Quote of the week!!

It's not always right to do what's popular

 &

it's not always popular to do what's right!



Christmas

Now that Christmas is over, and it's a "little" more safe to talk about....Have you ever considered the holiday? Where it came from....how it started.....what our traditions are all about?? We started exploring this about 3 years ago. It has been a very interesting journey. This week, I found a blog with 12 articles on the subject, from differing viewpoints. Thought you might be interested in looking at some of them. If you do..please come back & leave me a comment. I would genuinely like to know your thoughts!!
Thanks & Blessings!

http://scottbrownonline.com/the-twelve-days-of-christmas-summary/

Wonderful eBooks from Sarah Mae!

Click here to view more details  on 31 days to Clean!

Click here to view more details   on marketing your own eBook

I don't know if you've read this eBook by Sarah Mae at but you will love it! If you need some cleaning inspiration, this is the place to look! She also has an eBook on how to market & sell your eBook. I haven't read this one yet, but Sarah Mae is a wonderful writer and has had great success w/ her previous eBooks so I'm sure she'd be one to learn from!!
Have a wonderful day!!

I LOVE decorating...and redecorating....and rearranging my home!

Lest you think it not an important part of homemaking to decorate your home. Here's a wonderful quote from Edith Schaeffer:

“If you have been afraid that your love of beautiful flowers and the flickering flame of the candle is somehow less spiritual than living in starkness and ugliness, remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and gave you the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to his creation. Creativity is his gift to you and the ‘raw materials’ to be put together in various ways are His gift to you as well.”

It doesn't have to be expensive. I get most of my decorating items either from Goodwill or garage sales! I also use materials from around our property. It's very "organic" and cheap!!  You can make your home look cozy and inviting. A lit candle does wonders for making everyone feel safe & snug. So, if you struggle w/ coming up w/ ideas....just look online, there are literally thousands of ideas to copy from those much more talented. (That's what I do!!) And remember, with your home, you are making memories your children will cherish for a lifetime!!
So....go decorate!!!

Before/After pics....I mean After/Before pics

OK, here's some before/after pics, which I thought I had put the "before" first, and the "after" next, but obviously they came up the opposite...so I guess we'll call them after/before pics! So, first, is the downstairs bath "after".....











and "before" ( nice 80's wallpaper there!!)

The family room "after"

and "before" (so dark, and once again 80's)

The dining room "after"...(we found this light hanging in the basement and moved it to the DR...and also, my husband did the ceiling!)

and "before" (they LOVED wallpaper!!)

The room that will eventually be our "Music room" when we get heat to it "after"...

and "before"

The is the stairway in the entryway, we are leaving this wallpaper for now.

So, as you can see, we've done some work, and have much more to go! I'll post more pics later as there are MANY more!!!

(And sorry about the space between the pics.....can't figure out how to get them closer as I'm new to this!!)

The Lord's plans for us

As I said, we were not sure as a family what the Lord was preparing us for. A smaller home, less land...??? We just knew we wanted to be where HE planted us.

My very first post on this blog mentioned the fact, that as the Lord has been reforming our family in many ways, we also felt He was leading us to change our living arrangements. From "city" life to a more simple, self-sufficient "country" way of living.

The Lord has blessed us with a beautiful home, much bigger home than we had dreamed or imagined, and much more land than we thought we would be able to afford. With the housing market as it is, we were able to purchase a home/land we would never have been able to several years ago.

There are so many miraculous steps the Lord led us on to the purchase of this home, and we can truly say, we KNOW we are right where HE would have us to be. Such peace and comfort comes from know we are in the right place and we now hope to use this house and land to bring glory to Him.

We are searching & praying for a name for our land. We want the name to show our gratitude to the Lord and our dreams of making this land give Him glory. I'll let ya know what we come up with!

And, I will post before and after pics as we spent about a month and a half making some changes before we moved in.

Soli Deo Gloria!

THANKSGIVING

What a wonderful Thanksgiving we had. We are SO blessed.

Thankful for:
Loving family of believers
Christian heritage
Hardworking Husband
9 Beautiful children
Amazing home
God's provision
God's mercy and grace
Jesus
Sunshine!
God's Sovereignty over our lives
Parents who raised me to love the Lord and remember "whose child I am"
Grandparents who had 6 children, who now have 31 grandchildren/great grandchildren, and Lord willing...will lead to MANY more generations who love, follow and serve the Lord
Sisters
Health
Wonderful church
God's Word

I'M B~A~C~K!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello!!! FINALLY, I'm back to blogging! Well, at least back to "attempting" to blog!!

Our family has been through much this past year, which I will try to write about as I can!

As I said in an earlier blog, we had been ready to put our home up for sale and try to find a place out in the country w/ land. Well, it took us about a yr. & a half, but we are here!!
It took our home exactly a year to sell. When it finally did, we didn't have a place to go. We had been looking fervently, but had not found our "dream home"!
As always, the Lord provided, and a week before we had to be out of our home, we were blessed w/ a place to stay. For FREE!! The Lord is good!
The home we were given to stay was a small, two bedroom, church parsonage. So, for the nine of us, it would be tight, but we KNEW we were where the Lord had us, so we were content. What peace comes with realizing that God is sovereign. Such rest knowing HE is in control, not us.We had no idea how long our stay would be. It ended up only lasting 2 1/2 months, much shorter than we had anticipated.

Our prayer in looking for a new place, was that the Lord would lead and guide us to where HE would have us to be. We wanted to KNOW that the home we found was exactly where the Lord wanted us to be. He answered those prayers.

The Lord has blessed us above and beyond anthing we could think or ask. We thought maybe, being in the small house, that the Lord was preparing us for a smaller home. The home we moved out of was about 3200 sq ft. We weren't looking for anything that big, and assumed the home, with land, that we would be able to afford, would be much smaller, and we were find with that. We were also beginning to think that we would have to be content w/ less land also. BUT.....the Lord had other plans.

Vision Forum Giveaway!

Vision forum is giving away $600 in gift cards to readers of Raising olives! We LOVE Vision Forum products! We have been buying and learning from them for MANY years! Our older children are around the same age as their older children so it's been fun to see them all grow over the years. www.visionforum.com has products that you can trust for your family & friends. I greatly encourage you to head over to www.raisingolives.com and sign up to win one of these fantastic gift cards!!
In HIM,
Michelle