.......Part of the Family, A Project and a Tip

Good afternoon Y'all!!!    I trust that where ever y'all are today that it is a blessed day and that you can say that you are happy to be a part of such a magnificent day!!!!    Not so good, you say.    Well, if your are reading this and was able to get out of bed today, then that makes it a pretty good day, doesn't it.    I got up with rain this morning, but the sun has shone just beautifully today.    The wind is blowing quit a bit, but not like it did late last week and over the weekend.    Every day was a bad hair day.    I have let my hair grow out and it is now hanging on my shoulders and back a bit, and boy does the wind whip it around.    I had forgotten about that fact when I started letting it grow out some. But, I guess I'll suffer through it for a while anyway.   I'm kinda enjoying the longer messy look, not that that was the look I was going for, but it seems to be the best I can do with it for myself.   Even back years ago when my was really long, I couldn't do much with it then, but I do even less with it now.     Maybe a perm to help it hold curl better?    Hummmmmm.........we'll see.     But....if the wind is blowing where you are, just hang on to your hair, otherwise you might end up looking like you have a tumbleweed on top of your head!!!      Hey, ask me how I know!!!   hahahahaha

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I have a project I wanted to share with y'all today.    I love crafting and I love recycling.    But I really love it when I can craft and recycle at the same time!!!    I bet y'all do too!!!    What did I do?    Well, I took some cracker boxes that was headed for the land fill somewhere and I turned it into a "priceless" necklace and earrings!   I did!!!!     hehehe    I took 3 layers of cracker box, aka-chipboard, and xyroned the layers together to make it a good, thick, sturdy, beefy, layer.    Then I searched thru my sizzix steel ruled dies and found one that was good for jewelry pieces.    I haven't been able to find the one I was looking for, gotta dig deeper for it I guess.    The sizzix dies will easily cut 3 layers, or more because they are the thicker, heavier dies..    The die that I chose was rectangles. It cut 4 or 5 different sized rectangles in one run thru the machine, then I took the largest of the rectangles and cut them in two and it made good sized pieces to work with.   I used the smaller of the rectangles as is, to make the earrings.

The first few pictures are of the raw chipboard.

 This is the shape I used for them.   The larger piece was twice the length.

 This shows a pretty good shot of how thick it is.

So, here it is.    What do you think?   I love how it turned out.    I put a base of a mixture of paint on for the first and base coat.   It was a mixture of metallic acrylic paints.    Then I commenced to put micro beads of different colors on.   I sprinkled on a couple of different micro glitters and added a few seed beads and then some gold flakes of a large flake glitter.

I will share with you another little secret tip.    Shhhhhh, don't tell anyone, but the micro beads and little thingies that look little hex nuts are from the Dollar Tree, in the nail polish area.   A couple of summers ago, they had tiny little bottles of all these micro beads, glitters, and stuff meant to put on fancy finger nails.   I use it on my fancy crafts.   hehehehe    Shhhhh, it's out little secret.

 The pin shows a perspective.    This is a very light weight set of jewelry.

 This is a better closeup of what's going on with the necklace.

Here you can see what's going on with earrings.   I punched the holes in the 3 pieces with my cropodile.    And I also made the ear wires.    I have a tool kinda like a jacked up pair of pliers and you cut a 2 inch of ear wire and lay it in a channel and squeeze the handles together and it makes all the bends on the ear wires perfectly.   Just be sure and sand the ends of the ear wires really well so as not to scratch up your ears.   Joanns used to carry the ear wire maker, but I don't know if they still have it or not.   You use size 18, 20, or 22 size wire to make the ear wires.     And then, what did I finish the earrings and necklace up with?    3 layers of my favorite shiny nail polish from the Dollar Tree.   When it cures, it's perfect!!!     Well, that's my project for this go around.    I am working on another project that will be awesome, I hope.   hehehe     Can't wait to share it with y'all!!!

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My tip, which is lower in the post, is about taking a picture of your church calendar with your cell phone.   When I started writing about that, I was reminded of our prayer list.    If you go to church, I bet your church keeps a prayer list too.    Even if you don't go to church, you may still have your prayer list that you go over on a regular basis.    I hope we all have people that we remember regularly in our daily prayers.    That's what I would like to remind us to keep those people close to our minds and hearts in prayer.   Lots of family and friends with all different kinds of needs.     Sickness, disease, victims of crime, loss of jobs, death, up coming surgeries, accidents, lives filled with sin and many other issues that we need to keep at the forefront of prayer needs.     Every one of us have problems, which means every one of us have needs.    We can take every one of those problems to the One who can meets those needs!!!!  

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We also need to remember our country!!!     Lots of issues are going on, true.    But there are lots of people causing unnecessary trouble.    I have always said that people who are looking for trouble will either find trouble or create trouble.   We have a lot of people finding the trouble and just as many more creating unnecessary trouble.     To those people I say, get a job or get a life, just get out of the way of the people who are trying to work for the good of others.    I seen about 2 or 3 minutes of the news this morning and all the slop was over the academy awards last night.    I asked hubby if he seen anyone with their arms in casts or slings and he asked why.    I said I just figured they all broke their arms while patting themselves on the backs!!!    Most of them are in the hall of SHAME in my book! But then again, that's just one woman's opinion, and for the time being, I am still allowed to have my opinion, and as long I am allowed to have my opinion, I will express it here.     I don't figure there are very many pagan hollywood elitists rushing over here to read my blog, but I sure wish they would!!!   I don't need pagan hollywood telling me how I should think, vote or feel about anything!!   There is only a VERY FEW people in hollywood, living today, that have actually served their country proudly in uniform.    There are a few, and for those few, I am thankful.    Google it.   You'll be surprised at what you find, or maybe not.   I know the generations before the pagan hollywood we have now, that MANY of those served their country.    I enjoyed "watching" those people.    I just don't need mimicers, apers, actors, liars, thieves, adulterers, idol worshipers, lovers of self, revilers, deviants, brawlers or impersonators (lots of other stuff too) telling me how I should act, feel, or think about anything.    Do you?    Probably not.    I can think for myself and I'm sure you can too.   We vote with how we spend our time and money.   I will not waste time or money on hollywood!!!    We love Christian movies with actors who are not afraid to walk the walk and talk the talk, in their every day lives.    Those are few and far between, but they are out there.     Support those movies and actors.     Ok, I'm getting off my detergent (soap) box now.    

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Have you ever thought of yourself as being in a royal family or of royal heritage.    I'm not thinking in the line of earthly royalty.    Although we can get an idea from what we see in some of the countries across the globe that still have some form of a royal family that people look to.    Again, that's not where I'm going with this.   Because that is putting people in classes.    Yes, there are wealthy people, and what we call middle class and lower class.    That isn't what I'm thinking at all.    And I'll tell you why.   Just because you may be wealthy, does that make you a good person?   No.    You may be middle class, does that make you a better person than the lower class person?   No.    We as human beings are always quick to label.    Hey, I did it, in the paragraph above this one.    But when we look with our physical eyes, that's what we do.    That's just what we do.    I don't know why we do, but we do.    I guess it has a tendency to make us feel better.     It shouldn't though.     When we look at scripture, in the very beginning, when God decided to make for Himself a companion to commune with, what did He use?    DIRT!!!!!!     Where's the bragging rights in that?     Well, there isn't any.   We do the best we can to get rid of as much dirt as possible.    We bathe, we clean our houses, we wash our cars, we clean up outside, all to get rid of accumulated dirt.    For me, I just say don't disturb the people that have collected in my house in the form of dust and dirt!!!   hahahaha    But you see what I am saying.    I have oft wondered why God chose dirt to make us from.    He could have made us from gold just as easily.     He could have made us from fire, or water or from trees, but he chose simple dirt.    I have to come to the conclusion, for myself, that God chose dirt, so when we started thinking high and mighty of ourselves, we could come back to basics and realize that dirt is dirt is dirt.    The only real variant in dirt is the colors, but in the end, it's still just dirt.

The "royalty" that I want us to take into consideration is the royalty in the family of God.    You see, at the foot of the Cross, we are all beggars; we are all thieves; we are all liars; we are all low class citizens; we are all in need.    The rich, the middle class, the peasants.......we are all in need of the same thing.   What is that particular need?    Redemption.     We live in a day and age when such things are not spoken of outside the church and to be honest, I don't think it's being talked about very much in many churches today.   It's all about passing blame or giving sin another name that removes all accountability.    Yes, redemption is an old word, yes it's an odd word from today's point of view.    Sin is one of those old words that has almost gone by the way side too.     I heard a young girl the other day in the grocery store saying that her generation has influenced the language of the day.   She was bragging about it.    For me, I almost cried.    Her lack of understanding, the lack of years under her belt, her lack of wisdom.....yes, I almost cried.    That's not necessarily something to brag about from my point of view.     I almost stopped her and asked just what she had contributed to the language of the day, but I didn't.    What about God's language, wonder what she knows about God's language.

In this life there are lots of places that we want to go, lots of places we want to visit.     What about the days to come?   What about eternity?    What are some of the words that will get us closer to an eternity spent with our Savior?   Confessing our sin, admitting our sin, asking forgiveness of our sin. 

Turning from our sin.   Taking accountability of our sin.  Calling on Messiah Christ Jesus to help us.
  

I said earlier that the foot of the Cross is level for all of us.    The rich, the poor, the upper class, the lower class.    Where ever you fall in those categories, we're all on an even playing field when we come to the Cross.     That's where mercy and grace comes together and changes us all.    If you have ever taken the step and came to the Cross, confessed that you are sinner and repented of your sin and asked Christ Jesus to be Lord of your life from that day forward, then let me tell you something.   You now belong to THE royal family!!!    You are now a Brother or Sister of Christ Jesus.    That makes you heir and joint heir with Christ.    You can now call Yahweh our God, Father.    Being able to call Him Father makes you a "Child of God".    If you are a child of God, then you my friend, are a son or daughter of the most high God!!!!     We go from rags to riches in the blink of an eye when we accept Christ as our Savior.    We go from beggar to heir of heaven.    We go from homeless to mansions.   We go from scruffing around on dirt roads to treading the streets of gold.    We go from tattered and torn clothes to priestly garments.   We go from being a nameless person to having our name written in the Lambs Book of Life.   We go from pauper with nothing to heir to all the riches that heaven holds!!!!    

I don't know 'bout you, but that just does my soul a whole heap of good.    You know, I can't even begin to imagine what eternity with Christ is gonna be like, but I do know that I would never ever find out what it's gonna be like without having a few words in my vocabulary like: redemption, ransom, sin, repentance, accountability, faith, mercy, grace, forgiveness, confessing sin, and many more words that are less common today than they should be.    Can you call yourself "Child of God"?   If so, then you are a part of the family, a son or daughter of the "most high God"!!!!    Can you say Amen and Amen to that?    So be it!!!!    So be it!!!!

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Another tip for y'all.     Woohoo, I hope are enjoying the tips I have been sharing.    Today's is a bit different, but I hope you will like it anyway.     I do, so I think a lot of y'all will like it too.     There have been a couple involving my cell phone, this one does too.   At church, we have a monthly calendar.    It has all the events and birthdays and anniversaries, church times, special meetings and the like.     It also has the daily Bible reading on it.    If you read every day, you will have read the Bible in a year.     So, what I do, every month when I get the new calendar to put on my fridge, I will take a picture of it with my cell phone.    I make sure it is a good clear picture and then I can zoom it large enough every day to read it and see what is happening and especially do my Bible reading.    It comes in handy if I am out somewhere and have a few minutes, I can do my Bible reading, because I have some Bible apps on my phone too.   So whether home or not, I can always do my Bible reading and it really helps to set yourself for success, by making it easier to have the calendar always at my fingertips.     Hope you like this and can find a way to use it to help with your daily Bible reading.

Well, that's just about it for now.    I hope you seen or read something here today that is a benefit to you or someone you love.     I hope and pray that you can call yourself a "Child of God" and call God Father.     If not, please consider what's keeping you from it.    Nothing is more important than having your eternity settled and secure.    That happens ONLY thru the blood of Christ.    There is no other way to the Father, except thru His Son.    Don't let anyone lie to you or cheat you out of an eternity in the presence of Jesus.    We make the choice.    No one can make the choice for you.    You choose.   Please choose wisely.    I hope you enjoyed the tip I shared with y'all and I hope you enjoyed the craft and recycling.    It's great to make something beautiful with something that would have been tossed otherwise.    I hope that you have an awesome rest of the evening, a blessed and refreshing night of rest and that tomorrow is a wonderful day for you!!!!    Always remember that God loves you and so do I!!!!!    hugs and love, Patty