Happy New Year everyone! I should have posted this ages ago, but somehow things have been a bit on the hectic end of late! I am going to be offering a 9 week online class teaching basic fabric design, starting January 15. The class will be one hour per week, and unlike the class I taught for Canon last year, this is going to be nothing but basic, introductory fabric design. You can read more about what we’ll be doing and get all the details here and I would just add that even though the class can earn you high school credit (how cool is that?!) it would be entirely appropriate for ladies older than high school! Anyway – I’d love to see you in the class, so get on over there and sign up!

You may have noticed that nine times out of ten, if we put a picture up with a post, it’s a picture of flowers. We are in danger of being redundant. But what could be prettier than  flowers?  (Okay, pictures of the kids are stiff competition, I grant.) But I confess that I am completely taken with the glory of flowers.

When I was first married, Bessie (my mother-in-law) showed me how to make a Japanese flower arrangement. Her own mother had passed away when Bessie was just five years old, and her brothers did not teach her much in the way of domesticity. But when she was in Japan as a missionary many years later, she loved the beauty and simplicity of their flower arrangements, and she learned to be quite good at arranging them herself. She told me early on that flowers should always be included in the weekly food budget, and I happily applied her good teaching!

Though I had been a plant lover, I had not really spent much time with fresh flowers. In fact, when Doug and I got married, I brought about thirty Read More

I often speak with women who want to be involved in “service” of some kind, and they wonder what they should do and how to find it. This is a good and godly impulse; in fact, it is a God-given impulse that identifies us as His very own. Paul tells us in Titus that we were made for good works for God “…gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed, and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works” (2:14).

We are God’s own special people. This is a tremendous fact. He has redeemed us from sin, He has cleansed us from sin, and He has made us His very own.  He redeemed us from all the bad works we were doing (lawless deeds) and now as “His own special people” we are eager and hungry for good ones.

Later in Titus 3:8, Paul says “This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works.” And in 3:14 we have it repeated: “And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.”

We can gather several things about good works from these two passages. First of all, we are to learn to do good works. That means we are Read More

So here’s the mania that’s been happening around here the last few days. Nana (my mom) had a big blank wall that needed something on it . . . and I thought a painting of a lot of cold and moody birds would be just the ticket. Can you guess from the painting what the weather has been like in Idaho this week?

But at the same time, Granny (Ben’s mom) is getting ready for her Kindergarten class to put on a very dramatic performance of “The Empty Pot” on Friday. They needed props. So yesterday we whizzed up a lot of rhinormous and very eccentric crepe paper flowers. They help us to forget what the weather has been like in Idaho last week.