Thankful Tree

I've posted this idea before and talked about it here, but here's our version this year.  I've gotten tired of making new leaves each year so this year after we traced and cut all the leaves I laminated them and we write on them with dry erase markers.

Home: rest

These pictures were taken back in January.  I took them to show my mom a few things and to get her ideas about some things.  I never did send them or do anything with them (No surprise there.  I take hundreds of pics with intent to blog and never do anything with them).  Right now I'm trying to clean up my hard drive of the over 26,000 pics and so I'm looking back through a lot of old ones and I'll be posting some old stuff.  Our room is dressed for summer right now and doesn't look like this, but I thought I'd post them anyway.  In fact my furniture usually is rotating around the house and I'm noticing some things that are in different rooms now.  I want our room to be a place of rest.  It is our getaway.  We value time alone together each evening and our room is a sanctuary for us.  Of course I stash laundry baskets and stuff in here when I'm cleaning fast and furiously because people are coming over.  It is rarely clean.  It is never clutter free or electronics free (therefore never dust free!), but it's ours.  It's what we've got.  It is so easy for me to be discontent while looking at blogs.  My "I want" and "I deserve" and "poor me" rare their ugly heads OFTEN!  However, the Lord has graciously grown me in this area over the past few years.  I don't spend money on home decor (ok, occasionally I use my birthday money for this!).  I use what I have.  I Tim 6:7 says, "for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out".  The beauty I desire my home to have is something that isn't tangible.  It's a feeling of complete comfort and a joy that cannot be expressed in pictures, but only in time spent here.  So, I'm reluctant to post pictures, but here is my place of rest.  At the end of the day this is where I'm happy.

I included the following picture because I never did "reveal" my Christmas gift from last year.  In this post I mentioned that there's something I've wanted for 15 years and finally got it!  Yep,  it's amazing.  and Yep, it lives in our room.  We are wall-to-wall STUFF here.

I love this bit of clean white space.  I think it's the only little bit of space in this house that's white, and clean.

None of this is here anymore.  In fact I actually sold the glass hurricanes at our yard sale.  It was fun for a week or so, but I've got to put on my missionary mindset and let some STUFF go.

Well, mom, this is a little late, but there ya go!  Thanks for the "J" and "B".

happy heart day

making valentines for J and E's classmates:

making heart garland with the top half of the cellophane bags (They were too long so we had to cut them off and I couldn't throw away the extra!):

making heart cookies for the K5 class at school:

meditating on what it means to have a happy heart as a child of God:

Home: giving thanks

If I had a quarter for every time I SAID, "say thank you" I'd be wearing jewels and dining on bacon (tee hee).  How many times do I SHOW thanks giving?  Thanksgiving should be more than a holiday.  It should be a way of life.  This month we have practiced thankfulness around here with the "thankfulness tree".  Each evening after dinner we each write on a leaf what we're thanking God for and add it to the tree.  My kids have really enjoyed this and I've noticed an overall attitude of gratefulness in the past few weeks that was almost nonexistent before.  They say it takes 21 days to form a habit.  Hopefully this one will stick.  Happy Thanksgiving!

See here for another giving thanks practice that's fun for the kids (and adults)!

Home: the old chair

I have had this chair for close to 15 years.  My dad owns some rental properties and this beauty was left behind by one of the occupants.  He was going to haul it to the dump and I rescued it!  It sat in my bedroom in high school and through college and has now moved 5 times with us.  I almost got rid of it this summer.  It sat in our garage for months, but I just couldn't part with it.  We just do not have room for it.  So, now it has found it's way back into the house and is squeezed into our bedroom.  I'd love to know the story behind it.  I want to know when it was made where it came from and who first purchased it and who have it's owners been and where it has gone.  This old chair is very much a part of our home.

Welcome

                          home...

There is no place more delightful than one's own fireside.  ~Cicero

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. ~Jane Austen

Home is a complex word that means many things.  My home is people, much like a church is it's people.  We, the Stamper people, associate home with this building we are living in right now, and over this coming month I'm going to explore what exactly that home is to us.  I hope to capture some of the ways we feel the word home (with pictures) and to express (with words) gratitude to our Lord for the institution of family and simultaneously the home that we enjoy.

ian's window

I've been wanting to show off this window we made for baby Ian and now that Amy posted it, I will too!

Christmas at our house