer color that someone heavily painted on. But for the price, and the fact that it was a bit smaller, I bought it.

And I went red with it!

Initially, I was going to do a blue and red theme. And something crafty for the top. But this is what my creative mind came up with.

And it has an eco-friendly, upcycled vein in its body. For the stencil, is actually a plastic bag.

I cut out the flower and just Elmer-glued it on. The stencil went on very nicely. I had the thought that it would look so obviously bad -- like I had cut a plastic bag and just glued it on. Go figure, right?

For the drawer handles, I found some fabric in my stash and glued it on. It was a dark blue and white French toile pattern.

Pretty happy with it. And the best part is that my husband likes it as well. At first, when I said a) I was going to get rid of his 5-drawer dresser and b) now he had to share an 8-drawer with me c) that I was going to paint the dresser RED and stencil on a flower....obviously he wasn't all that enthusiastic but he was pleased at the end of the day.


Linked to:
Raising Homemakers
Between Naps on the Porch
Making the World Cuter
DIY Showoff
The Girl Creative
Sumo's Sweet Stuff
Made By You
Today's Creative Blog
Blue Cricket Designs
Fireflies and JellyBeans
Tales from Bloggeritaville
Somewhat Simple
The Shabby Creek Cottage
Beyond the Picket Fence
Sweet Little Gals
remodelaholic
finding fabulous
romantic home
fingerprints on the fridge
kojo designs
Sugar Bee Crafts
Topsy Turvy
Funky Polkadot Crafts
Let Birds Fly
Kitchen Fun with my 3 Sons
Tea Rose Home
Domestically Speaking

My entry into Domestically Speaking’s Power of Paint Party is sponsored by Appliances Online and the Bosch Washing Machines.

Diva Planter

With my 5 month old, Jed, nursing more frequently again, I can't stop eating. So my thinking is: "I'm up (again, munching on something). Might as well, do some crafting".
Makes complete and total sense, right? :)

I recently purchased an aloe plant in planter from some friends who were selling everything for their upcoming missions trip.

I really liked how the aloe plant was sitting on its side. But as with most things that cross my path, I have to make it stand out somewhat.

It turned out to be a quick craft. I gave it a base coat (just in case there was show-through) and then hot glued on my green, blue and white glass beads. I forgot to count how may beads I used, so we can't play *that* game :)

Yes, I gave it a quick blow-dry afterwards (to melt all the hot glue strands, silly) and yes, I burned my fingers plenty.of.times.
But it's all for the better decor good.

What do you think? I kind of feel it needs something more....

**hah, I just realized the irony of me burning my fingers for a craft on an aloe plant.....get it? People usually have an aloe plant as a home remedy for BURNS....

Linked to:
Raising Homemakers
Between Naps on the Porch
Making the World Cuter
DIY Showoff
The Girl Creative
Sumo's Sweet Stuff
Made By You
Today's Creative Blog
Blue Cricket Designs
Fireflies and JellyBeans
Tales from Bloggeritaville
Somewhat Simple
The Shabby Creek Cottage
Beyond the Picket Fence
Sweet Little Gals
remodelahoilic
finding fabulous
romantic home
fingerprints on the fridge
kojo designs
Sugar Bee Crafts
Topsy Turvy
Funky Polkadot Crafts
Let Birds Fly
Kitchen Fun with my 3 Sons
Tea Rose Home

My entry into Strut your Stuff sponsored by Appliances Online and the Bosch Washing Machines

Respectable

I thought this post "Respectable" from Large Family Mothering was just so well written and so important that I am reposting it here. I definitely think society has biblical roles and feminism upside down!

Happy reading!

Respectable
My prince has come!
Classic television is enlightening. It reveals a little of our cultural values of the past.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E was a series my husband enjoyed as a boy. He endured the show that came before, "Please Don't Eat the Daisies", just because he knew Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin would soon appear on the screen.

We bought a portion of this series to enjoy with our own children. During one of the episodes, Napoleon asks the villain, "Is this the way you show your respect of women?". Later in the same episode the villain says of women, "They are noble creatures; they will give everything to preserve the ones they love". Later the villain asserts, "I told you never to lay a hand on a woman!"

Funny, but these lines were written before the women's movement became widely accepted, before respect was being demanded.

Flash forward to our current age, and just watch a little bit of TV on any given evening.

Women are not respected in our culture because they are not respectable. On the small screen, they are hard, capable, shameless and mean. They leave nothing to the imagination, and they sleep around like the horrid males women complained about in the 60's. They are no longer "noble", because they are all for one--"self" is more important than baby or husband or anyone else.

I grew up in a culture on the cusp of great "change". I was told that what came before didn't matter; that things were always bad, that we shouldn't hope for anything better, that it wasn't possible. Nuclear war was inevitable, old-fashioned methodologies and values were passe', there was something new coming, something better. I didn't know any different; I was a child and looked up to those at school and in the main-stream media. The generations before had somehow lost the ability to articulate, inculcate and transfer the values that made our society free and great, so my parents and grandparents did not retain the reasons for and benefits of keeping these mores and were regretfully among those who decided to scrap the whole thing and start all over.

Hemlines went up, necklines went down. P*rnography went main-stream and there was even a special variety produced exclusively for women. The pill made it possible for women to fornicate without having to worry about getting pregnant--and so it was the beginning of the end for propriety, virtue and common decency at least within the culture at large.

But what the feminist movement promised, that women would be more "respected" and have better and happier lives, has yet to manifest itself.

From where I sit, women have become more slaves to more demands than ever. Duped into believing we can "have it all", we sign up for government education loans by the millions. Then, after the sheepskin is obtained, we realize our fore-mothers traded in one ball-and-chain for another, and a much less-fulfilling one, for that matter.

And men do not care for women or defend, protect and provide for them as they did in former times. Men don't mind that women are "liberated"; it keeps them from having to grow up. Men have become "Peter-Pans". They don't have to get married in order to have their physical needs met, and even if they do marry, they can sit back and enjoy staying juveniles, with their wives as the responsible "mothers", for the rest of their lives. Therefore, children have become a noisy, messy, and costly nuisance to them.

After you, my dear.
Instead of men stepping up to the bar to take care of an expectant mother and her baby, men and women alike cry, "Why didn't she use protection?" Everyone expects that women will sleep around, in and out of marriage. This is not considered irresponsible, unless she does not use contraception, and only then does she experience social sanctioning. Marriage is no longer the holy union meant to last a lifetime where two unique people become "one-flesh" together.

But in the heart of every man there is a yearning for virtue, a yearning to find a woman "spotless and unblemished". In fact, I believe there is an unmet need for virtuous womanhood among men at large, but they have lost hope of ever finding their noble and highly regarded life-companion.

Women have become notorious for complaining there are no "heroes" left, but heroes need to have damsels in order to display their knightly characteristics. If the damsels are all out slaying their own dragons, the knights would just as soon return to the castle and down a few frothy beers. If the damsels are just as filthy, unkempt and uncaring as the local scoundrel, why do they merit saving?

My husband informs me that a lot of older men miss those days and resist the temptation to forgo these more romantic and polite ways of ministering to women.

Alas, it seems forever gone are the days when a man would open a door or relieve a woman of her burden in order to serve and cherish her.

Guest Blogger: Switzerland or Wales..?

Today, a special treat.....a guest blogger from across the world!
And my first guest blogger!
Meet Rachel from Three Years and One Stone Then Home. In her post, she gives a little glimpse of her current home, Switzerland and her heart-home, Wales. Aren't the pictures gorgeous? Stop by her blog and say hi! Find out what her son's first word was.. :)

Life Inside a Snow Globe

Of all the countries that I have passed-through, visited or lived in, Switzerland is the one that is most definitely ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille. So picture-perfect, so clean, so safe, so harmoniously run, it’s the on-earth contender for Avatar’s Pandora. One of the richest countries in the world with its largest city, Zurich, regularly featuring in ‘top 10 places to live’ and ‘top 10 quality of living’ surveys, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a place conjured up by the best of Hollywood’s scriptwriters. But it’s not. It’s a place where I live. And it’s a place that, try though I might, I can’t call home.

On paper, Switzerland, Zurich specifically, has everything a family could want. Parks, museums, amazing healthcare, excellent schools, a safe haven for children to play outdoors and walk to school by themselves (from the age of 6 would you believe). Mountains on hand for winter sports, a lake so clean you can drink from it, for summer sports. Public transport that runs frequently and on time and a train station that you actually want to spend time in – it’s breathtakingly beautiful. Have I convinced you to move out here yet?

Call me crazy, call me insane, but my heart belongs to Wales. I want to go home. And here’s where the problem lies. The most difficult toss of a coin that I’ve come up against. Weighing up the pros and cons of bringing my son up in surroundings and circumstances that dreams are made of versus being close to family and friends and everything familiar.

I’ve looked back to my own childhood to help make the decision and on the whole, my memories are based entirely on people, never location. In fact, I realized at an early age that you can be bought or buy yourself everything under the sun, travel to the most amazing of places but the best times you’ll ever have are with the people that you love. I don’t need to go further than my mum and dad’s old dining table for most of my favorite moments. Rewind a little further and it’s my grandparents back garden.

So I can bring my son up in this hugely impressive country or instead, choose to bring him up in the middle of an equally impressive collection of family and friends. Which will give him the best start? Which will give him the best memories? And which of those will help to nurture him to be the best and happiest he can possibly be?

This post has been provided by Three Years and One Stone ThenHome as part of the Multi-Coloured Blog Swap carnival.


Hey check out my post for a yummy
Vanilla Mousse Cheesecake over at Glass Half Full

Thanks to Troubled Doubled for hosting this awesome Blog Swap Carnival!