Sweet Goodies

Precious... you are!!  Your kind, sweet words and encouragement have meant more to me than I could ever tell you!  Thank you from the very depths of my heart!

While I'm thanking you... I also want to thank our sweet friend Linda over at Parker's Paradise for this wonderful package that arrived in my mailbox a few weeks back!  I adored these sheep that she made and blogged about, but I knew there was no way that I could make them as good as our Linda and boy was I ever surprised and thankful to receive one!!  He is so sweet on my year round tree!

Linda's little tucks are SO adorable too!

Thank you dearly, my sweet friend for your big heart and  generosity!

Another wonderful package that arrived just today was an order that I placed from Lois over at Huckleberry Lady.  Lois recently had a giveaway for her adorable X's and O's.  I acquired if she had any left because I had to have them to put under my Valentine's tree.  One set left, YAY for me!  Aren't these just so sweet?

They are perfect sitting in an old metal strainer (that is sitting in an old wooden Carnation crate) under my year round tree covered in hearts.  The X's and O's really add a touch of sweetness!

Oh... there was also a nice little surprise of a Twix candy bar that was quickly stashed in my purse to enjoy at the basketball game tonight.  I pulled it out at the game and started munching away.  Rich looked at me and said "Where did that come from??"  I just smiled.  =]  So thank you Lois for the extra little treat, I did enjoy it!

Gonna spend the week cleaning, purging, and organizing my son's room and prepping it for paint.  Hope to sneak in some crafting somewhere along the way.  I have a few quilt block sawdust pillows ready to list on Etsy.  I love the old look and feel of them, definitely reminds me of days past.

I'm so thankful that God's mercies are new everyday.  I'm thankful for the valleys He has us walk through to strengthen us and build our character.  I'm thankful for the precious friends and family that he puts along our path through the valley to lift us up and encourage us on our journey.  My family has truly felt your prayers concerning our son and his school.  I'm not completely happy with the outcome of our situation but I know that this is the best route for all.  Things could have been much worse so I'm thankful that Rich and I stood up to the school officials and administration to let them know that we will not sit back and watch injustice.  We fought and won some, but not all.  Short term, it is a small victory but I know long term that they will remember that we are very involved in our children's lives and we do watch out for their well-being.

Again, I can not thank you enough for being there for me and being such a strong supporter and prayer warrior for us!  I truly love you each and every one!  =]

Situation Re-Cap and His Word

My dear friends, I can not even begin to express to you how much you have touched my heart these past five days!  Within just a few minutes of my last post, you were right there offering me support, encouragement, and best of all your prayers.  As I read through each comment that you all made, the outpouring of love was so strong, so deep, and so sincere that I just sat there and bawled like a baby!  You have never even met me, yet you care enough about me and my family to let me know that you are there for us, lifting us up in intercessory prayer.  I appreciate and love each and every one of you that have thought of us or prayed for us these past days.  I can tell you that your prayers have given me the strength and the courage to be strong.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

We are still in the thick of this situation.  I talked to a lawyer today.  I also wrote up a written appeal to the school and we have our committee hearing on Thursday morning.  Right now I take one day at a time, one phone call at a time, one conversation at a time.

One neat thing that I want to share with you is how God is showing me so much of Himself throughout this whole ordeal... Monday morning was the day that my son and I went to visit with the high school principal so I spent Sunday evening in prayer and reading His Word.  I told you already how I am extremely emotional and very non-confrontational to the extent that I break out in hives and redness on my neck and face, throbbing temples, and have even experienced dizzy spells, all within minutes of being confronted.  I just don't like to debate issues (which explains why I failed Speech & Debate in high school, ha).  I went to His Word and was reading Philippians 4:6, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God".  So I shut my Bible right there and just poured out my heart to God.  He already knew my issues, He created me.  I asked begged him to guard my heart, my emotions, to speak through me and not let my mind worry or fear.  After praying for some time, I opened my Bible back up and went on to read Philippians 4:7, "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus"!  I was SOOO excited!!  He confirmed right then and there that He was indeed in control of the whole situation.  I have read this passage many times in my lifetime but in this one certain situation, this verse had a whole new meaning to me!  Such sweetness! =]

Our meeting with the principal was very direct and swift.  We weren't getting anywhere so I informed him that our only option was to obtain a lawyer.  Within 20 minutes of leaving our meeting, he left me a phone message that said Ryan could come back to school but he would be placed in In-House Suspension.  I called him back and thanked him for that option, but declined in that it would still present my son as guilty.  So now we sit and wait until our committee meeting on Thursday.  In the meantime, Ryan is allowed back to school as a regular student.  Which I don't understand but who understands school politics?  I give God ALL the glory for getting me through these past few days, for restraining my tongue, and speaking wisdom through me (Rich can attest that is definitely from God, haha)

So there you have it.  I thank you all that continue to send emails and messages that you are still praying and will continue until this situation is resolved.  Again, I can't express how much that touches my heart.  Please pray for our meeting on Thursday.  All we want is justice.

Now... on to some fun stuff!  I am so very excited, I am attending a crafter's retreat this weekend, YAY!!  All day Friday and Saturday, and almost all of Sunday.  This time away from home could not have come at a better time... another way that God is showing me His Grace!  We will be at Camp Egan, which is surrounded by the beautiful Ozark Mountains.  If only we could get snowed in there, lol!  Old friends and new friends, such a great time!  Oddly enough, I plan to scrapbook Ryan's school years and catch up to present year.  I'm also taking my recipe scrapbook and some stitching to work on.  It's gonna be a superb time, I can tell already!  =]  This is a present for my mom that is almost finished.  I need to complete the border and then add each grandchild's name under the hearts.  I plan to finish this at the retreat.

I thank you if you lasted until the end of this post, lol.  I know lots of words and not many pictures is not fun.  It's been quite a few months of heartache and tribulation.  Definitely not much fun happening at the Berry Homespun Primitive blog.  But... my God is a loving God and a gracious God who wants to give us the desires of our hearts.

I plan to be back to creating and crafting as soon as I get back from the retreat.  I have lots of projects that are patiently waiting for me.

Thank you one more time, my dear, sweet friends.  You mean so much to me and I thank God for our friendship.  Have a delightful week~

Prayer Warrior Friends... I Need You!!

My prayer warrior friends, I really need you right now.  I have never posted anything negative or personal on my blog, but I have an issue that I need prayers for.  I KNOW that my God has this under control and I KNOW that His will for this situation will be done.  I need prayers for strength, for courage, for wisdom.

Without going into details, there was a situation yesterday at my oldest son's high school where he was involved.  The school never contacted us about it, he told me about it when I picked him up from school.  We did not think it was a serious issue.  But this morning, it became serious and legal. We are contacting a lawyer and I'm going to bat for my son.  Rich asked me to what extent do we want to fight this?  I told him that I don't want to lose my home over it but there is an injustice to my child going on and I refuse to sit by and let it happen.

I will be back next week with more details and hopefully a resolve on this situation.  I think the school thinks that we are going to accept it and move on, but this Momma bear will make sure her child is vindicated.

I am a very emotional person that too many times, lets my emotions get in the way and I'm also very NON-confrontational.  So please pray that I can be firm, have the courage to say what needs to be said and not let my emotions interfere.

Thank you dearly, friends!  I appreciate you and your prayers so much!  Sorry I don't have anything fun or prim, or pictures today, just a heavy heart.

Yesterday Once More's Anniversary Giveaway!

Be sure to hop on over to the blog of our senior writer for A Primitive Place magazine for a wonderful giveaway!  Dan Weaver of ~Yesterday Once More~ is hosting an awesome giveaway of a year subscription to our beloved A Primitive Place magazine!!

The deadline to enter is Monday, January 23, 2012 so get on over there and enter!  Or not... and give me a better chance of winning.  LOL!  Just kidding!!  I want everyone to know about this wonderful magazine... primitive goodness abounds!!  I so look forward to every issue and still pour over past issues.  The crew has done an outstanding job and I thank them all for giving us an exceptional quality primitive magazine!

Oh, and one more thing.  I just love following the blogs of Dan, Linda, Kimberlee, Kris, and others.  I think of them as friends and with every issue that comes out, I enjoy seeing what my "friends" have been up to.  The great writing, beautiful styling and pictures, awesome project tutorials... I appreciate the time and energy they put into each page.

So if you haven't heard about this amazing magazine yet, what are you waiting on?!  Get on over to Dan's blog and try to win a subscription.  If you don't, then you must buy one.  Dan has the details on his blog sidebar.

Enjoy your week~

Blessings to you from Berry Homespun Primitives~

Antiquing in Wagoner

Chilly here today, our coldest day of the winter so far.  We even have an inch of snow on the ground from last night, our first of the season.  A fire is steadily going in the fireplace, heating up the home.  I set up a little table by the fire with my sewing machine so I can spend the week making some more of these...

I appreciate all the advice and tips I received from so many of you.  I think my little sawdust quilt pillow turned out cute.  I still need to hand stitch the opening where I stuffed it with a sawdust pillow, you can see it on the left in the picture above.  I found a way to make it work and it truly is something that the pioneers would do... I'll be back later with details on how I did it.

My friend Katie and I went to an antique mall in Wagoner, a town where we had not been antiquing yet.  I found this mini strainer for $2.  It's only about 3" and so darn cute!  I have never seen one so small.

What would one use such a little piece for?  To strain into a mason jar?  It really looks tiny with the rest of my strainer/sifter collection.

I was so excited to find this awesome slaw cutter at a great price!  I have been looking at them all year long but the prices have been more than I want to pay.  I haven't found any that are hinged like this.  We found 3 hinged slaw cutters in that one little mall!

It had a $20 price tag, marked down to $10!!  So I grabbed it!  I just LOVE old wood patina.

This lovely (not!) sewing basket was marked down to $2.50.  I'm not into dragons, especially ones that are falling apart...

But... the inside of this sewing basket is a beautiful worn blue velour fabric and looks much better displayed like this...

The jar of antique buttons was part of a Christmas gift from my niece (we draw names).  I love the little size of it, so cute!

I'll be back soon with a post about RAK's: Random Acts of Kindness.  =]

Time for me to get hopping.  My middle school daughter has a basketball game in a town 1 hour away!!  =/  That's not even round trip.  It's gonna take us a good solid hour driving on the interstate with a speed limit of 75 to get there.  Yuck!!  That's all I have to say about that.  But I will do anything for my baby girl so it's time to get the cupcakes baking.  I bake treats for the team for them to have after every game.  Just a little something to show that we love them and support them.

I hope you all are staying warm and cozy inside your homes during this winter storm blast we had last night.  I noticed on the radar that it started way down in Oklahoma with us and went straight north all the way to Canada, it was a huge stretch as it swept across the US.  My first thought was of you, all my blogging friends... hoping  you were safe and warm in your homes.  Bundle up girls~

Quilt squares

Hi friends!  I'm glad to be back amongst you all again!  Rich had his Christmas break planned out with some things he wanted to get done.  That was fine and dandy with me because I told him I had a plan too... catch up on my blog reading.  So I spent the past two weeks reading about 500 posts and catching up with you all.  I have never, ever seen my Google Reader so bare!  Now I enjoy blogging again.  =]

Before I get into what this post is about, I just want to say that you all have turned into some of my most treasured and loyal friends.  I appreciate you and love you all!  I'm thankful that I can come here happy and you are happy with me, sad and you are sad for me, asking for prayer and you are there.  THANK YOU for being that kind of friend to me these past couple of years.  What a joy and a blessing it is to share life with you all!

Now that the sappy stuff is outta the way, let's get down to quilting, hehe.  I am not a quilter.  But my friend Katie over at Willow Creek Homestead and I went to an outside sale that her dad was having.  Katie's dad holds these sales for charity.  All the money is donated to wildfire victims in his area.  We had an outburst of wildfires last year and many lost their homes.  Jim was blessed to not lose anything although the fires came up to his place and burned most of his land.  Now he is helping his neighbors that lost everything.  One of the things that we picked up was a huge box of quilt pieces and squares.  We sat down and went through it piece by piece, splitting the whole box.  Here is my stash:

Even splitting it up, I ended up with almost 70 squares of various sizes plus 2 full quilt tops!

My favorite are these smaller 7.5" squares that are going to make some adorable little pillows.  One of Rich's buddy at work is bringing him a bag of sawdust for me tonight, yippee!

Just look at this stack!

There were about 4 different sizes of squares, lots of blues.

These are the 2 full quilt tops.  Not sure what I am going to do with these yet.  I have a friend that has a long arm quilting machine so I'll probably be visiting her.  =]

I'm not sure of the age but the squares are definitely hand stitched and made out of old clothes.  You can tell that most of them were made from men's shirts.

Oh, and I forgot to count how many diamonds there were because I already had them in the sink getting a bath.

Now I'm asking advice from you.  I probably did this wrong so PLEASE correct me if I did.  I'll take all the critique and advice you want to give.  =]  To clean these pieces, I put them a sink of hot water with Dawn dish soap.  I stirred it occasionally, soaking for an hour.  Then I soaked them in hot water to rinse.  That's what the above picture is from (you can even see the steam in some areas).  They were very, very dingy.  Then I'm going to put them in the dryer on delicate for a bit.  I'm wondering if maybe they should be washed and rinsed in cold water?  What do you all do?  Please help!  =/

Thanks for stopping in for a visit.  I appreciate you coming by.

Have a delightful week~

Homemade Teacher Gifts

I'll admit that it's been a rough time getting in the Christmas spirit and getting everything done.  I always start in November so that I have plenty of time to enjoy and not stress.  But the three family funerals that I attended last month put me way behind.  I appreciate your prayers so very much!  I know they helped me and my families cope with losing our loved ones.

The decorating is finally done as of today, four days before Christmas.  I really don't like that because we don't have much time to enjoy.  I was going to minimize this year but Rich said that he really likes to see the home decked out in holiday cheer... so it happened.

I have really enjoyed looking at your beautiful homes full of Christmas.  It has honestly gotten me in the spirit and I thank each of you dearly for that, I needed it!  =]

I thought I would share some homemade gifts that the kids and I worked on this past week.  I made some Cinnamon Apple Jelly a couple weeks back.  It is so delicious and so easy to make.  I am not a jelly maker, but I can make this so anyone can do it!  Here is the recipe link if you care to try it: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Cinnamon-Apple-Jelly

A lovely idea that I gleaned from Pinterest: wrap a freshly baked loaf of bread in a coffee filter and tie it off.  Of course I had to use baker's twine because I'm addicted to that stuff, haha.  Quick, cheap, and cute!

The kid's five Sunday School teachers received a jar of Cinnamon Apple Jelly and 2 mini loaves of Brown Sugar-Oatmeal Bread that came from Gooseberry Patch's Gifts For Giving cookbook.  They turned out to be cute little gifts.

Amariah has always had a giving heart.  She wanted to gift each of her 7 school teachers, even the ones that she really doesn't care too much for, lol.  So we made up some hot cocoa packets with candy canes, another Pinterest idea.  I buy the big boxes of hot cocoa packets from Sam's so we already had that on hand.

Our teacher gift to the little guy's Kindergarten teacher was also a Pinterest idea.  I like to give practical gifts.  I know... no fun, right?  But this is practical and FUN!  I've had the paint can for awhile because I just had to have it, but haven't even used it so this was perfect.  I wrapped it in some cute school scrapbook paper and added some matching stickers.

Of course Mrs. Baker's treat can had to have some fun treats!  So we used a cute idea from yep... Pinterest.  So quick and easy.  I used the mini Creative Memories circle punch which was the perfect size for the bottom of the kiss.  The gingerbread/heart theme will carry over to Valentine's Day so that worked out great. 

Robbie signing his Christmas card to Mrs. Baker, with a back view of the treat can.

This was just a cute little idea that I saw on Pinterest.  I bought a Jenga knock-off game at Dollar General for $3.50.  We picked out some colorful scrapbook paper and some school theme paper then mod podged them on to one side of the blocks.  Now the kids can build things with them or use them as a matching game because we made 2 of each design.  Robbie really enjoyed this and played with it all weekend so I know that his classmates will enjoy it.  Another practical gift...

Amongst the hustle and bustle that society has created around the birth of our Savior, my kids and I were able to have some fun creating and crafting gifts to present to their teachers.  13 gifts later and I am so thankful for the quality time we spent together, memories that were made, and all the $$ that I saved.

Now on to some cookie baking and candy making for 17 of Rich's co-workers... Chocolate Crackles, Snickerdoodles, and our favorite to make... Chocolate Stars!

I wish for you all to have a most delightful Christmas surrounded by loved ones with many wonderful memories being made!  May you find time this joyous season to remember and celebrate Jesus Christ's birth.  Hold on to His promises of a full life, an abundant life that only He can give you.  

Merry Christmas~