Sometimes I read something online and I think, “That was so good/funny/interesting/provocative/helpful! I should send that to my friends.” And sometimes I do send an occasional link to a friend or two. But most times I don’t.

Today I’m going to share some good/funny/interesting/provocative/helpful links with you all. So if you don’t have a few minutes to sit and enjoy these, maybe you could just make a note to come back to this post when you have some extra time, because these are worth perusing.

If you aren’t familiar with Jen Hatmaker, you might want to check out her blog and/or her Bible studies. I’m especially interested in her study entitled “7.”  She doesn’t post on her blog very often, but when she does it’s always funny and thought-provoking. I liked Jen’s post here.

And who doesn’t need a little extra awe in their life? Whenever I’m praying about something that just seems too far-fetched, too impossible to come true, looking up into the night sky always helps. Remembering how vast and powerful God is puts my own stuff into perspective and helps me pray and believe for big things. If you haven’t checked this site out, take a look at the astronomy photo of the day, right here.

Are there any poets among you? How about poem lovers? I receive a daily devotional by email every day, but did you know you can sign up to receive one poem a day too? Take a look here.

Would you like to learn how to knit, or to knit better? My daughter taught a small group of us how to knit and I truly enjoy it. But I need help now and then, and I need help to move on from knitting scarves. Do you know about the site Knitting Help? What I like about it is how kind and patient the teacher is, and how the camera view is exactly like your own view of your hands, needles and yarn would be. So you can start and stop the video again and again until you’ve got it. Need to be shown thirty-eight times? No problem! Here’s the beginning lesson right here, but if you poke around the site you can find lots of helpful videos.

Anyone who visits my blog or is a part of my life knows that I love cardinals. They’re very rare this far north. Here is a wonderful video of a Northern Cardinal and its instantly-recognizable-to-me song, here.

I think reading the book 1000 Gifts made a big difference in my life, especially since I learned at my beloved mama’s knee how to view life as a glass-half-empty prospect. So many visit Ann Voskamp’s blog already, but I think her post on nurturing marriage is worth reading over and over. Michael and I have been married almost thirty-two years, and neither of us doubts the other’s devotion and faithfulness. But every couple needs a tune-up now and then, and every marriage needs some occasional refreshment. This post of Ann’s is worth coming back to.

I love Mexican food. Growing up in Southern California not far from the Mexican border meant that Mexican restaurants were plentiful, and my family and I probably visited our favorite one every month. When I moved to Minnesota in 1981 I was surprised to learn that not many Minnesotans knew the difference between an enchilada and a burrito, and some folks I met even pronounced the word taco, “TACK-oh.” Oh dear. Today more northeastern Minnesotans seem to be enjoying Mexican food, but I still run across people who don’t know that a good taco is always made with a home-fried corn (not flour!) tortilla. Michael still calls them taco shells. 🙂 Here’s a picture of the kind of corn tortillas you should never have in your house. I’ve often thought about doing my own little how-to video, but I guess I’d have to learn how to upload one first. In the meantime, you can see how to fry a corn tortilla here. The only difference in the way the nice woman in the video fries hers and the way I fry mine is the duration: mine don’t get quite as brown as hers. Fill a freshly fried (and drained of course) corn tortilla with seasoned beef or chicken, grated colby jack cheese, shredded romaine lettuce, finely chopped purple onion and homemade pico de gallo and I guarantee your eyes will roll back in your head when you taste all those flavors and textures together. And you’ll need extra napkins when all that tomato-cilantro-lime juicey goodness leaks out of the taco as you take a bite.

No one likes to talk about this, but I think it’s good when people do. Don’t we all know someone who has experienced some sort of infidelity in a relationship? I know that pain from my first marriage, and always have compassion on those who have experienced it. And I also try not to throw stones at those who have not been faithful, because what am I, sinless or something? Hardly. I think this link could be helpful, so file it away in your brain or on your computer for whomever might need it someday — it’s called Affair Recovery and is right here.

Not everyone enjoys warped comedy, but I do. I don’t care for comedy that isn’t family friendly, but I do like the edgy humor of Christian comedian Tim Hawkins. Tim is the father of four, and he and his wife Heather home school their children and take them all over the country when Tim is on tour. My grandchildren love Tim Hawkins. We’re going to drive to the Twin Cities in August to see him in concert, and I look forward to seeing Michael wipe tears from his eyes from laughing so hard. Click here to see Tim talk a little about home schoolers, and then listen to him sing a weird, flat song about yoga pants. You’ll either think it’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever seen, or you’ll join those of us who laugh so hard our bellies ache.

Lastly, we just got through painting a wall in our dining room with black chalkboard paint. It’s “curing” now, but in a few days we’ll be able to write on it. Someone asked me today what kinds of things we’ll write, and I said, “Menus, happy birthday wishes, scripture memory verses, atta-girl compliments for folks in our home, grocery lists, prayer requests, doodling….whatever!” If you’d like to see some of the most incredible chalkboard art, click here to see the brilliant artist make it happen in time lapse. Amazing!

Well, Michael is waiting for me to come watch a movie with him. We’re taking a chance on this one. I liked the newer one with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, but I wonder if this 1985 film can compare. Have any of you seen it?

Hey, what are some of your favorite links? Feel free to share them in a comment below!

While many places in our country currently have scenes like this:

And folks on the East Coast are seeing apple trees that look like this:

This is the forecast that was just posted in our neck of the woods:

And we are nearing the middle of April!

Do you have flowers blooming where you are?

Saturday evening we had four grandchildren over for a few hours while their mama and daddy went to a wedding.

Clara, Elijah, Vivienne and Audrey always make beelines for their favorite things after they come in and hang up their coats, hats and mittens. This time Clara picked a book from our shelves about how to make dogs smile. Elijah always reads the Tintin books over and over, and says he never gets tired of them. Vivie went straight to my office, opened the closet and brought out a box of crayons and a pile of blank paper for drawing. And Audrey sat on my lap and listened while I read this book and this book to her, before going to the dining room table to join Vivie in their artistic pursuits.

Later on Audrey (age 5) presented me with a drawing she’d completed, and she said with her hugest grin and tons of delight and love in her voice, “Grandma, this is for you. It’s you and me, and we really love each other.”

Here is her drawing, with her signature at the top (you can click to enlarge if you’d like to see the fine details):

I know you might have a hard time telling which person is which in Audrey’s drawing, but some things are better left a mystery, so I’ll let you guess.  🙂

And here’s a recent picture of The Auds, taken at the preschool she attends twice a week:

These are the simple things that make me so happy.

To have the love of a child is to have treasure untold.

For the first time ever, Michael and I went away for Easter. We would have liked to go someplace for two nights, but even though we were only able to work things out so one night was possible, we were still very much looking forward to getting away. When I asked Michael where he wanted to go, I was expecting him to name an old favorite place like “Up the north shore” or “Grand Marais,” or even “The Twin Cities,” but instead he surprised me by promptly answering, “Brainerd.”

Brainerd? It seemed like an unlikely choice to me, since the Brainerd Lakes area of Minnesota has so many lakes and in my mind is regarded more as a summer destination. But what do I know, since I’ve only been to Brainerd once in my life? Michael was firm on this destination so I set about trying to find the kind of place we like, that is, not a hotel with one room, and not a high-end cabin that costs more than a week’s worth of groceries. It took a while, but because we were booking on such short notice and we’d be staying on Easter weekend, I found a resort who gave us a nice cottage on Roy Lake for half price.

Roy Lake is one of the unlabeled lakes you see below in the little town of Nisswa, which is very close to Brainerd. And even though the Brainerd Lakes region of our state is stunningly beautiful and draws visitors from all over, I have a tiny problem with the name. I think it sounds like a merging of the word brain (you think?) and innard. So in my mind it becomes a dubious destination before I even strap on my seatbelt. BRAY-nerd? It’s even a stretch to say with an excited lilt in the voice, “Hey, we’re going to BRAY-nerd for our weekend away! Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

This weirdness about certain words runs in our family. Someday scientists will still be mapping human genes, and after all the important ones are identified, they’ll move on to the lesser ones, and the gene that causes the female members of some families to have a negative visceral reaction to certain words will be isolated and named. We already know our family has this gene. Sharon had a very difficult time early in her marriage when she learned that their first apartment (a very nice place in Northern California) was situated on a street called Guardino (gwar-DEE-no). Her Icky Word Gene waved a red flag and hissed to every fiber of her being, “No! No! You can’t possibly live on a street called Guardino! Icky!” Needless to say, Sharon’s husband Chris was at a loss to understand all of this. But I understood. They did move into the nice place but I’m pretty sure Sharon said the word Guardino as infrequently as possible.

And Carolyn hates the word moist. She sort of wrinkles her nose when she says it. Sara doesn’t like the word cubic. And there are a few other words the females in our family can’t abide, but they’re escaping me now. And this post is about sixty-five per cent and I like cows, so I must move on.

Michael and I like an unhurried road trip, and the weather was beautiful for this time of year. You would never know it’s spring by all the bare trees and the snow still on the ground, but the longer days and temperatures in the high thirties and low forties make such a difference in our outlooks after such a long winter. As we headed toward the center of our state, we passed by many small farms with cows standing placidly around in their pens.

I thought about how much I’ve always liked cows and never really talked about it to anyone. It’s not like I was keeping this big cow secret or anything. I think I would have made a good owner of one or two cows. I would have been like the farm wife of yesteryear who named her milk cows and talked to them and found milking a therapeutic routine. I would have made cheese and yogurt and butter, and worn a matronly, flowered house dress and wound my gray hair up in bobby pins each morning. Have any of you ever milked a cow? I haven’t, but I’ve milked a goat, and thought it was something I could get used to. Alas, cow ownership is something I don’t think is in my future, but I have been considering cow art lately. Take a look at this painting and tell me it wouldn’t look good some place in our house.  🙂

When we arrived at our cabin we were so pleased with it. Here’s the living room, which is just a few feet from the lake. Our view through these windows was wintry of course, and the lake was white and completely frozen over.

We rested. We ate Twizzlers, which I’m pretty sure cause cancer, but hey it’s once a year. We enjoyed the fireplace. We drove in to Brainerd and saw a movie (Olympus Has Fallen) which was terribly stressful and a nail biter and full of seven hundred forty-six uses of a word I hate (there’s that Icky Word Gene making my flesh crawl again), and once back in our cabin we soaked in the restorative quiet and the beauty.

On Easter morning we read, did not go to church for the first Easter I can remember in my life, played some Easter music and talked about all that Jesus has done for us, and then we napped. I could feel myself winding down and it was wonderful. We had to leave, though, because it was just this one night, so we went to the main lodge to check out, which was built in 1919 and looks like this inside. We had reservations for their very popular Easter brunch, and our meals were delicious. It was the first time I’ve ever had Walleye Chowder and of course that was heaven for Michael the fisherman. We lingered over our brunch and once we left Nisswa and Brainerd we decided to take a slow way home. We drove back roads that passed through little bergs like Ossipee, Crosslake, Fifty Lakes, Emily (the home town of my dear friend Pat), MacGregor and Cloquet (rhymes with okay). We saw dozens of lakes and several more farms with lovely cows.

Since conversation is such a challenge for Michael because Parkinson’s has affected his voice, we mostly listened to CDs and the radio as we went, and at one point this song came on. I love this song because it reminds me of Michael, and whenever I hear it I sing it and point at him while smiling and acting goofy. He loves it. Of course I couldn’t take my eyes from the road for very long, but I did sing all the words that I knew by heart, lovingly elbowed him at certain phrases, and he grinned and we made a memory. As I sang out the line that says, “We’re still havin’ fun and you’re still the one” I thought to myself, well I don’t know how much fun we’re having these days, but he’s definitely still the one. Because Parkinson’s Disease is not fun, in case anyone was wondering. Not for the patient, not for the caregiver.

A few minutes later (is anyone still here? hello?), this song came on the radio, and I was tickled when Michael decided it was his turn to sing (sort of) to me. At the part of the song that says, “You are the woman that I’ve always dreamed of, I knew it from the start” — and you really should click on these links to get the full effect of the songs — Michael reached over and put his hand on my leg to show me that I was the woman he had always dreamed of and he knew it from the start. It was a moment, people. I felt so happy and grateful inside and I knew we were making another memory I would cherish forever.

But then I had to throw the teeniest little monkey wrench into the whole deal by saying, “Oh, I know I haven’t turned out to be the woman you have always dreamed of, Michael. I know I’ve been a high maintenance wife at times.” Wasn’t that a meek and humble thing for me to say? Ha.

Michael answered with a nice smile, “Yes, you’ve been wonderful most of the time.” I should have left it at that, don’t you think? But nooooo. I said, “Most of the time?” and I was thinking well, maybe about 90 per cent of the time, and by the end of that thought Michael replied, “I’d say about sixty-five per cent of the time.”

Oh.

Now we were really making a memory that would be carved into my mind forever. Some of you know Michael well. There isn’t a mean bone in his body. We’re studying Ephesians in CBS right now and today’s lesson was on the gifts that God gives to His people. As I wrote down many of them, Michael came to mind. The ones that best describe my husband’s giftings are acts of service, giving generously and acts of mercy. He is a man without guile and I knew he had no idea that my hearing the words sixty-five per cent come out of his mouth would be painful to me. But I sort of felt like I’d been sucker-punched. The tears instantly welled up but the music was still on and we were looking at the road and I tried hard to not cry. I was thinking: sixty-five per cent is a failing grade. We have been married almost thirty-two years and I should be improving by now. He has a terrible illness and my heart’s desire is to help him forget he has it as much as possible because I love and serve him so well. My heart seemed to say to me, Ahem.

But here’s how I know I’m growing. After a minute or two, I put it out of my mind and we enjoyed the rest of our drive home. And I prayed about it. That is progress.

The next day Michael and I were in our bedroom and I was sitting on the side of the bed putting on my socks. He came over and sat next to me to show me his fingernails needed cutting and I opened the drawer in my nightstand where I keep the clippers, to do that for him. I sensed an opportune time, and I asked him, “Michael, I would like to be a good wife more than sixty-five per cent of the time. Will you tell me what I can do to improve?” Even typing that out makes me aware that this conversation might seem (in print) like I was groveling — I wasn’t. It might appear like Michael keeps tabs on my wife-ing and lords it over me in some way — he does not. I must be honest and admit that his gentle answer went straight to my heart and I knew it was needed truth. He put his arm around me and whispered, “A little more humility.”

*Long inward sigh.*

My kind of pride isn’t necessarily the kind that’s all puffed up about how grand and accomplished I am. That would be a joke. My kind of pride isn’t the vain kind that primps and puckers in the mirror and cares more about my appearance than anything else. That would be an even bigger joke. My kind of pride is a self-pitying, martyr-like pride. The kind of pride that whispers thoughts about how I’m giving up things that are meaningful to me in order to care for others, that my own life is fading and getting smaller, more silent and lonely, and isn’t it a shame I have to say no to so much in order to cook and clean and fold laundry and administer meds and ask Michael to repeat himself forty-three times a day and hope that his festinating (rapid shuffling) doesn’t get so bad he starts falling and absolutely no one is leaping about trying to serve me and meet my needs?

And while I don’t speak these things out loud, the attitude behind them escapes out into the open now and then in the form of impatient or martyr-like sighs, raised eyebrows that say you’re kidding me, right? and an attempt to control things because so much is happening that I can’t control.

When Michael gave me that answer, I put my head on his shoulder and he put his arms around me. I cried a little and asked him to forgive me. I asked him to pray for me and he did, which made me cry harder because there’s no one on the earth I’d rather have pray for me than Michael.

He said kindly, “I didn’t really mean sixty-five per cent. I meant about eighty per cent,” and I laughed through my tears, because this could have been true. He often tries to say one thing and ends up saying another these days. It’s part of the damage Parkinson’s is doing to his brain.

But sixty-five per cent or eighty per cent…it doesn’t matter.

We went away to Brainerd, the icky sounding beautiful place. We sang songs to each other in the car on the way home. The Lord spoke a needed word to my heart through the most gracious mouthpiece in the world.

And I came home with the very settled and satisfying realization that I really like cows.

“But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.

G.K. Chesterton

*           *           *           *           *           *           *

Hello friends and family…

I hope your Easter was nice in some way. Or in many ways — that would be the best. I hope you had a bite of palatable food, a smile from a loved one, a note from a friend, a song to sing along with, a few good winks of sleep, and a grateful heart that Jesus paid the price we owe and couldn’t pay ourselves. I had all of those, and thank God for such riches.

I have some future posts I’m pondering on. If I were truly a proper writer I would have said I have some future posts on which I’m pondering. In a day or two I’ll try to publish one of the several I’m considering:

*Sixty-five Per Cent, or I Like Cows       

*Angel in Atlanta?

*Be So Proud!

*Your Constant Source of Stability

*Send in the Clowns

*Organ Lessons

*My Milestones

*Some Helpful Links

*Pride Cometh…

If anyone has an opinion on the one or two or three they’d like to see first, I would welcome the nudge.

Today was a laundry, company, dentist, chauffeuring, child care, suitcase-unpacking, report-writing, cooking, tax document-gathering, bill paying sort of day. I’m hoping tonight is a hot bath, tacos, All Creatures Great and Small, smiling people sort of night.

Thank you for reading…

“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said;  if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”  — Tim Keller

When Michael and I were raising the girls many moons ago, we listened to a lot of contemporary Christian music. Does anyone remember Farrell and Farrell, Randy Stonehill, Petra, Leslie Phillips, Michele Pillar, Keith Green? One of Michael’s favorite artists was Don Francisco, and we had all his albums.

One of Don’s most powerful songs was about the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, from Peter’s perspective. The song starts out quietly and builds in suspense, and ends in an exultant chorus that Michael used to sing along to every Easter morning. We would all get up and have breakfast before getting ready to go to church, and this song would be playing as loud as we could stand it.

Michael used to walk around the house booming out the words, often with tears in his eyes.

We don’t have record albums anymore, but I do have a CD of Don Francisco’s greatest hits, and “He’s Alive” is on it. I will pull it out on Easter Sunday and play it loud, and I can just see Michael’s response now. He may not be able to boom out the song anymore, but he will sing it with all his might, and I’m fairly certain there will be tears of gratitude still.

Thank you my kind friends for making time in your life to stop by here. I pray that no matter what life looks like to you right now, there will be joy for you this Easter.

He is risen!

Many of you might have already seen this, since it was posted on Ann Voskamp’s blog recently. It touched me so deeply I found it on youtube so I can share it here.

Like this mama, we are all still learning how to live, and how to give thanks to God, no matter what our lives are like….

These favorites of mine have nothing to do with Friday, especially since today is Monday. I like these things every day of the week, or at least almost every day of the week. It’s just that I rarely pass up a chance to employ a little alliteration, so Friday Favorites it is. Even though, as I said, today is Monday.

I know. Don’t ask.

I’ve said this before but it might be worth repeating — Honeycrisp apples are my favorite apple. They’re pricey right now since the season is over, but I buy them anyway. Crisp, juicy, and tart-sweet, I eat one of these every day, sometimes paired with a slice of Swiss cheese, or a dollop of peanut butter. What is your favorite apple?

I’m always on the lookout for a brand of pen I can latch onto and call my own. I need a pen with a large point — fine point pens don’t glide smoothly or quickly enough for me. This pen by Bic is called Velocity and it’s my current choice. It does leave the occasional blob of ink because the point is so large, and I’m not crazy about that. If I find another one that writes this well and is blobless, I’ll make the switch. Do pens make a difference to you? If so, what pen do you prefer?

This is my favorite peanut butter, and I eat some every day. Sometimes I just put some Smucker’s on my Honeycrisp apple slices, other times I spread a little peanut butter on toast. This is the kind that comes separated, and you have to stir and stir the oil and the ground peanuts together very well before you can use it. My OCD method is this: stir carefully and deeply over and over with a butter knife, making sure you don’t displace any oil so it runs down the side of the jar. I hate that. After you stir and fold and stir and fold, then you replace the lid snugly and store it upside down in the refrigerator overnight. Then the next day you can turn the jar back over and you’re good to go. Do you like peanut butter? What kind do you buy?

I’m not much of a makeup person. I do wear it when I’m going out someplace fancy, but even then I don’t wear nearly as much as I did when I was young. A lot for me these days would be concealer, a touch of eye shadow, soft liner, eyebrow pencil, mascara and lip gloss. That much would make me feel a bit clownish, even though I’m sparing when I apply it. Most days I just use eyebrow pencil (because looking like a Caucasian Whoopi Goldberg is not something I aspire to in my old age), lip gloss and Estee Lauder finishing powder. It’s translucent, and it softens the ruddiness that has crept into my fair skin after a dozen or two blistering sunburns when I was a teen. This finishing powder is hardly noticeable, but I notice a difference when I wear it. Do you wear makeup every day or just occasionally? Or not at all? If you do wear cosmetics, what two or three products do you wear most often?

About eight years ago my optometrist did a little test on my eyes to see how my tear production was going. I figured the ducts were just fine since shedding tears could be an almost daily thing for me. Open my Bible, cry. Read a greeting card, cry. See the below zero temperatures outside, cry. Walk on my wonky right knee, cry. See my husband declining, cry. Think of God’s many blessings, cry. Read a loving text from a friend, cry. (In fact, our family had a little joke about my mother’s propensity for crying about happy and sad things, and we used to sing this song from Sesame Street to her and it would make us all crack up. Now I think the song could apply to me.) Anyway, my eye doctor said my eyes were not making an adequate amount of tears and asked me if I’d experienced dry eyes of late. It made me ponder, and it hit me that when I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and my eyelids are stuck to my gritty eyeballs, that could be a tear production problem. So now I use Systane, and it’s a Godsend. I especially need it at night, and have learned to put a drop in each eye if I wake up to go potty, or to tell Michael he’s only dreaming, or to move Mildred away from behind my knees.

I’ve been using Norwex Antibacterial cleaning cloths for about six weeks now and am totally sold. They actually kill bacteria because they have silver in them, rarely have to be washed, and enable the user to clean household surfaces with only hot water and no chemicals. If you don’t know about Norwex (and I don’t sell the products), try watching a couple of demonstration videos on youtube — they’re easy to find.

This is my favorite lip gloss. Or I guess it’s lip balm by C.O. Bigelow. I’ve used a lot of lip glosses over the years (I remember the first I was ever allowed to use when I was about 12 — it was called Yardley Pot o’ Gloss — anyone remember that?) This one is not too thick and sticky, not too liquidy. Do you use lip gloss? If you do, what’s your favorite?

And this is one of my favorite things to do….to get away for a weekend with my husband to a cabin on one of Minnesota’s 30,000 lakes. These cabins below are where Michael and I are going very soon, just for a short break. They’ll look a little different than they do in the photo…there will be snow on the roofs and the lake will be frozen over, but we plan on mostly staying inside anyway. We’ll enjoy the fireplace, the quiet beauty all around us, sleeping in past 5:50 a.m., and maybe I’ll take a book. Ha. No maybe about it.  🙂

And lastly, this is my favorite baby. Her name is Louisa and she’s my eighth grandchild. Can you believe that sweet grin of hers? Do you have a favorite baby in your life? I’d love to know about him/her!

And now, to my favorite blog readers, I wish you a joyful week full of some of your favorite things!

We have lived in our new house for ten months now. Are you tired of me talking about how many months and days we’ve lived in our new house? I don’t know why I keep mentioning that. We’ve done a few decorating things, but nothing major. A little red and cream toile wallpaper here, a little asymmetrical plate hanging there, but overall I just decided to be content with the modern/Swedish vibe of our home.

Now that we’ve settled in, I realize that I’m missing a place in our home for words. I have always liked having words on the walls in my homes. If you’re new here and you’ve never seen the words on the walls of our old house, you can click here to see the words in the kitchen, and here to see the words on my old office walls.

Not long ago, I happened upon a photo online where the people painted their walls with black chalkboard paint, so they could write on their walls. Before you say blech and wonder why anyone would do something dumb like that, click here. (Once there, be sure to click the right arrows that say “next” so you can see the several different photos of how people used chalkboard paint in brilliant ways in their homes.) I’ll wait while you look, and tell you what I’m up to when you come back here.

Did you see the unique ideas? Did you see the old door painted black and placed behind a bathtub? Did you see how even in a Victorian home they used chalkboard paint above rich oak paneling?

Now take a look at this picture below:

This is the photo I found online that made me stop and say, “Oh my gosh, I want that in my house!” I want a small piece of wall, perhaps a corner even, painted with black chalkboard paint, so we can write words on it. Like Bible verses I’m trying to memorize. Or grocery lists. Or the evening’s menu when we have company. Or birthday wishes. Or a heartfelt prayer. Or drawings, like the birch trees in the home above, or of our Edith and Mildred the Schnauzers. Whatever. I’m just a gal who likes to have words on her walls.

So here’s the wall I’m going to paint. It’s in the dining room, and you can see this wall when you’re standing in the kitchen and looking toward the living room. To the left of this wall are three very tall windows/French doors that let in a lot of light, and look out over Lake Superior.

My daughter Carolyn taped off the area for me with green frog tape, and it’s all ready to paint. Can you envision how the black chalkboard paint will be on the wall where the clock is, and then will be wrapped around to the right where that little piece of wall is, above the shoes? (Click to enlarge the photo if you like.) The bird clock was hung there on the day we moved in because there was a nail there — I need to find a new place for the clock. The old, oak deacon’s bench is a place to store pillows that I don’t like anyplace else, and also the savage, heavy-duty anti-bark collars we must put on our delicate and innocent little Schnauzers each and every time they go outside. Oh! You don’t know that heart-rending story? It’s called A Sad Day In Schnauzerville, and if all this chalkboard paint talk is boring you, you can click here to read about the neighbors who left us an unfriendly note. (I never know who is new here and might not have read some of these scintillating posts.)

I’ll post a picture when I’m done painting our little space with black chalkboard paint.  (I would like to thank Jessica Colvin so much for allowing me to post her photo above — she was so gracious when I asked her permission. Please visit Jessica’s very creative blog here.)

If you have words on your walls, what do they say? And feel free to link to a photo if you have one!

If you were going to put words on your walls, what would they be?