christmas decorating on a budget :)

This year I decided to decorate the apartment for the holidays. I had so much fun it was embarrassing... I felt like a four-year-old again. And I only spent 48c on paper. Behold!

Paper chains - I made one long enough to go all the way around our kitchen and then some, using about a yard each of red and white paper and some staples.

Paper snowflakes! Eliza is a master at cutting out beautiful snowflakes. We hung them from various lengths of white thread and I love how it looks :)

Paper Christmas trees - decorated with tin foil ornaments. I cut out four small trees of various shapes to put on our cupboard doors. Then I got to decorate them using tin foil and markers :) I was giddy with joy.

ta-da! I'm in love with the way our apartment looks now. It will be the perfect backdrop for our Christmas party :)

peppermint

peppermint is my new addiction this holiday season. thank you Delightfully Tacky for the abundance of peppermint-related posts today :)

I want to make these

and eat this 

while wearing this

and making and eating these

and these

and then put them in hot cocoa and drink it

 while these bake

while wearing this

and I want this :)

happy holidays! :)

what is love?

baby don't hurt me..... ;)

So I re-read The Four Loves today
& it gave me some food for thought.

for a few weeks i've been trying to decide how to love somebody and if/when to just give up. trying to do what's healthy for me and what God wants for us.

this is what I read:

"We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it."

"It is probably impossible to love any human being simply "too much." We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, the constitues the inordinacy."

"In everyone, and of course in ourselves, there is that which requires forbearance, tolerance, forgiveness. The necessity of practising these virtues first sets us, forces us, upon the attempt to turn - more strictly, to let God turn - our love into Charity."

So i'm turning this over to God. asking Him to turn this "love" into Charity. offering Him everything (or trying to.) praying for increased love for Him & others. we'll see how this goes :)

from tabernacle to temple

Today I was thinking about the Provo Tabernacle and sort of relating it to myself... see if you can follow my thinking :)

 The Provo Tabernacle was wonderful, beloved, doing a good work for the Lord and being great and used for lots of good things.

Then, about a year ago there was a terrible fire and the Tabernacle was seriously damaged, leaving only the exterior walls standing.

Because of this fire, the Church has decided to rebuild it and turn it into the second temple of the Church in the city of Provo! Which will be even more awesome and glorious than it was before.

"The purpose of the gospel is to make... good men better." ~David O. McKay

So I'm thinking that, like the Provo Tabernacle, I could be doing good. Then a fire or trial comes, and it's heyyy what the heck I had a good thing going here! And I don't see what the purpose is in tearing my good thing down and burning it up. But the Lord has something so much greater in mind for me. And my "being a tabernacle" time is done. Time for me to become a temple, if I'll let the Lord work on me. God uses trials and hard times to help me become even better and more purified and sacred than I ever thought I could be :)

This is sort of like C.S. Lewis' "Imagine yourself as a living house" quote, if you're familiar with that at all. :)

Anywaysssssssss.... that's what I was thinking about today! Happy Sunday! :)

photo sources:

 1.2.3.

life lately :)

...has been pretty wonderful :)

ha11oween

halloween costumes 2011! :)

 asian woman. christmas tree. biker chick. pinata.

 i beat him up and take his candy.

 elizabean, my christmas tree :)

vampire. cow. christmas tree. asian woman. biker chicks. bella swan. pocahontas.

God wants our lives to make a difference

In thinking about what happened last monday, I admit I asked myself why God would let something like this happen. I know He is always watching over us and that He cares for us infinitely, I just couldn't see a reason for Him to allow this to happen. I know that we have to be allowed to use our agency, even to make wrong decisions, but the girl involved has a mental illness. How does agency come into play in a situation like that? Only God knows. This world is so wicked... but at the same time there is so much more goodness. As Helen Keller said,

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it."

Keeping up with the news stories this week I have been inspired by the people of my hometown and how God has answered prayers for healing and compassion. It has been truly amazing. I have been especially impressed by how the young people have been handling the situation with grace and courage.

One of my friends who goes to that high school posted on facebook,

"We want our lives to make sense, God wants our lives to make a difference. This week, we did it, together."

I've been pondering the first part of that post a lot lately. "God wants our lives to make a difference." I definitely see that this incident has made a difference in the lives of hundreds of people. At times when my life doesn't make sense, I can remember that God is using me to make a difference. It changes the way I live my life. God has a plan for my life, different from the one that I might have imagined. But my life doesn't have to make sense to me. God's in control of it, and I trust Him absolutely to use me to make a positive difference in the world if I let him.

I choose to see God's hand in everything. The recovery of the young girl who was hurt has been miraculous. Doctors say that if she had been stabbed just 4 millimeters to one side, she would have bled out immediately. They also say that if the emergency respondents had chosen to send her to the trauma hospital farther away instead of the one they chose, she would've died en route. As it was, she died several times that day and the doctors were able to bring her back. I believe that God was with her that day, answering hundreds of prayers for her and her safety. God truly did take care of those in need that day, and in the days since and still to come. Miracles sometimes come down to minutes and millimeters.

God allows us our agency. Terrible things happen, I don't always know why. But I know that God is always in control, and that He loves us, and that He has a plan for us. I know that He answers our prayers. I know that He is always with us, even and especially in the midst of tragedy. And when we follow Him, our lives will make a difference.