triumph!

praise God! we submitted a tile sample for some scary ceiling tile in the basement. it needs to come down for HVAC...we wondered if it is asbestos tile. the results came back negative. yippee!

a snapshot of the past few weeks

life has been full of events, both at work and at home. here are the highlights:

1) this past weekend, i heard andrée seu speak at the bethlehem women's conference. she was awesome, unconventional. i want to be her friend. she even described herself as "melancholy." she was a bit stream of consciousness, and entirely practical. God used her words to speak into my life about how to tackle fear. what a blessing she was. (and what a vocabulary! she's definitely a writer. i even got to meet her and she signed my book! i told her i was a bit starstruck and she looked around and said, "why, did someone walk by?") our pastor's wife blogged about her here, too.

2) i've got the itch to garden. i planted some basil, parsley, and chives to keep in the kitchen window. they are practice, so we'll see how they turn out. i have a beautiful ranunculus plant out on the front step, and a few house plants i'm learning to care for. oh yeah—the hostas my mom and i split last summer are coming up! i had a long conversation with my managing editor today about gardening and plants, and i'm totally motivated. however...

3) our side yard looks like this [see above!]. at one point this was a nice garden, according to the reports of neighbors. but now it is overgrown and unkempt. we tore out the stakes and wire (and the random oar???), and ben started tilling it. we'll seed it and it will hopefully be grass before too long.

4) in other yard news, our neighbor painted our shed for us. here's the before pic. the after will come before too long (i've said that before, though...). let's just say ben and i are like-minded in our preference for blue.

5) speaking of like-mindedness, we need to pick out tile for the master bathroom—floor and shower. i pulled some samples from kate-lo, but ben didn't really like any of them—and that was fine by me! it kind of made me laugh afterwards, because i picked ones i thought he might like, but they weren't ones that i was particularly crazy about, either. shows how little i know about his taste! anyways, we'll go look again on saturday, and hopefully we'll put our heads together and find something we both like. because, like taylor swift says, "two is better than one!" [cheesy, i know.]

two feet

what a difference two feet can make. when we redid our kitchen, we took out two side-by-side closets to expand the space. how much did we gain? two feet. and it felt like much more than that.

after getting the header/permit situation figured out for the master remodel, our contractor was able to come today to do some framing for us. he took down a wall that was part of a closet and put in a header. the walls and new doorways are now in the right spots, and boy, do the rooms feel changed. again, we shifted walls to expand the bedroom by about two feet, and the rooms feel so different. when i walked in, there was shrieking—the good kind.

you can see where the wall used to be. this outlined area was a closet between the bedrooms, but we are creating a walk-in closet elsewhere, so we didn't need this closet anymore. we took down the wall and incorporated the two feet into the master bedroom (to the left). the opposite side (to the right) will be the master bath.

the wall we took down was load bearing, so we needed to have this header installed where the wall was. it comes down from the ceiling about five inches. not the most ideal, but doing so allowed us to gain that extra two feet!

 more zoomed-out shots. the framed doorway on the right will lead from the master bedroom into the master bath.

w

we may or may not have ordered a little too much lumber. :)

tomorrow, we are set to help my brother and sister-in-law paint their new house! they moved in today, and we haven't seen it yet. can't wait! it will be nice to step away from our own project and help someone else on theirs. they are expecting their first baby in august, so i'm especially excited to help them begin to build their "nest." until the future!

birthday happenings

whew! it has been a busy week.

i have a lovely sister. she turned 23 on tuesday. we celebrated with our family on sunday, and we met some sweet friends from her work. it was a beautiful day—sunny and warm—so we ate lunch outside.

i got the chance to try out a recipe i've been curious about. it's the pink lemonade layer cake from the deen brothers cookbook. it called for lemon zest in both the cake and the frosting, but i left that out because i wanted it to be more sweet than tart. in my opinion, it came out plenty tart, so i think i'll leave that out in the future.

anyway, kristy put in a request for a strawberry or raspberry dessert, so i added strawberries. i also got a chance to use the cake decorating tools ben gave me for Christmas in 2008!

of course, i wanted to use the camera. so here's the visual story of the cake's life.

k for kristen. it was soon time to blow out the candle and...we all know how the story ends.

i was feeling extra crafty, so i decided to make her birthday card myself. i had saved this post to try and i decided to make the most of all the leftover paint color samples we have around the house. i had everything else on hand.

what fun to make things out of stuff you already have.

p.s. free coffee today at starbucks if you bring your own mug! happy tax day!

another p.s. instead of posting pics of the kids from easter, here's a video ben took of klaas teaching those kids crazy things. ha!

saturday {4.10.2010}

well, we got the load-bearing wall situation figured out, thanks to my husband's perseverance and dedication! he got the permit from the city yesterday, so we are full speed ahead to make up for some lost time.

but first, a side story. when i came home from work on friday night, i was so confused to see tons and tons of vans, suvs, and cars with trailers trolling around our neighborhood. i also noticed that there was a toilet in the front of our neighbor's yard. what was going on?

it took me a while to realize that this weekend the city would pick up junk and trash from people's houses if they put it all by the curb. and the trollers were looking for treasure! i'm not kidding, people had desks, chairs, mattresses, beds, old christmas decorations, and all sorts of other things out on their front lawns.

so we decided to join in on the fun. we put out three old doors that we had torn down, as well as our very own demo-ed toilet. but this morning, here's what we saw:

a rejection notice. apparently, porcelain isn't accepted into the program. it's okay, we have a dumpster for situations such as these!

anyways, today's work included a trip to cannon recovery (which we have had good experiences with in the past) to look for doors. but we looked at vanities, tile, etc, too.

that last one made us laugh. we didn't have any luck, so we went to order some doors at menards: poplar two-panels with brushed nickel hinges.

when we came home, we pulled a bunch of nails out of the studs to prep for some contractors who will hopefully come this week. then, ben stepped on a nail! praise God that he just had a tetanus shot a few weeks ago. hmmm, i should probably get one of those, too...

story of a lonely goodwill skirt

my mom and her sister definitely know their way around a sewing machine. my mom used to teach sewing classes, and i can remember sitting next to her in the basement, watching her thread her needle and guide the fabric through the machine. my aunt sewed baby blankets for me, my brother, and my sister—and i slept with mine longer than i'd like to admit. she also made easter dresses for me and kristen. they were pretty much the same dress, but mine was purple and kristen's was pink. i'm no sewing expert, but my mom is, so that's a start. :)

i mentioned that i received a sewing machine from my parents for Christmas, and i've been having so much fun with it! the internet is such an inspiring place...google "sewing tutorial" and a million things come up. it has been a long time since i've made anything wearable (like, since seventh grade home economics), but i thought sewing a skirt would be pretty simple. so i needed some fabric.

i found this skirt at goodwill for $2.50. it grabbed my attention because the fabric was so bright and bold! i didn't even check the size. i was going to cut it to pieces and rework it anyway, so the bigger the better—more fabric!

here are a few shots of what it was like when i bought it. i should have taken a shot of me wearing it. it was huge. like i could stack both fists between my waist and the waistband. it looked like one of those crazy weight loss "look at me in my former pants" pictures. before i told him about the vision, i put it on over my clothes and showed ben. he was very confused.

it was really long, and it buttoned up the side, too:

 but check out that label: diane von furstenberg! no way!

i cut off the button-up side seams and the strange pleated waistband. there were two tiny holes near the hem, so i cut that off, too. i basically ended up with two rectangles of fabric. i mashed up no less than three skirt tutorials i saw online and improvised a waistband (i just sewed a little "pocket" and threaded 1 1/2" elastic through, then sewed it shut). oh yeah, and the fabric was totally see-through so i added a lining. here's how it came out (don't laugh at my poses! i felt awkward...)

i wore it yesterday for easter, but i cheated and wore it to work earlier in the week, too. :) it was fun to wear something handmade, something that had been old and strange and is now fun and pretty!

easter food

we spent easter at the home of my parents-in-law, and it was a lovely day. i made sure to bring my camera for more experimentation, and mary was kind enough to let me snap a few shots of her yummy food. i got some good shots of the kids, too, so i'll post those later in the week after i fiddle around with some editing in iphoto.

i hope your easter was beautiful!

the Lord is risen!

the Lord is risen indeed! happy easter!

this verse stuck out to me this morning from the high priestly prayer:

"Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world." {John 17: 24}

press on, for Christ has died for us. He prayed for us—someday we'll see face to face!

interesting reading

today i stumbled upon this article: Christian faith; calvinism is back. it's a long read, partially about mark dever's church in dc, but also a general discussion of calvinism today. i thought it was well written.

just in case you don't have time to read it all, here are a few paragraphs—they are without their proper context, but food for thought. perhaps it will whet your appetite to read the entire article. :)

Calvin's influence on America's founding is unmistakable. The nation's patriotism, work ethic, sense of equality, public morality, and even elements of democracy all sprang in part from the Calvinist taproot of Puritan New England. When Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards told worshipers in 1741 that they were loathsome spiders held over the pit of hell by the gracious hand of an offended God, he wasn't speaking a heretical creed but the basic vocabulary of American faith. It wasn't until the 19th century that Calvinist doctrines waned.

In a separate report, Barna found that more than 6 in 10 born-again Christians say they are customizing their faith, not following any one church's theology. "Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible," the report notes.

"A lot of people think religion is something you piece together [from] ideas you think are sweet and that you personally find beneficial," says Mr. Dever. "No. It's like a doctor's report.... It's an objective reality. It's just what is."

More broadly, the Calvinist revival reflects an effort to recast the foundation of faith itself. From conservative evangelical churches to liberal new-age groups, the message of much modern teaching is man's need for betterment. Not New Calvinism; its star is God's need for glory. And the gravity of His will is great: It can be denied, but not defied.

Christopher Brown, a lawyer, concurs. "I came for the theology but stayed for the community," he says. "As Americans, we're so individualistic. But the New Testament rebukes this 'rugged individualism.' We're not saved to be lone rangers."

"Calvinism is 'big picture' Christianity," says Allen Guelzo, the author of "Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate." "It is less interested in asking why God lets bad things happen to good people, and asks instead whether there have ever been any genuinely 'good' people."

New Calvinists talk about their sin a lot. Despite that – or rather because of it – they exude not guilt but great joy. Their explanation: If we play down our sinfulness, we'll play down our gratitude for the magnitude of God's love and forgiveness.

ork neighborhood posters

{image from ork posters}

remember when i posted about the fun city posters? of course, there isn't a minneapolis print. i understand, but we're getting warmer. {as seen at apartment 412.}