My favorite time of the year….time to focus on family, on love, on giving…
…on our Savior.
Time to take a bit of a blog break and revel in the homey Christmas joys I love so very much.
Wishing you and yours the most wonderful season of love at this Christmas time…and may you always remember the reason for it all.
See you in the New Year!
Julie
What’s the most important thing in all the world? Love, we’re told…
…and I do believe they’re right. There are so many kinds of love—the love for your spouse, a mother’s love, love for your parents, siblings & friends…
…we could go on & on. Love makes the world go round, right?
I wonder if we give those we love most the priority they deserve.
I wonder…
That’s certainly something I’m working on right now. Where am I spending the most time? What am I focusing on?
Are my priorities in line with what’s truly important???
Perhaps that’s why, subconsciously, the focus of my creativity has changed this last year or so…
I wonder…
A little less time, I’m finding, for things that are merely fluff. A little more time spent trying to look inside—trying, creatively, to put pen to paper in an effort to leave something lovely behind for those that will come long after I’m gone…
…something that reveals a bit of my heart. Something that will show the things that really matter to me.
First things first.
Julie
Just a couple of new pages to share with you today. Pages with more thoughts that have been jumbling around in my head…
One of my favorite little poems from a favorite poet~the words so gently beautiful~yet powerful at the same time…Hope.
And with that hope, that hope that when moments come for me to stand up and do what I need to do, that I will. I will keep hoping…
Wishing you beautiful moments of peace and hope this week.
Julie
Just a day. Isn’t it amazing how a day—a moment—can stay alive in your memory from your earliest days? There may not have been anything momentous about that moment, but it stays…it just stays.
My memory, I’m sure, is helped along by the pictures that were snapped in those moments by my father, but I remember. I remember the feel of the concrete steps on my bare little legs. I remember a feeling. I remember love…
I love the contentment I see in my little-girl self’s face. I love my hand wrapped around my beautiful, young mother’s arm as she leans close to give me a sweet mother’s kiss…moments….
Just a moment in time. My time…my moment…made all the more precious by the love I see in these captured moments and the love that was—and is still—given.
Julie
Decisions, decisions…everyday we’re faced with having to decide…Some decisions are fanciful--
--mere dreamy things we think about, sing about—or they might be more serious things…
…now or later? Patient or not so much?
Sometimes it’s a choice between what’s good now and what would be better for us in the future…
But, whatever it is, sometimes we just have to buckle down & make a choice--
--and then dream of stars and moons and other such lovely things...
Julie
I’m getting the urge to pick up my stitching again….it’s been such a long time! When my vision changed—once again—it just got frustrating. But, with time, as always happens, I’ve adapted. I’m ready.
I’m excited!
Cross-stitch, needlepoint…I’m just yearning to pull out old patterns & piles, needles & hoops. And crazy quilting—one of my biggest stitchy dreams! And my last-remaining-daughter-at-home is under fair warning: she will soon be learning the needleworker’s art…
As I’m thinking & anticipating, my thoughts turned to one of my great-great-grandmothers, as my thoughts often do…
Born in Denmark in 1854, Augusta Maria lived a pretty comfortable life. The daughter of a fairly well-to-do cabinetmaker, she had a few—not too many—but a few gentle privileges. She was sent to a private school for young ladies, and learned the art of making fine ladies’ gloves, and became a good seamstress, which were skills she used throughout her life.
When she was just 16 years old, she married my great-great-grandfather, an American who was in Denmark for a time teaching. She happily left the home she loved with the man she loved…never to return again.
When she arrived with him to his home in the “Wild West”, and saw the impoverished way (in comparison to what she had known) many of the women in his extended family were living, she sat her chest down on the ground, opened it up, and gave away most of her fine dresses and things away to those who were there to welcome her to her new home…
In the small town in northern Arizona, where Augusta lived most of her adult life and is buried, there’s a small family museum. In it are a few of her personal possessions…physical reminders of a lovely, gracious and quiet woman, who probably never—in her girlish imaginings—could have dreamed of the adventures her life would bring…
A small, beautiful chest made for Augusta when she was young by her grandfather, a noted Copenhagen cabinetmaker in the mid-1800’s…
…beautiful purple velvet lining the inside of the lovely box…
Another “treasure chest” made by the same grandfather, who was also a violinist in the King’s Orchestra in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen…filled with her simple woman’s treasures…
Her scrapbook from late Victorian through Edwardian times…I could only take a few pictures—since I technically wasn’t allowed to touch anything…just a couple of gentle touches (shhhh!)…
And best of all, her crazy quilt…
I found out that it had been passed on to my grandfather, and was in their family for quite a while…oh, how I’d love to have it gracing my sitting room at home! But, it’s in a place where many can love it where it is…
…delicate stitches…worn velvets and satins…beautifully embroidered monograms…flowers, animals, patterns…all stitched by the loving hands of a woman I never met…
…who has touched my life in more ways than I can imagine, through those invisible ties that bind us together.
Stitches in time. As my daughter and I sit and stitch together, I’ll be thinking of Augusta. I’ll probably share a story or two with my daughter as we work…ties that bind in beautiful, beautiful ways.
Julie
{The two needlework images at the top of my post were found on Pinterest.}
Do you ever—once in a while--really stop and really look at yourself when you’re standing there in the mirror?
Do you like what you see reflected there?
I’m not talking about the physical you—I’m talking about the you you see in your eyes. The inner you that’s looking out to the outer you….what is your soul trying to tell you?
Taking a moment, now and then, to take stock of ourselves is a very good thing, I think. Taking time to make improvements when we need to. Taking time to appreciate who we already are.
Taking time to see…
Taking time to stop and really appreciate what’s around us. What we’ve already been given. Slowing down…paying attention…
Taking time to listen to your heart.
Julie
Have you ever noticed that a person full of optimism—full of faith—is beautiful?
A positive attitude--a general happiness--I think, makes you glow…
…and that’s not a bad thing, is it?
Those that are loving, caring and tender-hearted are—to me—beautiful, as well…
…it doesn’t matter what their features are, they’re just beautiful.
That’s the kind of beauty you can’t get from cosmetics, from moisturizers…from anything….
…anything other than love.
Wishing you a heart filled with love…
Julie
