...and one's body is exhausted...and stringing words together has become a hugely overwhelming task.
What can one do about blogging?
Well...
How about fiddling around with making new headers, taking enormous amounts of time to rearrange one's sidebar, and writing snippity-ippity little posts like this one?
At least it feels like one is accomplishing something...
And now! The new header!
Tell me. What do you think? And what are your thoughts on the new layout in general? I wanted a more springy/summery look, and was inspired by the colorfulness of both Natalie's and Cordy's blogs, so I went for a sort of rainbow conglomeration. But, oh! I don't know. Is it too much color, do you think? I'm not sure I'm entirely satisfied with it. (Dear, dear. What a pickle.) Well, at any rate, I suppose it will have to do for now, because I really haven't the time to mess with it anymore. ;)
Last day of the Three Day Quote Tag, and as usual I have more than one quote to share with you. Actually, I went a little overboard today and included five. I hope you don't mind.
(Illustration by Norman Rockwell - from Tom Sawyer)
I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
~Jerome K. Jerome
There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say--unless you insist on saying it!
~Anonymous
The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Little girl's definition of conscience: "Something that makes you tell your mother before your brother or sister does." ~Anonymous
Learn to laugh at yourself and you'll never want for amusement. ~Unknown
Four more quotes for you today! I know, I know. This tag is supposed to be one quote a day. But, really, if I'm taking the time to post one, I may as well post a few more while I'm at it. Don't ya think?
"No pit is so deep that He is not deeper still; with Jesus, even in our darkest moments the best remains, and the very best is yet to come.
~Corrie Ten Boom
I believe in the sun even when it's not shining.
I believe in love even when I don't feel it.
And I believe in God even when He is silent.
~quote found on the wall of a concentration camp
God Knows who belongs in your life and who doesn't. Trust and let go. Whoever is meant to be there, will still be there.
~Anonymous
God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn no other way.
Blessing Counter tagged me for the Three Day Quote Tag over at her blog, Counting Your Blessings One by One. Thank you, Blessing!! This tag has come at a good time for me, because I happen to be in a bit of a funk when it comes to writing, so a simple post like this is just what I need. :D
The Rules:
Thank the person who nominated you
Nominated 3 new bloggers every day
Post a new quote every day for 3 consecutive days
Well. I'm feeling rather lazy this week, so I've decided I'm not going to tag anyone specifically, but if you'd like to do this tag, please consider yourself nominated!!
Without further ado, here's my quote/quotes for the day.
It is as if God were saying, "What I am is all that need matter to you, for there lie your hope and your peace. I will do what I will do, and it will all come to light at last, but how I do it is My secret. Trust Me, and be not afraid."
"Our insistence on seeing ahead is natural enough, but it is a real hindrance to our spiritual progress."
~A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
God loves us the way we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way.
This is unaccountably silly, I know--sitting here at 4:19 in the morning, writing a blog post. But, you see, I couldn't sleep for thinking of all the things I need to do when I get up, so I thought I might as well get up now, work for an hour or so and see if I can't get my mind to slow down a bit and get sleepy again.
This has been an extraordinarily busy weekend...hence the reason for my being woefully behind in answering all you dear people's comments...and hence the reason for my stress levels rising, my thoughts going at a hundred miles a minute, and the ridiculousness of finding myself sitting here so early in the morning typing at my computer.
*Ahem* I think perhaps a recap of my weekend might be in order.
To begin with, I took off of work this Saturday because it was the day before my oldest sister's wedding, and I had a feeling there might be some last minute preparations in which I could lend a hand. (And if my services were not needed for actual wedding preparations then at least I could help out with the Saturday wash load, and allow my mom more time to work on the wedding stuff.) As it turned out there really wasn't all that much to do, but I managed to fill my day up quite nicely anyway. My sister and I (not the sister getting married, you understand, but another one) went out in the afternoon to do a little shopping because she was off of work, too, for the same reason as I--and finding that the wedding preparations were well under control we thought we might as well enjoy ourselves.
My sister has just recently begun collecting tea cups. So we went to a used furniture/what's-it shop in order to see if we couldn't find another cup to add to her collection. And guess what? We did!
Here it is. Isn't it pretty?
My sister was so happy to have made such an excellent purchase, that she decided another purchase was in order and drove us straightway to Chick-fil-a for a celebratory milkshake. As always she ordered a strawberry milkshake for me and a cookies-n-cream for herself and we were happy, happy, happy! That is, until we realized that the cookies-n-cream milkshake was actually a chocolate milkshake.
Horrors! This would never do.
So my sister parked the car and went inside to see about getting it switched. (So much for the drive through. Ha!) There was a bit of a wait before she could get the attention of one of the workers, but in the end everything turned out just fine. We got our cookies-n-cream milkshake and even got to keep the chocolate one free of charge! (Yes. It was a good day.)
Then Sunday arrived. The day of the wedding.
My mom, my three older sisters, the groom, and myself were heading up to the wedding site early, along with a group of friends who had volunteered their services for getting things set up and ready before the guests arrived. The ceremony and reception were being held at a camp up in the mountains about two hours away from our home, so carting up all the decorations and food was a bit of a job, and we had to be very careful not to leave anything behind since going home for forgotten items wasn't really an option. There were, of course, some moments of stress throughout the day, but looking back on it, it really did come together pretty smoothly.
My oldest sister is really into the rustic, woodsy look, so decorating was fairly simple.
Here's a picture to show you how we decorated the beverage table. Nothing fancy, as you can see, but we were pleased with it, and it was all very easy to put together. All we needed was a wooden crate, a burlap table runner, and some pine branches cut from the trees outside, and wala! We had a decorated table! :)
My sister had come to the conclusion several weeks before the wedding that carrying a cake two and a half hours in the car wasn't going to work very well, so instead of a real cake, she decided to make a cake out of Oreos; inspired from the picture below.
It was a cute idea. Of course, our cake didn't turn out as picture perfect as the original, but we really didn't care. After all, it was just going to be eaten in a few hours. :P
All in all it was a very nice wedding. Small but totally relaxed and family-ish, which is what we like. My dad sang a song during the ceremony while my brother accompanied him on the guitar, and it was absolutely beautiful. I have now decided that I must have my dad sing to me at my wedding.
I don't have a recording of my dad singing the song, but here's a recording of the original if you'd like to hear it. It's a song by Phil Keaggy from his album Way Back Home.
It really was a fun day, and seems especially fun now that I'm looking back on it (isn't that how it always is, though? Things always appear so much more fun in retrospect than in the actual moment). I will confess, however, that even in the midst of all the laughter and gaiety, I did manage to find some time for a personal little party. (You know the kind. I think they're normally called 'pity parties'?) Yes. I had one of those. I sat there, all silent and alone (well, not literally alone--I was in fact surrounded by people--but alone in spirit, you know?), thinking pityingly over the sad, sad state of my own singleness. Wishing very much for a husband and feeling altogether 'lone and lorn'--to borrow a phrase from Mrs. Gummidge. Yes. I was quite enjoying myself, in a miserable, gloomy sort of way.
Unfortunately, though, I wasn't able to go all out and do proper justice to my little pity party because, well...crying in public just isn't quite the thing. But I assure you I had plans for indulging myself on the way home. Ah yes. In the darkness of the long car ride, I felt certain I'd be able to let the river of tears flow unnoticed and...do things properly, so to speak. But, well, it's funny how these things work out. I suppose I must have been too tired by the end of the evening even to cry , because I made it home without a shedding a single tear. (Shucks. And I was so looking forward to feeling sorry for myself.)
I stole this picture from my brother's camera. That was the appearance of the outdoors during the wedding celebration...that is, when it wasn't raining, snowing, or hailing. Yeah, the weather was pretty crazy, and very cold. Actually, it felt like a winter wedding...in May.
We arrived home quite late, but still managed to squeeze in a short discussion of the days events before going to bed, because that's what we do. We must talk. By the time we finally got to sleep it was close to 2:00. I slept in the next morning and then...wouldn't you know it? My sister and brother announced they were going to go antique shopping again and stop at Chick-fil-a for lunch. And of course they asked if I wanted to go with them--and of course I said yes, because...well, Chick-fil-a means a milkshake, and I was sort of in the mood for a milkshake. (When am I not?)
This outing took up half of my morning (the half which I hadn't already spent in bed) and half of the afternoon, and when I got home I was hoping to catch up on responding to comments and all that jazz, but then I got to talking with my siblings about the wedding again, (yes, we really do like to talk!) and after that I had laundry to do, and ironing, and supper preparations, and...did I tell you it was a busy weekend? And then my evening was full, too, because I and my two siblings (the two who'd gone to Chick-fil-a with me) went to our oldest brother's house for our bi-weekly movie night. (We're currently watching through Jeeves and Wooster, and finished the third and fourth episodes of season 4 last night.) Of course, before we started the movie we had to have a little talk about the wedding, and then we had further discussions about various topics after the movie was over, so by the time we got home it was around 11:00. No time for computer work that evening.
So there you have it. That was my very busy weekend. (And no. I did not write all of the above between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning. I got through the first couple paragraphs and then went back to bed till 6:30.) It is now 5:00 in the evening and I declare, this post has taken me much too long to complete. Granted I wasn't working on it non-stop but still...I'm much too slow of a writer. And that's a fact. :P
What have you all been up to lately?
Anything new and exciting happening in your lives?
