Cultivating Beauty

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.
• Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
• She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.
• Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised

Earlier this week I did a post titled "Do You Feel Beautiful?", and mentioned that the topic of beauty seemed to keep cropping up in my thoughts and in my life for a couple of weeks.  I started noticing beauty (and the lack of it) every where I turned.

I'll be honest, I felt a little overwhelmingly UN-beautiful around that time. A sort of is-this-the-best-it's-going-to-be-for-me? mood struck me and stuck around for a while.  Don't you hate it when that happens?

Thankfully, though, the Lord arranged one of those wonderful "coincidences" that I don't believe are coincidences at all!

I went to a special prayer service at a friend's church.  There was some beautiful soft music playing, and a soothing voice leading the participants in guided prayer, while leaving time for personal reflection and prayer, as well.  And even in that situation, what subject came up?  Guess!  The beauty of God's creation--and the Lord dropped a bit of wisdom into my heart.

You can have a beautiful life if you cultivate it.

Immediately thoughts and examples started flooding my mind.

This was my garden this year.

Because I didn't cultivate it.

Last year I did better.  I planted....

...and watered

...and watered some more.  (And even tried to shade some of our plants from the hottest of the sun--for no avail for those particular plants--it was just a bad year for cucumbers that year.)

But we had a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes.

This year a friend of mine kept telling me all of the good things she was harvesting from her garden and her fruit trees--and I had nothing that I'd grown in myself in my own garden--because I didn't cultivate it.

Earlier this year I shared about what a mess my house had become--you can see the whole Clean In 30 series.  It got that way because I wasn't cultivating a clean house....

But little by little, one room at a time, I started cultivating clean. 

There's a reason I had started calling this my "Ugly Room"....

Until I challenged myself to do something about it.

I'd like to say that everything has stayed just as clean and organized, or gotten even better (which was my intent) since then, but the truth is, while it's better than before, it's not as good as after right now.

Why?  Because I haven't cultivated it.

I will probably never live in what I call a big, nice house.  But my little house is paid for, and it's as beautiful as I make it.  If I want it to be better--cleaner, more organized, prettier--I have to cultivate the habits that not only make it that way, but the ones that keep it that way, too.

I will never be younger, or taller, or have less wrinkles and gray hair than I have right now, but if I eat right and exercise and do the little things that help me feel prettier, I can be beautiful in my eyes and in the eyes of those who love me.  

I just have to cultivate it.

If I want beauty of mind, soul, and spirit, I have to be careful what I allow in. What books do I read, what television shows do I watch, who do I spend time with, with what do I fill my conversations?  How much time do I spend with my Creator, or in His Word?  Am I all about me, or do I reach out to those around me?

Do I cultivate it?

Until next time...

This post is linked to:

Heart Reflected

Make Your Home Sing Monday at Mom's the Word

Faith Barista Jam Thursday

Proverbs 31 Thursday at Raising Might Arrows

Do You Feel Beautiful?

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.
• Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
• She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.
• Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised

The word "beautiful" keeps coming up in my thoughts and in my life--in the words of a song, a conversation with a friend, even in my prayer life.  

I attended a wedding last weekend, and the bride really was absolutely beautiful (don't you agree?) The bridesmaids were beautiful, the church was beautiful, the reception decorations were beautiful, and the bride and groom are returning from their honeymoon to a beautiful new-to-them house.  

An old friend of mine welcomed a brand new grandbaby into her family this week, her first; a beautiful baby girl.

Another new friend invited me out to lunch, and I went by her house to pick her up--and IT was beautiful, with gorgeous, expensive-looking furniture, and everything just "so".  

I keep thinking to myself--I want a beautiful life, too! I know I'm an overweight, middle-aged lady, with a small house and not much money to speak of, but what about me?  Has my time for beauty passed, and is this the best my life is ever going to be?  

Frankly, that thought is rather depressing.

Another day, I was with a friend and she asked me to pray for her--not "will you remember me in your prayers" kind of thing, but "I need prayer right now, will you pray for me now".  So I did, and as I was praying, I got the distinct impression that Lord wanted me to ask her a question.  

"Do you feel beautiful?"

And she laughed a little and said, "No, I don't." 

And we had a conversation about inward and outward beauty, and about how the later does depend somewhat on the former, and vice-versa.  How we look can affect how we feel, and how we feel can affect how we look.  The physical affects the mental affects the spiritual, and the reverse is true as well. 

It's all tied in together.  

I have some further thoughts that I want to share with you at another time, but I leave you with this question:

"Do you feel beautiful?"  Inside or outside?

Until next time...

This post is linked to:
Heart Reflected
Spiritual Sundays
Make Your Home Sing at Mom's the Word

A Virtuous Woman Cooks--Low Carb Pizza Crust

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She bringeth her food from afar
• She giveth meat to her household

Check out the new recipe I tried out on my food blog for low-carb pizza crust--made out of cauliflower! I thought I didn't like cauliflower, but I found out that I just don't like it boiled to death.  It's a fairly mild vegetable, so it basically takes on the flavor of whatever you use to season it.  

Try it, you might like it!

Until next time...

Dollar Store and Thrifty Decorating for Fall

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She worketh willingly with her hands

It's finally starting to feel a little like fall around my house.  Yesterday we were able to turn off the air conditioning and open windows for the first time this season.  I'm sitting in front of an open window now, wearing jeans and a long sleeved shirt, and when the breeze picks up I feel almost chilly.  If you knew me in real life, you'd know how unusual that is for me!

As I've already shared, I'm not much of a decorator, and I'm limited somewhat by budget, the style and small scale of our house, but I do like to have a few simple, seasonal decorations around.

This year when I pulled out my Thrifty Fall Wreath that I made a few years ago, I was afraid it was too beat up to use.  The tissue & wire fake fall leaves are definitely a bit worse for the wear...

...especially compared to when I first made this from Dollar Tree goodies and an old, repurposed grapevine wreath. ($2 for the garland and leaves, less than $3 originally for the wreath)

I decided it looked just fine from a distance, more like real leaves, anyway.  Which I could/would use, except we don't have fall colors here yet, and most of our leaves around here just turn brown and then fall off anyway!



You may remember this from a couple of years ago, too.  The charger was originally $1.99, and has been used over and over again, as has the glass vase and dried frou-frou, both from Dollar Tree for $1 each.

This year I used the same charger and vase, some slightly different Dollar Tree dried frou-frou, and a big splurge--a $5 candle from Walmart, which was the only place I could find one tall enough that was still in budget (meaning cheap inexpensive).  edited to add: Besides a just-for-looks candle like this one, I buy a few from the dollar store in fall scents for burning--maple, hazelnut, and pumpkin spice--especially when we're having guests.

I still have a vintage Mason jar filled with nuts, and one from Ball that I fill with a fall pick with leaves and berries and some loose silk leaves at this time of the year--all dollar store purchases from years past....


....as well as one filled with vintage and antique buttons of all different shapes, sizes, and colors.

What do you do to decorate for fall?  Do you go "all out", or keep it simple?

Until next time...


This post is linked to:

Make Your Home Sing at Mom's the Word
Make it Pretty Monday at The Dedicated House
In & Out of the Kitchen at Feeding Big
Inspire Me Tuesday at A Stroll Through Life

A Virtuous Woman Cooks--Quick and Easy Fruit Dip

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She is like the merchants ships, she bringeth her food from afar
• She provideth meat to her household...

We pulled this Quick and Easy Fruit Dip out of our family archives for a bridal shower for one of my nieces, and I made it again for a study group that we've started hosting at our house on Friday nights.  It's quick, it's easy, it makes two or three times the amount of dip for the same price as "store-bought" pre-made fruit dips, and tastes wonderfully delicious.  Besides serving with fruit, I think it would make a wondeful sauce over bread pudding or sliced pound cake.  

Enjoy!

Until next time...

Dollar Store Decorating--Make a Grouping of Small Items

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She maketh herself (and her house?) coverings of tapestry...

As you can tell from the pictures I've posted over the years, I'm not much of a decorator.  When we first moved into this house sixteen years ago, I didn't hang much on the walls--as a matter of fact, I went several years with blank walls.  When you put a hole in paneling, it's there to stay, and I didn't want to add more holes to this 1962-era paneling than were already there, unless I knew I really wanted something hung! 

On top of that, I'm a bit of a cheapskate, sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity, so I always try to be really really sure that I like something and am willing to live with it a while before I invest my hard-earned dollars.  

One mistake that I've made in the past, and have to remind myself not to do even today, is buying something the wrong scale. I tend to go too big with furniture and too small with decor.  I can't really do too much with too-big furniture, but I've learned a fix for too-small decor, and one that doesn't have to be expensive, either, and that's to group small like items together.    



Several years ago I found this pretty mirror at Dollar General for around $10-15.  It came in this sort of pewter and bronze color, and then the same pattern in a really hideous gaudy goldish gilt. The width of the frame gave it a good weight and scale, but once I got it home, I realized it was still too small for the space I wanted to fill. I got the bright idea to buy another and hang two of them side-by-side.  Unfortunately, search though I did, at every Dollar General within a 25-mile radius, all they had left were the ugly gold ones. I thought about buying a gold one and spraying painting them both a third color, but I really liked the pewter/bronze color.

So it sat in a bag in the bottom of a closet seemingly forever. Periodically, I'd search through the mirrors and frames at different store locations in hopes of finding a matching piece.

And then finally--voila'!  Not the same mirror, not an exact match of color or size, but one day, searching through the frames and mirrors as always, I found a little mirror with a metallic-ish frame that I thought just might work. And this time, having learned my lesson, I bought two!  I don't remember exactly what these cost, but it was less than $10 for the two of them.  

And they worked! Close enough in color, two are enough to help fill the blank spot, and the whole arrangement was inexpensive enough to change at a moment's whim.  

Not that I do "a moment's whim" for decor changes.  But I could if I wanted to. 

Until next time...

This post is linked to:

Penny Pinching Party at the Thrifty Home

Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family

The HomeMaking Party at Hope in Every Season

Make Your Home Sing at Mom's the Word

My "Ugly Room Challenge" Update

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She worketh willingly with her hands

Did you see my post last week with the "before" pictures of my "Ugly Room" self-challenge?

No? Well, you need to go look at them.  I'll wait.

Rough, right?

Now let me show you what this room looks like today.  (Pardon the lighting, it was an early morning pre-dawn hour when I took these, and my flash and the lighting in the room aren't the best way to view this room.)

This is the first glimpse you get when you head down the hall.  Better, yes?

Here is the desk area.

Bookcases and cleaned and straightened.  I purged at least 100 books, believe it or not, but replaced them with books from boxes and piles.  This is probably about half of the books we own. There are still others stashed in boxes, our son has at least two bookcases worth of his personal books in his room, and I have probably another book case worth, at least, in my office at church.

The lovely couch is now ready for a nap or a sit, as is the "reading nook" chair.  

And just to show you the reality, we had company coming over, so, while I did do a lot of cleaning, organizing, and purging, I also did some "stash-and-dash" cleaning--put things in a box or bag, and stash it someplace out-of-sight until later!

Another, smaller "stash-and-dash" pile.  

I still to do some work around the desk, too.

And whatever do you do with old journals and sentimental things?  I read somewhere that Beth Moore has instructed her daughters that if anything ever happens to her, they are to take her journals and burn them immediately!  That's how I feel, I would really hate for anyone else to ever read these, and yet I'm not quite ready to torch them myself yet!

I noticed over on Mom's the Word that her post is about having a cut-off-time for chores--this is especially true when you tackle something huge like my "ugly room".  There is no way this could all have been done in a day--even a week, to be honest, unless every thing else is neglected.  But laundry and cooking and dishes still needed doing.  I had a funeral to attend, and church and grocery shopping and company coming over--I needed to attend to the rest of the house, too.  And besides that, you can only work on clutter and cleaning and organizing for so long before you start to make poor decisions about what to keep and where to put it--as soon as I started getting to the point of just mindlessly wanting to through it all away, or alternatively, box it all up and avoid dealing with it, I knew I needed to take a break.

My "ugly room" is still far from finished.  I need to do another sweep through the bookcases and purge a little more.  I need to go through the "stash-and-dash" boxes one at a time. (Oh, and did I mention that I stashed a few boxes in the closet, too?) But at this stage, it's at least clean--you can't imagine the dust I've inhaled in the last week or two! And it's do-able, and approachable.

My "ugly room" is no more.  Now it's just a room---not good or bad, it just is what it is, and I'm up for the challenge to make it into a peaceful retreat for this family of book nerds. I want to change the curtains, add something to a couple of the walls, maybe a throw rug to cover the worn-out wood floors, who knows?  It's still far from pretty, but it's definitely a change in the right direction!

Until next time...

This post is linked to:
Make Your Home Sing at Mom's the Word
Make it Pretty Monday at the Dedicated House
The HomeMaking Party at Hope in Every Season