Don’t Leave Home Without It: The Bible

I carry a tiny Bible in my purse.  It’s only 3″ X 4.5″ and doesn’t weight anything.  It’s not the entire Bible, just the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs.  It allows me to have the word of God at all times and have something to read should I get myself unexpectedly stuck in a waiting room or waiting in my car.  I’ve been able to squeeze in Bible reading time I would not otherwise have had, and I haven’t had to twiddle my thumbs.  It’ s worked for me for about 20 years now!  🙂

Please Advise :-)

This Works For Me Wednesday Backwards Edition came at just the perfect time because I happen to need advise on several issues.  Please help me out and thanks for all your comments.

• Which blog reader do you prefer and why?  (I’ve been using and loving WordPress Blog Surfer, but it only works for WordPress blogs.)
• What is your favorite, easy to make/serve dessert for your family?  I often serve ice cream as it’s real easy, tasty and in hot Southern California it also cools us down, but I’d love your ideas or recipes for some more variety.
• Our son is doing a poll for school and would like me to ask which presidential candidate do you DISLIKE the most and why?
• Life is getting outrageously expensive.  The price of everything is going up except for paychecks.  What are your best ways of saving money and stretching your shrinking dollar?
• It’s time to change cell phones, so which company are you happy with?  Which plan gets the most minutes for the least amount of money?
• Can you recommend digital scrapbooking sites?

For more participants, be sure to visit Rocks In My Dryer.

Don’t miss my other Works For Me Wednesday posts on my Household Tips page and Organizing Tips page.

Solution For Keys Lost Right In Your Own Home

I don’t know if it’s premature old age, if it’s too many other things on the brain, or if everybody is like this from time to time, but a few years ago I started losing my keys all over the house, except in a logical spot. Being tired of searching frantically and of making myself late to boot, I hung a decorative wooden box on the wall right behind the front door. It took a couple of days to remember to put my keys in there, but the training period was fast. I also put in there our sunglasses, a spare garage door remote, a spare set of house and car keys and a pen in case I need to sign for something at the door. It works for me and now I’m always ready to go.

So has this happened to you??? Or is it just me?

For more participants in Works For Me Wednesday, visit Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer.

Don’t miss my other Works For Me Wednesday posts on my Household Tips page and Organizing Tips page.

Inhumane Conditions In The Slaughterhouse Since 1993?? They Told Us California Cows Were Happy Cows!!

With this week-end’s meat recall, 143 million pounds of beef, the largest recall in history, comes an even more disturbing possibility. A video has surfaced that shows inhumane conditions may have occurred since 1993. That’s 15 years!! Did the government do anything to safeguard that consumers eat healthy food? Did the greedy big business slaughterhouse have the least thought about the public school children who would eat tainted meat? Are California cows happy cows as the advertising slogan claims? You decide.

Check out Tad Cronn’s article and look at the video he posted.

WFMW & Thursday 13: Our Purpose Driven Lives

The Lenten season is approaching quickly.  For the past two years while I was working at my church I have used the book “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren to prepare for Easter by reading his book and reflecting on his 40-day spiritual journey.  I found different insights each year as I have grown and changed.  It worked for me so well that I want to repeat it for a third year, and for 2008 I hope you’ll join me on-line.  I highly recommend this book which according to Publishers Weekly has become “the bestselling nonfiction hardback book in history.”  So come find out why with me and my other readers.  If you don’t already own it, you can check it out from your local library when the time comes, or you can purchase it.

If you’re interested in “The Purpose Driven Life,” please join me for the 40 days of lent as we go through each of the 4o short chapters one day at a time.  I will start the discussion with the introduction on February 6th (Ash Wednesday) and we will continue for the next 40 days during lent, finishing on March 17th (St. Patrick’s Day), just in time for Holy Week and with God’s help we will be prepared for a new purpose driven life during the Easter Season.   (I will continue my other posts as well.)

Here are 13 of many more discussion questions taken from Warren’s book:

1. What do you feel most people’s lives are driven by?
2. What has been the driving force in your life?
3. How is friendship with God similar to any other friendship, and how is it different?
4. What fears surface when you think of surrendering your complete life to Christ?
5. What are the barriers that keep us from loving and caring for other believers?
6. Is there someone you need to restore a relationship with that we could pray with you about?
7. Where in your spiritual growth are you having to be patient because there seems to be little progress?
8. How has God used pain and trouble to help you grow?
9. What do you love to do that you could use to serve others in the family of God?
10. How does comparing ourselves with others keep us from fully developing our unique shape?
11. What do you feel might be a part of the Life Message that God has given you to share with the world?
12. How has reading through this book together refocused or redirected you life purpose?
13. What have been some of the most helpful insights to you?

For more participants, head over to Shannon’s Rocks In My Dryer, and to Thursday Thirteen.  And if you’ve missed some of my previous posts, just click below.

• Hit The Road, Junk!
• Cleaning Supplies In Every Room
• Large desk calendar inside guest closet
• How Do You Organize Your Home?
• Thank You Note How-To And Samples
• New Year Resolution And Thank You Notes
• Organizing Household Resources In An Address Book
• Organized In The New Year
• Put Used Christmas Cards To Good Use
• Bookcases at the Breaking Point?
• Organizing Household Binder
• Trading Card Storage
• Freezer Solution
• Child’s haircut without tears
• Homemade bread stuffing
• Plastic colander bath toy drainer/holder
• Reuse plastic grocery bags in the car
• How to increase Web site traffic?
• 16 Blog/Web site tips
• Toy storage
• Every Cookie Recipe Imaginable
• Egg Tip
• Holiday Decorating Tips and Ideas

Find Free Classics And Coupons On-Line At Read Print

I’m sharing with you something of interest to students, literature enthusiasts and coupon-clippers. This unusual combination can be found at Read Print, a site offering free on-line access to the classics, where you’ll find thousands of books, short stories and poems by many of the must-read authors. At Read Print, you’ll also find a biography and illustration of each author. There is a section for articles on literature and writing, as well as that unexpected and unrelated section for coupons for all sorts of companies such as Payless Shoes and Office Depot which must keep Read Print financially alive. The site which has been online since 2006 provides clean, clear, easy-on-the-eyes and well organized pages. There’s also a search feature to help you find exactly what your looking for.

Celebrate Life; Plant Trees On Tu B’Shevat And Year Round

When you shall come to the land, you shall plant trees. Leviticus 19:23

At sundown on Monday, Jews around the world will be celebrating Tu B’Shevat, which is the New Year for Trees. It is not a high holiday like Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah, but some families celebrate with their children by planting trees, donating to the Jewish National Fund to have a tree planted in Israel, or having a seder similar to the one from Passover as Tu B’Shevat begins the 60 days leading to Passover.

During President Bush’s recent visit to Israel, the Jewish National Fund presented him with a certificate for 36 trees to be planted in his name at the American Independence Park in the Judean Hills and in Negev. The JNF states, “As the present year, 5768 in the Jewish calendar is a shmitta year, when the land lies fallow and no sowing or planting is allowed in the earth of the Land of Israel, the trees that will be planted in the name of the U.S. President will actually be planted at the end of the shmitta year.”

Fellow blogger Robin has an excellent 13-point description of Tu B’Shevat and I encourage you to check her easy-to-understand but detailed information and links.

Growing Blog, Top Post And Blog Forecast For 2008

I’m amazed and also quite pleased to see that I continue to make the Growing Blog list on WordPress despite the exponential factor which should make it progressively more difficult to be on this list.

To remain a growing blog, you not only have to grow, but you have to outdo your own growing rate and the rate of others each time, and I’ve started the new year with a bang not only being one of the WordPress Growing Blogs, but also having one of the Top Posts on WordPress.

At last count my post Organizing Household Resources In An Address Book was the 99th Top Post on WordPress out of more than 2 million blogs and an unknown bazillion posts.

I’ve said it before, but I have to say it again that I thank my readers.  I’m so glad that you find my blog to be interesting and useful.  I’m so glad when I look at my statistics and see that you came to my site from a link which was e-mailed to you or when I read my own e-mail and there’s a note from you telling me that you are putting me on your reader so you won’t miss a post.

As you saw with yesterday’s post, I don’t like to make New Year Resolutions because so few people can keep them and if I’m going to have a resolution or a goal, why wait for January 1, but here are just a few of the directions I see my blog going in the coming months.  I have other plans too that I’ll let you know about as the year unfolds.

If you’ve made the resolution to be organized, this blog is quickly becoming the place to find easy tips and solutions.  I’ve even created pages at the top of this blog for Household Tips and for Organizing so that you can easily find my posts at any time.  To help you with that there are also a search feature and a calendar in the sidebar.

I’ve noticed that you are also especially interested in my posts on healthy eating and cookies (not so healthy but yummy) as well as other recipes.  So I’ll give you a bit more in these areas too in the coming months.

I’ll continue to post about religion, God and my opinions on the topic.  The Lenten season is approaching quickly.  For the past two years I have used the book “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren to prepare for Easter by reading his book and reflecting on his 40-day spiritual journey.  I found different insights each year as I have grown and changed, and for 2008 I hope you’ll join me on-line.  I highly recommend this book which according to Publishers Weekly has become “the bestselling nonfiction hardback book in history.”  So come find out why with me and my other readers.  If you don’t already own it, you can check it out from your local library when the time comes, or you can purchase it.

Today and anytime, feel free to leave me comments.  Comments help us get to know each other and to build a community.

In the meantime, thanks a million to all of you for reading my blog, and I wish you and your loved ones a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2008!!!

Thursday 13 #7 — Thankful for God’s Comforts

 

Happy Thanksgiving To All!!!

Thank you for coming back to Thursday Thirteen. On this day of giving thanks I let you know about 13 things I am thankful God gave us and which comfort my spirit and soul. You’ll notice a major theme with water.  All photos from Flickr’s public files.

1. Lakes
2. Beaches
3. The smell of a redwood forest
4. Rain taping on a window or on my face
5. Birds singing
6. Cuddling up in a comfy chair with a warm blanket and a great book next to a fire while the rain taps its music on the window pane
7. Hot tea
8. The sun creating rainbows through a church’s stained glass windows
9. Early morning fresh air
10. Being perfectly still and quiet, watching nature unnoticed
11. A brook or small cascade gurgling
12. The cool softness of moss
13. Morning dew

 

Don’t miss my posts about Black Friday and Holiday Shopping.
Thanks to the Internet we can have our cake and eat it too:
Let’s shop all the Black Friday sales WHILE we stay home in our pajamas!!
Now that’s a good reason to TGIF!!

• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.

WFMW — Organizing Household Binder

I love to organize with binders. One of my favorite binder is my household binder.

In a regular school binder I put in sheet protectors and add all my household warranties, receipts, and manuals like the ones for my washer/dryer, my dishwasher, my air conditioning, my roof, my blender, etc., etc., etc.

In that binder I also keep information about who installed them or who repaired them, such as business cards of my plumber, bug exterminator, roofer, electrician, etc.

If a friend recommends a service provider, I add it in too, along with the name of the friend’s name, the date and any comments.

It’s not information we need often, but when we need it, we need it fast and we need to know exactly where to find it.

When I add something to it, I take a minute to look through for any obsolete papers which can be thrown out.

When it comes time to move, I can give all the appropriate paperwork to the new owners and I add my latest coupons for the local pizza and Chinese takeout for an easy moving day dinner.

I first saw this system used when I was a teen and my parents purchased a new home. The housing developer gave them just such a binder with all the appliance manuals, recommended service providers, local schools, phone numbers for cable, utilities, newspaper, etc. and my mom and I liked the idea so much that all these years later, we still use it.

I think Realtors could use this idea too.

It really works for us! It keeps our homes organized.

For a list of this week’s other participants, stop by Rocks in My Dryer.

If you missed any on my previous Works For Me Wednesdays and household tips, just click below.

Holiday Shopping List

Holiday Decorating Tips and Ideas

Trading Card Storage

Freezer Solution

Large desk calendar inside guest closet

Child’s haircut without tears

Homemade bread stuffing

Plastic colander bath toy drainer/holder

Reuse plastic grocery bags in the car

How to increase Web site traffic?

16 Blog/Web site tips

Toy storage

• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.