One Season to the Next....

Hello friends. I hope you all are doing well. It is a little cooler here than it has been. Mind you it is still very hot. I was able to take my first "walk" after surgery yesterday. I haven't gone yet today. I had a lot of office/church book work I had to do. I do not want to get behind in bookkeeping for the church. It is a beast already. 

Today marks the beginning of my third week. I can now walk 5-10 minutes on a flat surface this week. I can eventually build up to 15-20 minutes. I was thinking 10 minutes would be no biggie. THEN..... I started walking and realized 5 minutes was HARD. So, I will be taking my time for sure. 

I am shocked how much pressure I felt. It was actually very shocking. This was a sign that slow and steady is my lot right now. 

Today, I had a little more energy and I needed to get some office work and church bookkeeping accomplished. 

Lots of printing, scanning and recording! LOTS! It is all done and I am all caught up. I am so thankful!

Today, my heart is swelling with THANKSGIVING because the Lord answered TWO specific requests for me and my husband. We had some deeply personal prayers where we really needed a miracle for our youngest son Kyle (19) and he answered it. We still have ongoing prayers for him and a very serious prayer for this coming Thursday. I believe if He answered this one for today, He will answer for Thursday! My husband and I without realizing it was praying about the same thing for our daughter, Hannah (21) yesterday. Neither of us knew until this morning that we both had focus prayer time for her job and for her a raise yesterday. She works very hard and is the "face" for her orthodontist. She is the first person that people see when they go to a consultation for braces. Since she took the position, their patients have increased by 75 percent. She works very hard and always has a smile. Not only that she jumps in all areas that are needing help. She celebrated being there a year last week and they had told her when they hired her last year, she would be evaluated and possibly receive a raise which is MUCH NEEDED as a young lady trying to kick off young adulthood in these times. The Lord answered my husband and I (her too) and unbeknownst to her when she got into work today they blessed her with a raise. We are thankful. 

On to my Photo for the July Daily Photo Challenge! The theme is WORDS. I am sharing TWO today! 

The first photo is of my Thank You cards that you can color. I am having a lot of fun with them. I also do wax seals for letters and cards. I am so excited to get my seals and wax out after I color them to have some fun!

My second one is this lovely sign with the words Simplify on it. A statement by Henry Thoreau one of my favorite poets.  I admire him for being a naturalist. His love for nature and simple living is what drew me to his writings. 

A little story about this sign. I found this primitive sign about 21 years ago for $1 at a yard sale. This sign is so meaningful to me because when I came across it, I had begun to shift my life and was craving a slower and simpler pace for my then young family. I was going 90 miles an hour serving, volunteering, running a cleaning business and raising small children. I had a moment where I knew the Lord was calling me make some changes. Oh, That I did. I went to our Pastor (we were not pastoring at the time) and stepped down from all ministries I was heling in but for two areas that I felt the Lord wanted me to continue. I stepped down from many volunteer positions. I put my house cleaning business on hold. I started homeschooling our children, taking nature walks with them and on my own, reading and playing with them, we took naps, picnics, learned so much and had so much fun. I began to stop and smell the roses, learn how to simplify things, started thrifting, being a better steward with things we owned/had, decluttered our entire home and began having a hospitable home for slow and relaxing moments with friends and their children. Oh, we built so many memories and what a treasure those years were. This sign caught my eye right when I was kicking off my life of "simplicity." It has been hung in every single home we have lived in even if it doesn't really match the home. It will always have a place because it serves as a reminder the importance of a simple life for me.

Hello friends. I hope you all had a lovely weekend. Today I am sharing Sunday and Monday's photo challenge combined. Let's start with Sunday which was GRASS!

We have a lot of ornamental grasses in our yard for landscaping. I knew it would be the easiest form of grass I could capture. I love how it lines a little walk in our backyard.

Now on to TODAY'S CHALLENGE which is WHITE! This one was little trickier. I was trying to be creative. I have all kinds of white in my house from cabinetry, dishes and decor. Then I thought about how I love our white columns that our home has. So, I thought I would capture one of the columns surrounded by a lot of my plants!

I thought the photo turned out neat. If you would like to jump in the photo challenge is below. Just a reminder... this is not my creation. I found this with no link or information on Pinterest.

I hope you all have a wonderful day and week ahead. See you all tomorrow!

ALSOOOO... starting NEXT MONDAY, Mrs. Patsi from A Working Pantry will be starting the $5 Pantry Challenge. I will be sharing the weeks I participate on Mondays as well. For more information check it our HERE!

**BLOGGER ISSUES~ most of you are aware that blogger is having glitches or some issues that are not being fixed since May. I am not getting updates on some of the blogs I follow. I have to be intentional to check all the blogs because updates are not showing up in my feed. Especially, if you are WordPress or have your own website. I am trying to make my rounds and be intentional to see if blogs have new posts. Also, I feel that if I am having this problem then my new posts may not be updating. 

Unless I feel too bad or it's a weekend I will be posting regularly daily during the month of July for the photo challenge. That way you know I am actively daily posting. I love when you visit and comment. I love visiting your blogs too. Hopefully, blogger will fix itself soon.

With  Love,

Chrissy T

🎇 Hello everyone. I hope you all have had a lovely weekend so far. We had a nice day with our adult kiddos as well as their "significant others." Saturday's Photo Challenge was SPARKLE! Here is my ONE DECENT SPARKLE photo. You all this photo challenge will not be producing amazing photos. It is simply to give me a little fun thing to do while recovering from surgery. I am still pretty limited with movement, bending and lifting. So, my photos will be quite simple. 

Watermelon and corn dip was our pre dinner snacks. Clayton (Hannah's boyfriend above) made a delish corn dip. They are snacking away.



This is Carleigh (Kyle's girlfriend of 3 years) we are hiding from the bottle rockets in the garage. I eventually decided to sit in the driveway far back and enjoy seeing the full view of it all. 



We all giggled at this photo because it looks like Hannah is holding a light saber from Star Wars!



This picture is one my favorites. I love how they are all so into the fireworks! Kyle just had to get smoke bombs! LOL! His favorite! Yes, the four-wheeler had a little American rip down the road for celebration. I mean we are southern it is just the way things are done. 😆😅😏

 Hello everyone. I will be sharing my daily photo challenge of SPARKLE (todays) and GRASS (Sundays) tomorrow. 

Until then.... If you are from the USA... Happy Fourth of July! Let's take time to thank the Lord for blessing us to live in this country as well as prayers for our future as so much has changed in 250 years (not all for the best). No country is perfect and putting politics and other things aside we live in a BEAUTIFUL FREE nation, and I am thankful for that. 

This verse RIGHT HERE!!! Let this be our desire and purpose!!!!

With Love,

Chrissy T

🌞Hello everyone. I had a hard time today with this theme of FOOD. I can't cook really right now. I am truly at the mercy of others. 😇 I ate my normal eggs and bagel this morning and I wasn't going to share that AGAIN. My husband picked up these cookies for our family gathering tomorrow. I love these UNHEALTHY LITTLE things! 😏 Nonetheless... while it may not be healthy FOOD or really TRUE FOOD...😆 it will work for today! I ate it as an afternoon treat! 

 Hello everyone! Day 2 of the July Photo Challenge that I found on Pinterest is FLOWER!

I will say that I cannot just do ONE FLOWER!!! I mean HOW COULD I?!

I ate my breakfast (well....brunch) outside. I did eggs and a bagel again. It seems to just do my stomach well for now. I strolled over to my roses to capture their glory!

Here is the photo challenge list if you would like to join along on your own blog!

Now.... what is going on here? A little of this and that. I am really still limited with activity so it has been a lot of reading, coloring, blogging, resting, watching a little of this and that. Oh, I have also been doing my crossword puzzle book and sticker book fun. 

This week I worked on our seasonal newsletter for our ladies at our church. The theme is on Freedom, Fullness and Fruitfulness. It was a fun one to create, write and stuff the envelopes. I had to work on this a little at a time  every single day for energy sake. I did get them all mailed yesterday. I always put a little surprise in the envelopes. Winter/Spring I added a sticker verse and for Summer I did a neat tea bag bookmark with flowers embroidered on them.