Archive for March 3, 2010

Trust and Patience

March 3, 2010 / Molly / 2 comments

Ahhh, trust and patience, two things that often elude me. I have been a Christian since I was a little girl, I grew up in a family where trusting God was as normal as breathing and yet its a lesson I have to learn over and over. Quite a few of my friends and family have been going through very difficult situations lately. Many are due to illness and the rest due to life situations that emerge. I have found myself praying more than ever before. Not the ‘sit down with a paper and pad and go through a list’ type of praying (which should work for me considering my affinity with ‘to do’ lists and my love of stationery) but more the ‘shoot a prayer to heaven’ or ‘pray as I do a mundane job’ sort of thing. Some of the things I’ve been praying about have been answered in the way I hoped they would be but most are just drifting there, waiting.

A couple of weeks ago while compiling my first Weekly What List I decided on the spur of the moment to put ‘memorise a verse’ on that list. I haven’t really memorised a verse since I was at Bible college, around 17 years ago (unless you count Colin Buchanan songs). That’s pretty shameful I think for someone who says they live by the Bible.

I decided to look for a verse surrounding the theme of trust. I had memorised Proverbs 3: 5-6 when I was a kid so that wasn’t an option. Instead I chose a verse that I probably skimmed at some point. Its full of words that we all see as Christian cliche’s such as ‘hope’, ‘trust’, ‘joy’ and ‘peace’ which is why I would have skimmed it.

I have to admit, I didn’t remember that I was meant to be memorising this until around half way through the week. I started to memorise bits and eventually it all stuck. Then I decided I’d better actually figure out what it means, what’s the point otherwise? Here’s the verse:

Romans 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace
as you trust in him,
so that you may overflow with hope
by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, here’s my version:

As you trust in the God who gives hope, may he fill you with joy and peace, the result of this is that his hope will overflow out of you via the Holy Spirit’s power.

The thing I realised was that in order to have true joy and peace in your circumstances you first have to trust God. The way to do this is to realise that he is in charge of all hope. He gives hope. He is hope. To use the dictionary definition, he is the one to whom we can look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence (I chose the verb definition as hope is a doing word for me, not static).

Thats pretty good news. We all need someone we can have confidence in even when things don’t seem right around us and who better than the person who not only made us but can see the bigger picture of how things will end.

So, that’s my verse from the last two weeks. The end result of trust in God is hope and the side benefits are joy and peace.

The verse I’m meant to memorise this week is this one, chosen because my jar of patience seems to have evaporated (must have left the lid off). Better get memorising hey!

Ecclesiastes 7:8
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.

Category: All Sorts of Things, Deeper Thoughts / Tags: , , ,

Doll’s House Renovations – the walls

March 3, 2010 / Molly / 3 comments

*Photo heavy post

This is part three of our doll’s house renovations. Having not quite finished the floors due to a lack of a piece of stiff cardboard (to put under the carpet like fabric for strength) we have moved on to the walls. K was in the right mood to continue working on the doll’s house today so we set to work. The other day I went to Riot Art and they had all their large scrap-booking papers marked down to 69c each. We selected a few, K particularly liked the butterflies and teapots and took them home.

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The first thing to do was to make a template making sure we had the window in place. This was a good opportunity to explain to Miss K what a template was. She understood for the most part but I wouldn’t say completely (she’s only 4 after all). After trimming a piece of computer paper to the right size of the wall I did a rubbing of the window area so we could get an exact fit.

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I’m a bit of a short-cutter in some things so I would suggest sticking the template to the wall using blu tak so it doesn’t move.

I then proceeded to cut out the window of the template using a metal ruler and knife and then cut out the scrap-booking paper using the template.

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While I was at Riot Art I talked to the sales assistant to see if there was an alternative to Modge Podge. the small bottle was around $13 and the large pot around $20, a bit expensive for me at the moment. She suggested using binder medium for both sticking and sealing the paper to wood, decoupage style. The bottle of binder medium was around $12 and much larger than the modge podge one, so a cheaper option. Atelier is a good brand from memory so I figured it was a good choice.

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K then went ahead and painted on the binder medium, she did a pretty good job too. Check out the concentration on her face.

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and then, after helping her to stick on the cut out paper sheet she sealed it with the same medium.

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At this point I had to stop to make another template for the next wall so after talking her out of putting the very busy butterfly paper next to the fake slate floor (she decided to go with the upstairs which will be carpeted, trying to teach a tiny bit of design here) I got on with it and she got distracted. It was a good distraction though, she went and sat in front of her sister and drew her pictures which was sweet. I proceeded to stick on the butterfly paper.

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And then we did the bathroom with the blue striped paper (she came back to help with that one).

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After sealing all of our ‘wallpaper’ she decided she’d had enough (and so had Miss L who wanted to join in) so we stopped there for this week. We still have several rooms to wallpaper and I think she’s enjoying watching the house change.

Category: All Sorts of Things, Darling Daughters, Family, Tutorials / Tags: , , ,

Photo of the Day – March 3

March 3, 2010 / Molly / No comments

fridgeclay

Can you tell what this is? Its my 1950′s clay collection building up. I keep the finished canes in the freezer, especially considering the temperatures we’ve had here lately. So far I’ve done a dress, roller-skate, TV, caravan and last night I made a good start on a record player. In fact I made the cane a bit too big and now I have both a single record and a record player. I’m thinking I may stop at this. I’m not sure whether a set of 5 magnets or 6 would be better. Sometimes odd numbers sit better. The one I’m the least happy with is the roller-skate. It seems to resemble a pointy boot on wheels but I might just pretend its stylized and go with it anyway.

What do you think, do one more so there are six in the set?

Category: All Sorts of Things, Photo a day, Polymer Clay / Tags: , ,
 
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