The Healthiest Way to Keep from Getting a Sunburn
Everyone is looking for ways to play in the sun without getting sunburned, but is sunblock really the way?
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1898046/the_healthiest_way_to_keep_from_getting.html

How to Make a Gorgeous Piece of Unusual Wall Art for Your Basement or Anywhere
If you’re looking for something a little different to decorate your home with, take a look at this simple yet dramatic piece of art you can do yourself.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1898142/how_to_make_a_gorgeous_piece_of_unusual.html

My Experiment: Making a Living Writing for Associated Content
I’ve been reading a lot of articles about making a living writing for Associated Content. Here’s my experiment to see if it can be done.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1905506/my_experiment_making_a_living_writing.html

Last month we had a series of storms that came through that flooded out our home.  It’s not as bad as it sounds since our home is actually a basement apartment (that is more like a studio apartment than not), and the water was only an inch deep in some places, but it’s caused a series of problems for us anyway.  I like nature.  I like it a lot, but I prefer to keep nature in nature (for the most part) and not in my home.  For a week I found myself outside shoveling loads of dirt to make drainage for the run off of rain water.  We can’t have this happen again.  It was hard work, but worth it.  Since then we have had no more flooding despite another almost full month of very heavy rainfall.  That said, these past two weeks I’ve been working on cleaning… Summers in the South are hot and humid… and because of the weather and our flood we’ve found ourselves having to deal with a mold problem.  So, that’s what I’ve been cleaning.  It’s been a battle, but I am winning.  I’ve done half the house, but have a long way to go.

When we first moved here we agreed that it would be temporary.  The idea was to move here so we could save our money to buy a house.  Well, despite our best efforts, in lieu of our recent financial hit we’ve realized that we’re going to have hunker down and make this home for a little while more… making our temporary stay a little less temporary than we had planned.  I enjoy my little home.  It’s comfortable and it fits my family nicely, but we know what we want, this isn’t it, and that compels us forward.  I usually feel pretty good about everything, but I have my days when I feel caged.

When my husband and I first got married we seriously mulled over the idea of getting jobs at Yellowstone National Park for a summer and “roughing” it for a summer.  Our plans fell short when we found out that we were expecting a baby.  I’ve thought about that this week though, and the thoughts of doing something similar during the summer months has become more appealing to me.  Despite my homebody nature, I also have an adventurous side… I think the two balance each other out pretty well, and I’ve been home for a long time now caring and bringing up my precious children.  That feeling of longing to “get out” has been getting stronger lately.  I’m sure that having cabin fever from having to stay home the past week and a half from having some sort of crud.. and from reading Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck aloud to my children at night before bed has something to do with it.  No matter what it is, the calling has been strong.  We’ll be homebound this summer, but we’re talking about doing something next summer… what we’re talking about takes planning, especially with children in tow.  At the very least, my need to get away is being somewhat appeased for the moment.

To pull everything together, these past few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time in introspection.  I have never wanted the “average” life.  I’ve never been content with just settling.  I’ve never wanted what “other people have” because I’m not “other people.”  I’ve always felt this way.  I believe that everyone has a distinct path in their lives … an adventure of their own, if you will, that is expressly unique.  I want *my* adventure.  I don’t care to try to live what I think is someone else’s life simply because their life seems better than mine in some way.  I think that most people who know me can attest to that.  A rebel against conformity, a free spirit, a dreamer, a girl with cadillac dreams on a voltswagon budget — all titles given to me throughout my life.  And, I’ve worn my labels relatively proudly… still do, really.  Simply, I like who I am, I like my life and I’m proud of the accomplishments I’ve made so far.

I’ve come to realize these past two months that hardship is a way of life, but so is joy.  I don’t live in the mansion on the top of the mountain.  I don’t drive a fancy car (our a/c went out last year, in fact, and our radio just stopped working earlier this year).  I’ve found myself in a place in life that calls for me to be as creative and inventive as I can to make my life and the lives of those intertwined with mine as joyful and comfortable and peaceful as I possibly can.  God has called me to look at this situation… and that situation… and find a way to turn the junk of life into art.  It’s been a test of faith, a trial of humility, and fight of intellect. I believe that these attributes not only apply to my life, but the lives of others as well.  I truly believe, to the core of my being, that every person is a paintbrush, and every life is a canvas.  We are handed trials and hurts, joys and jubilation, and these are our paints.  I believe that every man is an artist, and what our end masterpiece looks like is not based simply on the “paints” or “situations” we are handed in life, but how we use them to paint the picture of our lives.  That, I believe, is how I, and how you, can find ourselves in the midst of the storm.

I haven’t been keeping it a secret that money has been tight these days.  I figure why try to hide it?  It’s not something we can control, and I thought that maybe somehow by sharing the things that are going on in our lives then maybe it would touch someone else’s life that was going through something similar.  I’ve had a “don’t give up” attitude lately, and I know that’s what it takes to really punch through to the other side.  Most days I try really hard to keep a positive attitude and think about the positive things in my life… but, I have my moments.

I had a moment on Monday afternoon.  I had myself a meltdown is what I had.  But, it led to something really wonderful that has really put a new fire under me.  I wanted to share it.

Monday actually started out really wonderfully.  I felt good.  Then, little by little, things kept going wrong, and my thoughts turned to things I knew we would need in the near future and we don’t have the money to meet those needs.  Before I had a chance to realize that God has met every need as we’ve had it, I had dropped into full blown despair.  I yelled at my poor husband, was a general nusiance to the whole family… and I knew I had to get away.  So, I drove down to a nearby park and found a quiet place to park the car so I could think.

There I poured my heart out to God.  “Why, God?  Why has it been so long?  Why so hard?  Why won’t you move?  Why don’t I feel You… or see You?”  As I was pouring it all out, suddenly this thought came into my head that was distinctly different than my others… It was calm… clear… solid…. “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

I sat there for a minute with tears in my eyes.  Woah.

I wish I could say that suddenly everything was ok… that I drove back home immediately with a new improved attitude and a smile on my face… but that’s not what happened.  I sat there for at least another hour reading the Bible and questioning God… I still had a chip on my shoulder.  “If you will never leave me or forsake me, then why do I feel abandoned?”  But, little by little, things began to calm.  That night I went to bed and felt good.

As I slept, however, I had one dream after another based on all my fears… It was craziness… a gorilla broke into the house… a bear was stalking my children… crazy stuff.  But, when I woke up that morning I realized  that the dreams were all based on my fears… (something outside of my control affecting my family and me in a very negative way)…

As I lay there thinking it over, another thought like the one from the previous day, “I will not leave you comfortless.”

I know… know that I know that I know that I know that God is in control and I don’t have anything to be afraid of.  I don’t care anymore what anyone else thinks.. or HOW we are going to have our needs met… God will find a way… and while He’s at it, He’ll fill our little joy cups up too.   –The wilderness isn’t so bad as long as you have a good guide.

I wanted to share this… I know that my family and I aren’t the only ones that have been facing hard times.  I am certain that there is hope.  And one key scripture sticks out in my head even as I type this:  “you do not have because you do not ask… or you ask amiss.”  It’s not about how much stuff we have… it’s about living life to its fullest capacity… living with a goal, a dream… reaching out and touching others and offering hope.  Life is good.  It really is… no matter what the circumstances appear to be.

Well, I put my first outfit up for auction on Ebay.  Click the image below to see it.  I’ve changed my mind about putting all three up at the same time… instead opting to put one up a day…

I’ve had to wait a bit longer for the website to be up… it’s still in the works, but I’ve decided to go ahead and move forward with selling.  So, Tuesday, May 12th, 3:00 central time the outfits you see below will be listed on Ebay.

I thought I’d make an update to some of the things I’ve been working on in my life….

Smoking:

My initial plan to quit smoking rather fell into pieces.  Week two started off on a good note, but then a couple of very stressful situations reared their ugly heads and I abandoned ship.  But, something else happened that I think is wonderful.  A friend offered to help me through a process to help me quit.  I don’t want to go into details on it because the process is far more personal than just “laying down the smokes.”  Ultimately, however, the idea behind it is helping me see my attitude behind why I smoke, and why I am still smoking… It’s not an easy 1, 2, 3 step by step like “how to build your own boat and quit smoking too!”  It’s thought provoking, and often a bit painful, but it is opening my eyes to seeing some poor thinking and judgement on my part…. and it appears that tackling that will be how I will be able to lay down my cigarettes and walk away from them forever.  I will post more later on it, a bit more on how it works, and hopefully with good news before long.  In the meantime, I’m pressing on.

Penny Millions:

This week has been a struggle on us financially.  To be quite honest I haven’t put a great deal of thought into my Penny Millions money these past few days outside of just doing what I can to pull in some dough… and that is to help pay for things outside of Penny Millions.  I still have a few stocks that are doing very well as I write this, so my account is growing, but because the stocks change consistently I can’t give an account of how much money is earned.  I won’t give an account until the stocks are sold and the money is available again for reinvestment.

Little Mockingbird Collection:

I am finally in a place where I can move forward with my website.  It will be a little while longer because my wonderful brother who is building my website for me can’t pull away to do the work for me.  In the meantime I will be having some fun putting images together and working on the basic layout.  I’m excited about that!

I’m also still working on my “Wild Child” series.  I’m about to finish up the third piece today, and hopefully will have pictures up tomorrow.  I’m also hoping to have some items up for sale on Ebay before the week is up.   After I finish these three pieces, I intend to move onto another series in my collection and make three of those.  There are 5 series ideas… and I am only making three of each to see how they sell before I invest too much time in the production of them.   –I initially wanted to sell only on Etsy, but I’m not getting enough traffic, and I think selling on Ebay at first will help to get my stuff noticed.  That’s the plan anyway.

Today is the National Day of Prayer… and I think that’s a big deal.  One thing I’ve noticed in my life is that the more people come together unified, lifting their voices to God, the more God moves.

“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” –Mathew 18:20

Yesterday, I poured my heart out and addressed an issue that had hurt me for a long time.  It’s funny because once everything was said, and I laid it out on the table, I was released from the burden I had carried for a long time.  Today the sun seems to be shining a little brighter…  The flowers smell a bit more fragrant.  But, it also did something I wasn’t expecting.  I was fully expecting some rebuttals.. even some harsh words to be thrown my way, but that’s not what I got at all.  I went into it expecting division (I didn’t want that, but I was afraid that’s what I would get), but instead I received love, gentleness, and cohesion.

Driving home this morning I mulled some of this over in my head…. how everyone has battle scars and we all are dealing with pain in our lives.  And, I know that I have been responsible for causing someone pain, even though unintentional, but many times I don’t know about it until a long time after… or never know about it… just feel something different between that person and I.  Thinking like that makes it a lot easier to forgive someone else for bringing pain into my life.  Looking back, at least 90% of the hurt I’ve experienced at the hand of someone else has been unintentional on their part.  Writing my post yesterday, clearing the air, getting my feelings out has given me a level of freedom that I hadn’t had before yesterday.  I had already forgiven any wrongdoing I perceived, but I truly felt the freedom of that forgiveness after I opened up.  This morning, as all of this occurred to me, I was forced to contemplate that perhaps so much of the division we feel is because there is unspoken hurt that needs to be pulled out… talked through… lovingly dealth with.  I know that this doesn’t work for every circumstance… but, maybe some.  I know that it’s helped me.

Anyway, today is National Prayer Day, and with that in mind, I thought it would be appropriate for my main prayer today to be for God to unify His people… begin a process of healing in the church… in the family… I know that oftentimes change occurs from just one person moving forward in a specific direction, and others joining in.   I’m not the first person to pray about this, I know, but I thought that if I mentioned here today then others would join with me, and with a unified voice we could pray for the same thing.  Perhaps its a far fetched idea, but I don’t think that is.  I’d like to see healing not only in my own life, but in the lives of the people around me.

So, that’s what I’m about today… I’m praying for unity and healing… for myself and for my people.  I welcome you to join me… and if there’s anything else you’d like for me to pray about with you too, please let me know.  I’ll join forces with you.

Happy National Day of Prayer.  I expect to see some mighty results.

I’ve been going through a mild depression these past few days… I won’t go into detail about everything that has been bothering me lately, but there is one subject I feel like I really need to address.  It’s the one subject that has been on my mind predominantly these past few days…  and has been for a very long time now:  church.

I’ve had a topsy turvy relationship with church from a very young age.  My mother kind of jumped around from church to church trying to find somewhere where we as a family would “fit in”… where we wouldn’t be judged… where we could just be ourselves… I guess that’s why she jumped around so much.  She was a single mother, working sometimes three jobs, and she caught a lot of flack for that… even though she divorced my dad because he was an alcoholic.  I think it took her a long time to finally be at peace in her own life, and having people admonish her for her choice made things a lot more difficult.  She was, and still is, an amazing person.

In the meantime, I also spent a lot of time with my grandparents on the weekend.  They were active members at a Church of God church, and I attended services with them regularly.   If I thought that the churches my mother attended knew how to dole it out, it didn’t hold a candle to the judgement, condemnation, and hypocrisy I saw at this church.  I make no apologies.  Even at a young age, I saw it.  People would run up and down the aisles screaming and crying and telling God how wonderful He was, and then once their feet were off church grounds the foulness of their hearts lept from them.  In fact, some of the cruelest treatment I have ever received came from these “so called” God fearing Christian people.  They were cruel, and selfish… I did not see any of the love of Christ in them at all.

Fast foward to my late teens.  I had all but abandoned church until I was around 17.  We moved and I started church more as a social gathering place than anything else.  I wasn’t sure I even really believed in God.  I hadn’t met a whole lot of people that really proved to me that there was much if any “Godly love” out in the world… outside of my own family, and I felt that they were obligated to love me.

I got married, and my husband and I jumped around from church to church for a bit, having trouble seeing past the blatant hypocrisy and finger pointing… or just flat out superficial christianity… My husband and I were both born again believers at this point, and we were looking for something real… something we could be a part of that was life altering… not just for us… but for others as well.  We wanted to make a difference.

Every time we attempted to settle in somewhere… let our anchor fall, we would soon discover that we weren’t really wanted… people wanted us to fit some mold… live some life that simply wasn’t us.

We wanted to participate in things where we were gifted in, but were told that we couldn’t for one reason or another, but my favorite excuses was “because you aren’t committed — you aren’t here enough.”  I loved this one so much because we were at church almost every time the doors were open.

We kept on, even though we felt useless, and for all respects, unwanted.  That is, until I got very, very sick.  To this day I dont’ know what was the cause of my illness, but I could not eat….went days without eating… facts are, if life had continued on that way I would have died.  I know that. My husband knows that.  God did something awesome in my life that turned it around, but my church was no where to be seen.  During that time I fell completely out of church because I simply didnt’ have the energy to go… mental or physical.  We received not one phone call.  No one came to visit.  It was like we never existed.  I cannot express how crushing that was to me.  I had heard over and over again “it’s not what your church can do for you, it’s what you can do for your church.”  Yet, when I needed my church family the most, there was nothing.

We floundered for a little while after that trying to find a new church family, but at this point I had so much bitterness in me that I don’t think if we had found a goldmine of a church I would have been receptive.  Eventually, God got through to me and I was able to forgive everyone, and even went back to the church.  It was nice for a while, but the same problems were there, and I felt myself getting hurt over and over again…so, we left again.

Currently, we aren’t going to church.  We decided to take a hiatus because it got too hard on Sunday mornings to force ourselves to move in that direction again.  I believe in church.  I believe that we don’t need to “forsake the assembling together of ourselves.” I believe in it with all of my heart, but sometimes it takes time for wounds to heal.

I’ve told my story a few times to a few people and I’ve heard a similar concept that I feel I must address.  It is not Biblical.  That concept is that you can’t look to God’s people and expect to see God… people aren’t perfect, and you can’t expect to see Christ when looking at infallible man.  Well, that’s bull.  Jesus, the man Himself, said that we are to be a light unto the world, salt to the earth.  Don’t be misguided into believing that that excuse holds even a bit of truth to it.  No, we humans are not perfect, but we are held to higher standards.  I am full aware that we all stumble and fall, and all the while someone is watching.  But, when that happens, the Christ in us gets up, seeks to make things right, and keeps on going.  We are all held accountable for our actions… someone somewhere is watching, and the things we say and do make a difference.