Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern

This is the table arrangement for a wedding I helped cater not so very long ago.

Pattern for tranquil joy

The task, here, was to seat 30 for the rehearsal dinner, in a rather smaller dining area, while the bride’s helpers prepared the larger dining area for the reception the following day.

I was totally pleased with how it turned out. The wedding colors were brown and yellow and I love how the walls cooperated with this plan. The centerpieces are simple tissue paper flowers, homemade, but exuberant and joyful. The entire theme of the wedding was whimsical and fun, so these fit in with all the rest of the laughter.

In fact, the entire setting seemed to fit the pattern for this wedding: relaxed, inexpensive, whimsical, inviting,  joyful, and at the same time, calm. The symmetry I think helped to anchor all that explosion of yellow.

We began with little idea of how it would work, although we had measured the room, and figured the dynamics several times.

I think it worked.

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above

From Above

We almost always view these lovely creations from above, but lately, at night, I have seen the underside of this poor thing as it tried to batter itself through this screen into my house. I went outdoors in the morning and took a photo of it, knowing I would need it for the next photo challenge, and sure enough, I did.

I enjoy when this happens, when I “just know” I will need the photo for the future. That happened with the bear I photographed so long ago, and many other times.

Most of us look at most things from the upper side, from the more presentable side, from above. How few times we know anything of the underworkings, of the heart of a matter! No one can tell the moth spent hours battering itself to no avail. “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, you’ve seen, anyone has seen. We cannot know until we walk a mile in each others’ shoes. How the feet hurt!

Next time we look at a seeming beautiful exterior, let’s remember: There is another side.

Reach out to everyone you can. You will be surprised.

It’s Time.

Motivations regarded most important for homeschooling among parents in 2007. Source: 1.5 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2007 Issue Brief from Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. December 2008. NCES 2009–030 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

School is almost out for the year. That means it is time to look at your school choices.

Especially if you are unhappy with your collective school, you need to think about slipping out of that situation and readying yourself and your children for schooling at home. It will take you at least a month to convince yourself you can and should do this, and find a shoulder to cry on. (Just kidding.) Add another month to research and find curriculum. That leaves you one more month for organizing your life around a new normal.

You need to start now. Your curriculum company and your children will be grateful if you do not wait until the week before school begins, as too many other people do, to place your order, expecting it to arrive timely. Timely arrival follows timely ordering.

Okay.

With that in mind, I’d like to direct you to the homeschooling posts on this site, created just for you, for inspiring, motivating, guiding, and helping you make the transition. Oh, and if you just need a booster and wish someone would give the beginning lectures to you all over again, hey, help yourself to these! You are welcome!

Why we don’t want them there in the first place:

My Sweetest Homeschool Memories; 5 pages!

To help you with inspiration and motivation:

Traditional Education

From Infancy to the Four-Year-Old, begins here and continues for 3 more pages.

To guide your choices and other decisions:

What Homeschooling is Like; 2 pages.

Do NOT Try Homeschooling (a trick title, but you’ll like this); 3 pages.

Is There Life After Homeschool? Yes!

To help figure out what curriculum you need:

A 5-Page Curriculum Guide by an Unbiased Person (me) (I love them ALL! and I am not to be sold.)

Okay. There is a LOT more on this site. Just search “homeschool” in the red search box to the right and you will find all sorts of help.

Have fun!

And don’t forget: Home’s Cool!

A Glimpse into the Pit of Hell?

Note: No photos here, for obvious reasons. But they abound and they are sick.

“It’s 4:30 AM and I can’t sleep. I sit appalled and pierced after viewing the Fox special “See No Evil” last evening. Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s actions of a lifetime were laid open for the world to see. Americans were allowed to gaze at the horror and atrocities this man committed over the past thirty years. And I am sickened at the depth of this depravity.

“I will never forget the pictures of that baby—those babies—brutally murdered, then stored in a freezer by this doctor and those working in his clinic of evil.” Read more here.

We don’t watch TV, but I found info clear back in February of 2011, about these atrocities on yahoo, of all places. Read more here.

Related posts:

Disasters

Missing Persons

And Can it BE?

When will we have had enough? (It begins with us, sisters. It begins with you.)

Overheard: Forgive!

The preacher said:

Forgiveness is not a feeling.

What an amazing statement. How often we get hung up, seemingly crippled about forgiveness, thinking we cannot do it because we do not feel it!

And how liberating to realize it is not a feeling!

No, forgiveness is a command.

We must forgive, just as we must honor property rights. I don’t always FEEL LIKE allowing my neighbor to keep his lovely flowers, but I must leave them in his yard. Digging them up is stealing.

I also do not always feel like forgiving, but I must. Holding someone in unforgiveness is sin, just as theft is.

For insight on how to forgive, look here.