We've Moved!

We've recently moved to a small home on a farm and will be journaling our exciting new adventures in raising chickens, goats, and gardening at our new blog Flutterbee Farm.  I hope you'll pop over and  visit!

Bathroom Makeover!

One of the first rooms to be completed at our new house!  The bathroom!  I had no idea what direction I wanted to go in for this one until I was at Walmart and found a pretty awesome shower curtain.  Then it all fell in to place after that.

Next I paired up the shower curtain with a rug that had some spunk and decided on a proven paint color, Comfort Gray by Sherwin Williams.  I didn't want to be another person to jump on the "Gray" bandwagon but it went really well with this shower curtain and the more I look at it all together, the more I love it.  It appeared to be more blue then I expected at first, after all,  I was under the impression the color had green undertones.  Once it dried it had a mix of everything depending on what time of day you looked at it...gray, green, blue.  Very soothing color, now I get what all the hype was about.  :)

Here's the BEFORE picture of the bathroom:

And the AFTER:

One room down, 5 more to go! :)

Our New Home

Over the last year my husband and I have begun to learn more about ourselves, as individuals and as a couple. What we've learned is that we struggle to conform with the society we live in. It's a wonderful, family-friendly town but there seems to be a lot of importance placed on material goods such as name brand clothing and purses, tube tops and wine drinking, and houses. People move up, they go bigger and newer. And honestly, we've grown tired of trying to keep up with the Jones'.

In a years time, we decided to send the children to a private school, at first it was going to be tight. I got a part time job in marketing and the salary matched the tuition almost to the penny, that along with the flexibility this job afforded made it obvious it was God's way of looking out for us. Since then, my husband has gotten a raise and promotion so we were back to being fairly comfortable. We could have "moved up" but I didn't like the feeling that came with it. So we decided to downsize, with the intent of finding a place with a little more land and privacy so we could grow closer to God through nature. I don't feel like I "owe" God for what He's done for us in the last year but rather, I want  to show my appreciation and acknowledge that without Him, I am nothing. No material goods on this earth is worth having over Him. So we've decided to downsize, clear out a great deal of our possessions and live more simply.

By downsize, I mean we've gone from 1700 sq ft house with a basement and attached garage to 960 sq ft on a crawl with a detached garage. But it's a beautiful oasis on 3 private acres, almost like a vacation home up north. The best part is that it's all fenced, the entire 3 acres so the kids and dogs are free to roam.  We got day old chicks before we completed the move so the very first thing on our list is to build a coop!  There will be many projects  to post about in the very near future including paint our exterior, brush hogging, gardening, building furniture, etc. Yes! A complete lifestyle change that we're so thrilled about. This will be an amazing experience for the kiddos as well as myself.   Good bye suburb and hello backwoods home!

 

The Best Teacher Gift Ever! The Blessing Candle

This is kind of a chaotic time, so much so that I should be anywhere but here typing this evening.  But I'm taking a moment to get this post in before it falls through the cracks, since it's a pretty good one that I really wanted to share with everyone.

So it's the end of the school year and time to recognize our teachers for their hard work and dedication.  I'm the room mother for my oldest daughters class and I wanted to organize something that would be very memorable for the teacher.  Of course the whole school is accepting donations to be split among the staff but I wanted the teacher to feel how much we appreciated her.  I stewed on ideas for days and finally decided to pull the trigger on one, hoping I could pull it off.  I couldn't find anything about it on the internet to know if it would work or if anyone else had already tried it, which made it a very risky venture.

My idea was the Blessing Candle.  Similar to the 'jewelry in a candle' concept, only the candle would contain little blessings, bible verses, memories, and notes of gratitude instead.  I did a beta test to see how a note would hold up in the melted wax of a candle and it failed miserably.  I had to tweak the concept so I put the note in a small ziplock-like baggie and THEN wrapped it in heavy duty foil.  It survived the melted wax.  So I headed to the store to pick up my actual supplies to get started on making the candle.

I sent an email out to the parents and requested that their child (parents were welcomed to participate as well) write a small note for the teacher on a piece of paper no larger than the size of a business card.  Once the "blessings" were all in, I set an afternoon aside to work solely on the candle creation.  It does take a significant amount of time, but the end result is a beautiful keepsake that will make a memorable impression.

Supplies:

• Strong (thick) candle container or glass container of your choice
• Wax
• Scented oil (or not)
• Wick
• Pot
• Metal bowl
• Tape
• Foil
• Small zip baggies

To start, make sure each blessing is folded up very small and insert in to baggie.  Then fold the baggie and wrap snuggly in foil.

Step 1:

Bring water to an almost boil and insert metal bowl containing a block of wax.  Wait for the wax to melt down.  While you're waiting, place your wick in the center of the candle container and tape the top to a pencil, knife, or popsicle stick and rest on top of the candle container to keep the wick from moving about.

Step 2:

Once the wax is melted down, add a few drops of scented oil.

Step 3: 

Pour the wax into the candle container and wait for the wax to begin to set (this is the time consuming part, to help speed it along, I placed the candle container inside a bowl of cold water). 

Step 4:

Once the wax has begun to turn from translucent to opaque you can begin to add a few wrapped blessings, or notes. 

Step 5:

REPEAT until you reach the top of the candle container.

Then decorate container as you wish.  I made sure to include little poem and an organza pouch with tweezers inside so the teacher could retrieve the blessings without burning her fingers in the wax.  She can also keep the notes in the organza bag as a keepsake after the candle has revealed all of it's "blessings".  

I did find that if you tried to add the next layer of wax too quickly, it would re-melt the previous layer, letting loose the blessings to float about.  Not too big of a deal, I would just have to watch for it to set up again and shove them back down into place.

The students have since presented the candle to the teacher and she went home and burned it immediately and said it was the most thoughtful gift she had ever gotten (score!).  It was her idea to keep the notes in the organza bag afterwards too.  :)

So a risk turned out to be a success!  What a way to end the school year!