“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

Think of the things that women generally work hard to keep: the house clean, the laundry done, the kids in order. Women also work hard to keep their figure, their job, their budget, their husband…you get the idea. We all work hard at keeping many things.

This proverb tells us be “keeping” our hearts because our hearts are where the action is. All we say and do (“the issues of life”) comes right out of our hearts. And if our hearts are not doing well, our lives won’t be doing well either.

The trouble is that our hearts are a whole lot more difficult to monitor than our weight or our job performance or our love life. Our hearts can deceive us (Jer. 17:9),  and James warns us (1:26) not to deceive ourselves. This requires wisdom.

So how do we keep our hearts? Clearly we need God’s help, and obviously He has provided a Read More

Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so,
But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.
 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

So Mom promised you a picture of my table . . . and here it is. She also suspected that my table was going to turn out to be an elegant sort of a situation, so I’m just going on record to say that I am using a canvas dropcloth from the hardware store as my tablecloth. Things can be only so elegant when you’re rockin’ the drop cloth.

I decided to do the obligatory cranberry jello in individual glasses this time, and slap some stickers on the side so that they could double as place cards. However, I’m beginning to have the vibe that they look like small scented candles rather than anything edible. Cranberry jello scented candles. On the other hand, I don’t care.

At this point I’m ready to sit down and have a glass of wine with my husband before bed! I have a 25 lb. turkey sitting in a buttermilk brine, I’ve made about 2 gallons of turkey broth to use in everything tomorrow, the cornbread is drying out for the dressing, the pie crusts are in the fridge, the spinach dip and deep fried cashews are ready for the Axis and Allies festival before dinner, and I don’t remember what else I got finished but I’ve crossed everything off my list that had to get done yesterday and today! Best of fun to all of you tomorrow!

So have you been thinking that Lizzie has been slacking off a bit lately in her posting? Well, it turns out that she had a good excuse. The rest of us however, not so much.

Anyway – here it is! Her new book! Ya-skippity-hoo just about sums it up. I haven’t read it yet myself – seeing as it’s still at the printers – but Lizzie and I talk on the phone a lot (as it turns out) while we’re mopping floors and folding laundry, and she read me snips of it as she wrote it. Lots of snips. So I can tell you very confidently that this is seriously good stuff.

This is a limited time “soft release” which means that the real thing (with blurbs on the back) comes out in January, but you can get an early copy by Christmas if you order by December 7. There are only a limited number available, so jump on this one!

Just thought you should see my piebald sofa update. As you can see, I got sick of sewing cusions. There’s that lonely one in the corner still left – but I was bored with cushions and tired of zippers. I’ve gotten one half of the uphostery done . . . unfortunately it was the small half. But on the other hand, it’s farther along than the last time I showed you my sofa situation. Once it’s finished, I may decide it’s worthy of a photo taken with something other than my phone. I should also add that I have not been working on this since we last spoke. I’ve taken entire weeks off and neglected it badly. During one of those weeks our entire family got the flu – and, not that you wanted to know this, Ben and I both got it at the exact same time which is something we’ve never done before. Thankfully none of the kids were throwing up right then – they would have been entirely on their own, because both Ben and I would have been completely unable to help. They timed their sicknesses very thoughtfully – they landed on either side of us. Anyhow, what I’m saying is that life is real and life is earnest – and in between times I try to staple some more ticking to my sofa.