Monday morning news....

busy day ahead.....going to see my favorite quintuplets.....you can see them too, at The Howell Quints! When I was there two weeks, three out of five of them took their first steps!! It was so exciting!

The Montage show the other night was fantastic......my sweet daughter has threatened to skip her senior year and go join the show.......teasing of course, but we all loved it. There was a contortionist that was amazing!!! I'd recommend seeing it if it comes to your area.

In SLaHOME news, there is a Gail Sale starting tomorrow, where we will be reducing our inventory of most Gail Pittman hand painted pottery. I'm sure it will be on my website; it starts tomorrow...so if you have begun a collection of Gail Pittman SLaHOME pottery, now is the time to finish out the pieces you still want to get. By the way you can go here to my SLaHOME website....
I'll be back later with stories from the Quints...if you haven't visited their blog, you need to check out how much they've grown. They are adorable.....I love my visits with them.

Lastly, remember to pray for Andrew and Ann, which just reminds me how thankful I am to have so many fabulous blog friends and what a blessing it is to be a blogger! Have a good Monday!!!

a Saturday special outing.......

We are taking our daughter to see this tonight! I am sure she will love it.....she has always loved gymnastics AND theater.



Hope you have a fun and safe weekend.

Please remember to pray for Andrew and his family as seen in yesterday's post.


Please also remember to pray for Ann, at Life at Ann's Place, who I read is at home! Yay for Ann! I am sure she can still use our prayers as she recovers.

An urgent prayer need for a sister and her child.....

Melanie at Bella Mella has a heavy heart...her son was diagnosed earlier this week with a brain tumor, and she is asking us to pray. I thought it was urgent enough that we could all be lifting up Andrew up in prayer, across the nation. Of course they are scared, tired, and wondering ........
Could you pray for them? I know they would appreciate it. Her daughter Audra, wrote this post on her behalf today.....

http://bellamella-melanie.blogspot.com/2009/08/update-on-andrew-from-guitar-girl.html

and even though we'd love to hug on Melanie and support her but can't because of distance, we can sure support her and her family in prayer. I'll be using Is.41:10 to pray, so that they will know the help of God, the strength of God and be confident in the fact the HE is their God. This is the very best way we can support her and her family right now....thanks friends. This is Andrew:

Photoshop Elements 7

I got this last spring for my birthday....and I had a goal of learning to use it over the summer.....kind of like taking a class, a few lessons at a time. I even got a book to walk me through the whole class, so that I could visually SEE what the cd was telling me to do....because I am a very visual learner. May I just say my plan failed miserably. Here it is August 26, 2009 and I have NOT OPENED the book, nor loaded the software to my laptop........so I need a NEW plan, obviously....I would like to go through it in the fall with the goal of having finished it by end of November....so perhaps Thursdays will be my Photoshop day, taking an hour or so every Thursday to go thru some of the chapters, experimenting on how to use the software and then showing YOU some of the lessons I am learning.
Do you have experience with Photoshop Elements? Am I going to be able to master this???? It is a challenge for me, but I'd like to think I can handle it.....any experienced PE users out there to offer technical support should I need it???? That would be so great if we could help each other out.....er, you help me and maybe something I post will help you....or you could ask for help on something domestic that challenges you, and maybe I can help. Something like that......

Hanging plates as wall decor.....

We all love them, and love hanging them, right? We've discussed the best way to hang them before, here.....with these handy little adhesive disc plate hangers....they attach directly to the plate and have that cool "d" hook that will hang a plate so very easily! They come in various sizes and NOW you can order them online and thanks to Mr. Stanley Latter, if you enter the code, he will give you FREE shipping.....don't we LOVE that , too?????? So click on the button and go on over and check out the best way EVER to hang your decorative plates as wall art! Go here to check them out.....
BREAKING NEWS: I've just learned that Mr. Latter is sending me some of these handy little plate holders so that I can hold a giveaway very soon.....keep checking back and you may get your own set absolutely FREE...how cool is that????

Hang in there.......

Sometimes life is hard, sometimes life is very hard......but this is encouragement to persevere! I pray for a blessed day for each of you.

Suzanne

Some mantle and fireplace ideas for you today.....

These ideas are all from the Southern Living at HOME convention this year.......hope you will enjoy and glean some creativity from them. You can imagine your own items in the places and just use the placement of things if you'd like.
The pictures are "clickable" to take a better look, especially at the second one so you can see all those cool balls stacked into the buckets for a delightful fall look!!!

A lesson learned from a dog.....

Lucie and Aggie


Aggie has lived with us for ten years now....he's a little old and crochity...........and has been an only dog for all this time.....Enter Lucie! She is a drama girl, who loves to play. When she first came to live with us, she was tiny, and he was bigger than she. Rather quickly she has grown to tower over him. She loves to stand over him and his short little self fits right under her long legs! She also teethes and loves to nibble and bite. (We are working to quell that behavior!) She loves to nibble Aggie's long ears! Aggie doesn't like that part about Lucie! He has learned to be VERY patient. The other remarkable thing about Lucie is that she has a STRONG desire to eat Aggie's food. He also has a strong desire to eat her yummy puppy food. Perhaps he thinks it is the fountain of youth!!



So this morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table as they were eating, standing guard if you will. You have to keep them each eating their own food. Lucie tries to be quite manipulative. She stands from a distance looking at Aggie's tempting bowl of Weight Management food, even though her own bowl is a foot away full of Puppy (read High Energy!) food. One must know hers tastes more like a sirloin and his tastes like a salad....Which one would YOU choose????
So as I worked diligently to direct her back to her own bowl, steering her away from his 1/2 cup of salad, I thought to myself....am I like this? Do I stare longingly at the things others have, disregarding the abundance I have within my the walls of my own home? Am I truly satisfied with the blessing given me from God or am I longing for someone else's dogfood???? That was a challenge to me today, and I thought I 'd share it with you....
The apostle Paul spoke of learning to be content in Phillipians chapter four....he had been through a lot to bring him to a spirit of contentedness. And I am to learn from that and from my two dogs that God has given me what I need. What I will need in the future, He will give me.
Will I chooose to be satisfied with that? Will I be satisfied with this body and some of the recent failings I have found in it? Will I deal with the disappointments that brings in a way that points to Him or to me....I will write further about that in days to come. But in the meantime, I must rest in the fact that HE gives me what I need. Lucie and I will be learning together, it seems, that our master provides what is right for us. Come along on our walk and join us, won't you?

Have a good day, my friends.

May you find wisdom today.....

have a blessed Sunday, my friends......see you next week.



Photo from Shots from the Heart....

The latest on Lucie.....

She's come from this tiny little thing........so, so cute....
to this at almost four months old.........she smiles!!!



She has a good personality, although for some reason, her idea of playing is pulling moss out of the pots my ficus trees are in, in the living room. She does get in trouble for that......but she is undaunted. She loves Aggie, our aging mini dachsund; she loves to bite his ears.....he really doesn't like that very much! But he is relatively patient with her.



She really is a sweetie and seems to have a good personality!! She is especially cute when she is sleeping!! :)
Have a great day.....hubby has taken off the next couple of days, so I may be in and out. I read some great things on blogs this morning that I want to come back and link you to, in case you didn't see them. Take care!

Blog Reading List went POOF!!!

I am not amused. I have lost my blogger reading list...........does anyone else have this issue? All the blogs I had on my list at the bottom of the Dashboard page have gone poof! I cannot keep up with ALL my blogging friends that I need to check on daily. So I sit here with my coffee, wondering how am I EVER going to build that list back up????? It's silly to be distraught over something like this, perhaps, but it's got me all discombobulated.....I hope it's just a Blogger issue and it will all magically reappear, so if you are having this issue, please leave a comment or email me so that I can have hope it may indeed reappear. Otherwise, I am not able to access all my friends' blogs without hopping all over blogland and trying to find you and add you back. This is an SOS call I guess to at least have you comment, so I will have a link to add you back. Thanks, friends.

Thanks to all who left comments.......shhhhh, I am going to try to curb my enthusiasm lest I find myself back in the same state I was in (and the Blogger buggymonsters hear my excitement and make things go POOF again!! ) but it looks like for the moment that they are back.....I am ecstatic, but in a very reserved sort of way...LOL. I can visit my friends again, with untold abandon. EXCEPT: this little problem ignited a cleaning spark and I need to go about the Casa with my dust rag and vacuum for a little longer......when I need to take a break, you know where I am going to come!! Back to our precious little community of bloggers to see who's doing what and where, and see and love on my dear friends!! :)
Hope you have a productive day as well...and thanks again.

Suzanne

A random idea from the archives........

I wanted to show you an amazing discovery I made. See, I have a tablecloth problem. I like 'em. I like to use 'em. But where do I put 'em???? With limited space for storage, I needed to find a way to keep them stored, without any "cramming" going on. Because that's the way they get that wadded look-- you've seen it; I don't like 'em to be all wadded and wrinkled, either. So how do you fit ten to twelve tablecloths in an eight inch space? (see, I told you I have a wee problem....) with absolutely NO wadding or cramming going on? I give you my new tablecloth storage idea. It may be a lightbulb moment for only me. It could be that possibly you ten readers have been employing this genius idea for years.....if so, please don't tell me. I like to think I had a bright idea! :)

You take a basic pants hanger... this is actually the second set I bought. The first one came from WalMart and actually had the little swing away bar, for easy removal of the item from the bar. These are those flocked kind that help things stay on and not slip off. You choose. You place your tablecloths on each little bar and they hang rather than being crammed or wadded. The closet is my coat closet not far from the dining room, and we really don't need a closet for coats anyway, so it houses many things, including my tablecloths. It works! To the left you'll see a stray tote bag, that could probably be donated. To the right, a stray bag of faux flowers that will probably also be donated. A good way, though, to keep extra things is to put them in a bag, and hook over a hanger in a closet.....keeps them off the floor, and I like that!

If you have things on your heart that feel burdensome, call upon the Lord to sustain you. You will find true rest in Him.......of course we all love sharing with one another, and it is indeed a blessing to be able to pray for one another. In fact I would love it if you would pray for my step father on Monday, having a heart cath, and possibly a stint put in.
Also on Monday, there is an exciting site that is going to bless our socks off, I just know it....take a look, and be inspired and encouraged!
And there is a new site for us bloggers to enjoy, where we can go and be (in)spired and (in)couraged!! The grand opening is on Monday, and I think our socks are going to be knocked off!!!

Some bookcase ideas for you.....

As you remember I was at the Southern Living at HOME convention recently, and they had a feature this year that I loved, and would love to share with you. They gave bookcase suggestions, and we all know how challenging it can be to make a great looking bookshelf. As well, we all know that a bookcase is NOT JUST FOR BOOKS, right???? Anyway, take a look at these ideas for your inspiration!

Oh my goodness.....check this out!!

If the trailer for this movie is any iota of what this movie is going to be like, I don't want to MISS IT!!!
Watch this trailer and see what I mean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcFp6SlVBOM

Trailer says it comes out Nov. 20.

What color is YOUR front door???

Recently at the Southern Living at HOME convention this door was featured in the Product Showcase. I thought it was beautiful!!! So what color is YOUR front door and what color would you paint it if you had your way????? I don't think my engineer husband would ever go for a purple door, but I sure do think it pops, don't you??????

The only way....