Spreadin' the Love

So I'm excited to share some original ideas with you all!  You have to understand, these come few and far between.  Sometimes when I do get an original idea, out of curiosity I do a Google search (and now I search Pinterest too) and come to disappointedly find out that someone else came up with the same "original" idea before me.  So as far as I know, and as far as I've searched, here are some original ideas I've come up with that I hope inspire you.

Lately I've been into wanting to decorate our home with branches.  I went "branch hunting" recently while going on a walk with my husband and two girls and broke off three small ones.  I have yet to use those for an idea I have that I will reveal in a later post.  Then I saw this big branch outside near our home!  I think the neighborhood kids knocked it down.  Well, what they may have meant for destruction, I have found a constructive use for [smile].  I was encouraged this last weekend to start decorating our home for Valentine's Day from an old post on Sally Clarkson's blog.

I got the idea to hang paper hearts and red ball ornaments on the branches from when I threw my oldest daughter a heart-themed birthday party (since her middle name is "Heart") at a local park when she turned one a couple years ago.  I cut out all the hearts from pink and red construction paper and looked up quotes that mentioned the heart or that were about love to write on each one.  A friend who helped me decorate for the party is actually the one who hung the ball ornaments in the trees and several of our guests made comments about them looking like berries from a distance.

When my husband came home from work and saw the new decor he said, "That's cool!"  And then later he commented again saying, "That's cute."  I always think it's funny when guys use the word "cute" to describe something.

Quotes from Mother Teresa are among some of my favorites.  I kept this one in mind when I went to church Sunday morning.  (Note: the screen print on my Bible was done by an awesome ministry named The Death Defeaters and Crazy Love is a thought-provoking book from Francis Chan).

I used to hate Valentine's Day.  To me it was one of the few holidays that excluded some people (like me) from celebrating it.  As far as I could tell, unless there was a guy who was interested in me, I had a boyfriend or I was married, I wasn't going to get to celebrate Valentine's Day.  I had heard that there were moms out there who did special things for their kids for Valentine's Day to include them, which is what I decided I wanted to do someday for my future kids.  Well, one day I did get to get married and when Valentine's Day came around I was determined to remember my single friends and what it felt like to be in their shoes.  I remember meeting with a couple of my friends at a Starbucks and giving them a little heart-decorated lunch box I had filled with homemade sugar cookies and a handmade Valentine card.

I remember writing a list of all the single girl friends I could think of and mailing them the rest of the handmade Valentine cards I made.  I had some pink cardstock left over from when I was into stamping and decorated them with heart stickers and pink and red gel pens.

I meant to do the same thing the following year, but I didn't end up mailing out the new handmade Valentines I made.

I made these out of scrapbook paper I had leftover from some past project and decorated them with those leftover heart stickers, torn pieces of white printer paper and vellum quotes and words from some pads I bought for wedding decor a few years ago.

This year my list of single friends is short but this time a couple widows also came to mind.  I never thought of widows around Valentine's Day and though I haven't experienced that season of life myself, I can imagine they must feel a little sad too when February 14 comes around.  So hopefully this won't be another good intention I don't follow through on.  I gotta get these Valentines in the mail!

Oh What Consolation!

Sally Clarkson's Mom Heart Conference is going on right now up in Irvine, California.  Last year I got to go for the first time with a small group of women from my church.  What an experience it was!  It was so inspiring and encouraging!  From that conference, a once-a-month Mom Heart Group was birthed.  All five of us ladies who went to the conference have been studying through Sally Clarkson's book, The Mission of Motherhood, plus an older mom who was asked to lead our group and two other new moms who were invited to join us.  We have two more meetings left.  Unfortunately, none of us were able to make it to this year's conference.  I really felt I could use some refreshment.  Lately, with a [fairly] new baby in addition to the 2-year-old I already have and my husband in his last semester of college before grad school, I've felt very stretched trying to meet four people's needs every day.  And then there's the uncharted realm of discipline my husband and I have been stumbling through ever since our oldest daughter became a toddler.  We've gotten mixed opinions from other Christian parents on what the Bible means when it mentions in the Proverbs disciplining a child with a "rod."  I honestly haven't felt right from the beginning about spanking a child that can't talk yet.  But when I did a word study on "rod," looking up its original Hebrew meaning... rod was a literal rod.  It wasn't symbolic of [insert method of discipline].  Okay, so I'm one that tends to lean towards trusting that God knows what He's talking about 'cause He made everything and knows how His creation works and sees the future and knows how everything is going to turn out.  So who am I to question how God says to discipline?  So that settles it, right?  Well, not exactly.  My husband and I tried to come to an agreement that we would reserve spanking for, you know, the "big" stuff, for deliberate disobedience.  But even when we followed through with that plan, we noticed a result in our daughter that we haven't liked; she starts hitting and kicking.  How do you explain to a toddler who's still learning how to talk that it's not right for her to hit us, or her sister, or things when she doesn't get her way, but that it's okay for us to "hit" her when we're not getting our way with her?  What really made me think was one day when I was giving our oldest a time out for swinging at her baby sister and I told her, "It's not nice for you to hit your sister.  Would you like for someone to [oh...] hit you?"  So yeah, we've been desperate for awhile when it comes to knowing how to discipline our children as Christian parents, so I finally ordered a used copy of the still out-of-print book by Clay Clarkson, Heartfelt Discipline.  I ordered it to get some more clear direction on this issue and as a consolation for missing Sally's conference this year.

And what should I find in the mail the night the Mom Heart Conference began in Irvine (as I was hoping it would be the night it would arrive)?  A like-new copy of the book Heartfelt Discipline!  I literally thought in my head, "Oh what consolation!" and proclaimed it to my husband out loud when I came in the front door from checking the mail.  So I set my notes from last year's conference, my copy of The Mission of Motherhood that I'm still doing a study through, my copy of Dancing with My Father that I've been reading through for personal encouragement, and my newest addition to my Clarkson collection, Heartfelt Discipline, on the counter and lit a candle Sally Clarkson style!

So the next best thing to getting to go to a Mom Heart Conference?  Having a Mom Heart Group that I get to be a part of, where I can get that refreshment I've been needing as an overwhelmed mama lately.  Having my own copy now of Heartfelt Discipline so my husband and I don't have to feel like we're floundering around when it comes to trying to faithfully and lovingly discipline our 2-year-old daughter.  Getting to read the reports from moms who did get to go to a Mom Heart Conference this year like here and here and reading Sally's follow-up thoughts after she spoke at the Mom Heart Conference in Colorado.

Plus, if I was in Irvine last night, I wouldn't have gotten to enjoy eating dinner with my handsome husband (or help him work on a desktop publishing project for school later that night) and witness my 2-year-old daughter paint pizza sauce all over her face (which I'm sure I wouldn't have thought was that cute or funny if Gregg didn't offer to clean her up afterwards).

And I wouldn't have gotten to wake up to greet my lively Leala and enjoy spending the morning with her or gotten to be with my cutie, Adella (who I was unknowingly pregnant with last year at the conference) in the comfort of our home and watch her get closer to being able to grab her feet.  There is a time and season for everything and this year it was my time to keep applying what I've gleaned from Sally and be thankful for what I have.

Note:  If anything else is shared online about this year's Mom Heart Conference, I would be more than happy to add the links on here!

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Sunday, January 5, 2012 Revision

This mom shared some of the things she learned on her Facebook profile:

Tracy Schulte
Sally Clarkson, so refreshing for this mama's heart! A few tid-bits...
A happy mom is a real gift to her children.
Discipleship takes a long time, but it changes hearts.
I am the PERFECT Mom for MY children.
Put down the work and pick up the child. [LOVE that; it's been stuck in my head since I read it!]
Guilt kills a soul.
Moms are advocates for their children, doing everything they can to make sure they make it in the world.
Guide. Inspire. Encourage.

AND...

She did it!  Adella touched her feet for the first time last night!  I knew she was getting close to doing it!  I love watching the different stages of my girls' growth.