Albert Chevallier Tayler (Artist)

Our little family is hoping to enjoy a boring week. Monday was boring and normal. Yay for normal and boring! Well, as normal and boring as life can be in the midst of Christmas and history defining events in your country and the world. But we did school, did work, and did normal stuff. That’s what we’re hoping for all week. Normal and boring.

There is still plenty happening and I’ll share a few bits today.

Prayer Requests

I shared two prayer requests a few weeks ago. I think one was resolved last week. I won’t know for sure for three to six months, but it is as resolved as it can be at the moment. The other prayer request is for someone else’s needs this week. Please pray for wisdom for everyone involved and a good outcome. Thank you.

Visiting Maramureș and a Romanian Village

In closing, I wanted to share this lovely video. I could have put it in my (neglected) forum, but wanted to share this here so people can enjoy it. (The video picture is really misleading. I don’t know why she chose that picture and wording other than for click bait.)

How much we have lost in this world when we abandoned the idea of belonging to a real community where you are known and valued. Whether it is where you live, where you worship, or where you work – we have lost so much in our movement to massive and basically anonymous organizations rather than true communities where we are each valuable, contributing individuals.

I wrote about this many years ago in The Loss of Real Communities.

This is one of the reasons I’ve always sought to develop a community with whatever I’ve done online. It’s not the same as real communities in real life, but it is one small thing I can do to make this huge world seem a little smaller and draw wonderful people together.

What is going on in your home this week? I hope you’ll leave a comment!

Artwork: “The Mirror” by Albert Chevalier Tayler 

Happy December! I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. We still have not had our meal. Caroline is slowly picking up steam, but she has had one of those two week colds that doesn’t want to go completely away and has been dragging her down. I think she’s finally turned the corner and seems to be fairly close to normal. Thankfully David and I did not catch it. Maybe it was one of the many colds I got as a teacher and passed on to David so we were already immune? In any case, we’re slowly getting back to “normal” since the holiday and the cold have disrupted the flow of everything around here. We were in a really good rhythm this fall and then it all kind of blew up in November.

Christmas Planning

I was able to get a start on my Christmas shopping over the weekend. I am making a point of buying and ordering as much as I can from anyplace other than Amazon. I’m not sure how much local shopping I will be able to do, but I’m utilizing sites to support small business and solo business people as much as possible. I can’t say much more since members of my family sometimes look at my website, but that’s what’s happening on our end.

We still send out Christmas cards, a short letter, and a photo. I need to start doing those things. We take very few photos now so it’s harder to find a good one. I might have to take one specifically for the card.

Reading

Yesterday I ordered Social Justice Goes to Church by Jon Harris. I’ve shared his videos before in the forum and thought this would be a good reference book to have on hand. I’m looking forward to reading it when it arrives. The previous link goes directly to his site where I ordered a copy.

I’ve been watching a lot of video and doing online research lately (as evidenced in this video I made that I truly encourage you to watch) so I’ve been doing less book reading. I’m not sure how much book reading I’ll get in this month with all the Christmas extras, but I want to reach my goal of 20 books this year so I meet at least a few of my 2020 goals. Looking at My Reading Tickler List, I should make it with a little effort. I admit I’ve read lots of fluff books this year, but I needed something to combat the realities of 2020.

Homemaking

This week I would like to clean out quite a few things from the basement that need to be sold. Caroline still has so much stuff (toys and such) and we need to start peeling back the layers and removing some of it. Now is a good time to do that since she has a lot of nice things that would make excellent Christmas presents for someone shopping for gently used or like new items.

I’ve been working on reorganizing my homemaking and work three-ring binder and calendar. We’re in the process of updating things in my shop under All Products for Women. If David has time, I would like to put in new designs for the monthly calendars.

Home Business

David and I have been working almost all year to finish updating all my products. We finally finished the copywork this weekend and I’m so pleased. We completely changed it and it’s so much better. I like scrolling through the pages with the products to see how nice they look. We can see the end in sight!

I’ve been removing some content from my website as I realized that it detracts from Christ. There were some topics I decided I didn’t want here any longer and so I’ve been removing them. I’ll write about it in a post, but that’s something I’ve been doing behind the scenes that people probably wouldn’t even notice. I’m not completely done, but getting there.

What is going on in your life this week? I hope you’ll leave a comment!

Artwork: “The Quiet Hour” by Albert Chevallier Tayler 

Happy Monday! We had a low-key weekend in our home, something all three of us needed. On Saturday, David and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary and 14th anniversary of discovering we were expecting a baby. We are thankful for our blessings.

We also had some unexpected news that is going to impact our family in a fairly significant way. (No, I’m not pregnant.) I’ll share about it at some point, but it’s requiring prayer and thoughtful decision-making.

For this week, I’m going to keep the three goals I only partially finished last week and add one more small one.

Goal 1 – Finish washing up all of the old sheets and research how I would like to repurpose them.

Goal 2 – Continue cleaning out my clothes and shoes, washing things up and organizing.

Goal 3 – Continue organizing and systematizing our digital clip art, papers, borders, stock photos, fonts, etc.

Goal 4 – Clean out and organize baking and coffee cupboards.

What do you have planned for your homemaking week? I hope you’ll share a goal or two in the comments and then come back on Friday to let us know how it went.

If you are new to my site, you can find lots of inspiration in my shop under All Products for Women.

Have a good Monday!

Artwork: “Posing with Posies” by Albert Chevallier Tayler