August Work Weekend

This weekend was our August Work Weekend with John's parents. They came up from Oklahoma to help us get some things done on the house. We had a "small" list of goals that we had for the weekend. My biggest goal was that I wanted to get our bedroom painted. When we first moved into the house our bedroom was a terrible pepto-pink color. One of the walls had tissue paper put on it before it was painted. Well, Jayn (my MIL) decided that if we were going to be re-painting, we should just do the re-decorating as well! It looks AMAZING! Here are some pictures of the during and after result of our bedroom.





And the finished project...





We even got some organization done! It is perfect. It's much better than anything that we could have imagined.


As you can see, no longer pepto-pink! It is our own personal retreat from everything!

John's big goal was to get some electrical work done out in the barn. Doug (my FIL) and John worked so hard and got everything done out in the barn, plus a bunch in the house as well. Things work now! It's wonderful! They also built an enclosure for our dogs in the barn. This will be great for the winter! It's complete with outlets and lights.

I am so grateful for their help and support of this project, our house is looking better every time they come up, and our wine selection appreciates it too!

Summertime

I remember being young and my dad taking us fishing during the summers. And when we got to visit him, my grandpa took us fishing too. It was a great time. We would catch the fish, Dad would get them off the hook for us, we'd be thrilled that we had just caught a three inch long perch. It was pure bliss. One of the first acts of kindness I can recall was Dad and Grandpa went fishing one day and were not catching hardly anything, and they'd been fishing for our dinner! They got to talking to the guy fishing next to them and he was catching much bigger fish. He ended up giving Dad and Grandpa a bucket full of fish to bring home to us. Anyways, John and I have started fishing together a lot lately. Last night when we were fishing we had a perfect sunset to go with it.





My excellent, handsome fishing partner:


I think it's safe to say, it's easy to see that there's a God, and he's smiling down on us.

"I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun, not because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else." ~C.S. Lewis (brilliant man)

Painting Mess

It has been a busy time for us! We have recently acquired a new member of our family, my sister Elizabeth! She is going to live with us for the next year or so. This has proven to be challenging and fun. It's odd trying to find that balance between being her sister, friend, and parent. We spent a good chunk of the past month with a family from our church living in one of our apartments upstairs. They were having most of their home remolded, so we let them stay with us during that time. It was nice to have people up there using the space again. It's odd, when we bought the house we prayed that God would give us the family to feed, the laughter to fill it, and a welcoming atmosphere to do His work in our home. We had an idea of what we wanted it to be, but God has once again proven that His ideas are bigger than our own. I never would have imagined that we could have helped people while getting their houses done, or that my sister would live with us. We had ideas of children, and family dinners. I'm loving what He has chosen to do with our space!

We've also been working on doing some projects around the house. Since Adam moved out earlier this summer we had turned his room into a storage/hobby room. Then Elizabeth decided that she wanted to live in that room, so we ended up converting and repainting it. Here are some pictures of the room now!





Our other project these past few weeks has been the kitchen. Thanks to my wonderful husband, this is actually happening much faster than I had expected! We picked a historic paint color, one that is found in and on buildings as old as our home, and used that for the kitchen. John has been in the process of refinishing all of the woodwork so that it contrasts and matches our style. Here are a few pictures of the kitchen, I'll try to get better ones up as soon as it is finished.








It's very nice to see that our home is finally coming together to suit us! I love seeing the work that we put into it. Our prayer for our home is this, that God will use the space as "safe space" for our friends and family in need, that He will find a way to do ministry within and from within our home, that He would bless the people who enter in, and provide us all with peace.