May Day Baskets

According to Wikipedia, "May Day was celebrated by some early European settlers of the American continent. In some parts of the United States, May Baskets are made. These are small baskets usually filled with flowers or treats and left at someone's doorstep. The giver rings the bell and runs away. The person receiving the basket tries to catch the fleeing giver. If they catch the person, a kiss is exchanged."

When we first moved into our neighborhood, the kids and I thought it would be fun to make May Day baskets and put them on our neighbor's door knobs. These made quite an impression! Our neighbor's loved them, so we have continued the tradition every May since then. They never have rung the door bell, but have quietly placed the May Day basket on the door knob, then they run away so they won't be caught.

This year, I looked through Pinterest for some May Day basket ideas. We saw a couple of ideas that would work, but adapted them for what we had on hand.

To make these May Day baskets, you will need:

berry baskets

flower foam

glue

craft sticks

cardstock

buttons

spanish moss

scissors

flower templates

ribbon

a couple of willing helpers... :o)

First, we glued the flower foam to the bottom of the berry basket.

The kids worked on tracing the flower templates and cutting out the flower shapes.

Homemade iced coffee is always appreciated by a hard working crew... :o)

We added some spanish moss to the berry baskets.

This stuff is really messy!

Ribbon was added to each basket so they could hang from the door knob.

Buttons were glued to the center of some of the flowers, then all the flowers were glued to the craft stick.  We added six flowers to each basket by gently pressing them into the flower foam.

I found a cute May Day printable on Pinterest to add to each basket.

Doesn't it look great hanging on a door knob? :o)

The kids were up at 6:30am yesterday to deliver all of our May Day baskets. They have such a fun time doing this! Have you ever done May Day baskets for your neighbors?

Olive's visit

This past weekend, we had the privilege of hosting Olive in our home.

Olive grew up in Uganda as a Compassion sponsored child. She is currently attending the Denver Seminary where is working to earn a Masters degree in Professional Leadership. Her goal is to return to Uganda and do whatever the Lord would have her to do to help other children living in poverty.

Another Compassion Advocate who lives close by had contacted Compassion about having an LDP (Leadership Development Program) student come to speak at their church. When Compassion realized that we were close by, they thought it would be great if Olive could speak at our church also during that same weekend.

So the arrangements were made and soon we were driving to the airport to pick up Olive. We talked a lot that evening and learned so much about her and her life in Uganda.

On Saturday, we met up with our new Compassion Advocate friends and headed to San Francisco for the day. Olive had never been to California and San Francisco was what she wanted to see. Here are a few photos of our time in the city:

Olive went home with Cathy and Steve that night as she would be speaking at their church on Sunday morning. On Sunday evening, we were able to put together a special Sunday evening service (with the help of many from our church family!). We had a great attendance! Matthew and Kirsten started the evening with a couple of worhip songs, then we did an interview style presentation. I had asked a few of our church family for questions to ask Olive that evening. Then our pastor followed up with a short powerful message, and Matthew and Kirsten closed our time with one last song.

Then we did what our church family does best, we spent a lot of time in fellowship with each other and many people had time with Olive, talking with her and getting to know her story just a little better.

We didn't have any new sponsorships that night, but I believe the sponsors who were in attendance have a better understanding of how important it is for us to be writing those letters to our sponsored children, telling them that we love them, are praying for them, and giving them the encouragement they so need to here.

If you ever have the chance to host a formerly sponsored Compassion child in your home, do not hesitate to say 'yes'! Without having gone on a Compassion trip...yet, this is probably the next best thing. These young adults have lived the experience and have a powerful testimony to let us all know that Compassion works, not only in the life of this one child, but to all the people in their family and community. I am so thankful for the time we were able to share with this sister in Christ!

Manual Mariposa

I know that is a strange title to a blog post, but I finally got a little brave and decided to try to take pictures using the manual setting on my camera. I have had my new Nikon D3100 for about a year now and have really loved it! I have mainly been using the auto setting, as well as some of what I call the 'dummy' settings (landscape, flower, portrait, etc.)

By adjusting the aperture and shutter speed, I was able to capture these images over the weekend at our Civil War event in Mariposa:



f/13, 1/200 seconds

f/20, 30 seconds

f/25, 1.3 seconds

f/6.3, 1/200 seconds

f/16, 1/20 seconds

f/9, 1/50 seconds

f/10, 1/30 seconds

f/25, 1/25 seconds

I should probably mention that these are straight out of the camera shots, nothing has been cropped and I don't use Photoshop.

As far as the event itself, it sure was a hot weekend. Just last week, we had torential downpours of rain and the weather decided to heat up quite a bit for our weekend. The hot weather makes it quite miserable while you are wearing wool uniform or many layers of women's clothing. The lack of accesible shade also makes it a little difficult to stay cool during the day.

However, the location is absolutely beautiful, just 30 minutes west of Yosemite. Since the location is pretty remote, the night time sky was amazing! With the new moon, the sky was filled with stars! We had a great time pointing out Venus, Mars, Saturn, Orion's Belt, and many other stars and constellations.

The end of a hot, camping weekend always makes us so thankful for clean, running, hot water and the comforts of our home. It is also a blessing to be away from all our technology and be able to have great face-to-face conversations with people who share the love for the history of our country.



Two letters in one day!

Monday was a great mail day! Two creamed colored envelopes came in the mail from two of our correspondent Compassion kids.

The first letter came from Victor in Ecuador. Here is what he wrote:

Dear Yvonne,
I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks for writing and telling me more about you. I am happy to hear from you. I have some flowers in the garden of my house and we also have fruit plants such as mango. I like to take care of them. My favorite verse is Proverbs 12:2 "A good man will obtain favor from the Lord, but He will condemn a man who devices evil." My family and I keep you and your family in our prayers. Please have my mom in your prayers and my studies too. How is your weather? I made a picture of my garden on the back. I close sending you hugs in Jesus Christ.

And here is a picture of his garden drawing:

I love all of the details he put into his garden drawing. And he even put a drawing of himself smiling!

The next letter is from Abner in Colombia. For a 9 year old, he wrote a long letter!

Dear Yvonne,
Greetings and bear hugs. I want to tell you that I traveled with my cousin Juan and my aunt Elisa on Christmas, we visited a town named Guaduas and there I saw colorful butterflies but not just that, there was also my favorite animal, the horse; there were many fruit and I've never been in a place that beautiful outside of Bogota. I want to tell you that my aunt and I were scared because of snake, black and long but my cousin was laughing because I was afraid. We ate lots of bananas and coconuts; I helped my aunt with the cooking. I love horses and my favorite horse is Canelo, he is brown and beautiful. I spent most of my Christmas time with my aunt, cousin and siblings and then I came back home and came back to school 2 days after that; I'm in 4th grade and I'm enjoying school with my friends. My favorite subject is English and my favorite verse is Psalms 8:3 "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" I'd love you to pray for me that I can do well at school. Blessings and goodbye. Thanks for all the letters that are beautiful.

Abner told me in his last letter that his family has a parrot named Rebeca. I asked him if he would send me a drawing of Rebeca and here it is!

I pray that I can continue to be an encouragement to these boys as they continue to grow their relationship with God. I pray for their families and for their studies. I pray they will grow up and make a difference in their communities. Thank you Lord for allowing these boys to be a part of our lives!

Space Adventure!

Kelsey was able to join her American Heritage Girl unit for an afternoon last week at the Challenger Learning Center.

She paired up with her buddy Hannah to explore the museum before their space mission.

The girls were split up into two groups. One group started out in 'mission control', the other group was on the 'space shuttle'. Kelsey was in the group that started out in 'mission control'. She worked with her partner on the 'space shuttle' to give her instructions on how to assemble the probe.

About half way through the mission, the girls switched places and we ended up on the 'space shuttle'. Kelsey took over assembling the probe. They only had so much time to complete the mission.

By working together, the girls were able to complete their 'mission' and the probe was released to meet up with Haley's Comet.

We then went into another room for a presentation about all the planets. I love this 'picture' of the sun with all the planets lined up on it.

As we were leaving the museum, we got caught in a huge downpour. Once we started getting closer to home, the storm cleared up. It made for a beautiful cloud filled picture!

So what else does Compassion do? Bite Back!

A lot of people know that Compassion International is a child sponsor program whose mission it is to release children from poverty in Jesus' name. But Compassion is so much more than this! I was thinking it might be nice to do some blog posts about some of the other things that Compassion does in the countries where they are working to help these children and their families be released from poverty.

Are you aware that people still die from malaria around the world? A person dies from malaria every 30 seconds and 3 out of every 4 of these deaths are children in Africa.This video does a great job of explaining how mosquito bites are still killing too many children around the world.



When Jordan Foxworthy (yes, the daughter of TV show's 'Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?' host, Jeff Foxworthy) went to Africa with her dad to visit their Compassion sponsored children, she came back as a changed young lady. (You can watch her video here. Scroll down to the third video.)  She worked with Compassion to start the Bite Back campaign to help provide insecticide-treated mosquito nets to children living in poverty. These nets help to protect the family while they are sleeping. This is the time when most mosquito bites occur.

Bite Back is a great way for teenagers and kids to become involved with Compassion. For just a $10 donation, a family will be provided with an insecticide-treated mosquito net to protect them from a mosquito bite which can lead to malaria.

Matthew was able to present Bite Back to our youth group and over the course of several weeks, they collected enough money to purchase 15 nets. You can make a donation today, or even better yet, order a presentation kit to share Bite Back with your church family. Help the fight to end malaria!

Craft table progress

After I posted yesterday about our Pinterest inspired IKEA trip, a friend of mine let me know that she had a bookcase she was willing to let me have. Yay! Well, this got me to thinking...should I try to use one of the bookcases I already had to make this craft table work?

After I picked up the bookcase from my friend, I started unloading everything off of the bookcases that needed to be moved and moving other things out of the room.  Here are a couple of before pictures:

One of the things that prompted trying to put this craft table project together was that card table in front of the 'closet'. I have been using it to rotary cut out material for my quilting projects and let's just say, it is not cutting it. :o) The table is just not tall enough and my back was not happy about it.

Of course when you clear out a whole bookcase of books and stuff, you end up with piles all over another room in your home:

Here is my version of the craft table project that I had pinned on Pinterest:

And here are a couple of after pictures of the progress so far in the whole room:

The table ends up being about 36 inches off the floor which makes it perfect for standing and rotary cutting out quilting pieces.

One of the things I always realize when I tackle this type of project is just how much stuff I have. Looks like it is time to do some clearing out and finding new homes for some things...but I am so thankful that I was able to pull off this whole re-do for just $5.99!