Count Your Blessings

I can't believe it's been two weeks since my last post. I can't even say for sure all that I've been up to except for cleaning, baking, school conferences and the day to day stuff that isn't very exciting to write about. I did finally start Christmas shopping, so I feel a little better about that.


In church on Sunday, we sang a wonderful hymn called "Count Your Blessings" and it's one that I really love to sing. The refrain of the hymn sings:
"Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done."


It's great to be thankful on Thanksgiving day, but what about every day?
"In every thing give thanks: for this is the Will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you" (1Thessalonians 5:18).

"I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving" (Psalm 69:30).

We all could make a very, very long list if we wrote out our blessings, one by one so I'll start here and follow suit as many bloggers have already done.

I'm so thankful for my health and that of my family's health. My son was born with a heart disorder that we discovered when he was 16 days old. I woke to find him turning blue and unresponsive. Through many tests in the hospital they discovered he had Supraventricular Tachycardia. Tachycardias are rhythm disorders in which the heart beats faster than normal and his was way up over 260 beats per minute. His heart would beat so fast that the heart muscle couldn't relax between contractions so his little body wasn't getting enough blood or oxygen. He would slip into this trance-like state where he just stared and remained unresponsive and eventually he would start to turn blue from lack of blood and oxygen. It was a rough start for the both of us; me being a first time mother and him being taken away from me at 16 days old and put in the ICU in a sealed tank. I could only hold him for short periods of time and he had to be bottle fed, which I had started out breastfeeding him. Needless to say, my first experience at breastfeeding turned out unsuccessful. He came home from the hospital on an infant form of Digitalis that he took twice a day every day up until he was 14 years old. He had an ablation procedure when he entered into his freshman year at high school and has never had to deal with it since. So I'm so thankful for his health, especially.

I'm thankful for the blessings that my children are to me. I didn't have a relationship with the Lord before having kids and my dh and I tried for a couple of years to start a family and couldn't. The Lord in His time enabled us to become pregnant and through them, I found salvation! I wanted my kids to have a better life than I had and not make the same mistakes that I made in my teenage years and young adult life. I remember laying in the hospital bed holding my daughter, crying out to God to please give us a loving relationship as I never had such a relationship with my mom or dad. I asked Him to please let me be more involved with my kids and be able to talk with them about everything. Don't get me wrong, I love my parents very much but my life as a child was one of being spoken to only if I was being punished and I was punished ALOT!

That brings me to the greatest blessing I have ever recieved above the birth of my children and that's my salvation. I know that I have eternal life in Heaven with God my creator and my redeemer. I have confidence in that gift because Christ is in my heart. I have the truth of His Word and understanding of it through the Holy Spirit. I have so many more blessings, but those are the ones I was inspired to share with you today.

I hope you all have a joyful Thanksgiving with good food, fellowship and the blessings of The Lord! Hugs~ Birgit

Making my Christmas Cards

Since I've had some down time and am still recovering a bit, I found myself spending time at my craft table making the Christmas cards that we'll be giving out this year. I generally make 5 or 6 different designs, making 6-8 of the same style at a time. By making them assembly line style, they seem to go together pretty quickly. Here's what I've gotten done so far.


I only had enough ribbon to complete two cards, so on the rest of the cards I used buttons in place of the ribbon. The sentiment on these cards is embossed.





I wanted to add real buttons to the image but all my buttons were too large and I didn't want to have to go shopping for more materials. Using real buttons would have added more dimention and texture to the cards.


Though you can't really tell in the picture, the berries on her twig wreath on her head are sparkly. I love to use sparkly glitter on my cards. By the time I'm done with paper crafting, I'm ususally covered in glitter. I think if you click on the pictures, you can see it better.



On these cards, I stamped the sentiment on the front of the card and then covered it with cardstock that I ripped and distress a hole in to reveal the sentiment.

Well, I guess it's back to my craft table for more card making. Thanks for stopping by to see what I've been working on. Hugs~ Birgit

Tagged and an Award

Recently I was tagged by my dear friend, Tammy, to share six things about myself. I've done one of these once but it's always fun to try to think of things that will make you say, "really?"

Here are the rules:

Link to the person who tagged you. Post the rules on your blog. Write six random things about yourself. Tag six people at the end of your post. Let each person know he or she has been tagged. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.


Here's my six things:
*I color coordinate my clothes in my closet so all my black shirts go together, then the gray, blue, green, red, burgundy... well, you get the picture. Also all my shirts are on one end of the closet and all my pants are at the other end but I don't own a lot of clothes.

*My dh and I started dating when I was 15 years old. We graduated together and were voted "senior sweethearts" for the yearbook. We've been married for 19 years in October.

*Since it's near Thanksgiving, I'll share this. I am a decendant of Peregrine White, one of the first babies born to the pilgrims in their new world. His parents were William and Susanna White.

*If I were to be given a gift certificate to shop anywhere, I would choose a junk shop.

*The only jewelry I wear every day is my wedding ring, since the diamond was lost out of my engagement ring while gardening one day. I leave home without jewelry most every day.

*Warm, hearty soups and stews are my most favored comfort food. I love this time of year mostly so I can look forward to eating those kinds of meals.

Tammy also gave me this sweet award


Thanks Tammy! I think this award is adorable since I do like my morning coffee and good doses of all that's mentioned on those cups!
I guess I have to answer these four questions:

1.Do you have the same friends since childhood? Not really. Most of my good friends moved away at different stages throughout my childhood and we never kept in touch.

2.What do you value most about your friends? I value their honesty and genuineness. I want my friends to be "real" with me.

3.Are your friends sounding boards? Sometimes, but I mostly give all my concerns up to God in prayer. He knows all about everything anyway and I don't want to have a grumbling heart. There are some things I share. I guess it depends on what it is.

4.What is your favorite activity to share with friends? It depends on who I'm with. Sometimes, just sitting and talking about life. I also like to go primitive shopping to fun shoppes or junk shopping. I wish I had a friend locally, who liked to stamp or scrapbook with me. I have online friends whom I wish lived closer so we could do that together sometime.

Now I guess I'm supposed to pick six ladies to pass this on to, but I'm not sure who has been tagged already or who may or may not want to participate. So, in light of that, I'll let you take this award and tag if you'd like to participate since you know your schedule better than I do. If you do take it, please let me know as I'd love to come read your responses. Feel free to pass the award and tag along any way you wish. Thanks so much for visiting! Hugs~ Birgit

Down Time

Well, I've spent the whole weekend down, trying to stay comfortable and at the same time, keep my mind busy and free from boredom. That's hard to do for most women, as we are multi-taskers. We like to be busy, juggling 10 different things at once. Every woman, especially mom's are born with the ability to do this naturally.

I love to keep busy. Even though I've been a SAHM for 16 years, there's never been much "down time" for me. I'm sure all of you who are reading this, can relate to this. There's always been the housekeeping, child rearing, cooking, laundry, story time, game time, family time as well as traveling to sports, appointments, library trips and other things that keep us on the road. Let's not forget the projects at home both personal projects as well as kid projects that always keep up busy and on task. There's also hobbies such as stamping, scrapbooking, crafting, decorating and making our house feel like home. Then don't forget about all the business that we tend to, keeping bills paid and delivered, balancing checkbooks and other accounting that's always in need of being kept up. Yeah, there's really not much down time in a woman's life.

These past few days have been enough "down time" for me to last for a very, very long time. Recovery began very slowly for me because I wasn't taking my pain medication, so I wasn't able to be up and moving like I should have been, to help me recover faster. So, while bored and resting, I was still thinking about all the things I would have liked to have been doing. Blogging, for one. So I thought I'd share a little of my down time with you.



This was my most comfortable spot in the house. This was the place I'd come to at 2:00a.m. when I couldn't stay in bed any longer. This is where you'd find me during the day, slightly reclined, passing the time away. As you can see, there's an electric blanket all plugged in keeping me warm. You don't build up much body heat when you're not moving around and I'm cold all the time, so it was sweet of my son to get that out of the linen closet and plug it in for me.


Let's not forget reading material. This is my favorite daily reading and my never ending source of hope in all things. God's Word. A daily dose will do anyone good! "Your Word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart." ~ Jer. 15:16


My buddy, Glory. He enjoyed the heat of the electric blanket as much as I did. You could find him generally sitting on my lap sleeping. More reading material, of course!



After reading all my magazines for the second and third time over, my good friend Lynda, must have been reading my mind. She brought me this wonderful book to read. It's chock-full of eye candy and good reading. We are also kindred spirits, as she likes the same primitive style as me so she knew it would lift me up. I'm so thankful for my good friend Lynda!

I'm so happy to say that today, I am feeling much better. I have even spent time cleaning our shower and vacumming the dog hair up from the floor today! I spent time yesterday at my craft table making some cards, which held a great dose of healing for me. I'll be posting pictures of the cards I've been working on soon. Here's one last picture I took in my boredom.



As you can see, almost all the beautiful fall leaves have fallen from the trees. They're bare now and ready for snow to come. I'm not quite sure I'm ready for snow, but at least I'll be enjoying good health and the ability to keep busy! Thanks for stopping by to see me. Until next time, hugs & blessings~ Birgit

Back Home & a Giveaway

Thanks to all of you who have left such kind, loving and supportive comments and prayers, about my recent gall bladder surgery. I'm overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness of people that I've never met. But we're all kindred spirits at heart so I feel so blessed to have this connection with you all.

Thankfully they were able to do laproscopic surgery to remove my gall bladder, so I have four small incisions in my belly. Hopefully it will heal quickly.
I got home yesterday afternoon around 4:00 and I pretty much slept on and off until 5:30 this morning. It was a very unrestful night as no position seemed to be comfortable to me and I still had to get up every two hours to relieve some of the fluids they pumped into me, while in the hospital.

I am not taking the pain medication they prescribed for me because I don't like how it makes me feel and they are hard and bitter to swallow. Since I had to have an oxygen tube down my throat it made my throat very sore, hence another reason not to take their giant pill.

So I've been trying to walk around the house today, just pacing and passing time. I can't sit, lay or stand for long periods of time simply because of the pain. But, I'm thankful to be home and on the healing side of this now. I'll be so happy when I can enjoy eating a simple peanut butter cup again. Mmmmm.....

My wonderful mom has made supper for my family both last night and for tonight, bless her heart! She made a wonderful pot of homemade chicken noodle soup and it's just what I needed earlier this afternoon.




This is going to be a short post so I'll share this wonderful gathering of goodeis from Sandy over at
For the Love of Prims is giving away in honor of her 100th post.




Thanks for stopping by and visiting me. Hugs & blessings to everyone!
~Birgit

Welcome To My Open House

I made it through my annual Holiday Open House this past weekend, Nov. 1st & 2nd. It was the best one yet as there were several of us involved and we had it at 4 locations. The feedback from all our customers was great! They loved going from house to house shopping and feasting on all the goodies. We had a Doorprize at each home. The winner of my Doorprize was Debbie Wood from South Portland. Congratulations Debbie!

Please sit back with a cup of your favorite something and enjoy the pictures from our fun event!


This is a picture of the new signs I painted for each end of our road. My dh built me two sturdy A-frame signs which I painted on both the front and the back. I added the words "Open House" to the bottom part of the sign.























































This was the centerpiece I did up using an old strainer filled with my Winter Snowflake fixin's and added a peppermint scented soy candle in the center surrounded by a glass chimney. It smelled the whole house up so yummy!










This is a Secretary's Desk that me and my dh built a long time ago. We didn't really have a space for it anymore, so I refinished and distressed it. It found a new home.







I love how these sugar cone candles came out! I've got just a couple left if you're interested.

So now I'm off tomorrow to the hospital for my surgery. I've spent these last few days getting my house back in order and cleaned so I don't have to worry about it after surgery. Thanks so much for visiting me and my open house. Talk to you all again soon.
Hugs~ Birgit