A few thoughts about gallery walls

We've currently set up two different gallery walls in this house, and two very different approaches went into each one. And although I'm no expert on much of anything, especially gallery walls, I wanted to share some of that thought process.

In the fall, we put up a wall of photos I took of some of my favorite places and buildings around town. Because they were all pictures of the same town, we wanted a more uniformed look for the wall. We made all of the photos black and white and got the same white frames for them all.

 

 

For the gallery wall we just put up in the family room, though, we had a completely different approach. The huge world map in above our couch was starting to bug me. I love the map, don't get me wrong, but all the empty space around it was taking away from the map's effect. The original plan had been to surround the big map with smaller maps of places that were meaningful to us, but it became too hard a task to find the maps I needed. (I gave up. I'll be honest.) So it was time to fill that space. With whatever I could find.

I got spontaneous on a snow day with the hubs last week and went through our whole house grabbing whatever frames I could find and spare (most of which were still in boxes in our spare room) and spread them out on the family room floor. Because I wanted to have frames on both sides of the large map, I divided the big group of frames into two small groups of frames, one for each side of the map. To decide what would go where, I looked only at the frames. We changed most of the pictures from inside the frames anyway, but the most important part for me was that the variety of frames spanning the wall seemed balanced. Not all the black on one side, little ones spread out, etc. Here's the finished product:

Here's the breakdown for each side: 

-each side has one frame that was bigger than the rest

-each side has a rough, weathered wood frame

-each side has a small frame

-each side has a metallic-looking frame (one is silver and one is gold)

-each side has at least one piece of artwork (either mine or from Etsy)

And because the frames are balanced out nicely, all we had to do was figure out the layout we wanted and spend some time on Shutterfly to fill the frames with some new pictures. Here's each side close up:

The beauty of this gallery wall, as opposed to the one in the kitchen, is that it can and will grow and evolve over time. It works for now the way it is, but there's also plenty of room on both sides to add frames and fill in the rest of the wall space as we collect more pictures, prints, and frames. We knew we didn't want to ever add to the kitchen gallery wall, so it fills the wall and it all matches perfectly. With this wall, though, we never have to worry about a specific frame going out of stock or having to maintain some kind of theme with what's inside the frames. It's all random and different which means it has the freedom to grow over time pretty easily. 

Both types of gallery walls are great and I love both of the ones in our house. I love them for different reasons, but I'm really happy with both of them.

Thrift store tray

I think I've mentioned before that I have a thrift store/antique store nearby that is near and dear to my heart. There are several within a ten mile radius that I love and have had great successes in, but this one...sigh...it was love at first sight. I walked into the store this summer and literally stopped and stared, and then spent a half hour in only the first six-by-six front window of the place. The elderly lady who owns the place laughed at me when I told her I wanted it all. This place, needless to say, is awesome. I've gotten some big pieces there (my nightstand, my kitchen desk) and a lot of little pieces (several wooden trays, the wooden duck sitting on my entertainment center, baskets) and they have all been super reasonable. Truly antique pieces, some of which hundreds of years old, only for a couple hundred dollars instead of several thousand like in so many antique stores.

So obviously the subject of this post was purchased at that store. My favorite of all stores.

I bought this tray a while ago, maybe this fall sometime. You can't quite tell in this picture but there's a piece of glass in there as well. I can't remember exactly when, but I remember that I loved it immediately and I couldn't wait to spend some time on it making it beautiful...and I remember that it only cost me $12. Told you this place is great. It came home and put up on a shelf in the guest room closet so it wouldn't accidentally get bumped or cracked at some point, and waited for me to one day take it out and fix it up. That day was today.

Step one was removing the nails that were holding the glass in. We were a little scared of this step, since the glass is pretty fragile and we didn't want to crack it when the nails came out. Turns out, though, it was pretty easy.

The nail is super hard to see in that first picture, but basically a bunch of tiny nails were put into the frame and the glass was just resting in there, free to flop around. Obviously, this wasn't going to work long term. So the nails came out.

We needed a new way to secure the glass and whatever backing we used, so we got these picture frame clips from Michaels. The nice lady behind the custom framing desk gave them to us for free! They're the kind that swivel to secure the back of the photo frame. Same principle here. Just a simple screw head and you're good to go.

With the frame prepped, it was time to have fun with the inside. Because this frame would be sitting on my coffee table, and the frame is almost the same color as the table, I wanted something other than just the glass on the inside of the frame to help it pop. I didn't want this awesome tray blending in to the coffee table it's sitting on. So I thought for a while about what I wanted to use (scrapbook paper, fabric) and figured fabric would be the best way to go when I had a major light bulb a couple days ago. The hubs bought a new duvet set (with pillowcases) while we were dating that got replaced about six months after we got married. The duvet was recently passed on to my poor college-kid sister, but she didn't need the pillowcases. I went and grabbed one from the hall closet, put it under the frame, and did a happy dance. The kind of happy dance that is inspired by the word "free." I do love that word. Hubs cut the seams to give me one big piece of fabric, we ironed it smooth, and it was go time. Here's the fabric:

And here it is up close (and slightly darker than I intended):

It's a little bland, but it's the perfect color for the room and those ridges gave me some great ideas. One really one idea: stripes.

I used a foam brush, because I wanted the coverage to be a little bit washed out rather than harsh, and I also liked the control having such a long straight edge would give me when following the ridges on the fabric.

I started with white. I just traced ridge lines on the fabric, in a random sequence. I really didn't want it to be or look like a pattern, so I didn't think too hard about it and instead just went for it.

I looked at the white for a minute to make sure I wasn't sold on it as is, and then decided some gray would be a good idea. The grays and tans and whites in our stone fireplace were the inspiration, by the way. I liked the idea of pulling those colors in, especially since this tray will be sitting across the room from the fireplace.

I went with much wider gray stripes, filling in the space between ridges this time rather than tracing the ridges themselves. Wherever I had left two ridges empty in between white stripes, I filled it in with gray.

Now for the back. I mentioned that the glass wobbled a lot inside there originally, because the depth of the tray was much deeper than the glass itself. I didn't want that to be the case anymore, so I cut out some matte board - like for behind pictures in a frame - to the size of the frame. This way I would get some added thickness as well as a hard back for the fabric. It wasn't thick enough, though, and still had some wiggle room. So I snagged some soft shelf liner from the garage and needed two layers of that before everything fit snugly inside the frame.

So as a recap, that's a layer of matte board, two layers of shelf liner, one layer of (very thin) fabric, and then the glass. No more wiggles or wobbles!

We did need to secure the fabric to the matte board and shelf liner, though, which was the trickiest part of this project. The stripes required some extra care, since we really had to make sure everything was straight and not crooked at all. Thankfully, my incredible former military, slightly OCD husband was there to help. And he did a great job.

Yeah, that's duct tape. There's not too many products better, and you know it.

With everything taped securely and tightly, we put it in the frame (after cleaning the glass), closed the clips, and we were only one step from being done. We didn't want the wood frame sitting directly on the coffee table, but the need for some kind of padding was made definite when the screw heads on the little clips stuck up pretty far. Meaning: it wouldn't be the wood frame sitting on the coffee table, it would be the metal screw heads sitting on the table with the frame floating above. No bueno. So I retrieved some bottom-of-the-chair pads from my desk, put one on each corner, and the problem was solved.

And that's it!

There are a handful of brown spots on the glass that wouldn't come off with cleaner, but I'm okay with it. It adds character to the piece, I think.

And that's it! I'll add some kind of decorative something to the tray soon, but I'm in love with the finished product. The painted lines aren't perfect up close (from the couch it looks great) but it's the kind of handmade look I was going for. I'm excited to layer some things on top but I think it's great on its own for now too. Because it's an older piece and the handles aren't the most sturdy, I won't use it for anything other than just looking pretty. But look pretty it does.

My favorite part about this project is its cost. Let's do a quick money recap: the matte board was from my craft closet, the shelf liner was from my garage, the fabric was a pillowcase from my hall closet, the paint was from my craft room, the frame clips were free from the nice lady at Michaels, and the tray was $12 from my favorite thrift/antique store. That means the total cost of this little DIY project was $12! Need I say one more time that I love using what I already have? I'm telling you, guys. You'd really be surprised with what you have to work with.

First Light: a very brief review

photo cred: Goodreads

So...remember when I told you all about how I got my library card and downloaded my first ever library book downloaded to my Kindle? Remember how I said it took me a half hour to find a book that wasn't already taken by someone else? Well when I eventually got one, I snatched it because it was an author I had once heard of. Not the book, but I've heard of the author. I crossed my fingers and hoped it was enough. Sadly, it wasn't. Total dud, guys. And don't look on Goodreads, because I seem to be the minority opinion.

Peter and his scientist parents spend some time in Greenland to do some experiments and such. Thea and her family live in a secret underground community within a glacier, in Greenland. As both teens explore and discover the truth about the world around them, they uncover generations of secrets and eventually, each other.

I honestly had no idea what was going on until about 60% through the book, and even after that I wasn't super interested. I thought her writing was unclear and the plot a little ridiculous. And I also had a hard time picturing anything that was happening at any given point. And even though that's a pretty harsh review, I've heard really great things about her other books and I still want to read them. I have total faith, Ms. Stead.

For when it just isn't in the budget...

This winter has been pretty rough on our budget. Between Captain's leg and the heater breaking and the Mazda needing to be fixed after hitting a deer and Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas presents and I'm sure some other things I can't remember...there definitely isn't extra money laying around for unnecessary house decor. I had a little bit of an immature hissy fit the other night when I sat down and combined all my various lists on my phone for house project ideas and put them all on one single sheet of paper. Looking at all my ideas and all the things we want to do to and around the house, I let myself get upset instead of excited. Even DIY projects, that are much cheaper than just buying everything straight up, most likely cost some kind of money because you still need supplies. I felt so frustrated because I want the freedom to do the projects I want and be the happy homemaker who makes her house look beautiful immediately.

But that's not real life. Money is real, and that freedom of doing whatever you want whenever you want to is not. I don't say that to be a downer on our specific situation; that's not real life for anyone. No matter what your budget (well, there are exceptions out there but it's no one I know) or how unburdened your finances, you don't have the ability to just do everything at once. Things take time. Decorating and renovating and organizing and figuring out what works best in your home takes time. Lots of time, and some failed attempts. My parents spent like thirteen years getting their house to the place it is right now, for crying out loud, and that was with a lot of round-the-clock work that lasted for months and months at a time.

The huge, glaring, nasty heart issue that I had to come to terms with in the middle of this hissy fit is that my stupid pride has an issue with showing people our house right now. Not because it's not super cute and great and cool right now, but because I'm not done with a single room in the house and I feel the need to tell people that. Like, heaven forbid someone think my house is exactly the way I want it. When I say it out loud - and especially when I type it to the universe - it's ridiculous. First of all, no one expects you to have a perfect house, and certainly no one expects you to complete the perfect house in less than a year of living in it. Second of all, my house is awesome just the way it is right now. We've done a lot and added a lot to it in our time here, and it's great. It functions and it's beautiful and we love it, and yes, we have ideas to make it better over the next 2 to 5 to 10 years, but that should be exciting. During the last couple days, since the hissy fit and the corresponding revelations, I've been soaking in our house just the way it is and focusing on all the things I love so much about it right now. The plans we have are really exciting, and some of them will help our lives be a little more functional and practical, but our house right now is really exciting. Our house, just the way it is right now, was exactly what we wanted. And it's very us. Isn't that the point of a home, anyway?

With all of that laid as the foundation for this post, I wanted to share a couple things we tackled yesterday during our snow day to give some areas of our home a facelift in an extremely budget friendly way. And how did we do it?

We used what we already had.

This is hardly rocket science, and it's a concept I've preached before in my office space makeover, but I just can't stress enough how useful and surprising it can be to go shopping within your own house. Moving things around, digging through boxes of stuff you've had for years but thought you don't have a place for...if you're anything like us you'd be seriously shocked to discover the gems hiding within your own four walls. For freeee.

One of the things on my long list of things for the house was to figure out where to hang some cool maps of our county, and to create a gallery wall in our family room around the huge world map that's been there for most of our time in the house. I'd originally had a plan for the space around the map but have since given up on finding the exact pieces I was looking for, and decided that a collage would be better. That led to some brainstorming about what we had scattered around our house, which led to some digging through boxes and collecting frames from some bookshelves, which led to a big lay out on the floor. We had some frames that had a picture or piece of artwork that we wanted to leave just the way they are, and we had a handful of frames that we wanted to use but replace the pictures inside with some new ones. So all we had to do was go through Shutterfly and pick out the ones we wanted, the sizes we needed, and order! With a deal Shutterfly had going on right now, we paid $5.44 for three new prints, (one 4x6, one 5x7, and one 8x11), including shipping!

 Here you can see a little window into the frame selection process, where I went through the house and just laid as many as I could out on the floor facing the wall they would be hung on. Not many of the photos and art you see in those frames are what will stay there, but I'm saving the final product for when all the pictures (and JTs birthday present, which is going in one of the frames) arrives in the mail. 

We also hung the two maps of our county I mentioned, using frames and matte board we already had (see the two frames propped up against the entertainment center in the picture above). They are both similar wood frames and even though they're not the shade, they look good together. We decided to hang them on a wall that's been bugging me in our dining room because it looked so empty. 

One of the maps is of the Virginia/West Virginia line (which Berryville borders), so it includes the town of Berryville as well as much of the mountains and valley in surrounding areas and West Virginia. The other map is slightly more artistic looking, and is of only Clarke County. I really love both of them and I really love them on that wall. They fill the space really well. 

We hung a very special clock in our entryway, as well, which you can see peeking through the archway in the picture above. We've been talking for a long time about how one of the little walls in that space needs a mirror (the wall facing the front door) and that the other wall needs a clock. I know that between our cell phones and the microwave, we don't really need a clock anywhere in our house, but it just seems like something a house needs. I've been keeping my eyes peeled, but whenever I saw one I liked I was alone and I knew the hubs would want to weigh in on a decision like that. So when we were visiting his parents in Colorado back in November and his mom said that she has a clock he made in high school...obviously we snatched it. And even though it probably needs a friend or two to help fill that wall someday, we decided to put him dead center until we find something to pair with it. 

 

One other thing I decided in a flurry of productivity to do yesterday was change out bedspread. I've got some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket and I just can't decide how to spend it (on the house? on some new clothes? on a tattoo?) and one of the things I've been searching websites for is a new bedspread for our room. I get really bedspread ADD for some reason, and I've just been wanting a change pretty bad. While I was playing with picture frames and layouts, it occurred to me that the guest room bed has a dark blue comforter hiding inside the duvet. It would match our room pretty well. So for one last shopping trip within our own home, I pulled the comforter out of the duvet in the guest room, put it on our bed, and filled the guest room duvet with an extra down comforter we'd had stuffed in a closet. 

Please ignore my bad iPhone picture, and the dog crate in the background (who's ready for a cast to be off?!). It's plain and it's nothing fancy or crazy, but it was free. Guys...free is important. I might argue, that depending on your financial situation, free is the most important.

Here's the bottom line: we all have dreams to make our house prettier or trendier or more functional, and those days will come. It's not a rush. Nothing is a rush, and it's dumb to press ahead with all your plans thinking they're urgent when you're really just putting yourself in a financial place you can't afford to be. Some of the plans we have for our house are going to be super expensive and won't happen for years, when we know we can. And that's what makes a day of little updates and tweaks that all cost (basically) nothing so much better. Because those free changes can still make a huge impact on your house, and that's a big deal!

(This last one is for me, because I have to continue to tell myself this): no one is going into your house and saying "geez, what a dump. She really needs a couple more baskets and throw pillows and then it would look great." No one is saying that about your house, and no one is saying it about mine. So stop putting that burden of having to please other people on yourself when it doesn't exist to begin with. And besides, your house is for you and the people you share it with, not anyone else. If someone does walk into your house and say those things, they don't have to live there anyway.

Homemade (green) Cleaning Products

So here's the thing: I've never put a lot of thought into what kind of products I use or clean with. It wasn't for any particular reason, I just haven't. I don't obsess about organic food or drinks and I guess I just filed cleaning products under the same umbrella. But yesterday I went to a friend's party that she hosted. It was one of those product parties like Pampered Chef where a rep comes to your friend's house and talks about their product, demonstrates the product, and then tries her darndest to get you to buy all of their products. This was just like that, except the products she was selling were all cleaning products.

The thing that she said that really swayed me was about our laundry: the chemicals we wash and dry our clothes with are being soaked into our skin and body 24/7 because we're either wearing our clothes or sleeping on our sheets or drying ourselves off with our towels. And apparently those chemicals aren't pleasant. So after about two and a half hours of a great sales pitch and me feeling like I could make a case for us needing everything but realizing that I certainly don't have hundreds of extra dollars laying around to buy it all, I took the catalog home to talk to the hubs and see what he thought. Long story short, I ended up on Pinterest, and found recipes for natural, homemade cleaning products to replace everything I have been using to clean my house. It turns out that once you decide you're bothered about laundry chemicals the domino effect falls from there to the rest of the chemicals. Except food. I'll tackle food a different day, maybe.

I got the ingredients for redoing my laundry cleaners, but since the laundry detergent I already have is already all-natural, I'll ride this gallon jug out and make my own afterwards. I'll share those recipes in a post when I actually make them.

I did make five different cleaning products today, though. Here's what I needed:

• 5 squirt bottles (one for each product you make)
• a funnel
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• some sort of label for each squirt bottle
• white distilled vinegar
• rubbing alcohol
• dish soap
• cornstarch
• olive oil
• lemon juice
• water

First, I made the labels for the bottles, using fun scrapbook paper obviously. 

 Doesn't that just make cleaning look fun and exciting?! That was the plan anyway. I traced a small candle, cut them out, and labeled them.

I'm sure I've made it clear by now that I'm not nearly as fancy as I try to appear, so even though I made these pretty labels with fun and exciting scrapbook paper, I used a whole bunch of Scotch tape to apply them to the bottles. Waterproof and durable...can't argue all that much with it. Also, I couldn't find the packaging tape.

Next was actually making the cleaners. They were all super easy, and took about ten minutes total probably. Here were the recipes I used for each one:


Stainless Steel Cleaner/Floor Cleaner:

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup white distilled vinegar
• 1 cup rubbing alcohol
• 2-3 drops dish soap

All-Purpose Cleaner:

• 3/4 cup white vinegar
• 3/4 cup water

Dusting Spray:

• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/4 cup white distilled vinegar
• 1 cup water

Granite Cleaner:

• 1/2 cup rubbing alcohol
• 8 drops dish soap
• 2 cups water

Glass Cleaner:

• 1/4 cup rubbing alcohol
• 1/4 cup white distilled vinegar
• 1 Tbs cornstarch
• 2 cups water

A special note: you'll need to shake the bottles each time you use them. It's kind of common sense, but you can see in the dusting spray in the middle of this picture that the olive oil is separated from the rest of the liquid, and the cornstarch in the glass cleaner can clog the hose if you don't give it a good shake.

Within minutes of making them all, I had to do some cleaning, obviously. I've used all of them but the all-purpose cleaner so far, and I can say that they're all awesome. I've never felt like my granite counters were very clean; there's always a weird film left behind no matter what I use. This granite cleaner, though, is great. The counters are clean and actually feel clean! The window cleaner easily eliminated a couple weeks' worth of Captain's nose prints all over my back door! The dusting spray is awesome! And the stainless steel cleaner...well. My stainless steel is clean. And it's usually not. You want proof? Here's a super embarrassing before and after of my stove:

I blame Captain for those smudges, too, by the way.

And the best part of all of this is that to buy all the ingredients needed for these cleaners (including the bottles which hopefully won't need to be replaced anytime soon), was super cheap! Here's the breakdown:

• gallon jug of white distilled vinegar = $2.38
• baking soda = $2.06
• cornstarch = $1.00
• spray bottles = $2.00 (x5 bottles)
• rubbing alcohol = $1.96 (x2 bottles)
  =$19.36 (not including tax)

How great is that? And it's not at all as if that $20 paid for just those five bottles of cleaners...I've barely tapped into all of those ingredients. I should be set for a while. I'll be sure to keep track of how long this shopping trip lasts me and how far that $20 stretches time wise.

Regardless, I'm excited about saving us some money and feeling a little bit better about the stuff we're breathing in and coating our house in. Dryer sheets are the next thing to go (just as soon as I remember to go to Hobby Lobby on a day other than Sunday...)

Crusing through 2014 goals

Today I got a library card, successfully downloaded a library book onto my Kindle, and got a gym membership. In case you don't understand the significance of all that, I got to cross two items off my 2014 New Year's Goals list, and get a huge jump start on another! Needless to say, I'm super excited. I can read books for free? Insanity.

Although I will say - and with something resembling anger I say this - it took me a half hour to find a book on the ebook database that I wanted to read that wasn't on hold. I mean, come on. There were a thousand I wanted to read, it's just that everyone else wants to read them too. So...that might backfire a little bit. But I still have the actual books to fall back on, so it's all good.

Blue Like Jazz: a brief review

I first heard about Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz about a million years ago. Our Campus Crusade for Christ used to give copies away, and I somehow always missed the nights I could have acquired a free book. It seemed like it was a given that I had read it, but I just never had. More recently, I feel like I'm close friends with Mr. Miller because of how intimate he is with the Relevant Podcast, which I listen to constantly. When my Donald Miller-lovin' sister gave me his most famous book for Christmas, I was obviously excited to know what all the fuss was about.

Miller's writing style is very unique; each chapter is its own separate essay but the book as a whole also follows a certain flow. He jumps around chronologically but somehow manages to not sound all that confusing, and most of his writing seems like a stream of consciousness, switching subjects as they pop into his head. And yet...it's still simple to understand. As a reader, you kind of get the feeling that you're sitting on a porch in Portland while he just talks to you, swapping stories and sharing intimate thoughts about Christianity. And his thoughts about Christianity are profound, indeed.

As I read, I tried to think in the back of my mind how I could really describe this book and my feelings about it. A really good example came from the book itself. It's kind of a long passage to type all the way out, but bear with me. It's a great example, I think, of his heart throughout the book.

"A long time I went to a concert with my friend Rebecca. Rebecca can sing better than anybody I've ever heard sing. I heard this folksinger was coming to town, and I thought she might like to see him because she was a singer too. The tickets were twenty bucks, which is a lot to pay if you're not on a date. Between songs, though, he told a story that helped me resolve some things about God. The story was about his friend who is a Navy SEAL. He told it like it was true, so I guess it was true, although it could have been a lie. 

The folksinger said his friend was performing a covert operation, freeing hostages from a building in some dark part of the world. His friend's team flew in by helicopter, made their way to the compound and stormed into the room where the hostages had been imprisoned for months. The room, the folksinger said, was filthy and dark. The hostages were curled up in a corner, terrified. When the SEALs entered the room, they heard the gasps of the hostages. They stood at the door and called to the prisoners, telling them they were Americans. The SEALs asked the hostages to follow them, but the hostages wouldn't. They sat there on the floor and his their eyes in fear. They were not of healthy mind and didn't believe their rescuers were really Americans. 

The SEALs stood there, not knowing what to do. They couldn't possibly carry everybody out. One of the SEALs, the folksinger's friend, got an idea. He put down his weapon, took off his helmet, and curled up tightly next to the other hostages, getting so close his body was touching some of theirs. He softened the look on his face and put his arms around them. He was trying to show them he was one of them. None of the prison guards would have done this. He stayed there for a little while until some of the hostages started to look at him, finally meeting his eyes. The Navy SEAL whispered that they were Americans and were there to rescue them. Will you follow us? he said. The hero stood to his feet and one of the hostages did the same, then another, until all of them were willing to go. The story ends with all the hostages safe on an American aircraft carrier. 

I never liked it when the preachers said we had to follow Jesus. Sometimes they would make Him sound angry. But I liked the story the folksinger told. I liked the idea of Jesus becoming man, so that we would be able to trust Him, and I like that He healed people and loved them and cared deeply about how people were feeling. 

When I understood that the decision to follow Jesus was very much like the decision the hostages had to make to follow their rescuer, I knew then that I needed to decide whether or not I would follow Him. The decision was simple once I asked myself, 'Is Jesus the Son of God, are we being held captive in a world run by Satan, a world filled with brokenness, and do I believe Jesus can rescue me from this condition'" 

Isn't that an awesome illustration? I love the image so much.

To switch gears slightly, though, I need to talk about a huge theme that runs throughout the whole heart of this book. He talks about how we have done Christianity wrong for too long. We give money to the food shelters and organizations of the world instead of walking down the street and actually feeding food to the poor and homeless. We spend our Sunday nights brainstorming ways to get sinners in the door of our church instead of leaving and going to be friends with people who don't believe the same as us. We live the Christian life within the church walls and within our church friendships but when it comes to people who don't believe the same as us (be that politically or spiritually or ethically), we forget how to interact with other human beings. I think why I love this message so much is because I went to a women's conference in Woodbridge this past weekend that was about exactly this. Jen Hatmaker - who by the way is incredibly awesome - talked about this topic most of the conference; we need to just be friends with the people around us. We need to literally love our neighbors, and not have any kind of agenda or mission or anything at all other than genuinely being friends with them. Not because we are waiting for that moment to ask them to church, but because we honestly and deeply care for them as human beings. Both Don and Jen talk a lot about how incredible it would be if we loved the nonChristians in our lives the same way we love the Christians. You had surgery? A baby? You're out of town? Here are some cookies, a casserole, and I'll mow your lawn. How simple is that? How stinking easy is that? It's not rocket science, and it's not hard. It's what Jesus did, and it's how Jesus loved people.

Gold star, Don. And two thumbs up.

Another Reading Goal

I know, I already have a couple of huge reading goals going on right now. Between the 94 Book Challenge and my New Year's goal of reading 40 books this year, I'm keeping myself fairly busy with all the books I want to read. But this new challenge is really small, and it fits nicely within my goal of reading 40 books this year. So I'm adding it.

I saw this link this morning, listing books that are going to be turned into movies this year, and I think I've seen it before but didn't bother to look at it until this morning when I was avoiding getting out of my warm bed. I've already read quite a few of the books on the list (The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent, The Giver, The Maze Runner), and some of them don't really interest me all that much (I'm really excited about the movie The Monuments Men but I just can't read about war), but some of them really do. There's a handful of those 16 books listed that I would definitely want to read before I see the movie, so I want to do so. (I'm also adding The Book Thief to the list because I really need to read it and would prefer to before seeing the movie.) So, a new challenge. And also now you see how it fits within my goal to read 40 books this year, especially since I already own Unbreakable and it's on my 94 Book Challenge. Happiness all around.

Here are the books that make up the Book-to-Movie Challenge (because every challenge ought to have a not-so-clever name):

Labor Day, written by Joyce Maynard
A Long Way Down, written by Nick Hornby
Dark Place, written by Gillian Flynn
This is Where I Leave You, written by Jonathan Tropper
Gone Girl, written by Gillian Flynn
Unbroken, written by Laura Hillenbrand
Wild, written by Cheryl Strayed
Serena, written by Ron Rash
The Book Thief, written by Markus Zusak

I'm not necessarily saying that my goal is to read all of these books by the end of the year, just that I read them before I see the movie. And I'm not someone who goes to the movies often (hardly ever) so I'm not too worried or stressed about this one. I'll just pick away at them and see the film version at some point.

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu: a brief review

I got some great new books off my wish list for Christmas, and I can't wait to read them. But I finished my last book, The Notebook, in the middle of college bowl season and guys...I'm gonna be honest. I love the NFL. I could - and have - watched the NFL all day. There are times I'm not in the mood because I don't care about either team playing, but for the most part I love it. But I married a man who loves both the NFL and college ball, and I'm not sure how to handle that. I don't know the players, I don't know the commentators, I don't have any strong opinions about the teams...it's like a foreign language to me. So I'm thankful that I have a husband who doesn't get bothered if I read a book while he has a bowl game on. The point is to be together, after all. All of that being said: I didn't feel like picking up Blue Like Jazz or Love Does or even the new Percy book in the middle of bowl season. So I picked up this random book that had been given to me when I was teaching instead.

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu is Wendy Wan-Long Shang's first book for young adults and I have to say it's pretty cute. It's not the absolute best writing I've ever read, and it's not the most earth-shattering plot in the world, but it's good. It's sweet. It is a little long but it's an easy read, which was great for both bowl season and a 2.5 hour wait at the GMC dealer.

Lucy is excited that her older sister, perfect daughter with straight A's and love for their Chinese heritage and culture, is finally going to college and leaving her their room. She's already planned all the decorating and is looking forward to her "perfect year" when her parents announce that a distant relative they've never met is going to be staying with them for a few months. The worst part is that this stranger will be joining Lucy as a roommate in her newly acquired room. Meanwhile, Lucy's parents are insisting that she quit the basketball team and attend Chinese school instead...something she is really not excited about.

Even though there are moments within the plot that are predictable, it's overall a really cute and endearing story. Lucy matures quite a bit throughout the story, but her initial reactions to the circumstances around her are natural (and understandable, since she's only 11). The growth in the relationship between Lucy and her roommate is the best part; it's a great little story about our first impressions rarely being enough to make a judgement about someone else. And as an added bonus, it's also a story about how cruel kids can be to each other sometimes, and the importance of friends and family to get through those times.

The Struggle

I shared during my New Year's goals post that I've been working on writing a novel. I realized I wanted to write this book two and a half years ago, I started writing it a year ago, and I picked it up really seriously again a couple months ago. My original goal was to finish it in November as part of a sort-of-kind-of NaNoWriMo thing, and when that didn't seem quite possible anymore I decided Christmas would be my deadline so I could give the first draft to my dad as his gift. Well, Dad still got everything that's been written, but it's far from done. I'm still loving the process and loving the possibilities of what may or may not happen with this thing someday, but I'm feeling some of the weight of it all today and I needed to be vulnerable and transparent for a few minutes about it. Mostly just because I like transparency and not because I have some profound point at the end.

I'm not working right now. I haven't had a job - other than once a week child care at a church that's only a couple hours at a time - since I stopped teaching a year and a half ago. That makes it seem (to both me and you) like it should be super duper easy to find time to write a novel. Just make it my full time stay-at-home job and write all day long. Every day. And that's kind of what I have envisioned, and continue to envision even though I've been doing this for a couple months now and that has yet to be reality.

Reality looks more like this.

I woke up this morning and started my day. I only had a couple of things to do and then I could write, so I tried to jump right in and get them done. I fed the dogs, but they were whining at me even though hubs had let them out to pee not a half hour earlier so I took them out again. Captain's leg is broken so I have to be outside with him on the leash every time, and he had to circle the yard to poop twice and pee once this morning, which took a while. I also decided to try to take advantage of the fact that I was already outside to carry some firewood to the deck from the shed, which took a few extra minutes since I was balancing a full armload and Captain on the end of a very stretched leash. We came inside, and I made coffee and breakfast. I just wanted to sit long enough to drink my coffee before attacking the to-do list, but the fire in the fire place wouldn't light no matter how hard I tried and about an hour passed before it finally got going. (Not lighting it wasn't an option because our heater is waiting to be fixed and the house is rather chilly.) By that time my coffee was cold so I reheated it and tried again. But then Captain was whining at me because he's miserable in the house and I was yelling at him to leave me alone and my relaxing cup of coffee wasn't really all that relaxing. So I went into the kitchen and did a bunch of dishes leftover from a spontaneous, late-night baking adventure last night, stopping every six minutes or so to go stoke the fire to keep it alive. Captain still hadn't quite whining at me so I took him out again. I brought more firewood inside, got the fire going really big so I could go take a shower without it dying out, then walked back into the kitchen and saw the stuff on the counter that meant I needed to get the chili for tonight's dinner in the crock pot. So I cut up the tomatoes and the pepper and put in all the ingredients. Then the dishes I'd just used annoyed me sitting in the sink since I'd just done the dishes so I washed them. I got the fire going big again and went to take my shower. Then I cleaned our bathroom and the main bathrooms, while ducking out to the living room a couple times to keep the fire going. By then it was 12:45, and I remembered that I hadn't eaten lunch so I sat down and ate something. I cleaned up lunch, took Captain out again, refilled the fire wood again, and had to spend a few minutes reviving the fire which had mysteriously died. I sat on the couch with my Bible and journal and spent some time in the Word. And now it's 1:55 and I'm spending a few minutes writing this before I finally get to the book.

I'm not meaning to complain about any of this. I think it might be coming across that way, but that's honestly not my intention. My intention is to say that it's never as easy as just sitting in a chair and writing a novel all day long, and not having any distractions. I think if I crated my dog and left to sit in a coffee shop eight hours a day I'd be able to pull that off, but I don't really see how that's necessary. I don't have a traditional job during the day, but I forget sometimes that my house is my full time job. I do still have to do the dishes and clean the bathrooms and make dinner and keep the fire alive and take the dog outside and deal with his cabin fever when we're inside. It's just not as easy as I thought (assumed?) it would be, and I'm learning how to be okay with that. Rather than get frustrated with how my real and actual responsibilities are getting in the way of a hobby I would like to pursue, I'm learning how to roll with it and use the time I have. Because the truth is, I'm really excited about this book. I'm enjoying it a lot. I spend a lot of time thinking and processing and revising what I've already written and figuring out what and how to write what I haven't yet. I'm excited to see what happens, even if it's just that I get to say that I wrote a book and nothing else. Something like that can't be rushed, and it can't be forced, and it certainly isn't worth letting your house go to crap because you spend all your time writing and not maintaining. We still have to eat, the house still needs to be cleaned, the clothes still need to be cleaned, and the dogs still need to pee.

Honestly, this post is more for me than anyone else. It's a rambling mess, I know. And I'm sorry about that. I just needed to sort through some of my reality-versus-expectation frustrations, and to see that it's not Captain's fault this book isn't done yet. Or the bathrooms'. Or the dishes'. It's just reality.

Now that I've said all that...I'm going to write for a while. (After stoking the fire.)

The Notebook: a brief review

I have to explain (confess?) a small something about myself before I give this review. I've always had a small aversion to and resistance toward Nicholas Sparks and all his literary and cinematic glory. I had always seen him as a little cheesy and a lot predictable, and much more of a guilty pleasure than a legitimate choice. This opinion was confirmed and encouraged in one of my college lit classes when we were asked on day one of class to list all the southern authors we could think of and one girl said "Nicholas Sparks" while barely keeping her laughter in. The rest of the class laughed along and the professor said something along the lines of "I suppose we can put him on our list although he's hardly an author." I think it was probably that moment that taught me that I was supposed to be embarrassed at the idea of liking one of his books. And yet, here I am, having just closed the last page of The Notebook and I genuinely enjoyed it. So take that, girl in that college lit class. I'm done being a Sparks snob.

My other small confession is that it's going to be really hard to review the book without at least thinking of the movie. Almost impossible, actually, since I've seen the movie about twenty times. But I'll try.

Noah and Allie met as teenagers when her family was in town for a summer. She came from southern royalty and he was from a more humble upbringing, but their love came fast and intense. When the summer ended and they had to part ways, circumstances and some devious interventions from her parents ended their relationship as well. After many years of silence they are reunited, except this time she's engaged to someone else.

This is a beautiful story of Noah and Allie's love. There is that little issue of Allie's engagement to nice guy Lon, but I think the weight of her decision is handled well and fairly realistically. Spark's writing is lovely, and the story flows well. His descriptions of scenes from their past are simple yet detailed enough to give the reader a complete picture of everything that took place. The love between the two is passionate (as is one slightly graphic scene detailing that love) and deeply rooted. (Small spoilers ahead but I'm working with the assumption that most people have seen the movie.) In the end, the descriptions of Noah's  love for Allie even in the face of horrible mental disease are heartbreaking, a little terrifying, and oddly comforting. There's no doubt that this book is wonderful.

But...but I just can't help but compare it to the movie a little bit. And my honest opinion is that the movie did a better job fleshing out the characters than the book did. I really think that the Noah and Allie were characters that worked in my head because I had the images of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in my head the whole time, and not because they worked as characters on their own. It was almost as if they would have been strangers to me without the foreknowledge of the movie. I think a huge part of this is because the book starts with Allie's return to Noah's house and moves forward from there, whereas in the movie this is one of the closing scenes. In the book, the couple's entire relationship is told as not-very-detailed flashbacks whereas in the movie the entire plot is that relationship. I knew those characters' personalities in the movie, but I think the only reason why I knew them in the book was because I was inserting scenes from the movie into my understanding of them. Maybe this isn't Spark's fault and I was setting myself up for this by watching the movie first...but maybe the character development just isn't as good in the book as it is in the movie. I honestly don't know, but either way I did like it a lot, and I did cry at all the right places. Mr. Sparks, you're officially on my radar for the future.

PS: I think it would be rude of me, considering my bashing of Sparks in the first paragraph, to not say that I genuinely love The Last Song. Not the movie, because the movie is absolutely unwatchable horrible, but the book is great. I love it. I don't know why that wasn't enough for me to turn from my snobbish ways...but I guess he's got me now.