5 Minute Friday: Look

I am writing this post as part of 5 Minute Friday.

Today's prompt is: Look

When I saw today's word I realized that the Bible has a lot to say about Looking.  Rather than writing my own frail words today, I would rather let God's Word speak for itself.  All I've done is organize it into sections.

1. Look to Jesus

Numbers 21:5-8  And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.  6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.  7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.  8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.

John 3:14-15  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:  15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

2. Look on the fields

John 4:35   Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.

Matthew 9:35-38  And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.  36 But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.  37 Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few;  38 Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

3. Look for the Blessed Hope

Titus 2:13  Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;

Luke 21:28  And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

Hebrews 9:28  So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

2 Peter 3:13-14  Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.  14 Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.

1 John 3:3   And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

Anti-Procrastination Challenge: Encouragement

We people like to focus on the negative sometimes, don't we?  When a restaurant gives us poor service, we take the time to write them an email or call to complain.

We will be sure to let others know what they did wrong, but sadly it's not nearly as often that we take the time to tell someone “Great job!”

If we're willing to take time out of our day to complain about something, let's make the time to be an encouragement to someone.

Find someone who does a lot of thankless, behind-the-scenes work at church or work, and let them know you've taken note and appreciate what they do.

Encourage someone who may be in the spotlight and everything they do is under scrutiny and is often criticized.  Build them up with your words while others may be tearing them down.

Seek out someone who is suffering through a trial and let them know that you're praying for them.

There are so many opportunities to be a blessing that we tend to overlook.  I challenge you to find one person today that you can be a blessing to through an encouraging word.

If you’re just joining the Anti-Procrastination challenge, you can take a look at all of the previous challenges I've posted here.  You may also want to subscribe to email updates or follow me on Facebook to receive each new challenge!

Homemade Laundry Detergent

How does using all natural laundry detergent, with no harmful chemicals added sound?  How does washing your clothes for $.007 per load sound?  (Yes, that's less than a penny per load.)

If you like the thought of that, keep reading and I'll tell you how I make my own laundry detergent without a lot of time or trouble.

There are a lot of different recipes out there for making your own laundry detergent.  As far as I know, they're all pretty easy to make, and extremely inexpensive.  Since I just got done making a batch, I thought I'd share my particular spin on the process.

Ingredients:

1 bar Kirk's Castile Soap

1/2 cup borax

1 cup washing soda

Most recipes call for Fels Naptha soap, but in my experience it doesn't do as good of a job cleaning our clothes as the castile soap does.  Plus, I don't know what's in that stuff, but I can't stand the smell of it!

Most of the recipes I've seen for liquid detergent call for you to make a humongous batch and store it in a 5 gallon bucket.  I wasn't really interested in taking up that much space in my laundry room.  All of the powdered detergent recipes seemed to use a lot more per load, making it more expensive.

I went searching to see if I could find a way to make the liquid detergent in a smaller batch, and I found a site that had done the math and figured it all out.  I pinned it to my Pinterest account so that I can easily find it whenever I need to make more detergent.

I make a powder detergent, and in turn I make a small batch of liquid detergent from the powder.

To make the powdered detergent:

1. Finely grate the bar of castile soap.  *Warning: this will take forever, and you will feel like you will never regain the use of your arm.*  Relax; your arm will be okay, and now the hard part is done.

2. Add 1/2 cup borax and 1 cup of washing soda to the grated soap.  Place into your desired container, seal, and shake to mix.

To make the liquid detergent:

Combine 4 tsp. powder and 4 cups hot water.  Let sit 8 hours.  Use 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup per load, depending on load size.

I keep my powder in one container and my liquid detergent in another container.  When I'm out of the liquid I just use some of the powder to mix up another batch.

I suppose I could have made a cute label, and I definitely could have taken better pictures, but I've got a whole lot of important things to get done today, so this is all you get!  🙂

Have you ever made your own laundry detergent?  Which recipe do you use?

Pretty Frosted Glass Door

Our house is quite old, and there are a whole lot of things about it that are definitely less than perfect.  But we are so thankful for it, and we're doing the best that we have with what we've got.

Our driveway is laid out in such a way that pretty much forces everybody to come to the back door.  Before you get to the kitchen door you have to go through a glass door into the laundry room.  If I know somebody is coming, I will of course have the laundry room cleaned up a little bit, but when I'm just going through my daily routine, there may be piles of laundry out there, the floor may be dirty, etc.  If the mail carrier or UPS driver comes up to leave something on the porch, they get a full view of the inside of my laundry room, regardless of what it may look like at the time.

And if I happen to be out there doing laundry when somebody unexpected comes to the door, I may not exactly feel like being seen, depending on my appearance at the time.

We used to keep a curtain on the door, but once we had kids, that made things look even worse than they already did.  They would pull it off of the door, and they got little baby snot stains all over it.

We wanted to put frosting paint on it to provide some privacy, but we didn't want the entire thing covered.  We wanted to think of a way to create some sort of design on it, but we didn't want to create a huge, time-consuming project for ourselves.  My mom suggested making a diamond pattern since that could be made with straight lines.  That was a great idea, but I wanted to use really thin tape so that the un-frosted part would not be thick enough for people to easily see through the door.  The only problem was that we couldn't find anything like that anywhere.

One day I was at an indoor yard sale that our town has (it's like a giant thrift store, but everything is just thrown on tables or in boxes and nothing is priced).  I spotted this and I knew immediately that it was exactly what I was looking for.  They charged me a whopping 33 cents for it!

I didn't even know what this stuff was, but my mom said it's for using with typewriters.  Okay then,  that's why I didn't know.  I did a search, though, and you can still buy this stuff on Amazon.  Now you know where to get it if you decide you want to do a door like mine!  🙂

Once I found that, we got to work right away procrastinated forever on designing our door.

We finally got to it this last weekend, and I am so glad it's done!

Here's how we did it:

First, we washed the door thoroughly, inside and out.  We just used vinegar water.  I'm not sure if a commercial cleaner might leave a residue that would interfere with the paint sticking.

We started our diamond design by making an “x” corner to corner on the door.  We used our fingernails and really made sure the tape was secured tightly to the door.  After we added each piece of tape, we numbered them so that we would know the order in which to take them off.

Then we measured 5 inches away from each line and placed another piece of tape top to bottom on the door.

We continued to measure 5 inches away from each line and place new lines diagonally top to bottom.  We used a dry erase marker on the outside of the door to mark our 5 inch measurements.  We made a mark at the top and bottom of where each piece of tape should go, then matched the tape up to the mark on the inside of the door.  By matching up the marks at the top and bottom, we were able to keep our lines perfectly straight.

Here is the door after we finished taping off our design.  It was getting dark – it took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Then we taped off the edges of the door and the door handle, and we covered any surrounding areas with newspaper.  This picture was taken after the first coat of paint had already been sprayed, which is why it's kind of hazy.  I was dealing with a dirty diaper at the time, and my poor husband did not realize that the laundry room windows could be opened.  I really don't recommend spraying without the windows open!

This is what we were spraying on the door.  I'm not sure if my husband sprayed two coats or three, but I do know that it took two entire cans of paint.  (They don't sell this particular brand on Amazon, but this is the same thing.  Buy it here.)

We let the paint dry for just a few minutes before we removed the tape.  We didn't want to let it dry too much for fear it would crack when we pulled the tape.  It was completely dark by the time we got done.  You can see how nice it's going to be to be able to be in the laundry with the light on at night and not have people able to see straight inside our house!

Now the mailman can leave packages on our porch without getting a scary view of me in my PJ's!

It's really hard to get a good shot of it because of the glare.  The lines came out perfect – no seeping of the paint anywhere even though it sort of looks that way in the pictures.  I'm very happy to finally have some privacy in my laundry room, and I'm excited that it looks pretty as well!

Update: I just discovered this frosted glass film on Amazon! It seems like it might be easier to just stick the film on than to tape everything off and spray it. Plus you don't have to worry about the spray paint getting chipped off if you use an adhesive film.

Find the adhesive film here.

5 Minute Friday: Race

This post is being written for 5 Minute Friday at Tales from a Gypsy Mama.  I am writing for 5 minutes flat with no editing, backtracking, or overthinking.

Go

As the mother of three young children, every day feels like a race.  I race to get one on the potty before we have an accident, leave her there and race to pick up another one who is crying.  I race to eat a bite of my lunch before someone spills their drink or wants more food.  All day long the race continues, and some days, okay most days,  it is incredibly exhausting.  I wonder how in the world I can continue this race day after day after day.  But any runner will tell you that they could never race unless they have first prepared and strengthened themselves.  I must do the same for my race.  Purposeful preparation of my heart and gathering strength from God’s Word must be a daily occurrence.   I can never endure this on my own.   I need daily help from God.  He is the source of my strength.  Without Him I can do nothing (John 15:5).

Stop

Time, Money, Health

When it comes to the way we feed our families, those three words create a juggling act that every homemaker does her best to perform well.

I'd like to examine our attitudes toward each of those juggling balls, but before I do, allow me to give a little introduction.

Food, especially as it relates to “health food”, is a touchy subject.  I know this because I've experienced both sides of the “touchiness”.  On one hand, I've felt like I didn't measure up to others' standards of what I should be feeding my family.  On the other hand, I've also been criticized for not having my priorities right and spending too much money on eating healthy.  (“I mean, we're all going to die anyway.  Everybody's going to end up with cancer anyway.  Why spend all that extra money on food when it could be used for the Lord's work?”)  Those weren't the exact words, but that was the gist of what was being said.

I've had to come to terms on both counts with the fact that the only person to whom I'm accountable when it comes to what I feed my family is God.

I can't worry about what anybody else thinks.  

When I fully embraced that thinking, I was free to make decisions for our family that, in other's eyes,  may or may not be “healthy enough” or that may or may not cost me too much money and time, but that are the right choices for us and for our particular situation.

With that being said, I want everyone to understand that I'm not here to tell you what you should eat or to tell you how much money or time you should spend purchasing and preparing your food.  I want to be an encouragement to everyone no matter what your particular circumstances to continue doing your best to balance these resources (all of them – time, money, and health) for the benefit of your family and the glory of God.

Now, let's take a quick look at these different juggling balls:

1. Time.  We all have different responsibilities in life, but there is no denying the fact that we are all busy.  Our days are filled to the brim with completing one responsibility after another, and time in the kitchen is yet another activity to add to our already full schedule.  It's not a wonder that when dinner time comes we want to prepare whatever is going to be the quickest and easiest so we can get that obstacle out of our way and continue on with our day.

2. Money.  There may be a few people in this world who have more money than they know what to do with, but I don't personally know any.  We all want to use our money wisely and not spend any more than is absolutely necessary – especially on something boring like the grocery bill.  While some are better at it than others, I would think that every family desires to trim down their eating expenses as much as possible so that there is more money left over for other needs and desires.

3. Health.  This is usually the juggling ball on which we focus the least of our attention.  We've exerted our effort so much on trimming down time and money spent on eating, that we lose control of that third ball.  Since we've done so well on managing the “time” and “money” balls, we feel as if we can relax a bit and not worry too much if our “health” ball becomes a little unsteady.

Folks, that was me not too long ago.  I had the “time” and the “money” ball flowing in a steady rhythm, and I thought I was doing pretty well on the “health” part too.  Until I started feeling like dirt all the time.

I had to take a step back and really examine what we were eating and what nutritional value it was providing for us.  I did a lot of research on various foods because many times what appears to be healthy on the surface is not really so healthy.  There was a lot of nutrition my body was missing out on.

Can I tell you something?  If you know any of  “those people”  (you know, the health food “nuts”?), don't knock their beliefs if you've never researched them.  Don't get the attitude that their ideas are a bit over-the-top if you've never taken the time to find out exactly why they do and don't eat certain things.  I would have never become convinced if someone had simply told me that I should or shouldn't feed my family certain things, but after doing my own research and finding things out for myself, I am quickly becoming persuaded that certain things just shouldn't be consumed by anybody, no matter how inexpensive they may be and how little money you may have.

In the next post, I'll be sharing some of the changes we made in our diet as well as other shifts we made to keep the “time” and “money” juggling balls from faltering.

In the meantime, I hope you'll take a little time to think through your handling of these juggling balls.  Have you relaxed a little on the “health” ball due to the fact that time and money are tight?  I challenge you to take the time to do some personal research on just one thing this week .  Maybe it's an ingredient in your food that you don't know what it is, or maybe you wonder why people would want to pay extra money to buy raw milk.

I hope I can be a help to you through this blog.  I'll be sharing our family's personal experiences of what we're learning about being healthy while simultaneously managing our time and money wisely.