Author: Andrea

Please Give Your Opinion…

I had heard positive reviews of homemade laundry soap.  At first I was skeptical –has the coupon clipping and penny-pinching really come to this?  But then, they said it does a wonderful job of laundering clothes…that it cleans very well and yet is gentle on the material.  I thought maybe one day I would try it…as an adventure if for nothing else!  After all, I still have lots of laundry soap from “stocking up” before we were married!  (You can ask my Mom Murdock about that!!!)

Then Marcia, a good friend, who with her husband had just invested in a frontloader washer, mentioned something one day.  It was something to the fact of, “I just bought all the stuff to make homemade laundry soap, and now our washing machine requires only High Efficiency laundry soap.  I wanted to try it to save money, and now I cannot use it, and I wasted the money buying the supplies.”  I’LL BUY IT FROM YOU!”  I said.  Here was my chance to try out the endeavor, and I wouldn’t have to run around to stores looking for Borax and other supplies either!

So, for twelve dollars, I had probably enough to make eight or ten batches of the soap, and each batch makes enough for around forty loads.  If you cannot say anything else about homemade laundry soap, you can say, IT IS CHEAP.

Marcia and I got together and made it at my house.  It was a piece of cake to make…SO EASY!  So you can say that in its favor too.

As for how it washes, how will we know, except to test it out on a stain or use it and over time see how it seems to work?  Well, I decided to test it out on a stain as I had seen that someone else had done.  I squirted Mustard on two old socks and soaked one in homemade soap, and the other in Dynamo laundry soap.  Well, are you waiting for me to give you a rave review on the homemade stuff?  I can’t.  THe Dynamo did better.  It is true.  Maybe I should try a different way next time, or maybe it is because of our water here…it is very hard, I think.  But it wasn’t anything special.  I would be willing to try a different recipe later, and I will definitely use up what I have, but I cannot rave about it.  Have you had a different experience?  Can you tell me why mine didn’t do wonderfully as it seems to have done for others?  I would like your opinion, especially if you have made homemade laundry soap before yourself!

Ingredients
Grated bar soap dissolving in hot water
Adding all the ingredients into a five-gallon bucket

Cricut Crazy!

Yes, I went cricut crazy!  With my new Cricut Expression, (a Christmas gift), I was excited to be able to cut out letters for my church bulletin board.  Before, I rarely used individual, stand alone letters because I was too lazy to cut each one out by hand.  But with a Cricut, I could use letters without all of the work!  So, I prayed that God would guide me in what message to use for my bulletin board.  Well, being January, I was thinking of snow, and the passage that came to mind was Isaiah 55:10-11.

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10-11

Well, I tried to trim down the verses, but didn’t think it very possible without taking away from the meaning of them.  So I began to cut out letters…and I cut out more, –and I realized this was going to be bigger than I thought–and I cut out more…and on and on.  Finally I finished.

If the cutting took a while, even with a Cricut, the taping and mounting took a good chunk of time too.  In fact, I had to trim down some of the verse so that it would fit on the 4′ x 4′ bulletin board.  It was quite a project!

Since one of my original ideas was Cricut-cut snowflakes, I did lots of them –white, light blue, dark blue, purple — to decorate the edges of the board.  The result:  A VERY “busy”, but nice board.  I think I went a little overboard on the cut-out-shapes style!  And I think I am going to leave everything (except the borders) taped right on that background paper, and roll it up carefully so maybe I can reuse the board easily after all of that work!  Some projects are a bit big even for a Cricut!  Lesson learned!

Another board in the same room that I usually coordinate with the bigger one.

400th Anniversary

Yes, this year is the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Authorized Version of the Bible, the King James Version, completed in the year 1611.  Yesterday at our church was Word of God Sunday, and we heard much teaching and preaching on Canonicity, Inspiration, and Preservation.  What a precious treasure we have!

God reveals Himself to us in several ways.  We see Him in Creation, in His workings in people’s lives, and in His workings in our own lives.  But there is no place we see God better than in His Word.  And without His Word, we could never be sure that what we perceived of God through the other avenues was true.  For example, we could believe God loved us by seeing how He provides for our daily needs, how he gives friends along the way to help us, and how He draws us to Himself, but how would e know it was God doing and giving these things without knowing from His Word that “God is love” (I John 4:8) and that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”  Not only that, but all of those other ways of seeing God are not nearly as all-inclusive as God’s Word is.  Within the pages of the Bible, we have everything we need to know about God spelled out for us with illustrations and examples included!  What a loving and merciful God to reveal Himself to us, and to do it in such a clear way!  (We are so unworthy…)

Not only that, but the Bible reveals our Saviour Jesus Christ to us.  It would have been great to have lived during the days Christ walked this earth…I can think of things I would have liked to ask Him.  But, wait, I can ask Him now –just as they could then –through prayer.  How do I know this?  Philippians 4:6 says, “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”  He told me so…in His Word.  And how do we know anything about Christ, not having seen or met Him physically, in person?  Through His Word.  The whole message of the Bible is Christ, who came to save sinners.  And we can find that salvation in the Bible.  Paul said in II Timothy 3:15 that the Scriptures “…are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”  So we see the Saviour and the way of Salvation through the Scriptures.

It is also through the Scriptures that God the Holy Spirit speaks to us.  The Bible is God’s instructions to us about how to live a Godly life, and how to deal with each problem we face.  And it is the Holy Spirit who speaks through it to mold us and make us into what He wants us to be.

Beside all these ideas, men have died for the Bible.  They have given their lives that we  might have the very Word of God in our language and in our own hands.  Men such as John Wycliffe and William Tyndale gave the greatest sacrifice…but what does it really mean to me?  Is the Bible precious to me?  Precious enough to read every day…precious enough to study, and obey more than any other book?  It is the expression of God’s love to me and His highest hopes for me, a gift worth dying for to others…but what is it worth to me?

John Wycliffe

William Tyndale

So Many Time Zones…

Well, we now span three different time zones with our immediate family alone!  I grew up on Central Standard Time, while Dustin was on Eastern Standard.  We married, and moved to Pennsylvania, so now we are definitely on Eastern Standard time.  My family still operates on Central time, and Dustin’s family are on Central Standard half of the week and Eastern Standard the other half.  That is a long story…feel free to read more about them here!  Dustin’s Dad is on Eastern Standard Time, although he is still in Michigan.  My wonderful sister and kindred spirit Sharon, who moved to Utah to teach in a Christian School there, is now on Mountain Standard Time!

That can make it a little difficult when I want to call family in the evenings…always have to think, “Now what time is it there?”  And not only that, but you have to think about everyone’s schedules, and if they are available at the times you are.

Sharon and I have found the perfect time to talk, however.  I call her between 8-8:30am Tuesdays or Wednesdays on my way to work.  She is beginning her day then (6-6:30am) delivering newspapers.  So it works out perfectly!

Lindsey, on the other hand, is VERY BUSY!  She takes out the school office trash each day, works in the kitchen, hangs out in the snack shop, goes to nursinghome to minister to the elderly, goes out to visit the bus kids, I mean, she is BUSY!  But when you do talk to her, she loves it, and does not want to hang up!  And every phone conversation ends with, “Tomorrow phone tomorrow” (i.e., CALL ME AGAIN TOMORROW!).

On the other hand, it is something to be thankful for.  “In every thing give thanks…” …right?  It is true.  I would never appreciate family the way I do being far away.  Perhaps our own relationship has grown stronger through only having God and each other and not lots of other family members to rely upon. Email conversations and phone calls are something to look forward to.  And going back is such fun…packing up and making the roadtrip together with Dustin.  All of this would not  be if we lived close.  And many things would be taken for granted.  Thank you, Lord even for taking us far away!

Mark 10:28-30

And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s,

But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

We are blessed.