haphazard musings

whoops...

i did it again.

ha ha...i didn't even mean to allude to a britney spears song circa 2001.

i just wanted to share with you all that i have once again enrolled myself in a course in which i might just be the stupid one.

as you may recall...a few semesters ago, i sat in my class and nodded uncontrollably and made really unsophisticated comments on the material we were covering.  it may be happening again.

i am now enrolled in Romantic Literature...which may sound sappy and all Jane Austen-y, but let me assure you it is not.  Romantic Lit is a time period from 1780 something to about 1830...and it is all about the politics and freedoms and stuff that went on during that time - like the French Revolution.

it is most definitely NOT about matthew macfadden striding through a dewey morning mist to the whimsical sounds of a masterful pianist playing "mr. darcy's" song...

source

and it most certainly is about...

source

and he, Lord Byron, is just not quite as exciting as he may appear.

nevertheless, i will keep you informed.

why is this so hard?

you know, i think that might be the most asked question in the universe?

i find myself frequently asking this question about many things throughout the day.

why is it so hard to get this printer to print?
why is it so hard to get out of bed in the morning?
why is it so hard to make dinner without creating such a big mess?
why is it so hard to walk up 5 flights of stairs when I can run 2.5 miles?

you get the idea.

so my why is this so hard question for today is:  why is it so hard to think about others?

why is it so hard for us to internalize the plight of others even when the stats speak for themselves?

there are 147,000,000 orphans in the world today.

there are at least 12 million slaves in the world today.

there are 30,000 deaths every week due to lack of clean water in the world today.

and so on and so on...

 

we, Christians, are tasked with doing something about these problems.  right?

so why is it so hard to remember that i am called to do something?

something big or small, something near or something far, just something.

i know the facts.  i know what i am asked to do.  and i think i can answer the question.

 

it is hard to be uncomfortable.  it's hard to choose to think about those things.  it's hard to choose to notice the things that might make you want to change your routine.

you know when i realized that?  well...it was sunday night...at youth group...where i am "supposed" to be the adult that has things figured out. :)  hopefully, i still have the girls at least a little bit tricked into thinking that i have some things figured out.  we have been talking about what we can do in our community and futher to make a difference.  and we were talking about our passions and what we might make it hard to make a difference.  and all the sudden a light bulb moment.

i don't like to be uncomfortable.  i don't like it at all.

so, a new goal...learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

on a clear day

you can no longer see into our shower from the street.

i took this picture standing in the shower and looking out...just fyi. :)

and yes, we store spare toilet paper in our bathtub...it's a giant empty space right...might as well use it efficently.

so we have lived in our house for four years now, and have been saying we need to do something about our super freaky window.  for a while we had a paper accordian blind hanging in there, but it eventually became unsticky and seemed pretty nasty.

so we finally did something about it.

Step 1...clean the window and apply the application solution.

Step 2...put the film on and smooth it out with the handy dandy squegee.

Step 3...trim the edges with the included knife.

Step 4...take new picture!

a forever family

this is from one a blog i follow by a lovely photographer and her filmmaker hubby, formally of ericamay.com

they are passionate about capturing stories, and this one tugs at my heart strings pretty hard.

 

a forever family...how cool.

silly dog

Emily came to visit us over the weekend and Finley really didn't want her to leave.

Or at least he wanted to go with her.  We are pretty sure he realized she was headed to the ranch.  I think it is his favorite place in the world...

ponds to play fetch in...

water to drink that is obviously just for him...

just look at the smile...

shelves upon shelves

of books.

that is my dream for my next house.

my favorite room in our house is currently the little office. 

why?

it is my reading spot.  i have a giant comfy chair, next to my front window, next to all my books.

and while i really, really enjoy reading books, i mostly love the way they look on our shelves.  so i can really only imagine what they could look like in much larger quantities!

i don't know what it is about books that i love so much, but i always have. it's a bit of a complusion...

ask my dad, he packed them ALL up from when i was a kid and brought them all to out house.  apparently, he needed the closet space.

and yes, in case you noticed, i take the covers off all my hard backs and have them stored in a little bin in the closet (this makes Ryan crazy, but I say they look better on the shelf that way).

and yes, that picture was taking in 2004 or 2005...we were so young.

as evidenced by my pins on pinterest, i have big dreams for my future library. 

so hopefully, our next house shall have a library full of leather bound books and will smell of rich mahogany.

10 points to you if you can name that movie reference...

enjoy these awesome libraries and be jealous that some day i plan to have one.  you can even come check out my books if you want.

    

did you get that one, by the way, check out my books...in my library...it was funny, you should have laughed.

and if you were wondering, the movie reference was Anchorman.  and no, i haven't seen it but Ryan quotes it all the time.  and by all the time, i mean probably once a week.

 

 

 

book or hymnal wreath

i like being crafty.  it's fun.

so i crafted a few of my christmas presents and decorations. 

the best one turned out to be my wreath made out of hymnal pages.

i got the idea here...at Living with Lindsay.  i had never read the blog before, and i don't know how i found the tutorial in general...but since it was called living with lindsay it must be a good read.  i mean we are name twins and thus kindred spirits.

so that is what Lindsay's looked like (now don't be confused, i have not yet been reduced to commenting about myself in the 3rd person).

i saw this one on pinterest that used hymnal pages just today.

this one is also cool, but it is very orderly.  mine was not quite so tidy - obviously, since tidy isn't really in my nature.

i followed the tutorial on Lindsay's site pretty closely, except that i used a stamp pad to darken the edges rather than a paint brush and craft paint.  why? you may ask.  well i had a stamp pad and i didn't have a paint brush or paint.  so i just improvised.  crazy, right?  also, i would recommend hot glue over the glue stick.

i forgot to take a final picture, but here is a picture of it being given and to give you an idea of the finished size.

so yeah, it was huge, and barely fit in the wreath box we bought to hold it.  we couldn't put the lid on though cuz it crushed the pages.  so we stuck a giant red bow on it and called it good. :)

now, i kind of want to make another one for my house, since i loved the way it turned out.  and i would kind of like to make it out of Bible pages, but seeing as i felt pretty guilty ripping pages from a hymnal, i can only imagine it is sacreligious to pull pages out of a Bible to make a wreath.

what do you think?  it would be pretty cool though.

so there you go...make your own.  they are super cool.

 

 

so have you seen this?

Stumbled upon this video a week or so ago, and ryan and i have watched it several times since then...for real it's hilarious.

you should skip over to about 2:30 seconds in the middle, because it doesn't really get funny until this point.  so the premise is, Jimmy Kimmel asked parents to record their kid's responses after they told them they ate all their halloweeen candy.  and these are the results he got.

most of the kids just cried, but these two were just absolutely hilarious!

 

 

also, Parenthood started again this week.  for real, i love that show.  it speaks to me.  it speaks to a lot of my friends too, so i just thought i would share with you that it started up.  so look for it on hulu or on NBC. :)

 

and a final thought for this wednesday...limbo.

i hate being in limbo.  so i ask a question.

do you think our lives are lived in limbo because we are constantly wondering what to do next?

i know it's not true.  i know that contentment in your current situation is important and i am working on that...but i tell you limbo can be killer.

    Barbados - January 2007

a new year, a new start

it's the best kind of sunday night...the kind where i don't have to go back to work on monday.  so as we sit watching some of the movies we got for Christmas, i am typing out recipes to put into a shutterfly book. 

it has been possibly the most efficient new year's day i have ever had.  we went to church,

out to lunch,

(aren't balloons the coolest?!?!)

organized the spice cabinet,

(trust me, that is much improved.)

cleaned out and organized the closet, and rearranged and added new stuff on top of the cabinets.

really, it has been quite a productive weekend in general.  lots of organizing going on around here.  ryan and i are feeling a bit overwhelmed by stuff.

does that happen to you?  the stuff in your life gets in the way of living your life? 

so i finally said no.  i called in the reinforcements - Anne the Organizational Queen.

for real, she made that face when she saw my really, really scary pantry!

we hit the store and found some bins that fit the dimensions of my seriously giant cabinet perfectly.

please note it was not as easy to find them as i made it sound.  we went to 4 or 5 places before we found them at Menards.  i got 4 of the 4 inch deep ones and 2 of the 7 inch deep ones.

and here are the final results (sorry for the lack of before picture, i didn't think about it until we were half way done)!

i am so determined to keep it this way.  so it is day two with the most awesome pantry ever, and we are going strong!!!

i've got lots of other projects to share with you this year.  some that i have already done and some that are coming up including a Christmas tree out of ornaments, a wreath made of hymnal pages, a basement finishing project, and hopefully, the final installments of my trip to china.

here are a couple pictures and a video i am dumping from my phone...see you soon.

Untitled from lindsay frasier on Vimeo.