Old Friends and New Friends
16 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
in Adventures at Home, Thoughtful Gestures Tags: friends, friendship, good friends, reach out
This week I was reminded again of the value of friendship.
First, a treasured friend of mine from 2002, whom I have not spoken to for quite a while, called and we had a wonderful time catching up. Eight years ago she was traveling through my state on vacation, bought some of my soap at a boutique and then called to re-order. We have been friends ever since and I have gained so much from having her as a friend.
Then today I took a new friend out for coffee. She is soon to be my sister-in-law and because we don’t live in the same town, I haven’t really had a chance to get to know her as well as I wanted to. I really enjoyed our coffee time and look forward to many years of friendship with her.
Unfortunately having special friendships isn’t something that everyone is blessed with, but I hope each of you has friends you treasure. If you do, don’t forget to take the opportunity to let them know! =)
Are you looking for a way to find more friends?
My two daughters and I have a plan that we began this fall. Every week, usually on Sunday afternoon, we invite either a lady or group of ladies in our neighborhood or nearby (with the exception of a few who are out of town) over for tea. We set the table a little fancier than usual, serve our favorite teas in the treasured tea-sets that were handed down from my aunt and offer some special baked goodies. So far we have had 4 of these tea-parties and thoroughly enjoyed them… we have had a neighbor lady come whose children are grown and gone, and 3 times we had mothers with their young daughters. A tea party fits all ages and it’s a great way to get to know people better!
Midweek Minute – Gratefulness
04 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Adventures at Home, Consider This, Family Ministry, Moments of Inspiration, The Simple Life, Thoughtful Gestures Tags: gratefulness, soup kitchen, webster's 1828
I’ve been trying to impress upon my children the need to have gratefulness continually. The 1828 Websters Dictionary defines grateful as:
grateful
GRA’TEFUL, a. [from L. gratus. See Grace.]
1. Having a due sense of benefits; kindly disposed towards one from whom a favor has been received; willing to acknowledge and repay benefits; as a grateful heart. 2. Agreeable; pleasing; acceptable; gratifying; as a grateful present; a grateful offering. 3. Pleasing to the taste; delicious; affording pleasure; as food or drink grateful offering.
- realizing that benefits were received
- being kindly disposed toward the one who gave the benefits
- acknowledging that the benefits were received
- being willing to somehow repay the one who gave the benefits
- being pleasant
- being thankful with words to the person who gave and others, with written words
- expressing appreciation
- obedience
- a good attitude
- good health
- clothing, food and shelter
- family
- the “religious” freedom that we still have
- our senses of taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing
Thoughtful Thursday – Convenient Cards
22 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in The Simple Life, Thoughtful Gestures Tags: "send out cards", card referral service, online card service, SOC
Do you ever forget a birthday or special event? I recently forgot the birthday of a special friend… and the worst part is, I could have very easily prevented it!
I’ve been using this amazing card service for several years now. They send me a reminder a week or two ahead of time. I can upload all of my contacts and include their birthday and/or anniversary. I can even write the cards and then schedule them to go out at a certain time. But my special friend wasn’t in the system, and I forgot…
The best part about this system (besides the convenience of never having to go card shopping again and still having thousands of cards at my fingertips) is the price. For a non-member, it’s only $2.99 to send a card. (Keep in mind, this is a REAL, paper greeting card…NOT an e-card! ) You type in what you want to say at the website and they print it and send it for you. All for only $2.99. As a member, I can also send the same card to hundreds of people at the same time (holiday wishes, birth announcement, etc) and I can customize it with my photos and my handwriting. PLUS, member prices are as low as 75¢ per card including postage. If I want to, I can even include a gift of chocolate, a magazine subscription, a gift card to Starbucks and much more… for additional cost, of course!
You can send a card using my account for only $2.99 and see how easy it is. Send it to yourself and see the high quality of the card and how fast it arrives. Or send it to your sweetheart and earn some brownie points! =)
Here is my link: Convenient Card Shop
Have a home business? Watch this short video to see how Convenient Card Shop can grow your business!
Giveaway at Heart of Wisdom Community
29 Jun 2010 1 Comment
in Thoughtful Gestures Tags: giveaway, heart of wisdom, hebrew education, homeschooling, unit studies
Heart of Wisdom GIVEAWAY! 20 Free Ebooks – $300.00 Value!
Heart of Wisdom is primarily a homeschooling community which provides excellent resources for teaching at home. This is the where I purchased the new curriculum I began doing in 2010 with my children. It is based on Scripture and Hebrew methods of teaching, using a Unit Study idea.
To learn more about the giveaway, visit the Heart of Wisdom Community
Thoughtful Thursday
13 May 2010 2 Comments
in Thoughtful Gestures Tags: being thoughtful, Thoughtful Gestures, traveling basket
In the next few weeks I want to try something new in my neighborhood. It’s not an original idea, but I don’t hear about it very often.
First, I want to find just the right basket or container, and then fill it with some home-baked goodies, hand-dipped candles, home grown from the garden, or soap or similar items (could even be coupons to mow the yard or rake, etc) and then take it to my closest neighbor’s house with a note inside that says:
This is a traveling basket for the neighborhood in _____. In a sincere desire to let you know that we appreciate having you as a neighbor, we wanted to share some things from our home, to yours Please keep these, put some of your own items in the basket and then pass it along to the next neighbor within the next 5 days.
We have included a list of the neighbors names as well as some ideas of what to put in the basket.
Ideas:
- Flowers from your garden
- Produce from your garden
- Something you baked
- Something you sewed, crocheted, etc
- A set of new kitchen towels
- Something you picked up in town specifically for them
- It could even be a note with a promise to offer your service to them (from your business, raking, hobby or shoveling snow, washing cars or windows, etc)
If everyone does it within 5 days, it should be back around in about a year
Teaching Tuesday – CSA
04 May 2010 1 Comment
in Thoughtful Gestures Tags: bulk herb store, community supported agriculture, csa, food inc, food inc dvd
On Monday, the children and I watched some clips about the food industry of the movie by Food Inc at BulkHerbStore.com You can watch 5 of them here. I purchased the complete Food Inc DVD at Amazon so we could watch the rest of it. The DVD comes with a chance to watch it online at no extra cost.
Here is a teaser trailer:
In the discussion afterwards, the audience suggests joining a CSA, so I went to look it up. What a fantastic idea! If you live in the city and there is not farmers market, there is a wonderful website that lists all the CSA’s around the country at this link.
So what is a CSA? It is Community Supported Agriculture. Here’s how it works:
Over the last 20 years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a “membership” or a “subscription”) and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.
This is the first time I have heard of this, so I really don’t know much about it, but I certainly think it is worth looking into and for those who cannot have a garden of their own, it sounds like a good alternative to purchasing from the grocery store.
Thoughtful Thursday – Sending Cards
01 Apr 2010 Leave a Comment
in Thoughtful Gestures Tags: "contact manager", "send out cards", being thoughtful, hand-written cards, sending cards, SOC, soc box, thank you cards
Sending cards and letters seems to be somewhat of a lost art these days. Email is so convenient and it doesn’t cost anything. But it just isn’t the same as a card. There is something special, something personal and touching about receiving a real card or letter in the mail. Don’t you think?
My daughters and I have made cards using stamps and stickers and special scissors. I’ve seen cards made this way that are absolutely breathtaking. Mine are not that amazing, but it is something wonderful that I can do together with my sweet girls and we can show our appreciation for another person. We take old cards and cut out pictures and words to re-use. Then we combine them with our stickers, stamps and backgrounds to match. It takes some time, but that also shows the one who receives the card that we put some thought into it and took some extra time for them.
The last time we did this we even added our creative touch of a wax seal. You can see pictures here.
Sample of an SOC Card
Another idea which is a little bit easier, and less time consuming, yet still personal, is using an online card system. There are several of these available and I just today looked at a new one, but the one I like best that has the best prices is Send Out Cards. They have all different membership prices, starting at $5 and going up to $400 (if you want to start a business). The higher priced membership gives you cards for as low as 66¢ each. I am a member, so if you are interested, I can set you up with your own account for $25, which includes your first 10 cards AND postage is included. Here is how it works:
- First you log in to your SOC account and choose from thousands of cards that are in the system. This saves you lots of time, since you don’t have to drive to a card store and browse through the aisles of cards.
- Next, choose your font and type your message into the card. (If you choose a higher priced membership you can even have your handwriting made into one of the fonts and type in your own handwriting).
- Finally, you can upload pictures into the card, making it very personal.
- You can even add a gift such as a book, candle, food or more. Of course that costs extra =)
- With the more expensive accounts you can upload your entire address book
- SOC sends you a reminder (a week ahead of time) for every birthday you upload or enter into the system, so you never have to forget another one! Your friends and family will wonder how you became so efficient!
- NOTE: these are NOT e-cards, they are real, high quality, paper cards
It’s really hard to do justice to this great concept with a written description, so if you are interested, I can let you send a free card from my account and see how much fun it is! =) With the $5 membership, the cards cost only $2 each including postage and then you simply refill the account when you use up your first 10 cards, like you would a phone card. Very convenient, very simple to do, and the cards are beautiful, just like the ones at Hallmark.
The best part is, you never have to touch the card. Simply hit the submit button and it is printed, stuffed in an envelope and mailed for you to the person of your choice.
This is great for missionaries since they can mail cards to anyone in the US from their country and the postage is all US prices.
Oh, and I almost forgot the last two things.
1. You can send these cards out to a list with a touch of a button. Upload the list, write the card and hit submit and it is mailed to your entire list. Great for wedding invitations, Holidays (Holy Days), etc… Imagine sending one card to your list of 75 in about 15 minutes =)
2. You can also schedule your cards as far ahead as you want to. If you go in on the first of the month, write all of the birthday cards and schedule them to go out a week before, then you don’t have to worry about them until the next month. Or if you are really ambitious… write them for the whole year =)
Thoughtful Thursday ~ Being a Good Samaritan
25 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment
in Family Ministry, Thoughtful Gestures Tags: community outreach, family ministry, family outreach, good samaritan, soup kitchen, tea parties, tea party
I’m late in writing today because we went to the Soup Kitchen as a family and served those in need in our community. It was once again a blessing to me. A long day standing on our feet, and a lot of work, but definitely a blessing. =) I am beginning to recognize some faces and hope to get to the point where I know some names too.
I would really like to do more things like this as a family. One of those things is to visit nursing homes or retirement homes nearby and reach out to some of the older folks. Maybe take along a guitar and sing with them or bake some cookies and share with them.
I am also very interested in my sweet little girls and I holding tea parties and inviting the neighbor ladies, one or two at a time, to come over and have tea and cookies with us. I am looking for natural ways to reach out to my neighbors and this could be one of them.
I have a few more ideas, but I’ll save them for other Thursdays. However, I would love comments from you all. Any suggestions? How do you reach out in your community?
I would also like to encourage those of you who can to give to the sweet family that is listed on the right side of this blog as Kristi & Co. This is a fatherless family in need. There is a link there where you can read their story. Yeshua, the Word made flesh speaks to us in James 1:27 saying , “The religious observance that God the Father considers pure and faultless is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being contaminated by the world.” I truly believe that reaching out to this family is exactly what this verse is talking about! =)
Old Fashioned Fun
05 Mar 2010 1 Comment
in Adventures at Home, Thoughtful Gestures Tags: dexter, letter seals, letterseals.com, nostalgic impressions, old-fashioned letter writing, raru, sealing wax, signet rings, wax seals
My daughters and I recently decided to venture out into new territory. We were inspired by someone we know who was sealing a hand-written letter. I also think the importance of this style of communication has been lost and I would like to restore it in our family.
So, my sweet little girls used their birthday money and I found a few dollars and we each ordered our initial and some wax. I also ordered the heart you see below. Yesterday after they arrived, we sat down and wrote out our hand-written letters. When we were finished expressing our thoughts on paper, we melted the special wax with a flame, sealed each of the envelopes and then stamped them with our seals.
For those of you who are interested in rekindling this beautiful personalized practice, I found several places to purchase these items online. At most of these places, you can purchase the wax and wax seals separately or in a kit together.
If you decide to purchase the wax seals separately, you can purchase a handle with different letters and symbols that are interchangeable, or a one-piece seal. Stuart Houghton seems to be a very big name and has been around a long time making this type of item. They can be purchased at this website from the UK for less than anywhere else online that I saw, even with shipping. Or you can buy other brands for slightly less. We ordered ours from LetterSeals.com, but I also found a great selection at Nostalgic Impressions, and Amazon has a nice-looking set here.
Then there is the sealing wax. You can buy inexpensive wax that is heated by glue-guns. This wax is more flexible and easily goes through the mail. One of my daughters ordered this type. The most traditional waxes are more brittle and higher quality, making them cost twice as much. There are also several types in the middle. Each type is explained at Letter Seals, where we purchased ours. I liked the variety that they offered. The one I purchased was made by Waterston. I ordered in my signature color, red sparkle. =)
However … my favorite item was the signet rings. I looked at two websites that make these. Dexter is quite a bit more pricey than deSignet, and if you look, you can probably find them for even less than either of these places, but I am of the opinion that you get what you pay for =) I really like the wide choice of ring selection at DeSignet. That, coupled with the fact that they don’t charge quite as much, makes them a better choice in my opinion. I am making a wish list there…
These would make a wonderful family heirloom for a man. A father could write beautiful letters to his wife and daughters and seal them with his ring. For that matter, he could write letters to his son encouraging him in the ways of a godly man, as well. Then when his son reached a certain age, or got married, he could inherit the special Family Signet Ring.
For myself, I am thinking a very personal custom ring with my initials, my trademark (a heart), my life slogan and symbols relating to my beliefs. I was thrilled to discover just such a symbol at this website. Not only is this a wonderful symbol, but it really solidifies many of the things Yeshua has been teaching me in the last weeks!
I really like the idea of sending meaningful letters to uplift my family and my sisters around the world, like you all, and then sealing them with this ring.
What are your thoughts? Have any of you ever used wax and seals? What do you think of the idea?
Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus
01 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment
in Thoughtful Gestures Tags: a pondering heart, jocelyn, sitting at the feet of rabbi jesus
I am sharing another giveaway with you that really caught my eye. It’s the book “Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus” from A Pondering Heart
I have to admit, I wasn’t thinking that I wanted to purchase this book. It was brought to my attention in December, but I’m always a little slow to try new things unless I’ve heard compelling reasons to embrace them. This is why I do a lot of research. =) Today when I got the notice of the giveaway, and read Jocelyn’s review, I realized that this is exactly the book I want to read. I have always loved the Jewish culture but only recently seen how it applies to my life. What could be more wonderful than seeing the Jewishness of my Lord Yeshua Ha Mashiach in this book?
So, if you are ready to enter another wonderful giveaway, go read the review here and find out how to have your chance to win!
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