A Grateful People

Have we waited far too long to surrender
Forgive us Oh God the years
We failed to seek your face
Oh Lord, your mercy turns us into
Grateful people
We can’t seem to find the words
So take our lives that there might be enough
To tell you how grateful
Lord, we are grateful
from "A Grateful People" by Watermark

The words of that song always come to my mind this time of year. It seems easy to remember to be thankful for the little things. My oldest daughter wrote that she was thankful for clean water, and our doctor. My two year old is thankful for cookies. We do tend to take the simple things for granted. A not so simple thing that I am guilty of forgetting is the mercy of a holy God. What I deserve and what He has given me are two very different things. So thankful.

Wishing you and yours a lovely Thanksgiving. And remember friends, a slice of pumpkin pie counts as a serving of vegetables!

Remembering to Be Thankful

With Thanksgiving upon us, we are trying to be more intentional about the way we celebrate the holiday. There are lots of ideas on how to get your kids thinking about thankfulness, and good ones too. This year I decided to just cut strips of paper that we can write our thoughts of thankfulness on. The strips will go into a jar, and then we can pull strips out to share at dinner each night.

I thought that after Thanksgiving, we can make the strips into paper chains. I always like to do paper chains for our Christmas decor, and this way, the cutting paper part is already done, and we can go on thinking about our thankfulness throughout the Christmas season.

This is just a simple way to turn our hearts towards being grateful.

Valentine's Day Crafting

I have always loved Valentine's Day.  Who doesn't love roses, paper heart doilies, pink, and sappy love songs?  Okay, lots of people I'm sure!  But I am such a romantic at heart.  It is such a great time for crafting, and even if you don't sew or aren't really crafty, there is still lots of opportunity for crafty fun.

I pulled this out a couple weeks ago, and today me and the kids did a little crafting.  I was thinking about something for the kids to put their valentines in, and I thought it would be nice to have something out now that we could leave little treats and love notes in over the weekend.  I had lots of brown paper bags, so we decorated one for each of the family.  Each bag is closed with a clothes-pin with a paper heart glued on.

If you're looking for gifts, this was a big hit with my husband last year.  I made one for him to put in his office, and it turned out so well that we made another one for our home.  We've since given one out for Mother's Day as well.  I just bought pre-cut poster board and a fat sharpie to make the letters.

Here is another craft I did last year.  I bought flour sack kitchen towels and red fabric paint.  I used cardstock to make a heart stencil, then stuck a paper doily onto the towel with spray adhesive.  Then, I sponged the paint onto the towel over the doily (using my stencil), then carefully peeled the doily off.  This was not an original idea, but I can't remember where I saw it.  I think this would make a sweet gift for a lady used as wrapping over a loaf of homemade bread.

Hope you are finding fun ways to spread the love this year!

Fabric Hearts Garland

I love Valentines Day. The colors, flowers, romance and just the plain fun of it! It is when I make up for all the baking I didn't get done at Christmas. Nothing tastes better than a heart shaped cookie with sprinkles.
We've been doing lots of crafting around here and this is a project I've been thinking about for awhile. We've seen this kind of thing for birthdays and Christmas, this one is just for Valentine's Day. I'll probably hang it in my girls' room after the day has passed.
This is very simple, just sewing wrong sides together and then doing a top-stitch.

A few tips:
I drew a heart on paper and traced it onto the wrong side of fabric. It's very simple to sew if you stitch right on the line. Don't forget to leave a little space to turn it right side out.

When you reach the points in the heart, stop with your needle down and then pivot. It makes for a nice heart shape.

Trim around the heart, leaving about 1/4 inch. Go back and trim a little more in the top inner corner and make a little notch right in the top point and then make little notches around the curves. This keeps the fabric from pulling after you turn it right side out.

Iron it smooth, pressing down your opening. Then do a little top-stitch.


I used one package of extra wide double fold bias tape binding to join all the hearts. I was thinking it might be nice to put a felt layer in between, but I didn't want to do an extra step.

This was pretty quick and easy and just looks adorable across the kitchen window.