Little Jewels

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Hinds Feet on High Places

My passion for the Shepherdess painting began back in 1996. My close girlfriend, Selina, and I went to a women's retreat put on by our church at a retreat center called Forest Home. It was a beautiful place nestled in the San Bernardino mountains. That year I had been asked to speak at one of the sessions. The theme for the retreat was "Hinds Feet on High Places" and our notebook had the Shepherdess painting printed on the front of it. I immediately fell in love with it! My topic for my message that I shared was "Children of Promise." I spoke about Sarah, Hannah and Ruth. They were all women that had waited on the Lord for a child of promise. At the time I was 36 and was still waiting for my beloved and the promise of a family. When I returned home from that retreat, I matted and framed the front of the notebook and I told myself that if I had a little girl that I would hang this picture in her nursery. It was special to me as it shows a young girl being very tender with a lamb and it's mother. It made me think of the Lord and how gentle and loving He is with us. I thought how beautiful that would be to have a daughter who had a heart for the Lord and loved people like He loves us. We are His flock and the sheep of His hand. Little did I know that it would be 10 years before I would hang that picture in my sweet little one's room. There it is today!

This theme of a young women and a lamb has continued in my home. Last Valentines Day I was in a Hallmark store in the mall looking for cards for Rich and Mary. There was a display of Willow Creek figurines. They were lovely. Down at the bottom, in the corner, was one of a young girl holding a lamb. Again, I fell in love with it! It cost a little bit more than I would usually pay for a decorative item, but I just had to have it. I thought it would be a wonderful Valentines Day gift for my little girl that she will learn to appreciate when she is older. So, I placed it on a high shelf in her room when I got back while she was napping. A few days later, she came running out of her room, pulling on my hand and saying, "dolly, dolly" and lead me to her room. Now she is a girl through and through and has quite a few dolls in her room. She stopped in front of her shelves and lifted her little hands up as high as she could and looked up the top shelf and said again, "dolly, dolly." That warmed my heart. I held her up to see it but I told her she could not play with it because it was special. She seemed to understand and did not get upset when I didn't give it to her to play with. A few weeks later, we rearranged the furniture in the living room and with the move we ended up leaving one wall empty. I thought, "Hey, a wall hanging would go so perfectly there." So, I looked online and I found a tapestry of the figurine that I had bought Mary. Again, I was delighted!! The wall hanging was entitled, "Peace on Earth." I ordered it and when it came, Rich hung it for me. I smile each time I gaze at it. It is like a small window into the future, where I see my Mary girl as a young woman with a tender and loving heart. She is embracing the Lamb, the Savior of her soul.

For more show and tell treasures and the storied behind them go to Kelli's blog.

Winds of Change

Winds of change are coming to my family. My husband is a wonderful artist in the medium of ceramics. He had started a small business down in Southern California making and selling lamps before I met him. When we had been dating about a month, he made me this awesome lamp and put my favorite scripture on it. The scripture is on the header of my blog. That was the last thing he worked on as he had to move and there was no place for his shop. Fifteen months later we married and then moved up here. He does heating and air conditioning repair. He has done this for years. In fact he grew up with it. His dad did that line of work and was president of a heating and air conditioning company for many years. Rich is really good at what he does but it is a very physically demanding job. The company he has worked for here has been very good to us, especially after Mary was born. They gave him several substantial raises. When we moved into this house, Rich was able to set up his ceramic shop but had no time or energy to do it. The job has afforded us the ability to get completely out of debt and build up a good savings account along with the help of his folks giving us some money a while back. The only thing that was holding up the ceramic business was that there was no end in sight with his job. The slowdown in our economy has hit this area very hard. His boss has had to cut way back on his hours as there are fewer repair jobs to be done. What a blessing! Now he has got everything set up in the shop and I will begin to learn how to do a working web page for Internet orders and we also want to try and sell his lamps in local gift shops. They can be custom made with artwork and scriptures on them. They are functional and beautiful. The light in the base shines through the design and makes a wonderful night light, when the upper light is turned off. We know that the economy being slow cuts into people buying gift items, but I feel that his design is unique and will fill a niche in the market. We don't want to get rich, just have our needs met. Rich wants to be able to be home working on something he enjoys and something that is much easier on his body. Being older parents we want to stay as healthy and active as we can for Mary. Also the job he has now gives him no time off in the summer. It is way too busy. So with having our own business we can go camping and fishing and be more active in the church that we attend. We have done a lot of prayer and we would appreciate your prayers. We feel the Lord is leading us in this direction and we are very happy! Here are a few pictures.

This is the lamp that he made for me when we were dating!

The kiln

work bench

plaster mold


drying shelves



supplies



beautiful designs!

Love and Marriage

My treasure to share today is the photos of my husband's folks. They are celebrating their 60th Wedding Anniversary today. Here are the photos of their wedding. They are such a blessing in my life. Wonderful in-laws and grandparents to our daughter.

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Here is a gift basket that I made for them for their anniversary. Underneath the flowers and ribbons there are all kinds of their favorite goodies and a bottle of champagne!

For more treasures and the stories behind them go to Kelli's Blog.

Wordless Wednesday - St. Patrick's Day

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Margaret Belle

This post is in honor of my great grandma who was of Irish descent. Her name was Margaret Belle Gamble daughter of Aaron and Margaret Gamble of Washington County, Pennsylvania. She married Joel Vorhees and they moved to Nebraska, where my mom was born. My mother was quite a story teller and loved to tell us kids about our ancestors. I found it a wonderful treasure to know where I came from. The 2 stories below are a transcription of a tape I have of my mother telling stories of her mother and grandparents. The pictures below that is my great grandparents wedding day photo. My mom told me I have my grandma and great grandma's eyes. They were very dark brown almost black and almond shaped. My baby girl, Mary, has her daddy's blues eyes but she does carry the almond shape. My husband was so pleased that she did. He loves my eyes and wanted our little girl to carry that trait. He is such a sweet heart and I love him so very much! Anyway without further ado, here are a couple of stories from my past! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Great Grandma's Cooking

Oh, I have to tell about how they always ate with a white table cloth on the table. It was white because they bleached flour sacks. Flour sacks were cloth in that day, not paper like they are now. They were poor to a certain extent but they were rich in a lot of things. She had nice linen ones for the dinners that she put on for people in town. For everyday, they used the bleached flour sack ones. Grandma would embroider on them and get them fixed pretty. So, whenever Grandpa would come in and the dinner wasn't quite ready, Grandma would tell the girls to run and get the table cloth and put it on. Because, if he saw the table cloth was on the table, he would think dinner is almost ready and he would go in and read his farm magazine. But if he came in and there wasn't a table cloth on, he would think she hasn't got it ready and he would go out and do more work on the farm. So my mom can remember as a little girl, running real fast and getting that table cloth and putting it on the table.
Her mother was a wonderful cook. She won all the prizes at the state fair for her bread and canned food. They had fairs in those days. She would go and take her prize pickles, bread and everything. She would get the blue ribbon for all her entries.
Whenever there was a new person that came to the church on Sunday, they had dinner with the Vorhees. My grandmother was very much of the opinion that if you entertained strangers at your house that you might be having angels unaware. That's according to the Book of Hebrews and Abraham in the Book of Genesis. Never did she want to miss the possibility of seeing angels. So, their house became famous in the area for having dinner.
My Grandma Belle not only had people over to her house but if anyone was sick or had a baby in the church or the neighborhood, she would take them food, a nice meal. So, my mother went with her one time to these really poor people. Someone had butchered a hog and given them the head to eat, a little while before my mom and grandma got there. When they went in, the family wanted to serve them something to eat and all they had was this hog's head. So the lady took a butcher knife and sliced some of the meat off the head sitting on the counter. The lady then fried it and put it on a plate. Every time my mom looked around that hog was looking at her. In her mind she was thinking it was saying "What are you doing, eating me?" It made it hard to swallow the meat. This was a common experience of rural farm kids.

The Thrifty Scotch Irish

My grandmother was a very thrifty person. That was the Scotch Irish in her. She was very devout and everything had to be neat and tidy. Grandpa had quite a sense of humor and he loved to tease her about her thriftiness. So one day she didn't feel well. I think she was pregnant with their son, Allen. It was unusual for her to lay down before she cleaned the kitchen. But Grandpa said he would take care of everything. Grandma never threw anything away. She always found some use for things. Food that was left over after a meal, was very carefully put on the pantry self in a little dish and saved. So after Grandpa got the table readed up, he went out to do his farming. Grandma got up later and went out to see how he did on the clean up. Checking on him to see if everything was done right or not. So, she went down and looked. There sitting on the pantry shelf was a saucer with one pea on it. Grandma thought that she would have liked to have seen his face when he was doing that.

Happy Birthday Mama!

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I had a wonderful day with my family!

Wordless Wednesday - Friends

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Mary and Lazarus

One evening after my husband pitted an avocado and made some yummy guacamole, he took the pit and set it on our kitchen window sill to dry. I didn't know what he was up to, or what an amazing story would unfold. A few days passed and the pit split and he put it in a glass of water with some tooth pics stuck in it to keep half of it above the water line. Long white roots began to emerge so he placed it in a quart jar and the roots kept coming. I didn't think it was going to make it because each time the leaf stalk would come, it would wither. So, I thought one day, "Hey, why don't I put the jar in a bag and give the roots some darkness, so it will be kind of like it is in the soil. That did the trick. A beautiful stock of leaves emerged! We planted in a large pot and I read that avocado trees have a very powerful growth hormone and if you do not cut it back, it will just be a really tall spindle plant and won't look like a tree. The cut is very severe. You must cut it half way up from the soil. This makes a green stob with no leaves! I didn't have the heart to do it, so I put my husband up to it. I winced when I saw it, but in a short while shoots began to appear on the stem and a small tree formed. It then looked like an avocado tree. We lived in Southern California at the time, so it thrived outside in its pot. In a few years we made a move north to a much colder climate. The first winter we brought it inside to protect it from the frost and heavy rains. It kept on growing and produced these leaves:

They were gigantic! In a few months it developed a disease that made all the leaves die and I thought for sure it was a goner! But I hung on to the hope of it surviving and sure enough....

here it is the following summer. Right then and there we named the tree, Lazarus!



We tried to start several other trees from pits but were not successful until the month after our daughter was born and here she is with the little start. We named this tree, Mary!
Here it is in our green house flourishing for the winter along with....

Lazarus, the old man of the grove:) My husband wants to purchase a fruit bearing avocado tree and take shoots from this tree and graft them into our trees to see if we can get them to bear. That is my hubby's dream is to have small avocado trees in pots that will have fruit and he can make some yummy guacamole!

For more treasures and the stories behind them go to Kelli's blog.

Wordless Wednesday - Crafts

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