By His Grace I Can.

This morning my hubby pulled up all the blinds to flood the main level with warm sunlight.  It's been a gloomy and rainy few days, and it's a welcome change. Cleaning is a regular part of every day.  Yet, usually there are things that I rarely get to because I don't have the time or energy to conquer them.   But today my hubby is on a kick deep cleaning the kitchen and it has energized me to take on some other neglected projects. Cue our large pane windows. I set out spraying and wiping down the interior side then hit the exterior.  I came back in and saw the grubby finger prints gone, but only replaced with big smudges from my cleaning rag.   OK, take two. I started again to wipe down the interior sides then went back outside to try again.  As I was wiping the exterior side, for a second, time and looking through the two sides of the glass, I got to thinking. Does it ever happen that we are perceiving a situation through "dirty windows"? (Love th...

This week I've been making some modifications to a dress.  Let's be honest, I am not really a seamstress.  Yes, I can successfully "sew" something, but if you look closely or turn it inside out, you'll see the... umm, mess process that got me there.   It's often not pretty. That being said, I had been working on this dress, feeling OK about how it was turning out.   Then last night--  an emotional bomb with off and with it an avalanche of deceptions .   This morning I sat back down to finish my modifications, feeling upset and angry about the situation.   I put some pins in place, sewed away, turned things right side out just to find that I had sewed through several layers of fabric instead of just the two.  Insert face palm. I should have known.  Don't sew mad. Now I have quite a bit of unstitching to do, and am crossing my fingers that I won't rip the fragile fabric. {To make things worse, several months ago, my son g...

Several hours after I gave birth to our most recent child, I was finally getting out of the hospital bed to get cleaned up.  It had been a rather traumatic birth and I had needed that time to hold my new son and let my body rest. I lifted off the hospital blanket and slowly eased my way to the edge of the bed.  I felt like a deflated balloon with no strength, stiff and sore, my tummy covered with stretch marks, both old and new.  The very first thoughts that came were of shame, weakness and ugliness. BUT I quickly countered them with my own-- how proud I was of my body, nine long months of discomfort and pain, all that it had endured to bring this baby in to the world.  What a miracle and blessing. Yesterday morning while sitting in bed nursing my baby, I caught a glimpse of myself from across the room in our bedroom mirror.  My messy bun had reached a new level of messiness, my two-day old mascara was amplifying the bags under my eyes and my shirt h...

My Grandpa was one to document everything.  Either by nurture or nature I inherited that same zeal.  Those who have been around me enough know that a picture is probably in order each time we hang out.  I am the self-proclaimed selfie queen.  On occasion for me a selfie is to document a good hair day or a day when I'm feeling extra beautiful, but in general it's because I want to remember so many of the tiny moments that make up my life.  Today in therapy we talked about the importance of identifying and saying how we feel.  Too often we subconsciously label a feeling as "bad" and repress it and glaze over it.  Without receiving the message that it intends to deliver, it will manifest in other times and other ways.   When I got home I had the thought to look through some of my selfies from the past several months and identify which feeling/feelings I caught with each snapshot.  I've gotten in the habit of not only documenti...

Click here for Video. After hearing that CHILDREN and teen suicide rates have greatly increased in the social media era--in large part because of the often unrealistic, perfect-seeming and unobtainable standards that are portrayed & shared--I made this video in an effort for me to personally be more authentic on social media for the people in my sphere of influence.  Recording in my PJs with a day old hairdo and makeup and giving a mini tour of my MESSY house contributed to those efforts ;0) As I mention in the video , I LOVE beautiful things.  I love designing cute invitations, throwing themed and coordinated events and decorating my house for each holiday and season.  It's easy for me to only post the beautiful, "perfect"-looking parts of my life.  But I desire to make positive waves with authenticity, to liberate myself from unobtainable standards and feel comfortable & confident in my skin AND to allow allow others to do the same. If you t...