7 quick takes: church and home tra la la

one

The last many weeks I've been spending every available 'extra', as if there are any if those, minute at church trying to chip away at the big Catechesis of the Good Shepherd pile. I've already posted pictures of the new rooms which continue to be so lovely, but I've also been rewriting lessons and remaking materials that weren't working. Communal Prayer, for example, needed a serious overhaul.

I did up new little 'order of services' or whatever you call it

and then laboriously rewrote by hand Opening Sentences, Dismissals. Psalms, and so on and so forth. When I finally came to the point of laminating everything Matt was reading about Anselm and the existence of God and boy, thought I, I used to be an intelligent person one time, but lo, now I am stupid with so much laminating. How the intelligent have become seriously dim witted!

two

I also put together this cute little Folder Holder for the Little Ones. So Cute! [sorry, overcome with the cuteness]

three

Of course, spending so much time at church means that the house and garden fall into decay and failure. Saturday evening I rushed around cutting a few more flowers before a threatening frost. But then I just plunked them on my desk where they eventually faded and died because I didn't have time to do anything else.

Sob. I do not desire the advent of frost and cold weather. I mourn and weep and wail, in fact, when I think about it.

four

No tomatoes, no squash, no herbs this year, as I have regularly been lamenting (so much whining that someone wonderful has been bringing me gorgeous tomatoes--that is the true lesson, as any child can tell you, the more you whine, the more you get what you want) but my hydrangea finally bloomed, in three colors even, and I've managed to dry a few of them.

five

So I'm still not done at church, I have to fix the basket for the Pearl of Great Price and write another lesson but I woke up and realized that if I didn't spend some time doing stuff at home, my lessening intelligence would be compounded by being a Bad Mother and Wife.

six

So, naturally, I forced Matt, against his will, to rearrange our bedroom. He has been wishing he could have a place to study that isn't a Junk Heap of Despair but there just isn't another room or place in the house so we subdivided our bedroom--half Study half Bedroom.

Here is the 'Study'. Not wanting him to be lonely by actually being alone, I provided him with a chair for me and lovingly placed my lap top straight away near him.

'You don't want me to actually work, do you' he observed sadly when I had made myself perfectly comfortable.

'Of course not,' I said, 'I want us to sit here happily reading the Internet together and never doing any work ever again.'

Look how many books fit in his nook!

seven

Making the room into two separate functioning spaces meant putting our bed up against the wall. I expected this arrangement to be awful but I really love it.

Why? You ask. Well, for the last couple of years I have woken up to the dismal red expanse of the church brick wall, AND though I love the church dearly, that wall looms over me and makes me feel like I wished I live in a forest, which I don't really wish, but the wall messes with my mind. Now, however, I wake up to the view of the sky and all the angst seems to have melted away.

Plus, I painted this clever shelf which I procured from the church Rummage Sale. The child, I don't know how to explain that, but isn't the shelf fine?

And then I flung all these pictures on the wall.

So now I should go back to writing lessons. Or something. 

Have a great weekend and go check out Jen!