To my precious sons and daughters...

Recently, while job searching, I was thinking about what I consider to be my calling, and hopefully someday my full-time career: Motherhood. 

I decided it would be great to start sharing my thoughts, lessons learned, recipes found, and mistakes made with my future children as they are happening. So I started a journal written to them, my unborn sons and daughters. 

As I was reading it the other day, my own words reminded me of Truth I needed. I hope it does the same for you.

Here's my first journal entry to my beloveds:

Monday, January 16, 2012

My Precious Sons and Daughters,

Though I do not yet know you, I know for sure that I deeply love you. I can already say this because I know a few things about you. 
           First, I know that you are not only made in the likeness of Kevin and me, though that is true. On a grander and much more significant level, you are made in the likeness of our Almighty God. I love Him, and I so love the way you reflect Him.
           Second, the Father, His Son Jesus, and His Holy Spirit love you more than I ever can or will. Please never forget this. Cling to it daily, remind yourself moment by moment that you are luxuriously cherished by your Creator, by your Savior, and by the Helper sent to guide and lead you on this earth. Remind yourself consistently that there is nothing you can ever do to earn this love, or win favor with the Lord. You are loved by no merit of your own (we ALL are). We must choose to follow the Lord’s commands as a response to being so loved, not because we must do what is good to earn this love. There is nothing we can do, but trust in what Jesus already DID.

Because of this Truth, I know I already love you, and True Love means leading someone more toward Christ.

You are loved. I love this Truth. I struggle to believe it. I yearn to know it more, to let it sink deep into my heart and affect my every thought, word and action. I hope by the time you come along, I believe it more solidly than I do now.

This is why this is my favorite worship song; I must remind myself that Jesus paid it all.

Jesus Paid it All

By Elvina Hall

I hear the Savior say,
 “Thy strength indeed is small;
 Child of weakness, watch and pray,
 Find in Me thine all in all.”

Jesus paid it all, 
All to Him I owe;
 Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

For nothing good have I, 
Whereby Thy grace to claim;
 I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.

Jesus paid it all,
 All to Him I owe;
 Sin had left a crimson stain,
 He washed it white as snow.

And now complete in Him, 
My robe, His righteousness,
 Close sheltered ’neath His side,
 I am divinely blest.

Jesus paid it all, 
All to Him I owe;
 Sin had left a crimson stain, 
He washed it white as snow.

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,
 Can change the leper’s spots 
And melt the heart of stone.

Jesus paid it all,
 All to Him I owe;
 Sin had left a crimson stain,
 He washed it white as snow.

When from my dying bed
, My ransomed soul shall rise,
 “Jesus died my soul to save, ”
Shall rend the vaulted skies.

Jesus paid it all, 
All to Him I owe;
 Sin had left a crimson stain,
 He washed it white as snow.

And when before the throne, 
I stand in Him complete, 
I’ll lay my trophies down, 
All down at Jesus’ feet.

*Other versions add this wonderful section:

Oh Praise the One who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead!

You can build your life upon the Truth of Jesus’ love for you, and you will see everything change. This is my greatest prayer for you.

I love you so much,

Mommy

P.S. I pray I live long through out all of your lives, but when my time comes, please remember to play this song at my funeral. 

One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I'll be taking the rest of the week off as I've been sick with the stomach flu. Hope to return soon!

While we're on the topic of pie...

Since my last Blog Post was about the awesome pie place we visited, I thought I would keep the theme going by highlighting a great pie-related garage sale find.

$10 Pie Safe.

This item isn't a recent find, but it is one of my favorites, and something we hope to keep the rest of our lives. We bought this at a ranch garage sale right after getting married when we were settling into our Atascadero home. All the lady we bought it from told us was that it was old and used for cooling pies.

Today I did some research and found out that they are called "Pie Safes". They are handmade by the Amish and retail for anywhere from $500 to $1,000. Wow. That's a purely lucky find.

Every Pie Safe that I found had that same exact tin face on the door. 

On top of our pie safe, I've been growing desperately trying to keep alive my Basil.

Remember this bird cage from this post? It served as our card holder at our wedding. 

Next to my Basil I placed some trinkets kevin made for me when we were dating. I love them.

Big pirate joke fans.

This was a Christmas present. Too good.

So, have you jumped on the Craigslist/Garage Sale bandwagon yet? :)

Home is where the art is

Before Kevin had graduated from Cal Poly, we used to throw around the idea of where we would like to live as post-grads. I don't know how many times we said the phrase, "We'll live anywhere from San Luis Obispo to San Diego...EXCEPT FOR LOS ANGELES!"

Then the Lord was very clear in calling us to LA, and I can say with out hesitation that I'm glad He is in control and that nothing is a surprise to Him. Kevin's job is so perfectly suited to his talents AND preferences, and we have actually been loving all the big city has to offer.

This weekend we ventured to Downtown La, specifically to the Arts District with my college roommate Colby, (who, get this, by chance ended up taking a job in Torrance and living less than 4 miles away from our place. What are the odds!) Anyway, the Arts District seemed like something you would see in a movie, and you probably have. There were "Notice of Filming" Postings all over the street and photo shoots happening at every corner.

We ate lunch at a pie place...sweet or savory, this place makes them all, and fabulously. I highly recommend it if you are ever in the area and in the mood for pie. If you're like me, you're probably in the mood for pie 100% of the time. Check out The Pie Hole and beware of mouth watering.

Here's some photos I snapped on our walk from the car, and some inside The Pie Hole:

Who invited you, telephone pole? 

Seemingly the one place in LA where graffiti is not painted over.

Man Beast. Naturally.

Insert philosophical caption about industrialization at odds with nature.

Seems welcoming enough.

Notice the little hearts. Adorb a schmorb.

Colby- more adorb than little hearts.

I am so in love with their logo!

Kevin and I split a bomb.com Chicken Pot Pie and a Macaroni and Cheese Pie. As you can see, there wasn't much any left.

Like I said- adorable. 

Succulents and scrumptious pie. Timeless.

All dreamy eyed over my Mexican Chocolate Pie. Seriously so good.

Sorry, Kevin, we're not sharing.

Fighting over the last few bites. Just kidding.

The wolf pack. It's shocking how many pictures we have like this.

Hope you're enjoying your weekend, and learning (like we are) to always be open to what the Lord has for you, even if it's on your "Will never do" list.

Don't be such a square

Now that Kevin is at work, I've been busying myself with decorating projects at home. I've wanted to try something similar to this since I saw it on pinterest.

Idea and photo via The New England Southerner

While at a local art gallery, Kevin mentioned that he loved the look of small square canvases in different colors or prints on a wall, so I pulled this fabric idea out to execute something he would love.

From Michael's, I bought square cardboard boxes.

I bought 5 of them at about $1.50 each.

I wanted to make a 9x9 tile square, but I didn't want to buy 9 boxes to only use the lids and throw the boxes away. Instead, I bought 5 boxes and used a bread knife to cut the bottom of 4 of the boxes to the exact height of the lids.

When deciding on colors and picking out fabric, I remembered a recent project that Kevin helped me with. Our apartment complex has a Trade Table, where residents place items they no longer want, and anyone is free to take something off the table. We found a beautifully almost-broken 4 pane frame, and I laid out my scrapbook paper and had Kevin choose which four pieces of paper to put in the frame. This is how it turned out:

These colors became my inspiration for picking out this fabric:

Fabric is so expensive! But I have leftovers for other projects, so it'll feel free then :)

I cut the fabric into squares that were 2 to 3 inches longer on each side than the square lids so the fabric could wrap around the sides. Then, I pulled the fabric tight so there was no excess fabric or wrinkles, and used an ordinary stapler. Probably not the best tool to use, but I made sure to staple it from the inside, so the staples are essentially invisible on the sides.

First one done!

After repeating this for all 9 lids (or sliced off bottoms of boxes), I decided what arrangement to put them in.

This was a fun puzzle to keep similar colors and patterns away from each other.

I hung them with two pushpins each, and worked hard to measure out the space between each square and get each square perfectly level. But here's the final product!

Sit and stay a while

I am so happy to say that Craigslist did not fail us. We found a great couch for an amazing price. There were a few disappointments along the way, like rearranging our weekend schedule to be in Orange County for an appointment to find out the couch we were looking at had sold before the appointment. That's just how it goes.

We saw this beauty on CL and decided it was worth the 45 minute drive to Eaglerock, LA to pick up.

Our $200 leather couch. What a steal.

Kev is starting to think the leather is too red. What do you think?

This purchase has turned out to be quite dangerous, though! Two nights this week we've accidentally fallen asleep on the couch cuddling instead of going to bed. We've woken up around midnight in a panic realizing we had no alarms set and Kev could have totally been late for work.

We should have gotten a less comfortable couch!

In other home improvement news, my sweet husband came home from his first day of work and still had enough energy left to hang my new curtains, a much needed addition.

Ugh, so dull! 

A more completed look for $10 each.

The scroll fabric.

Plain window...with my reflection in it. Oopsie :)

Same print as the blue, but in rust, with a scalloped edge and a second layer for $20 total.  (P.S. in between the before and after picture, one of our neighbors brought us an orchid. See how beautiful it is!?)

Rust scroll fabric.

Our place is slowly coming together. More photos to come as it all falls into place!

And thank you for your prayers for Kevin's first day. Work has been going well, and I just can tell he's going to love this new job, and of course they are going to love him.

How adorable was he on his very first day!?

Linen Closet: Before and After

I have a lot of clothes. So many, that our decently large closet wasn't quite big enough to house them all, so Kevin and I put the "leftovers" in our very deep linen closet.

By the way, this is after clearing out one shelf already that was full of clothes. It was worse than this looks:

Two bummers with this. One, it looks so disorganized! Two, you can't easily get to the clothes in the back.

Solution? Four square cloth baskets on each shelf. That way everything is categorized, and you just have to move the basket in front to get to the basket in the back.

Ah, I love organization.

Pay no attention to the fact that the bottom two shelves are completely devoted to me, or to the fact that all my summer clothes are still at my parent's house. We'll have another organizational disaster when the weather starts warming up!

P.s. Today is Kevin's first day of work at Robinson Helicopter! Prayers for a smooth day! :)

Island in the Sun

While it's been nice having a kitchen at least three times the size of our last one, there was this huge gap of space that needed to be filled.

I really wanted a kitchen island, but they are way more expensive than you would think! We saw a nice one at Walmart for about $130, and the next day, the same one on Craigslist for $40!

Goodbye Awkward Gap!

Perfect location for my herb garden!

Love that it has an extra leaf for more counter space.

Now all we need is a couch. Come on, Craigslist, don't fail us now!