28 Dec
For our friends… from Michelle Howell on Vimeo.
Thank you for becoming more than a community to us…you are our family. We have been so blessed this past year and cannot wait to share our futures with you. Watch the video to the end for a special announcement!
14 Nov
Interested in slowing down and enjoying this Christmas season?
Watch This Video
One of the ways that our family is slowing down, spending more time together and putting our focus on our savior’s birth is by making gifts for those we love. We are upcycling some of our favorite things into something special and new.
Preheat Oven to 200 degrees. Peel and Break Crayons.
Spray pan with cooking spray. Fill to the top with broken crayons.
Place in oven until crayons are melted. You may have to add a few crayons.
Allow crayons to cool and seperate from pan.
Kids love banging the crayons out of the pan!
Put a smile on someone’s face!
Any t-shirt will work. Find an item you would like to scan or a photo from the internet.
Print the image (you can always increase or decrease the size)
Cut out the image
Use template to cut out felt patterns. Add embellishments if you want.
Sew onto the shirt with embroidery floss.
Other Shirt Ideas
I am sure that washing on a delicate cycle or by hand would be the best method. But we just throw all of our clothes into the same wash with no problem!
Select an item to upcycle into a clock…the possibilities really are endless. You can buy clock mechanisms for around $5 or use one out of a used clock (goodwill and grandma’s attic have them for less than $1)
Remove the clock mechanism, the pieces just pop apart!
Use the center of the old clock to determine which size drill bit to use.
If making a book and you want it to close, you can cut a square out for the base of the clock mechanism.
Snap all of the pieces back into place. You have a clock!
Coming Soon!
Buy & Sell on Ebay
Thrifting for Gifts
Have Kids and Save Money
5 Oct
There are some things in life that are so simple that we just suppose they aren’t as good as the more complicated, expensive, and artificially made. I had this recipe for laundry detergent for a long, long time but just kept waiting to take the plunge. But once I did I can’t tell you how excited I was to be able to save on detergent and stop lugging those huge containers in on grocery day!
Here’s the recipe. Warning: please do not eat.
5 Gallon Bucket
Three Gallons Hot Water-straight from the tap
1/2 cup of Borax
1 Cup Washing Soda
1 Bar of Soap (you can use scented or scent free)
Step One: On your stovetop heat 4 cups of water and shave the bar of soap slowly into the water until it is dissolved (keep the water below boiling).
Step Two: Add this mixture to three gallons of hot water using your 5 gallon bucket.
Step Three: Add the Borax and Washing Soda
Step Four: Let it sit overnight.
Use about 1 Cup per load. You can also use 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar (added to the fabric softener dispenser) to rinse water for a squeaky clean wash.
Cost: 3 cents per load (compared to 30 cents for store brands)
Don’t have a 5 gallon bucket or a place to store one? Don’t want to cook soap on your stovetop? You can also try this super quick and easy dry soap method.
Just combine 4 cups of soap flakes, 2 cups of washing soda and 2 cups of Borax in a glass jar with a lid.
Want to make up a Free & Clear detergent for towels, cloth diapers, children’s clothes but need some “good” scent for your husbands work clothes?
Just add a small amount of sweet or spicy essential oils to detergent for that load!
And just a side note: this detergent will not be sudsy like store bought detergent.
29 Sep
I love how Beth Moore’s brain works, I imagine it is a lot like mine, except that I don’t have all of those scriptures floating around in there, although I am working on that…very…slowly…working on that. It gives me hope to compare my life experiences to those in the bible that messed up but saw God at work in their life. Reminds me that I am flesh and all of the people around me are flesh. The truth is that we screw up, hurt each other, struggle to make up and then usually do it all over again. The problem is that if you stay in the cycle of defeat you may find deliverance as Moses did, but you will never get to the promised land-your Gilgal, as the Israelites finally did after decades of defeat.
Nathan and I have recently found our Gilgal and while I know we won’t be permanently residing here, I do believe that God has given us the answers so we can finally pass the test. He wants us to live our marriage the way he designed it.
Now I have to add that Nathan and I have a wonderfully blessed marriage. We work really hard to meet each others needs and are very focused on keeping our priorities straight. But the truth is that we both came to our marriage as, well, humans. Our own selfishness and limitations can and do rise to the surface from time to time. Like most couples, I imagine, we have periods of greatness where everything seems to be going really well. We are communicating with each other like civilized adults, spend lots of time snuggling, catching each others eye from the other side of the room.
And then…
You know what happens. Someone gets their feelings hurt (usually me), or someone gets the bank statement (not usually me) and things just aren’t as peachy anymore. It’s amazing how quickly this can happen too. All of a sudden I am doing my regular chores with the energy of a triathlon and the attitude of a three year old. And at this point anything he says is going to make me upset. We were both failing the test.
While we did have more days in that state of marital bliss we did have more days than we would like to admit in the (D-) category. One morning when we were not communicating very well we both stood there staring at each other. We didn’t want to hurt each other so we both realized that we better not say anything at all. We were at a moment of testing, but we didn’t want to fail anymore. We wanted to believe, in each other, in what God wanted for us. We both prayed to ourselves and God showed up.
So we found ourselves days from our 7th anniversary going to marriage counseling at our church. We discovered what we already knew. Men and women are different and that is okay, God created us that way. We were given the tools (answers to the test) to communicate in a healthy way. And told that it would be hard at first and require a lot of practice, again we figure that would be the case.
But then we were told something that we had not really thought about before. As we have been chugging along in life we weren’t exactly headed in the same direction. I was headed North at warp speed and Nathan was enjoying a slow stroll South. We needed to decide where we wanted to go together as a couple and as a family. So together we worked on our goals and plans for the future. We shared the life experiences that we hoped to have and the things we didn’t want to miss on the journey. We talked, cried, shared our biggest hopes and dreams. As partners in our marriage we created a roadmap in which we can direct every decision, commitment and activity of our lives. And on our 7th anniversary Nathan hand wrote the Howell Family Vision and brought it to me with a bouquet of flowers. We had found directions to our Gilgal.
Only As God brings us full circle and breaks the cycle of failure we have been working on for so long can we finally start believing in Gods ability to work in our marriages. We begin to see what he originally intended for man and wife and that he must be the center of our marriage for us to get there. Now we won’t always be in Gilgal, I realize that, but now that we have seen it and have the map to get there we can come back more quickly than ever before.
25 Sep
I have met a couple of very dear friends through the internet, mostly through my original blog {fresh floral art}. While I realize that the internet is not a place to seek and invest great amounts of time on friendships I do believe that God brings people together, even online. My friend Sarah is one of those people. We challenge one another, pray for each others children and provide honest feedback for each other when we need it. While we may never meet IRL (in real life), we look forward to the day when we greet each other in heaven and chat about our homeschooling ventures over coffee (that’s how it plays out in our head anyway).
Sarah is my friend I go to when I am trying to streamline and organize my life. Her latest advice came from a need for a simple way for me and the kids to study the bible every day. Through the bible with my child is the perfect addition to our curriculum. It is set up so that you study the entire bible every four years and it can be repeated several times during a child’s homeschool experience. It also includes questions and writing supplements. While I may order the book so I can hold it in my hands, I started by downloading it HERE.
17 Sep
Nathan and I have been talking a lot about community. While we both have family nearby we have longed and prayed for a group of people that we can share life with on an intimate, christ centered way. And you know our God, we pray, and when it is his will, he answers. When we were asked to attend a small church on the edge of town in place of our much larger church we were not exactly sure how we felt about that. You know how it is, you attend the same church for a long time, each and every Sunday. Enter the same door, talk to the same people, sit in the same pew…
Praise God that his plan is much bigger than ours! That small, intimate church has become such an important part of our lives. It is more than a Sunday morning worship experience, its a collection of real people who love God and it shows. We come early, worship together, stay late and meet up during the week. We know each others names. If you aren’t there on a Sunday morning, someone notices.
So our prayers continued that God would give us a group of people that we could connect with, share with, live with. It happened slowly, but we feel that God carefully drew a group of people together that needed each other.
The twelve disciples were followers of Jesus whom he had chosen to become his core group, the people he talked things over with and depended on. Just as Jesus continued to share the good news with others wherever he went, he needed that smaller community to be himself. We believe that God wants that for us too. That is what we prayed for and what God provided for us in the most beautiful way.
15 Sep
…at the Goodwill again. I have been saying that a lot lately. God Came Calling is something my great grandmother would say when she would receive a blessing or answered prayer. She would say “God Came Calling” and I would come waiting to hear what magnificent thing God had done in her life. Most often it was a 2/1 deal at the save-a-lot or the extra checks she had ordered from the bank arrived a day earlier than she had expected. But what God Came Calling with wasn’t as important as the fact that GOD CAME CALLING. He comes in the huge and tiny, powerful and gentle, moments of miracles and moments of silence.
There are a few reasons why I shop at Goodwill.
It is right by my house, cheap and I like the hunt.
God always blesses us with something we really need.
But the other reason is that God always puts someone in our path that we can bless. When Carter and I go by ourselves he heads right over to housewares because he is drawn to the older men that are standing around talking, discussing the weather, electronics, or the economy (he also knows that there are usually a few toys there too). He has one liners for these older men like “do you have a tractor”, “are you a grandpa”, “Goodwill is cool isn’t it”. You know, all the normal things a 5 year old says to a male stranger at the Goodwill. But the truth is that God uses Carter to bless these men. There also times that I take all three kiddos with me to the Goodwill, which is minor miracle in itself. And Elizabeth is equally as chatty with many of the people who are obviously needing some love, while the baby strapped on my back always makes someone’s day. Shopping at Goodwill is more than simply buying cheap stuff. It is an experience that I can provide for my children and the people shopping there. We come through the door like a tumbleweed in a cowboy movie, stick around, make people laugh, and always leave praying for others.
God may have some rocky paths planned for us in the future because he keeps blessing us with shoes. A couple of weeks ago the men at our church were getting together to play some basketball. I wanted to go because I love, love, love my church family and they have become our community. But Nathan just wanted to spend time as a family, equally important so I didn’t think more about it. We went fishing and stopped by church on our way home. The boys were still playing ball so we stopped and Nathan ended up playing in his dress shoes. It didn’t occur to me until that night that Nathan didn’t have any tennis shoes. And because he is very selfless, and a little cheap, he didn’t want to spend money on shoes for himself. So I guess you have already guessed what I found at the Goodwill.
A gently used pair of size 12 New Balance tennis shoes.
Praise God. And I must add that Nathan needed God to come calling with something just for him. You know, God loves us like that. He wants to provide for our needs, but we have to let our needs last longer than a trip to the Target or a click of the mouse.
10 Sep
There once was a girl on the floor,
Who seldom thought blocks were a bore.
She hid away to read Berry,
Then mommy snuck up not to scary.
And the girl laughed out with a roar.
28 Aug
Our church is doing an amazing study on how your life would change if you only had 30 days to live. I believe that we all have moments when we feel more connected to the reality of our death, but most of the time we are just living life (eating, pooping, sleeping, driving, working, talking on the phone, searching the web, watching tv, planning our next day).
My mother and I were very blessed through the pain of her illness and healing of our mutual survival. She has been given 6 months to live so many times that when we speak those words we do it with a chuckle. But the truth is that when you hear a doctor tell you that you may die, will probably die, in the next 6 months you begin to evaluate your life. Praise God that I was given this wake up call early in my life because it gave me a realistic view, Godly view is a better description, of my time here on earth. I have always viewed my time here as very short, like a vacation to a wonderful place, but not like home. And that realistic understanding of our time on earth can only come through the holy spirit as a gift from God.
As a young child we believed the doctors, always question what you believe to be true, and we were always evaluating our circumstances and discussing what we would do if mom died. I learned to dial 911 early in life in case I found my mother not breathing. If mom started to appear like she was having a brain bleed I had specific things to do to take care of her. There was talk about where I would go if she was in the hospital, went into rehabilitation or died. I remember at the age of 6 my grandparents came out to California, stayed a week, gave me all of these instructions and then went back home. Truth is that there were days that I prayed God would let me go to heaven with my mom or that he would go ahead and take her so I could find a permanent home here on earth.
Between the ages of 10 and 20 my mom refused to go to the doctors. She just believed that she would live and I believed that too. Talk about a faith that works! She decided that she was going to focus our lives on God and that we both had specific work that needed to be done for him. She would tell others her story and they would say the same. There were days that I just wanted to live like everyone else around us, just be. But most of the time God would intervene and remind me that we are not here just to live, we are here to save. And because I have to be reminded of this often and in substantial ways, I faced my own doctors and talks of death when I was pregnant with Carter. How odd it is that I grew up praying I would not have the same illness as my mother and was always reassured it was not genetic. And later found out that it was genetic, that I had it and that the doctors did not know what to do. Of course, God heals and new studies proved that a baby aspirin can and does save. How amazing that when the fears of my childhood became reality God filled me with an overwhelming peace so powerful that it saved my husband.
I was reminded of all of this today on a visit to the butterfly house. There was a butterfly caught in a spiders web. Carter asked if we could save it, take it out of the web. But as I looked at the butterfly and noticed his legs were broken I knew that taking it out of the web would not respect the circle of life. What an awesome visual to teach how fragile life is and how the circle of life, created by God, is beautiful. We talked about it again this morning. How God created that butterfly for many things. Our enjoyment in watching those beautiful creatures emerge from a caterpillar is an important part of their life. But feeding spiders is another very meaningful part of their life and, of course, death. I share this with my children because I do not want them to fear death. For if they fear death they will not live. If they do not live, they can not save.
15 Aug
