A while back I had my little office wallpapered with a dark red and cream toile. I don’t know what it is about toile, but I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember. Once the wallpaper had been hung, I began to think about curtains for this room. I wanted something heavy so they would be warm and also give some privacy. I thought I would choose a taupe velvet, or if I was really daring, a deep cardinal red velvet. But the latter seemed too boudoir-ish to me, so I crossed if off my list pretty quickly. (Also, if you’d like to see what the room looked like when we first moved in on May 31st, you can click here.)

But then I started thinking about some posts my daughter Sharon did on color combinations and how opposite colors often really do look good together. If you’d like to see what she said and see some example photos, click here.

And one morning it came to me in a flash of inspiration: aqua or robin’s egg blue curtains with my red and cream toile! A few people I told said, “Heh?” or, “Uhh, no” and some didn’t get it. Some of you still might not think this looks good together, but I love it! The curtains are not a true green or a true blue. They’re too dark to be called robin’s egg, I think. So I’m just calling them my aqua velvet curtains. (Remember Aqua Velva? If you do, you’re as old as me.) Maybe they’re even a dark turquoise, I don’t know.

My office is also our temporary guest room. We have two spaces in our new house that could potentially be very nice guest rooms some day, but for now when we have visitors, they stay in the office. I shut down all office operations and the room belongs to whoever comes to see us. It’s large enough for a new queen-sized inflatable mattress (very comfortable), and a small nightstand, and it has closet space for folks to use too. You can click to enlarge these photos if you like.

Eventually I plan to hang some things on the wall but am still thinking about that. You have to be careful with toile.

There are two good-sized closets in the office. The one on the right has delightful little cubbies and shelves for all my stationery needs — it helps me stay organized. Or semi-organized. The closet on the left is almost empty and anyone who comes to stay has a nice place to stow their stuff.

If you would like to come for a visit, we’re ready for you! (As long as you’re not one of those people who hates toile, gags at complementary colors paired together in decorating, or detests Minnesota. You probably would want to rethink your plans to visit us if any of the above are true.)

Putting up aqua velvet curtains in a red and cream toile office was definitely thinking outside the decorating box for me. I’ve always leaned toward being a matchy-matchy person. I think doing something unexpected like this just seems to go along with our lives in general these days. Sometimes things don’t really fit, don’t seem like they go together, are not your first choice, but you make do and search for beauty anyway.

This morning it’s raining and how welcome it is after a summer drought! I sit in this office as I type this, and it’s still dark out. I can hear the wind gusting right outside these closed velvet curtains and I know the last of the leaves on the trees will be carpeting the ground soon, and the bitter cold season of greys and white will soon be upon us. It will be time for more soups and stews, thick socks, candle-light, knitting, journaling, pondering and hunkering.

How do you like to spend your winter months? Do you do any hunkering and pondering when winter comes?

We Christians allow our performance-oriented society to rush us into a flurry of religious activities at the expense of genuine intimacy with the living God. It was in “being with Him” that Jesus would equip and empower His disciples to do the work of the ministry.

Are you able to enjoy the intimacy of quiet moments in God’s presence? Or is your primary goal spiritual productivity which demands that either He do something or He give you something to do? 

His call is no different today — He still calls men and women to “be with Him.” Consider these words from Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest): “The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship.”

~~Marguerite Hermanson

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This is not the clearest picture, but I thought I’d continue with my intermittent tour of our new house, and show you our laundry room. I took about ten pictures of it and none of them turned out great, but it’s not like a sharp photograph of our laundry room is of earth-shattering importance, so I’ll just go with this shot:

Can you believe that this room is literally one foot from our bedroom? So handy! I am very thankful for a main-floor laundry room at this stage of my life.

Lord, I thank you, and my knees thank you.  🙂

The walls were painted by the former owners and are a blend of what I’d call terra cotta and salmon. The aqua counter is a retro-print Formica with the nicest little stainless sink and faucet at one end. I use this sink for hand-washables. I probably wouldn’t have chosen these colors myself, but I’m so carefree in the decorating department these days. If my new house has it, I like it! That’s my philosophy. It makes life a lot easier.

The hardwood flooring is maple. The cabinet doors open up and out, and on one end I keep laundry stuff, and on the other end all my gift wrapping supplies are neatly stored (thanks to Carolyn, who did that for me). I could even do all my gift wrapping in here with such a great, long surface to work on.

When I was growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, most people I knew had their washers and dryers in the garage. In 1981, I moved to Northern Minnesota where most houses have basements, and I learned that most people had their laundry area in their basement. When this house (built in 1948) was extensively remodeled by the former owners, they split the old main-floor master bedroom and converted it into an office and a laundry room. Then they built a huge new master bedroom over the garage. Click here if you’d like to see how huge the master bedroom is, and if you promise not to judge.

I’ll post more pictures of other rooms in our new house soon. Today, because I’ll be tending to laundry, I’ve been telling the Lord how grateful I am for this laundry room.

Is there anything you’ve thanked God for today? I would love to know, and if you share I will give thanks with you!

Thank you for making time to stop by my little spot on the web….

I love seeing how other people think and create. It’s inspiring! My son-in-law Jeremy shared this short video with me and I loved it.

I think some of my grandchildren would enjoy this.

What do you think?

Most of you who read this little blog know I have three daughters. Sharon, Carolyn and Sara. I like to talk about them to people, and sometimes it might get boring when I do, because I can go on and on about what I like about them. Sharon makes beautiful yarn, Carolyn sings beautifully and acts like an Oscar-winner, Sara makes beautiful flower arrangements that no one else in the world makes, and so on. You might get tired of hearing about a mother’s bragging. But they’re always on my mind and ever in my heart, so I like to share….

Here’s a recent fabulous picture of Sara, taken by her sister/photographer Sharon:

It’s hard for me to believe that this lovely daughter who looks like a movie star is 30 years old…how did time fly by so quickly? I was just giving birth to her yesterday, wasn’t I? At home with a midwife? With the furnace turned up to 90 degrees because there was no isolette? With Michael grinning from ear to ear when he first laid eyes on her, he was so thrilled? (And that has actually never stopped.) Three decades couldn’t have whizzed by so fast.

Sara was a kind little girl who knew how to love deeply from the time she was quite tiny. She was loving and sensitive and cried as easily as I did if a sad movie or a hurting person was seen. If she did something that needed correcting, a dark look from me would make the tears pour. She also had some organizing talents that began to emerge before she was ten years old. To this day, I have never known anyone who can make chaos into order quicker than she can.

She’s funny, super-smart, hard-working (which she inherited from her dad), has a love for beauty and nature’s amazing details, and is a leeeetle bit crazy about our Schnauzers, Edith and Mildred, who think she’s the second best person in the universe, after their daddy Michael.

Do any of you have special ring tones on your cell phones for different people? I do. The one I have for my daughters is this song.

Even though this is more of a romantic song, the words still apply. When I hear this song play when one of my girls is calling my cell, it makes me smile and feel the happiness of being their mom.

Sara has inherited a love for adventure and wanting to experience new things from her dad, I think. I tend to be obsessed with comfort and safety and quiet times. She would jump off a cliff and go para-sailing tomorrow if she had the opportunity I think. So would Michael.

Here are a few words and phrases that come to mind when I think about Sara: flowers all over the house, in delightful arrangements you’d never imagine, dogs love her and she loves dogs, intense activity — she loves to get out in the beauty of our area and exercise and feel invigorated, sensitive — to others, to God, and to the world around her, resilient, always willing to lend a hand, quirky/funny, lovely, orderly, generous — she’s such a good gift giver, compassionate — she is drawn to the underdog just like her dad is and tries to make a difference for people, and she’s soooo creative. I don’t even think she’s come close to tapping into what she could do creatively, although her floral designs take people’s breath away.

I’m sure there will come another day, another blog post, when I’ll be talking about my daughters again, and all you moms out there will understand, I’m sure.

But today, I just wanted to tell you more about one of my girls…

For your viewing pleasure, below you’ll find a collage of delightful and inspiring photographs, taken about a week ago.

1.  The first picture is of the bottom of my (obviously needing some moisturizer) right foot, and the plantar wart that has plagued me since late May. Every step felt like I had a small thumb tack stuck right between my heel and arch.

2.  Next is the ominous looking building where I went to have my wart-ectomy. Up until now this downtown building always looked fine to me. On the day of my surgery it looked terribly foreboding, and this music was playing in my head.

3.  There’s the empty chair in the podiatrist’s office, right before I sat on it and started silently praying.

4.  Next is the picture that hung on the wall in the room where I sat in the chair where I was silently praying. If you click to enlarge the collage, you can see that the expression on the face of the little fox (or whatever he is) is identical to the expression on my face when my doctor injected the numbing medicine right into my wart.

5.  The next picture shows my legs and feet while I was waiting for the doctor to return to the room with the giant hypodermic syringe. I had a small towel at the ready so I could cover my face in case I needed to do The Silent Scream.

6.  Next you can see the bottom of my foot, right after it had been disinfected and injected. A drop of blood trickled in honor of The Silent Scream I did when the needle went in.

7.  Behold, the crater created on the bottom of my right foot after the wart was scooped out.

8.  Hello, Dr. Nipp! Is that name appropriate or what? She is wrapping my foot up now that the surgery is complete.

9.  The underside of the viral offender that I am so pleased to be rid of.  When I left the office I had to hobble a bit since my foot was so thickly wrapped, but this music was playing inside my head.

Now I’m hoping that my body’s immune system stops sleeping on the job, and takes care of the virus that caused the wart.

I’m still soaking my foot in water laced with antibiotic soap twice a day, still wearing a special padded bandage, still limping a tiny bit. But oh, I’m so relieved to have it over with!

Thank God.

And thank you to anyone who prayed for me.

I hope to remain yours and wartless,

I have so much and so many to be thankful for!

And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what the Lord has done….

“Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift(s)!” — 2 Corinthians 9:15

Who or what are you thankful for today?

After an almost suffocatingly hot and humid summer (which is not typical for our area), fall is in full bloom now. Or should I say fall is in full death? The leaves on the maples, birches and oaks are dying, and there is such beauty in that process it’s breathtaking. There are some streets in our neighborhood that are completely overhung with huge maples that are aflame in orange, gold and scarlet. To drive or walk under these canopies seems to almost slow down time for me. It’s an ethereal experience that seems to hearken to something deep in my soul and all I can do is whisper a thanks to God that I’m allowed to see such beauty.

Can one ever grow tired of red, orange and yellow? Especially red, orange and yellow against the contrast of the dark blackish green of the towering pines? I don’t think so. Because if I live to be ninety (which I won’t) I will never cease to be stunned at the magnificence of a colorful autumn.

Here’s a smallish tree that I see every day outside my office window. It’s in a neighbor’s yard, and the bare branches at the top reveal that the tree is dying. But even in death this little tree is pumping out all the beauty it can, and each time I gaze at it I feel that impact.

You might be able to see some of the green-turning-orange leaves on the tree across the street too. The words I frequently employ at this time of year are “oohhh!” and “aahhh!”  Dying leaves bring such beauty to our world.

I think there’s another kind of beauty in death too. When a follower of Christ dies, no matter how unexpected or sad the situation, there’s a beauty about that kind of death that I can’t put words to.  There’s a peace and an assurance that permeates, even though sobs wrack and tears flow. It almost seems too sacred to describe, but I know it’s a gift from the Lord. We get glimpses of Him and His beauty when someone who has followed Jesus dies. Whenever I attend the funeral of a Christian I always remember that they didn’t stop living, they just stopped living here.

My friend Carey told me yesterday about a video she had seen that blessed her so deeply. I knew by her description that I would love it too, because two of my favorite people are in it: Fernando Ortega and Ruth Bell Graham. Do you have any of Fernando’s music? If you don’t, may I encourage you to get something by him soon? All he has to do is sit down at the piano and begin to sing, and I’m transported almost immediately. Peace and praise well up inside, and it’s easier to remember Who is on the throne when Fernando Ortega sings.

In this short video, he’s playing in a tribute to Ruth Bell Graham. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that Mrs. Billy Graham actually called our house years ago and spoke to my husband Michael, and we still marvel over that story, which you can read about here, if you like.

Ruth Graham was a vibrant woman of faith and prayer. She knew how to laugh and have fun, she knew how to grieve and persevere, she knew what it meant to live a life wholly given to Christ. I’ve read that in her latter years, she was terribly afflicted with arthritis and could rarely leave her bed, requiring constant help from caregivers. The pain was horrible. Yet as that small woman wasted away, she perched on her bed each day with her Bible, her journal, study books, and paper for letter writing, spread all around her on the blankets. She wrote letters of encouragement to people. She made telephone calls for her son Franklin’s organization Samaritan’s Purse, she prayed, she studied her Bible, she communed with the Lord. And when she died, she left a huge void in her family’s life. But they had peace and assurance about where she had gone, and this beautiful video conveys that.

Long ago I wrote in my funeral instructions that I want Fernando Ortega’s song “Give Me Jesus” played at my funeral. I would never even hope or presume to be anything like Ruth Bell Graham, but as I grow older I’m ever aware that day by day, my death draws closer. Even if I live to be much older than I am now, each day brings me that much nearer to the end of my earthly life. To me this is not a maudlin or even terribly sad thing. I was born to live, I was born to die, as we all are.

How true God’s Word is when He reminds me that my life is like a vapor! And how sadly true it is that I have squandered so much of the time He has given me. Oh, but His mercies are new every single morning! So this morning as I sit here in my red plaid flannel nightgown, I thank the Lord for the new mercies He has poured out on me already. Thank you Lord.

Yesterday I was rude to someone I didn’t even know, and my heart was immediately smitten with sorrow over how quick I was to utter a clipped, caustic word. If we think we do not need a Savior, let’s try to live just one single day being kind and generous and patient and forgiving and pure-minded and encouraging and selfless, and not greedy or peevish or lustful or bitter or prayerless or self-pitying or mean or lazy. One day. I don’t think it can be done.

I see heartbreaking beauty in the little red tree outside my office window. I hear heartbreaking beauty in the song of Fernando Ortega, and see it so clearly in the life of Ruth Bell Graham. I don’t see it in myself, but I will not concern myself with that. Today, I have life! And I have some new mercies pouring down over me, straight from the hand of the Lord. I ask the Lord today to be with me, to be with you, to open our eyes to His beauty and His ways, and to help us not waste this beautiful day we’ve been given.

Amen.

“It is in the dark that God is passing by.

The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by.

God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by.

In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will.

Though it is black and we can’t see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us…”

~~~Ann Voskamp, from One Thousand Gifts

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I knew when we moved into our new house that I didn’t want to do the same things I’d always done to decorate the mantel on our fireplace, or the space above it. Here’s a picture of our old fireplace, which I loved, and the way it was decorated last December.

Now we’re in a house with a more modern feel to it, and the fireplace is in the dining room, which is in between the kitchen and the living room. In fact, all three of these rooms sort of flow and open up into each other, so the colors need to do the same. I think

At our old house, we had a huge kitchen with blue and white accents everywhere. If you haven’t seen that kitchen, you can click here and scroll down to the final photos in that post. You might be able to see some of the blue and white cup/mug collection on the far wall.

In this house, I’m not sure the blue and white things I have really look like they belong, but I don’t care enough to change all that. I like blue and white, so blue and white we will keep, even if it looks a little out of place with our modern cherry cabinets and black granite counter tops.

So recently I took a bunch of our black and red transferware plates that used to hang in our old bedroom (again, click here to see if you like), along with some of the blue transferware plates that we used to use in our old kitchen, and started thinking about hanging them above the fireplace. Black, red and blue. Not a combination I would ever think of.

I also didn’t want to hang them symmetrically. So I searched online for a few inspiration photos and decided I liked these two examples below of asymmetrical plate hanging the best:

Then I started arranging my blue, red and black plates on the carpet, taking pictures and moving them around and considering how they looked. Sara helped me one afternoon and we both agreed that to place different sized plates like this is not as random as it appears! It was challenging. Once we settled on a swirly, flowing design I liked, I took a picture, piled up the plates and let them sit on the book case for at least three weeks before I felt up to the task of hanging them.

Carolyn came over yesterday and helped me hang them. She laid them out on the table first, and we measured and rearranged and fiddled and peered and adjusted.

Here is what the space above our fireplace and mantel looks like this morning: (you can click to enlarge it if you like.)

I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out. I think it combines the traditional look of transferware with an unexpected, more modern or whimsical look. Now I have a new issue. (I assure you I know this is not really a true problem considering what life can throw at people). What in the world will I put on the mantel?  This morning I put a few things there to see how they looked, but none of the old items look like they belong. I wonder if one large black and white framed photo of my family, placed on the mantel where the largest empty space is on the left, would be a good choice.

If any of you have ideas or links to ideas you like, please leave a comment — I’d love to see what you think!

In the meantime, I hope your week is filled with good things…