Psalm 121

This past summer, our church, Ada Bible Church did a series titled

Songs : Exploring the Psalms.

And one of the things I love most about our church is how Bible-based it really is.  (Shouldn't all churches be?!?)  But seriously.  The preaching is straight from scripture, and scripture is dissected and explained each week in ways that those new to the Bible can understand, and those who have been studying the Bible their entire life can still learn new things.  In the last year and a half that we've been at Ada Bible, I know that I've learned more about the Bible than I've learned in years elsewhere.

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On the first Sunday of the Psalms series, our pastor preached on Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
   where does my help come from?

My help comes from the LORD,
   the Maker of heaven and earth.

   He will not let your foot slip—
   he who watches over you will not slumber;

indeed, he who watches over Israel
   will neither slumber nor sleep. 

   The LORD watches over you—
   the LORD is your shade at your right hand; 

the sun will not harm you by day,
   nor the moon by night. 

   The LORD will keep you from all harm—
   he will watch over your life; 

the LORD will watch over your coming and going
   both now and forevermore.

Like many other pieces of scripture, I'm sure I had read this or heard it read multiple times in my life. But our pastor had us to read this to each other as an encouragement to one another, and I felt like I heard this Psalm in a whole new way.  If you and I were in a conversation right now, I would read it aloud to you so hopefully you could hear it in a whole new way too.  To fully know and accept that the same God who created the Heavens and the Earth will watch over and protect you and I, is pretty amazing.

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And since the Psalms were in fact originally intended to be sung, the worship leader from our church set this Psalm to music.  It's pretty incredible really, and it's quite possible that I've listened to it, oh, about a million times.  Click here to watch the video.  If you have the time, watching the entire sermon is so worthwhile, but if you can't do that now, at least take a minute to watch the song which begins around the 10:00 mark in the video.

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Christmas morning, Eric really surprised me with a custom print that he had made with the help of Dee of Red Letter Words where they inserted our family names into this Psalm.  For whatever reason, on Christmas Eve night, this Psalm kept popping into my mind, so then to see it written out Christmas morning, with our family's names included had me completely reduced to tears.

I'm looking forward to hanging this in our home and always having it serve as a reminder to us that God will watch over this family.  This is something that I will certainly treasure forever.

 

Fresh Start Sunday

a great verse as we begin a new year... 

Source: typographicverses.com via Jill on Pinterest

Insta-Friday

Happy Friday!

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I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was really nice. We started with a quick getaway to Chicago, and ended it with a few low-key family get-togethers. Here's a peek...

it was a happy mail kind of week...including beautifully wrapped packages from Megan of Sparrow Mercantile and Allison of Paisley Sprouts.  Both are such sweet, and such talented, creative ladies.

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We did the whole Elf On the Shelf for the first time this year.  Claire named our elf ZeZe.  We had so much fun coming up with creative (and up high and out of Zachary's reach) places for him to be each day.  Here's a few of my favorites:

ZeZe's own hot air balloon flying over our sun room

 this was intended to be a zip line, but in the process of setting it up, ZeZe found himself upside down and hanging on for dear life.  So not the plan, but it really worked!  

 

Our very own super hero, flying high over our kitchen!

Along with our neighbors, we had our own 12 Days of Christmas, where each house took 2 days to deliver treats to the other neighbors.  These North Pole cupcakes were my favorite to make and give!

I scored an ah.ma.zing deal on this snow suit for Zachary, perfect for our Chicago trip, right??

He did NOT agree!

Breakfast at American Girl with my girl + Kit

(totally blurry picture, ugh!)

The Lights at Lincoln Park Zoo.  Sooo cool!

a little (or a lot of) post-vacation let down

Blue Lily is coming to my town!!  I've kept an eye out, and the closest they've come in the past is Chicago or Detroit, so when I saw that they were coming to Grand Rapids, I booked!  Now I've got 9 months to figure out what we're going to wear!!

still my favorite guy to spend the holidays with

and my favorite Christmas gift that Eric worked with Dee of Red Letter Words to create.
I'll share details of how this came about soon!

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Have a great weekend!

Insta-Friday

 Happy Friday, all!

Last week was craaazy busy, so I took things clear the opposite direction this week and we slowed waaay down, ahh.  Here's a peek!

 somehow I got the brilliant idea to do our entire house in grays.

Have you ever tried picking out gray paint?  NOT. EASY.

Pretty soon I'll probably owe the paint store for all the samples I've taken home.

 

this girl and her heart.  I'm so proud of her thoughtfulness.

She made this at school, and first thing pointed out that it had pink buttons, but only because they didn't have purple (my favorite)

 

painting trim.  So unexciting, yet it makes such a difference in cleaning up a room.

 

choosing to skip his morning nap did not work out so well for poor Zachary.

and I kind of can't believe that he actually slept in a shopping cart (nor am I especially proud of it) but in the end, he had an afternoon nap, and I had groceries : win, win.

 

earrings by Wifey Singer.

This girl is seriously sweet, check out her shop and blog

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I've got more to share with you all including pictures from a fun Instagrammer meet-up, and a new clip board art wall I just put together.  So much to blog, so little time!

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Have a great weekend, everyone!!

Instagrammer's Night

A few months back, several of us on Instagram tossed out the idea of meeting up.  We all "know" each other online, but considering we all live in the same town, maybe it was time we all get to know each other in real life.  We picked a date in December, and it miraculously worked for everyone!

let the holiday eating begin!

gift tags + washi tape + bakers twine + stamps ready for a craft

so pretty!

Trish, Aletha, Carrie, Lanny, Shawn, Mindy, me, Dee, Megan

(such an awesome group of ladies!)

the next morning, Claire was all about making gift tags of her own, and I don't blame her!

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What a fun night, I'm so looking forward to doing it again!

Easy, Inexpensive Art

longer alternative title :

art for those who can't commit to expensive art,

and don't like putting nail holes in their walls

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I recently declared a day "stop just pinning, start actually printing day" where I took all of the free printables that I had pinned, loaded them onto a CD, and brought them to Office Max to have them printed. (Side note : isn't it awesome that design-savvy people out there are creating free printables for the rest of us?!?)  After they came out of the printer, there I had a stack of awesome art, that only cost me all of .63 each to print.

 since several of the pieces were seasonal and I knew I wasn't committing to hanging them long-term, rather than frame them, or put holes in my wall, I grabbed some washi tape and taped them to the wall.

and just like that, in a matter of minutes, our back entryway has some fabulous new art for the holidays!

 

Fresh Start Sunday

Source: anightowlblog.com via Jill on Pinterest

Beneath the Tree

A few weekends back brought Beneath the Tree to our town. It's an in-home craft show featuring well over 100 vendors in 12 area homes. Rebel.Reclaimed was the designer of one of the homes, so several of my products were included in the show including linen garlands, ruffle pillows, Michigan pillows and table runners.  I've been working with Rebel for nearly two years now, and I have to admit, I still have plenty of "pinch me" moments when I see my products on display!
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Here's a peek...

 

 

 

Thankful

All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

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2 Corinthians 4:15 (NIV)

Fresh Start Sunday

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.

Do everything in love.

~

1 Corinthians 16:13-14 (NIV)

 

Insta-Friday

Oh hello, Insta-Friday, it's been a while!

Here's a bit about what this week looked like...

 

Proofs from our family pictures.

LOVE.

Eric had Monday off so we hit up some shops including one shop full of cool vintage treasures.  This chair, ugh, I wanted it so bad and didn't buy it, now it's been haunting me all week.

 

it's a good thing he's cute, because wow is this boy starting to cause some trouble around here!

And the no clothes thing?  I don't really know what that was about.

I've just recently started using a babysitter occasionally during the day.  This is me at the start of a FOUR hour stretch with a babysitter!  #runningerrandsefficiently

 

We're doing it this year.

 I'm so excited I may or may not have just spent an entire evening looking up Elf ideas on Pinterest.

 

Love my babies!

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 Have a great weekend!