Loose Change

For those of you that know me well, I love far off places.  And while I've only ever been to Central America, many of my fiends and family have traveled to distant lands.  One of the things I love most about other countries is their money.  It says so much!  It can be colorful, show famous leaders, display domestic animals, and even give detail to the countries traditions.  So, I always try to ask people to bring me back some bills or coins from wherever their travels might take them.  While I love looking at the different pieces of money, they have always just sait in a bowl on my desk.  After trying to figure out a good way to display them, my mom came across an easy fix.  She had seen someone else do this with just a ton of pennys and it looked pretty cool, so I thought I would give it a try.  So here it is, how to organize and display loose change:

So, we had this spare frame laying around our basement.  I took out the picture of the flowers and carefully placed each coin where I wanted them to be.  You can glue them down onto a piece of background paper if you want.  I didn't do that though, because the thought of putting glue on my precious coins scares me.  However, after placing them so nicely and then putting the back on the frame, they all moved.  At first I was kind of frustrated by this, but then I realized that I like how disheveled it looked. 

So here it is!  The semi-finished product.  I didn't have enough coins to fill in the frame, which is a good thing, because I plan on collecting more of them.  Also that one coin at the top got stuck up there, but I decided that it gave it some character, so I left it there.  In any case, it's an extremely easy way to get that bowl of coins off of my desk and display my collection.  

Dear Mr. Potter

The Joy of Community

Summer is a weird time for me now that I'm in college.  I didn't really try to stay in touch with my high school friends once I graduated.  That plus a move, makes coming home from college very different.  I don't really have any friends here, so it's a lot of working and hanging  out with my family, which I must admit, I'm completely okay with.


However, I am starting to hear a lot about the early church in Acts and that's starting to make me wonder if we as Christians have everything wrong.  I've always known how the church in Acts worked, I've heard about it over and over growing up and I know a lot of churches try to base themselves ater it.  However, recently it's been brought up in conversations multiple times and today my Bible reading took me straight to Acts.  So, I feel like it's something that I'm really supposed to be focusing on.  Anyway, I came across this verse and it really struck a chord with me:


"They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common.  They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
-Acts 2: 42-47


These people lived together!  They talked, fellowshiped, studied God's word, prayed together, ate together, and did ministry together.  Their lives were intertwined!  And so it got me thinking how incredible this would be.  How amazing it would be to live with other Christians, to spend all my time with them, to be able to talk and pray together at a moments notice, because we were always together.  How beautiful this would be.  And I realized, I have this opportunity everyday at school.  I live with Christians, I eat with Christians, I go to class and to church with Christians.  My life is constantly spent with Christians.  And yet, it is so far from this picture of the early church.  We hardly ever talk about God and our "christian" lives, we never pray together, we hardly ever study God's word together.  There is no openness, no vulnerability.  I don't know my friends struggles and they don't know mine.  I'm not sure exactly how to change that, how to make our lives be more like the early church in Acts, but I know that if we do, God will use us, and what more could we want in life?!  


Anyway, continuing on, the author of Acts speaks about sharing your burdens with one another in the hope that they will be lifted.  I am so blessed with this, because I have such incredible people in my life that are always ready to listen and pray.  I was recently matched with a mentor from The Good Women Project, which if you haven't every been there, you should check it out!  Anyway, they as do I, believe that to become a Godly woman, you must be poured into and mentored by someone that has been through and understands your struggles. So I signed up and have been emailing back and forth with this wonderful women of God who is serving Christ in Spain.  I feel so joyful for having met her!  She is incredible and has really helped me in the past couple of weeks that we have been talking.  She encourages me to pray and stay in the word, to overcome my struggles, and to rest in the fact that God loves me no matter what.  I finally feel like I have a glimpse of what God intended for the church to be.  


It should be open.  We should stretch across borders and barriers.  We should love each other no matter what, because God loves the church no matter how many times it/we turn on back on Him.  We should pray for each other.  We should encourage one another.  This relationship with my mentor has given me a picture of what a christian college should like, of what my life at school should look like.  I pray that God would open my eyes as to how that will happen.  I pray that He would use me and that before I graduate, my campus looks more and more like the early church in Acts.  

Just a thought for the day.

Pallet Sign.

As promised, here is the first craft of the summer! I saw this on pinterest and I really wanted to make it, but I was unsure where to find wood that wasn't falling appart.  Well, lo and behold, our neighbors where cleaning out their house and had a dumpster in their driveway.  Mom and I went over and "dumpster dived!"  It was tons of fun!  Anyway, I found to cabinet doors that were made out of planks of wood and they were in great shape.  So I took them home and made my sign. 

 How I felt dumpster diving. (not actually me)

 Since the doors were already made for a cabinet, they had holes cut in them.  I used the existing holes for the screws.  If you're doing this with random wood you found or new wood, you can just drill holes.

 We bought some wood and I sawed it so that it will would fit lengthwise across the salvaged wood.

 I then sanded the edges so that there wouldn't be any splinters. 

 Next, I marked where the holes were in the salvaged wood.  This way I would know where to drill holes in the new wood.  You can't tell from the picture, but the salvaged wood is slightly skewed.  I did this so that it wouldn't look "perfect."

 I then drilled the holes where I had marked then on the new wood. 

Next, I screwed in the screws.  

 The last step was paint!  This made me nervous, because I knew that if I messed up there was no going back.  But I love how it turned out!  I just used some leftover paint that we had from painting out walls.

 
Here's the finished project!  The words are from a song that we sang in church on Sunday.  It was the first time that I had heard the song, and I absolutely fell in love with it.  Here are the lyrics.  Enjoy and keep crafting!


I lie down and rest,
Cause I work no longer.
I breathe in, refreshed no more soiled in disgrace.
I look up at him to whom I am kneeling,
And I see delight there in my Father’s face.

I’m a son of God, and love is my freedom.
I can ask anything of my Father the King.
I’m an heir, I’m adopted and my brother is Jesus.
I’m a son of God and my soul is at peace.

I am last and low,
Cause I fight no longer,
To be right, or good or to prove my own worth.
I’m not driven or pushed or weighed down with duty.
I am filled with release that Christ did all for me.

I’m a son of God, and love is my freedom.
I can ask anything of my Father the King.
I’m an heir, I’m adopted and my brother is Jesus.
I’m a son of God and my soul is at peace.

I stand up in faith,
Cause I fear no longer,
And I pray and wait for God to provide.
I lean all of my weight on him who is able,
And I set aside every effort of mine.

I’m a son of God, and love is my freedom.
I can ask anything of my Father the King.
I’m an heir, I’m adopted and my brother is Jesus.
I’m a son of God and my soul is at peace.

I know now, I’m safe,
Cause nothing can harm me,
Or break in and take what’s stored up for me.
I need not to cling to dead helpless idols,
They no longer can hold any comfort for me.

I’m a son of God, and love is my freedom.
I can ask anything of my Father the King.
I’m an heir, I’m adopted and my brother is Jesus.
I’m a son of God and my soul is at peace.

Sister Love.

“My sisters were the coolest people I knew, and still are. I have always aspired to be like them and know what they know. My sisters were the color and noise in my black-and-white world-how I pitied my friends who had brothers. Boys seemed incredibly tedious and dim compared to my sisters, who were always a rush of energy and excitement, buzzing over all the books, records, jokes, rumors and ideas we were discovering together. I grew up thriving on the commotion of their noise, whether they were laughing or singing. I always loved being lost in that noise.” Robert Sheffield

Unashamed Intimacy.

"We desire unashamed physical, spiritual, and emotional intimacy, because it mirrors Christ's love for us - We are broken, but He still loves us. " -Wes Simmons

My campus minister said this to us on a monday night group meeting last semester and it is something that has stuck with me ever since.  He continued on by saying, "Don't require a man to be Jesus for you, because he can't and he won't, which will only leave you disappointed."  So often I find myself reading books or watching movies and seeing relationships working.  Couples my age finding love and getting married.  And I want that so badly.  And the reason I want that, is because it is what I was made for.  I was made to be loved and to love in return.  It is the very fiber of who we are.  We are creatures that crave love.  And we look for it in money, jobs, sex, and relationships.  Love that doesn't exist in those things, at least not in it's purest form, which is how we need it.  No, the only way we can find love like that is in and through Christ. 

So guess what, I'm home!  I have finished my sophomore year of college and I am officially half way done with college.  So, since I am home, I have more time on my hands.  At least hopefully anyway.  Which means I will hopefully be updating mindless muses a little bit more frequently.  I have a ton of recipes and DIY projects that I want to try out, and they should end up on here, so keep your eyes peeled.   Right now though, I'm relaxing and obsessed with Lost, so give me some time.  :)

Expectations

I'm a dreamer.  I don't know that I've ever really admitted that, because pretending to be a realist is much easier.  When you're a realist, there aren't any shattered dreams, because there weren't any dreams to begin with.  But that's where the problem lies.  How do you go through life without dreaming?

I have so many dreams, wants, and expectations for myself and my life.  I want so much out of this life.  But I'm afraid that I might want too much.  I want to live in a loft in Seattle or Portland.  I want to accidentally bump into someone at the market and become great friends with them.  I want to sit in coffee shops with my husband and talk about Jack Kerouac and C.S. Lewis.  I want to have beautiful children that are creative and talented.  I want to own my own business.  I want to write novels.  I want to travel the world.  I want to get tattoos.  I want to bike across America.  I want to love the unlovable.  I want to feed the hungry.  I want to learn new languages.  I want backpack across Europe.  I want so many things.  And the quote that I continually come back to is by Mary Oliver:

  "Tell me, what is it you plan to do
  with your one wild and precious life?"

I want to live this life to the fullest.  But, are my dreams to only be seen when I close my eyes?  Are my expectations only to be attained through photographs seen in books? What if everything that I want is completely unattainable and I go through life dissatisfied?

I know that I don't need to make a choice right now, but it seems as though making a choice is equivalent with moving forward.  And why should I waste these valuable days?  So here is the big question: Do I continue on living as though my dreams are unreachable?  Do I settle for less?  Do I settle for what seems appropriate and realistic?  Or do I dream with my eyes open?  Do I chase my dreams as though they are all I have?  I want to run and dance and dream, and I want my dreams to be a reality.

be beautiful.

Something to Make You Think.

"The illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship." 

Connected, but alone? 

Mumford.

Summer Night.

Longing for summer.