Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Addendum to the pre-made pages business



I did another one, with a pre-made page by Brenda Kempf at sbbytes. This time, I wanted three pictures and there were only two frames, so I added one by cutting and pasting. I also resized this one from 12x12 to 7x10. Here's the finished page and the original element.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Pre-Made Scrapbook Page

I recently began a voyage into digital scrapbooking--wow! It's fun! No mess, either, and I love that. I use PSP8 anyway for other graphics work, and it's perfect for scrapbooking. I initially began with textures that I already had saved for other work, and that was fine. But a couple of weeks ago I discovered that there are free, ready to use scrapbook paper and elements and alphabets just waiting to be plugged in. The first thing I did was the yearbook pages for our homeschool group, and I did that much as I would do regular scrapping--cut and paste and muck around, and I really enjoyed it.
This evening, I thought I would try a pre-made layout, which is something that I would normally view as "cheating", but I thought maybe it would be a nice way to get something ready fast. And it was! It's really cute, perfect for the photos, and I have a completed page ready to be printed, and it took about 10 minutes to do. Here it is: (Click the picture to see the full-size page--if it doesn't load the first time and you get the title of the photo instead of a picture, go back and try again. There seems to be a glitch there.)
I don't think I'll always use pre-made pages, but I can definitely see the possibilities. This particular one is from Shabby Princess, a site with absolutely lovely, free materials. The alphabet I used is by Jennifer Riggins at Scrapbook Bytes. All of the pieces required a lot of resizing, because they are huge, and the original page was meant to be 12x12 and I resized it to be 7x10 because it makes a nice clean printout on standard 8.5x11 paper. I found the whole experience to be oddly liberating; it was really kind of nice to be able to ignore my usual desire to mess around with things as much as I normally would!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Underestimating Our Childrens' Ability to Follow Christ

This morning, the sermon at church began a new series on youth in the church (as a body)--our expectations of them, whether they have heard the gospel rightly, what they are doing with it. It seems that some of the messages in this series will be aimed at the youth, and some at the parents, and some at the church as a whole.
One of the points that Pastor John made (the sermon will be available online shortly at Desiring God) was that we often underestimate our children when they have made a profession of faith. As I think about this, I am in agreement. Although we homeschool and definitely do not participate in most of the silliness the post-modern world has to offer, the idea of children and teens being kind of empty-headed and completely fun-oriented is very pervasive, and I have to admit that I have lower expectations of my kids than I should at times.
My daughter has professed faith in Christ, and as time passes I have been excited to see the beginnings of all kinds of good fruit in her. Of course, a parent can't say with certainty, "My child is saved!", since only God truly knows the heart, but nevertheless, I am delighted to see her begin to grow in righteousness.
But I am concerned that I'm not encouraging her enough to live for the Glory of God, to delight in Him, to rest in the security of His future Grace, while still persevering in a life of good works to reflect His mercy. Certainly, I encourage her in her efforts to be more Christ-like, I try to recognize and comment when I see fruits of patience and kindness and self-control. But I'm wondering if I should be doing something different. I'm thinking that when it comes to helping our children grow in faith, we maybe need to be coming more alongside them, sinner to sinner, and encouraging them as we would adult believers, with a heart to helping them glorify God with their lives. Not to minimize or change the authority of the parental role, of course, because that's part of God's plan, but just to try to empathize more, as the struggles our children have are the same as the ones we have, day to day.
I think I am underestimating her ability to have a real focus in her life.
I really need to give this some more thought, as I see that this post is kind of a babbling affair, sort of a stream of consciousness, but I'm excited to see where this new idea leads me, and excited to hear how this new sermon series develops.
Praise Him!

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Beloved Tomato



By the end of August each year I am so tired of even the thought of tying up another tomato plant or loading up another basket of grape tomatoes, I'm just waiting for that killing frost. But then, in December, the Spring seed catalogs start to come...
In Minnesota, the growing season is quite short, compared to other areas of the country. We can pretty much count on about 90-110 days of frost-free weather, which somewhat limits the kind of veg and fruit we can grow.
But there's the tomato! Oh, how I love them. We all love them. Last year, I grew nine varieties, including some nifty heirloom tomatoes of unbelievable flavor and color.
This year, I'm going to try some "Whopper" tomatoes from Park Seeds, and a couple of new "currant" type tomatoes, so small that three ripe fruits can fit on a dime. Also, I'll be revisiting some of the heirlooms from last year, the Brandywine, the Big Rainbow and the Black Krim, plus the usual Golden Girl, Yellow Pear and plain old Grape.
I gave up on Cherry-types, like the Super Sweet 100, primarily because they are so incredibly prolific, but the fruit doesn't keep for more than a day. I was constantly overrun with fruit flies because my cherry tomatoes were turning to the dark side the day after they were picked. We just couldn't keep up.
The kids just love the little tomatoes. They're always out in the garden with bulging cheeks and full pockets, so it's a good thing that all of the small-fruiting tomatoes are indeterminate and just keep on going from the middle of July until the frost.
This afternoon, I was mucking around the vegetable garden, gradually getting things ready, and found just a couple of little, dried out yellow pear tomatoes that missed the fall clean-up. It was funny to see them out there, unmistakably out of their season, but so at home there in the dirt. I wonder what would happen if I buried them after a winter on the ground.

Keeping Stuff vs. the Mercy of God

Since we moved, 2 1/2 years ago to a considerably smaller space, I have been laboring to get rid of all kinds of unnecessary things. Last spring I went through my storage shed and found that I had boxes and bins and boxes and bins of baby clothes, receipts, scraps that I had written on, old toys (even some of mine!), textbooks, school papers, etc, that I never looked at and suddenly realized that I was no longer attached to. So much of it seemed so pointless, so temporary, I couldn't see why I had bothered to haul it all around with me for so long.

I gave quite a bit of thought to this phenomenon, because in the past, I have always been so sentimental that the very thought of losing any of these things would bring tears to my eyes. I couldn't figure out why my perspective had changed so much. Then it hit me--the last time I really went through these items with an eye to what I really wanted to keep was before I became a Christian!

Wow! This was an incredible realization for me, and a demonstration of the mighty power of the Holy Spirit in a born-again believer--the power to transform thought patterns of a lifetime, without my even knowing it was happening. Yet another example of how the Lord never commands us to do what he doesn't give us the grace to accomplish. Matthew 6:19-21 tells us clearly that we are not be putting our love and hope in earthly things--and I think that that applies to things of no monetary value as well as money and fancy possessions. I had way, way too much invested in those items that I was saving.

Also, it's a demonstration of the mercies of the Lord. He could have accomplished His goal in me by causing me to be convicted that I didn't need these things, and then I would have had a painful "separation" from them as I tried to be obedient. But in His mercy, He changed my heart before I had to deal with the actual situation. Not all sinful patterns are resolved so easily. There are always struggles where I have to simply "mortify the flesh", and run to the Lord with the pain it causes, leaning heavily for the strength to continue. But I am so grateful that in this He allowed me to learn gently.

All this doesn't mean that I never save anything, never keep memorabilia. I have a box with a few special baby items, diaries, love letters from my husband, early drawings from the kids, etc. But I if something happens to that box, I'll be okay, because I'm truly beginning to know where my treasure must be.

Friday, April 18, 2008

A new frontier...


It surprises me that I have never blogged before, as I have been a "diarist" since I was able to write, and I use the computer to do all kinds of other hobby and school related things. But, this is my first experience with it. My friend Tami, at Ambleside Classical, has been encouraging me to do it, and I can see from poking around various blogs that it should be right up my alley.
I am a Christian, and wife to Jim, mother to Stella, 10 and Gabe, 5, and happy and blessed to be a housewife and homeschooler.
We have always been homeschoolers; even before we were married, Jim and I knew we would homeschool our kids when we had them, although our reasons have changed over the years from a purely academic purpose to a focus on obedience to Scripture, especially Ephesians 6:4--"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." (ESV)
As all Christian moms know, this is easier said than done, but we are confident that the Lord will bless our work, as He never gives us a command without also giving us the grace and strength we need to obey.
I am seeing this blog as an opportunity to share all kinds of things, like curriculum things, budget and money ideas, cooking and gardening plans, etc. I'm hoping it will be a kind of combination scrapbook and diary that I will enjoy looking through, and maybe others will as well.