No Simply Primitives Update for Me

Between fighting a virus for a week and a half and attending a missions conference in Atlanta there has been little time for crafting over the past couple of weeks. However, my talented artist friends at Simply Primitives have many new offerings this month and I hope you drop by and check them out.

Conference Host was McEarchen UMC, Powder Springs, GA

Ready for Another Day of Workshops

I love attending conferences and hearing what other churches are doing missionally and how they deal with the challenges we all face. We came home from the conference energized and full of ideas.

Fall is in full swing here and, despite the drought, the trees are almost as pretty as ever. I'm trying to take time every day to get outside and enjoy the glorious weather and quickly changing colors and I hope you're enjoying fall in your area too!

Christmas in October

Kansas City hosts this annual event that helps low income, elderly homeowners with needed home repairs. Yesterday teams worked on over 200 houses across KC. Homeowners apply early in the year, and the house captains choose a house to work on. Projects range from painting to replacing a roof. This was my husband's first year to lead a team, so he picked a home that mostly needed painting and some minor repairs. The homeowner, Marie had lived in the home since 1948.

Many years ago, Marie herself had replaced the porch railing but time had taken it's toll. Rob and Chris replaced it using Marie's original design.

One team member tackled a variety of fix-up projects in the house, but most of us spent our time scraping, caulking and painting.

Some us were braver about heights than others.

It was probably the coldest day we'll have in October this year but hopefully many homeowners around KC will be a little warmer this winter because of the work done yesterday by hundreds of volunteers.

Early Work Mercantile Update

Early Work Mercantile has been updated for October! I hope you'll drop by and see what everyone is offering this month.

It was 16 years ago this month that we adopted Cookie, our little mustachioed kitty. This cat definitely has nine lives. Her previous owners moved away and left her as a kitten to fend for herself and she managed to survive. She has survived several mysterious illnesses (cats never tell you what's hurting them) and if you follow my blog you know we thought we were going to lose her earlier this year when she stopped eating for several days. Now she is blind and pretty disoriented and, since they don't make kitty Depends we find ourselves carrying her to her litter box several times a day. She's really not the cat she used to be but I can't bring myself to let her go. I thought it would be easier because we've never had a cat who enjoyed such a long life, but it's not. She still enjoys eating and purrs when we pet her, but spends the rest of the time sleeping. How do you know when the time has come to say goodbye?