God Is Love and Love Came Down

I love this time of year - the pretty lights, dark nights, Christmas music, sparkling decorations, cold weather, hot chocolate, presents, and happy smiles. It is a season of celebration. Everywhere you turn there is a reminder to celebrate! There is a purpose to this season, a reason to be joyful and have hope.

I started listening to Christmas music over a month ago. Why? Because it is never too early to celebrate our God coming to earth! What wondrous love God has shown us in sending His Son!

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him" (1 John 4:7-9, NIV 1984).

Love came down. God sent His Son, Jesus, the Messiah. Immanuel. God With Us. Prince of Peace. Bread of Life. Light of the World. Savior.

Jesus came to earth as a baby. The God of the universe came to dwell among fallen people - doesn't that just astound you? Doesn't it make your heart sing? God loved us so much that He came down to live among us and save us from our sins. He lived and suffered as we do. He was tempted, yet was without sin. He was a perfect and holy sacrifice, and He willingly gave His life to redeem all who will believe.

Love came down, died for us, and rose again. If that isn't a reason to listen to celebrate, then I don't know what is.

My prayer for you today, dear friend, is that you will know the mercy and grace of God, that you will have His peace and joy in your life, and that this Christmas season you will truly celebrate God coming to earth.

I like the Love Came Down collection from DaySpring because the items are not just beautiful decorations, but they have words that express the meaning for the celebration of this season. Every piece of this collection is a reminder that Jesus came to earth, a reminder to celebrate.

One of my new favorite items is this  reversible Table Runner. It is just beautiful! Our table is too small for this large table runner, so instead I am using mine for a tree skirt. It works very nicely, I think!

DaySpring has provided me with these lovely items in exchange for a story/review post.  All words and opinions are my own. I appreciate these items from DaySpring very much, but I do not have enough space to use them all.  I would like to give these Tea Lights and Advent Calendar to one of my readers!  Just leave a comment to enter.  A winner will be chosen and notified by email on Monday, November 26th.

* This giveaway is now closed. *

Toy Kitchen Makeover

I wanted to get Adelaide a toy kitchen for her 2nd birthday.  Toy kitchens are expensive, and I was looking for a way to get one at an affordable price.  I was planning to use an old tv stand or end table and make it into a little girl's kitchen, so I started collecting Play Kitchen Ideas on Pinterest.

I never did find the right piece of furniture at a thrift store to use for the kitchen makeover.  However, my parents found an old and faded toy kitchen for me, which made the project even easier!  Here are the before pictures:

It was not so pretty, but was very sturdy - perfect for a makeover!

It even came with a little tea kettle, which was also in need of a makeover.

My dad sanded the kitchen down, removed the doors, handles, and knobs.  Will took me out shopping to find the perfect paint.  It took me two weeks to get everything painted.  It was hard work, much harder than I had anticipated.  Painting the little kitchen took a lot out of me, but the end product was pretty, and seeing the delighted expression on Adelaide's face was priceless. 

Here is the kitchen after its makeover:

The kitchen is now "Canyon Pink" from Olympic paints.  The knobs and sink are painted white (with a little bit of pink mixed into the white paint).  My mom recently showed me that Adelaide's kitchen looks a little like the Pottery Barn Kids toy kitchen!  I had no idea that pink was such a stylish color for toy kitchens right now.

I also sanded and painted the tea kettle.  The faded red, yellow, and blue of the original kettle would never do!  I mixed some black and pink paint in order to get a new color for the tea kettle.  I was hoping for a grayish pink color, but it actually turned kind of purple.

My mom found two wooden disks for me to use for the burners.

I painted them black and glued them on using wood glue.

Adelaide loves to wash her hands in the sink.

The pink kitchen is Adelaide's new favorite toy.

The paint job isn't perfect, but it is good enough.  Adelaide is thrilled with her new kitchen, and it brings me such happiness to see her play with it.  I am so thankful that the Lord gave me the strength to paint this little kitchen for her.

Soft-Boiled Eggs and Violets

When I was a little girl I loved to go to my Oma and Opa's house.  Oma would always fix soft-boiled eggs for breakfast - my favorite!  Then, to my amazement, Oma could turn the empty eggshells into vases for small flowers.  She would carefully wash the eggshells and keep the ones that had not cracked.  Then the two of us would take a walk in the backyard to pick flowers for our eggshell vases.  It was my special time with Oma, and I always liked picking the wild violets that grew in her backyard.  To this day, wild violets remind me of Oma.

Guess what I found in our backyard this spring...

Wild Violets!

Earlier this week William and I ate soft boiled eggs for breakfast.  Then that afternoon we took a walk to the back of the apartments where the violets are.  (We took all of the necessary precautions for such an excursion: a stool for me to sit on, compression hose, water, and a cell phone for William to call Will if I were to faint or be too weak to get back to the front of the building.)  Once in the back, I sat down and picked my violets while William picked dandelions.  We took them inside, and my violets found their home in a small eggshell vase, just like Oma used to make for me.

Ready for Adelaide

William and Adelaide's bedroom is now decorated and ready for our new little addition.

Easter Eggs

Today Will, William, and I have been decorating Easter eggs and listening to our Easter Music. It's messy, but fun. I like having fun projects and crafts that we can do together while sitting down and staying in one place. It makes life easier for me, while still being exciting and fun for William.

We did mostly hard-boiled eggs, but we did some blown eggs too. I discovered that people with POTS are not meant to blow out eggs. Lucky for me I have a husband who is willing to do it for me. By the time we got to the last egg I figured out that baby nasal aspirators work very well for blowing the egg out. I'll have to file that knowledge away for next year.

Here are some pictures of our fun!

William was very amused by the whole egg dying process.

I learned from Martha Stewart today that you can make pretty patterns on the eggs by wrapping them tightly in lace and then placing them in the dye.

Here is my favorite lacy egg. Martha's turned out better, but who's keeping score?

Martha's hands looked better too. She wears rubber gloves while dying eggs. Obviously I don't!

Our basket of colored eggs. The eggs are new, but the basket is as old as me. I think that Easter grass just might be as old as me too!

Steamer Trunk Mini-Makeover

The steamer trunk in William's bedroom has been in need of some new knobs. The old ones had broken, and only the tiny center of the knob was left.

Guess what we found at the thrift store for free! Knobs that fit perfectly.

The New and Improved Steamer Trunk

10 Minute Makeover

The Nester recently did a 4 week series called "10 Minutes to a Room You'll Love." She gave simple and practical advice for making a room prettier and more functional. Now that the series is over, she is having a linking party so that we can all share the 10 minute makeovers we did in our homes. Below are the changes I made in our house this week.

This is our dining area before. We live in a small apartment, and have virtually no office space. My husband is a seminary student, and living in a small apartment makes studying difficult and messy! Will doesn't have an office or spare corner of the apartment for studying and doing homework, so our kitchen table doubles as his study space. We are only a family of three, and we really don't need all of the table space for meals. We did want the dining area to look nice, but we didn't have a good place to keep books, notebooks, pens, Bibles, Hebrew cards, etc. They always stayed piled up on the table. And what is that in the corner???

Yep, it's a box of food. We ran out of food storage room in our kitchen. This box stayed in the corner. It was practical for us, but unsightly! The solution: I removed the box of food, and replaced it with a small bookshelf.

This bookshelf now holds all of Will's notebooks, pens, current textbooks, Bibles, and Hebrew cards. I even had room on the top for some of our favorite pictures and a fake candle (real candles are banned in our apartment complex).




That cleared off the table very nicely. But what did I do with the box of food? Look closely!




There it is! I just pushed it under the table. We don't use that side of the table, so it won't be in anyone's way, and it won't be in plain sight.

This is the after shot. It's not a perfect dining area, but it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful, right?

Do you want to see what others have done? Go check out the Nester's linking party!