What are you Full of?

What comes to mind when you think of Full?  Do you see things as "the glass is half empty, or half full?"....

Looking over the last few months I realize that I am learning to live life day by day and truly appreciate every blessing down to the tiniest.  There's something about uncertainty that really can magnify things in your life.  Are you looking for the blessings and realizing how full your life is of truly magnificent wonder, or are you always looking for the next thing, wanting something new, craving something you feel is better than what you already have?  Culture seems to say that everything revolves around self and that you should never be "satisfied" with what you have, creating this atmosphere of unrest and unhappiness that will never be satisfied.  

I'm by no means perfect and don't do this as much as I should, but having a purposeful mindset to look and seek out the blessings and truly realize how full my life is with God's mercy and blessing really helps me in my daily journey.  It is an action, not just something to conjure up...something you ask God for help with, get a journal to write them down, talk with your friend and have someone there to remind you even when things don't seem great that there are still so many blessings to come as God can use any situation even the mucky ones.

What do you fill your life with....your mind with?  Are you choosing to be purposeful or are you just riding the wave as far as it will take you, with no thought about where you'll end up and missing out on all the little joys?  Are you choosing things that really truly make life full or empty hollow things that will never fill the void every one of us has?

This is part of Five Minute Friday, I'm linking up over at The Gypsy Mama

Make your own buttons!!!

These are really awesome, and if I ever get a minute and the supplies I'm totally doing this!

It would be a fun project for older kids too and then you can preserve their artwork too!

Hop over Here and check it out!

Five Minutes Of Grateful

Here's all the info over at The Gypsy Mama's page!  

This week is all about Grateful for Five Minutes....

Have you ever really thought about what you are truly grateful for? Really chewed on it and mulled it over for a bit?  

We tell our children all the time that they should be grateful for things...if they're not grateful then they might as well not have the thing.  Is gratefulness and attitude of the heart or an action word?

I really wish we as a society would learn to be grateful...how many times I've heard that we need a bigger house from "strangers" because we "only" have a 3 bedroom house and we've got 5 kids....we do just fine with what God's given us provided we have the right perspective.  Moving to a bigger house just makes more room for more "stuff" that needs taken care of and therefore uses time that we could be spending on much more important things like playing with our kiddo's, having people over, helping someone else or whatever God sets in our path.  

I've been pondering lately about how there's almost always a blessing to be grateful for in every situation, whether the situation is fantastic or really not too great.  If it's great you really don't have to look to hard, but the worse the situation is the harder you have to look but even if it's just that God's there with you holding you through the muck that is still a blessing.  The muck makes you ever more grateful for the better things that come as well.

I am so grateful for the blessing of a wonderful hubby and 5 littles, especially "bean" who is finally growing and smiling lots and doing so much better!

It's your turn, leave me a link so I can swing by your "place" for a visit! 

Embroidery Hoop Wall Art....Mini How To

So, I've seen tutorials/pics for these in quite a few places and have been "collecting" embroidery hoops for my own set of them.  I just pick them up at the thrifts store when I see them, usually for 30 cents up to 1.99.  I finally had enough to get a good start and a few minutes to throw it all together.  

Do you have fabric in your "stash" that you love but never gets made into anything...maybe you like it a bit too much?  Or is that just me, ha.  Here's what I put together, and I think I need to find some more itty bitty ones and one more big one to balance my wall out....we'll see.  

Really, I didn't do a whole tutorial, more likes tips and tricks, cause all you need to do is google embroidery hoop wall art and you can have pages and pages of tutes, how to's, for sale and such.

 This is my wall after I took all the pics off of it I had hanging and patched and painted...just excuse the mess on the back of the couch please {:o)

Those are all the pics I had on the wall that I moved to the stairwell, ha!

I missed taking pics of spray painting the outside hoops.... you can choose to leave the hoops alone, but I got them from the thrift store so the dark paint covered up marks and prices and such, and also made them all the same tone.  Take the screws/bolts out of the tops and the inside hoops out before you spray paint them....

Those are the "insides" and the bolts and such.  I missed the stretching of the fabric too, but it's pretty self explanatory....just stretch the fabric in between the outside and inside hoops and tighten the bolt and keep doing that till your fabric is taught  and then trim the excess off around the backside

For some reason I couldn't get a decent pic of the whole wall...or at least one that showed some of the detail of the fabrics so I took two...one of the right half....

and one of the left....

I pushed the inside hoop beyond the outside edge, as shown in this pic cause it helped curve the excess around the back in toward the center of the hoop....plus I just like how it looks

I just hung the first one in the "middle" (over the biggest patch in the wall, ha) and then branched out with no rhyme or reason really, although I tried to keep the color scheme balances a bit.

Would be fun to get like 25 small ones and do a square grid of  5 rows of 5 in different fabrics!

Or get 4 big/small ones and 5 of the other size and alternate in a straight line vertically or horizontally...

Have you done this?  If you have, or do, send me a link so I can come see!!!

You Are Welcome

Crazy to think the week has flown, seems like just yesterday I wrote about wonder...oh well, life's been crazy at our house for a while now and I'm just trying to go with the flow!  I do have pics of some tutorial type things taken I just have to find time to do the blog posts, hopefully I can get to them next week.  In the mean time I'm joining in again over on five minute friday and this weeks theme is Welcome.  

Hop on over Here and check out the rules and such and join in the fun!

Here we go:

I am always amazed to think of how God welcomes us all into His family whenever we decide we are ready.  He knit us together and formed us, had dreams and plans for us before we were ever created.  He loves each more than anyone could fathom and is with us ever step of every day walking along on our life journey, if we let Him. 

He cries with us and loves on us, He finds joy in us and give us wonderful blessings, He will always be there through thick and thin.  Even when we decide we don't "need" His help, He waits patiently ready to extend grace and mercy and Welcome us back into a loving relationship with Him.

Even in the middle of the muck when it doesn't "feel" like he's there, when you can't see His hand in whatever is going on, He says be still and know that I am still here, through all things I can bring glory, I love you and am with you even when you can't see to put one foot in front of the other I am here to guide you. 

Time's up...leave me a link to your five minutes so I can come visit!