The Blessing of Having a Best Friend

Welcome to Blog Your Blessings Sunday.

One of my biggest blessings is my network of support from friends and family, but by far, my most treasured is my best friend.

Perhaps some people have numerous best friends, but I've had only a handful in my lifetime. After I gave my life to Jesus fifteen years ago, I found myself sort of friendless; oh, I had lots of friendly people in my life, but no one close. Changing your entire way of life tends to do that. Jesus was my everything, but I still yearned for a flesh and blood friend I could be me with, so I asked God for one.

It took fourteen years, but I finally met that friend because her son and my son had become friends at school and they wanted to have a sleepover. Let me tell you, this woman was entirely worth the wait. She's everything I ever hoped for and more. God knew just who I needed and sent her at the right time.

If you have a close friend you can confide in who loves you through thick and thin, thank God and treasure the gift. You're fortunate. Not everyone has one. Take a moment today to call your friend and tell him/her just how much you appreciate your friendship.

If you don't have a close friend and long for one, don't give up. Ask God, keep asking God, and wait expectantly with gratitude for the one that's coming. Mine finally did. I believe yours will too. Let me ask God for you, too:

God, to all who read my blog and long for a close friend, please grant their desires and give them the close friends they long for who will love them through thick and thin and continue with them, for you know we need support to keep us strong and going in the right direction. Thank You, God. Amen.

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Tech Tags: blessing friend best friend God thankful

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Garden Co-ops

Opinion Polls & Market Research

After some incredible high April temps and dry weather that made a dust bowl around here, we're finally getting much needed rain. Vegetation is the greenest I've seen it in months and I noticed yesterday grass is starting to grow. When we first moved in here, I wondered if we'd ever see grass, but I think God orchestrated his creation so there are seeds in just about any soil. (Well, maybe not the clay stuff...)

Speaking of seeds and soil, we haven't tried a garden here for two reasons:

1. I think I'm garden handicapped.
2. I doubt anything will grow in sandy soil.

The first I can take care of by educating myself. There are some great gardening websites and books. The second, I can now solve much easier than buying top soil thanks to my friend. Yesterday she asked me if I was interested in sharing a garden with her.

A garden co-op? Whodathunkit? We must be in tune with each other, perhaps by God's spirit since she loves Jesus too, because if you read yesterday's post, you know I mentioned growing food. I just didn't know how I was going to succeed at it with our sandy soil.

So now the two of us are going to grow a garden at her house where she already has a designated garden plot, and we'll get to share quality time, soak up lovely sunshine and it's precious vitamin D through our much-needed sunblock, give our kids regular play time together, and save money on vegetables! This is a perfect setup for someone like me who is garden green, as in don't-know-nothing-'bout-planting.

If you are planning a garden, why not ask a friend or two if they want to go in with you? Or if you want to save money but don't have the space, ask some of your land-wealthy friends if they might be interested in a garden co-op. Or maybe you have land, but don't know how to garden. Get some friends and learn gardening together. You don't even need that much space. The return might be worth turning a postage stamp parcel's tiny lawn into a garden for a season.

Garden co-ops--what a great way to grow friendships, food, and that green wallet stuff.

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Tech Tags: garden co-op grow plant save money share weather

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Earth Day Humor: Ways we help the earth & environment

Welcome to
Works for Me Wednesday,
sponsored by
Rocks In My Dryer.

Since yesterday was Earth Day, I thought I'd share a few green living tips--ways we help the earth, and you can too.

1. We open our doors to let air conditioning outside. We want to do our part to help stop global warming and figure that if everyone did this, maybe we could cool the earth back down and once again weather would resume to normal behavior. No more 80 degree April days in Vermont!
2. We throw our banana peels and apple cores outside to feed animals and fertilize the ground by what they leave behind. I hope this will make our sandy lot more garden friendly so we can start growing our own vegetables instead of buying pesticide laden ones from the grocery store.
3. We buy recycled napkins--lots of them. The more we buy, the better the recycling industry will do. And since they're biodegradable, we throw them on the ground too to keep them out of already full landfills.
4. We clean our bathroom once a month so we don't put more chemicals in the air or harm the environment. We like that all-natural bathroom aroma.
5. I make our kids wear holey clothes to keep them cool instead of maintaining a pool full of environmentally unfriendly chemicals. We get most of the holey used clothes from clothing giveaways so we can also preserve money to build our house.
6. We give all our junk to free places like Freecycle or hospice places. That way our broken monitor and printer stays out of electronic landfills in Asia.
   
7. Last but not least, I make our kids wait at least a week before showering so they don't waste water. And that's when they're allowed to brush their teeth. Waste not want not.

No, really folks, if you think we really do these things, you're nuts!

Earth Day is great time to evaluate our lifestyles.If we exchange one product for a recycled one, like napkins, or change out a chemical toilet cleaner to baking soda or vinegar, and everyone did this, the impact on our environment to preserve the earth would be great and our earth would bear us better.

Here are ways The Building Brows really help our earth:

1. We recycle and use recycled items.
2. We avoid foods made with artificial flavors, preservatives, and colors (all chemicals).
3. We purchase decent used clothes, visit clothing giveaways, swap clothes, and give away ones we no longer use or need.
4. We turn off water (or try to remember to) when brushing teeth and soaping dishes.
5. We exchanged a few chemical cleaners for natural ones made of plant bases, and they really work.
6. We shower instead of bathe to preserve water.
7. We carpool and/or consolidate trips in our fuel-efficient Kia Spectra.

We also have the option to purchase greener electric power that comes from wind sources instead of filthy coal-burning plants at a slight price increase. We may look at this in the future for a self-appointed portion of our bill. Perhaps your electric company also offers a greener power alternative.


Hope you enjoyed this Works for Me Wednesday post and will consider what one thing you can add or change to make an environmental difference on the earth for all who live on it.

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Tech Tags: Earth Day ~ environment ~ tips ~ green ~ Works for Me Wednesday

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Simple Desk & More Trash Control Tip

Welcome to Works for Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks In My Dryer.

If your desk is anything like mine, covered with tissues, crumbs, wrappers, or other miscellaneous disposable junk from various family members, you'll like this simple desk+ trash reducer tip.

Many people probably have a trash can beside their desks, but since we have little space, we don't. Still, even with a trash can nearby, trash accumulates quickly and we don't always want to disrupt work long enough to get up or swing around to throw stuff away.

To remedy this, I keep an emptied tissue box, preferably pop-up, within arm's length. I can dump dirty tissues or whatnot in it without disrupting my train of thought and keep my work space clear, which helps me be more efficient. At the end of the day or at break time, I dump it in the nearest trash can and return it to its spot.

This small decorative box still adds to decor while serving a great function. Plus it's portable and can be used anywhere in the house you need an extra trash collector but don't want to place an extra trash can. Works great in the kids' rooms or when someone's sporting a cold that produces mounds of tissues. I can assign an emptied box per child that gets used during the cold and then discarded or recycled once they recover.

Works for me! Try it. You might like it too.

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Tech Tags: trash tip health household Works for Me Wednesday organization

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Tax man arrives with hope for resuming house construction

The tax man has cometh. Most people want to hide from him, but Jim and I have been waiting expectantly for his arrival. I've alluded before to a plan we were following to resume house construction. For the past several years we'd been looking at something significant with the power to impact our financial health, but did not count on anything until it happened. Now with the tax man's arrival, it has, and I can share.

Roofing is a tough industry in New England because it's a three-season job. It's difficult for a family to live on a roofer's income when he's just the worker and has no income in the winter, 4-5 months of the year, so these past fifteen years have been very tight financially. It's why we're living in a tiny mobile home and could not afford a normal mortgage or rent or car payments. (Not that we want them anyway...) But we knew there was hope on the horizon because my dad talked of giving Jim the business.

This past year was the first year Jim and Dad were business partners. We had no idea what our finances would look like until the tax man arrived, and we kept things strung tight the entire year not knowing how the winter would be without unemployment or income and still having to pay quarterly taxes. It looks like we've done OK and will continue to as long as we mind our budget.

We are now be able to pay ourselves a small mortgage to put into building supplies, so work should resume this year. I can't tell you how happy and relieved this makes me. When you sit in tiny hole year round looking at your unfinished house untouched for the second year in a row, it gets depressing, especially when you can't see a way to change things.

I'm grateful to God for supplying our needs through good old fashioned hard work, and for helping us hang on and be faithful to roofing when God asked us to even before talk of ownership began. That's the toughest part of faith--following what God asks when you can't see any logical reason for it. It borders on lunacy, and would be if not orchestrated by God. (All the more reason to know God to discern His direction.)

So we'll keep budgeting and start building up house funds, and hopefully we'll be back in that house pounding nails soon. Yippee!

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Tech Tags: taxes roofing house construction budgeting mortgage building DIY

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Truth or Lie?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

SM and NT came home from school angry yesterday with their clothes, boots, and backpacks soaked and a waterlogged game system. The neighborhood second grader had come up behind them and shoved them off the road into a stream below for no apparent reason. And then he lied about it to his mom this morning saying our kids had started it when they kicked him in the nuts.

When questioned, my kids' mouths dropped open and they started yelling he was a liar, all while I'm on the phone with his mom who believed her son was telling the truth despite that she knew he tended to lie. And then she said the defining issue that often goes unspoken but is the core of many two-family parent arguments. "I think I can tell when my son is telling the truth."

There began a delicate conversation about chronic lying and our abilities to read our kids' truth meters. Can you say Can of Worms? All I can say is, thank God I'm friends with her and she loves Jesus too.

The truth is, some kids are chronic liars and many parents instinctively want to believe the best about their kids, or at the very least, that they are good enough parents to be able to ascertain truth from lies coming from their children. What parent wants to face that maybe they can't or that maybe they aren't smart enough to keep from being deceived by an imp? It threatens us with the back pedaling topic of "bad parent."

But maybe we can't always read our kids. Maybe some of them have become so skilled at lying that they can get by even our toughest defenses against deception.

Oh no! We might be deceivable, just like that darned woman in the garden of Eden. God forbid--because if we're deceivable, we're penetrable and can be humiliated.

Nope, we counter later in the day of questioning while our kid tiptoes up behind another unsuspecting peer on the way home. I can read my kids. I'm not a stupid parent.

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Tech Tags: kids lie lying truth parenting poll

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Spring time dirt defense

Welcome to Works for Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks In My Dryer.

Its finally spring and I'm battling the biggest no-snow problem of all. DIRT. Since we have oceanless beach front property, sand seems to get everywhere. Each morning I sweep up buckets of the stuff. And that's with thorough sweeping before bed. My kids must go out in the middle of the night to play basketball. Either that, we have a visually impaired sandman who bumps into stuff in the dark and spills his precious sleep potion everywhere.

I went to the store yesterday to set up my line of defense. A step before the bottom of the walkway IN THE WAY I placed a bristle shoe brush. From there, we step onto a pallet. Dirt falls between the slats as we walk the distance to the stairs. (We need to add another pallet back. We used to have two which doubled the sand drop rate.)

At the end of the pallet just before the stairs begin, I placed a bristle mat for more wiping. Then up the stairs. At the top, is a flatter mat with recessed areas to catch more dirt, but it wipes the finer sand away. Then it's in the door where I placed a new tan mat with recessed areas as well to catch the dirt.

So far, my defense line is working well. There was about 65% less dirt actually on the stairs than average days prior to the new mats, and indoors was less, too--even with the dog's feet.

Now all will be fine as long as everyone avoids dog poop.

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Technorati Tags: spring sand dirt+in+house housework solution

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Shocking (or not) housework study results

See? It's not all in my head. Now I have proof. Men really do create more housework for women! This according to a federally funded study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

Actually, if you read the article it contradicts itself. And it doesn't take into account work done outside the house, which many men shoulder most responsibility for. I'd say, we're close to even. Bottom line--marriage creates more house-work (inside and out) for everyone involved.

Maybe while I exchange a little yard work for dinner prep, the article writer can go back and edit his article to relay the research information accurately. I'd like to know what the research really concluded.

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New Tactics to Make You Pay

Welcome to Blog Your Blessings Sunday.

Bought a new car with payments lately? Then maybe you're familiar with one of those little boxes affixed under your dash that ensure your lender payment as spoken of at USA Today. You know, the one that beeps incessantly if you default on a payment and then shuts off your car entirely if you don't punch in a code given only by your lender once you make that payment.

Lenders are getting tough about getting their money, and customers are getting cranky about it. Next thing we could see is these little black boxes on our homes locking us out, or worse. But let's face it. Lenders have a right to their money, and on time.

If we don't like it, we shouldn't borrow. Or we should be patient and long suffering to save our money enough to buy outright; a difficult feat, for sure, but if we don't want little black boxes controlling our lives, worth the second look.

Realistically, this is a warning of tougher standards ahead, and rightly so. Spending is way out of control and debt loads soar. Now is the time to make changes before consequences for payment defaults become so severe people land in prison.

Don't laugh. It could happen. Thankfully today, we still have time to change. And that's the biggest blessing.

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My Blessing: CyberCelt

Welcome to Blog Your Blessings Sunday.

And I really mean welcome this week! I'm doing SOOOOOOOOOOO much better than last week. But I'm very sad by my sin.

Poor CyberCelt. He's the one who started Blog Your Blessings Sunday (no he wasn't--Blue Panther did and I mistook them as being the same person) and innocently stopped by last Sunday to leave a comment. He had no idea it would land like a bomb and explode in his face. Truly, I was in such a horrible frame of mind that I needed to hear most what he suggested--that I count my blessings--but it was the last thing I wanted to hear.

Publicly I say to CyberCelt,

• THANK YOU, and I apologize for getting angry at you when you did only right.
  
• Thank you for participating in Blog Your Blessings Sunday. What happened last week was exactly the reason I joined, for I knew that when people land in a bad place, what they need most to do is count their blessings. With your help I did, and last Sunday was the beginning of my turn-around.
  
• Thank you for being faithful with BYB Sunday and leaving comments for those on the blogroll. I appreciate you more than you probably realize.

Folks, this week CyberCelt is my blessing. Please visit CyberCelt's blog and consider joining BYB Sunday. But if you're having a bad week, spare those who comment on your blog and lift your frustrations instead to God.

CORRECTION: CyberCelt does not sponsor BYB Sunday and is not Blue Panther as I thought. I'm not sure how I got that idea, so I've corrected the link above. I'm sorry for the confusion. I guess if you're going to humiliate yourself, you might as well do a good job at it, right? Oy vey.

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Technorati Tags: BYB Sunday ^ sin ^ blessings ^ Blog Your Blessings

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BYB: Combating a Pissy Attitude

Welcome to Blog Your Blessings Sunday.

I am soooo not in the mood for Blog Your Blessings Sunday which is a huge sign I had better do it. This might take me a while--much longer than it will take you to read, so I'm going for only five today. Here goes:

1. All of my kids are alive. (45 seconds)
2. I have a warm house to live in. (45 seconds)
3. Even though my computer hard drive is corrupt and won't run, I have a back up computer thanks to listening to God to buy an inexpensive iMac at a tag sale this summer. (30 seconds)
   
4. Both of my parents are still alive, and so is my Grandma. (90 seconds)
5. On my last dismal post CyberCelt suggested I blog my blessings, and even though it peeved me so much I wanted to delete his comment (I didn't), he was right. (1 minute)
   

I'm still in a piss-hole attitude, which is probably the worst thing I've ever said on this blog.

What? Christians can't say piss-hole? Bah! Go read about Peter in Matthew 26, verses 31-35 and 69-75. He cursed in his piss-hole attitude when he flat out denied the One he loved most. But he got through it. God restored Him (John 21:15-22) and God will me too. At least I'm real like Peter was. God can work with that. He can't work with fake, and fake I won't be.

So there, CyberCelt. You got your blogged blessings. And blessings they are indeed, but you pissed me off suggesting it!

Maybe I'd better torture myself some more and blog them every day to force this foul mood out of me. Along with reading Psalm 119:9

"How can a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed according to your word."

And lovely. I have a faith article to write this week due Friday. Figures. Guess it's going to be about being genuine and cleaning up when we've made ourselves a disgusting mess.

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Technorati Tags: Blog Your Blessings ^ genuine ^ attitude ^ Christians

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Hard Start to 2008

Sick sick sick with fever, headaches, on/off nausea, and dizziness. Couple that with a computer crash and a biopsy and what a way to start 2008. I hope the rest of you are faring better than myself at the moment. It's surely been a difficult week. There's nothing like everything going wrong to challenge yourself or your faith.

But everything really isn't going wrong. It's just hard to see that when I feel so crummy. I have many things to thank God for. Remember. I've got to remember.

I'm very grateful to the many people who have prayed for me and my family these past few weeks and for everyone who supported us when we came under fire for our lifestyle. Each of you is a treasure and I thank God for every one. Even those who oppose us. You have all made me take stock of everything.

A friend reminded me of my life verses that I had forgotten at such a crucial moment in life, and I'm concluding it is the end of all matters. From Brandy's memory:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones.

~ Proverbs 3:5-8

Signing off to take a nap ~

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Technorati Tags:  family ^ sick ^ controversy ^ prayer ^ faith

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Free Christmas Images

Merry Christmas!

Here are a few images you may use for free in celebration of the holiday season.
Right click on them and click "save as" to save to your computer.
Please host them yourself--do not link to my image's URLs.

May you have a joyous time with friends and family.
Thank You, Jesus, for coming to save us ~

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