Decorating for baby boy…Help!!

So, I have a major dilemma. 

I dont know how to decorate for a boy.

I love decorating. I love putting colors together and designing each room to have its own “feel.”  Maris’ room is really beginning to come together. Its pretty with lots of dusty pinks, corals, and hints of fuchsia. I want to get a large dark green area rug remnant that I have, surged for the center.  Its coming together nicely.

Then I think about baby boys’ room.  I can’t do the oh so popular blue and brown.  Nothing against blue and brown fans…I just can’t stand the color brown. 

I look on the internet quite often for ideas and what do I find?…blue and brown…blue and brown polka dots…blue and brown stripes…blue and brown giraffes…I cant escape blue…and brown. Or green…and brown for that matter…

So, for right now, this is what I’m leaning toward…I caved for a blue…this is (maybe) where I am heading visually…

 

Lots of white…ivorys…and this gorgeous deep ocean blue color…this particular blue is so breathtaking to me…with spuratic hints of gold and tan.  No geometric patterns.  Just simple white crib bedding. This particular room is ultra feminine but the colors are what I love and what gives direction and a little bit of a vision…and hopefully I can make it look strong and more masculine.

We shall see.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

Any advice whatsoever is welcome!!

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Women…Beauty…and the Ties that Bind

 

Maris, our two year old, is very girly.  I like that she is girly…I find it cute and amusing…but she is almost beyond girly…she is pretty much diva in her little head.  Not only does she like her nails painted ect. but she loves putting on body lotion, lipstick, and lately…my bras.  She even turns the back of the bra to the back of her and does the whole clasp thing.  Its a little bit weird.  What amazes me is her instinct though to look to Daniel for affirmation and approval.  The other day she had gotten me to put on her pink headband and after it was placed just so, she turned to Daniel and shouts…”Look Daddy!!!” …and she prances around while he gushes over how pretty she looks in it.

How is this so wired into us as women?  You may not believe me, but I don’t encourage and spur her on to be this over the top girly girl.  Daniel and I both want Maris to be Maris.  So, it just really astounds me how at even 2 years old she wants to be “pitty” (pretty)… and she wants to hear it most of all from her daddy.

I have contemplated over this for years now.  I honestly could write a book about it, I’ve thought about it that much.  What is it with beauty and why do we want it…why are we drawn to it…why is it when a really beautiful woman walks in the room people stare (mostly other women)?  Why is it that I am so drawn to pretty things and when I wear something really beautiful it has the power to change my thinking and how I feel about myself?  Why is it that…just being blatantly honest…I love to watch the Victorias Secret Fashion show in December every year because the women are just so dang gorgeous and I get this feeling of motivation like somehow I can look like that…I can attain that…or for a second I can live vicariously through that model who looks that way…

And I know that a lot of it is driven by the sex crazed culture we live in…but dont you think a lot of it is wired in us as women to long to be beautiful…that longing to know beauty somehow…to attain it…to get it back from wherever it has been for so long…

I do personally. Think its wired…think its in us…from a God who invented beauty itself.  He is beauty.  He knows beauty full well.  And He designed woman, Eve, to be the most exquisite and breathtaking creature on the planet.  Gosh, sometimes I try to imagine what she would have looked like.  The epitome of beauty besides God Himself. 

And then all was lost…

Perfect beauty was lost…

And we’ve been trying to get it back ever since.  You don’t think so?  Count how many commercials come on during prime time television geared toward women and beauty products….I can hear it in my head now…”Reverse the signs of aging with Olays new…..” ect…ect…

Sucks huh? Well, not completely.  All is not lost.  Perfect beauty is not lost.  We will, if you are a believer, get it back one day…but until then… we may have stretch marks, wrinkles, cellulite, gapped teeth, hair loss, hair growth, love handles, and so on…:)…but in the midst of that, I believe, we can know Him who IS beauty Himself…our identity and self worth can be wrapped in Him…in His beauty…and in turn it gives us such peace, such confidence, the kind of confidence that can’t be attained even by the most beautiful model on the runway…

 And, then…. then!… when we look at HIM with eager eyes and shout…”Look Daddy!”….boy does He ever turn His head… and while we are prancing… He gushes over how pretty, beautiful, and exquisite we are!

Have a Magnificent Weekend Love!  You are Beautiful!

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What is Church?

 

 

I am going through this stage in my life where I am really searching out what Church is…what it means…why its important. 

I’ve been in church all my life and I’ve never really had the questions and the contemplations about it until a few years ago and just in the past year I’ve really struggled through tough issues regarding Church.  I have not come to any type of resolution or understanding…I am still very much in the middle of murky and unclear waters…but I am wading through one step at a time…so please bear with me.

In the midst of my bad attitude at times, lies a heart that wants God to be portrayed like He really is…I guess…and I know in most churches He is not portrayed correctly or attractively for that matter.

Let me also begin by saying that church is not everything.  Learning who God truly is and His attributes and personality begins in the home…BUT…church plays a HUGE role in how we perceive God and how we live out our faith in front of the world.

I run the risk of seeming judgemental but I am only stating my opinion from what I have seen in my short lifetime. 

Most, not all, but most churches are…well… B-O-R-I-N-G.  I mean…painfully boring.  I did a Beth Moore study and she made a statement that rocked my world.  She said that if your life is boring…then you are out of the will of God.  You know why? Because God is not boring!!!  Nor does he wish a boring life for His children.  At times I have been in churches and I look around and everyone just seems absolutely miserable.  The songs and hymns are mumbled with such gruff and stiff faces…who can blame them when they sound as bad as they do! 

Did you know that David was a musician and a skilled one at that?  1 Samuel 16:17 says that David played the harp well.  Some music ministers need to get with the flow and do music well…to be great at it…to be skilled at it…not so that this church can be “cooler” and more hip than all the others…but because its God we are singing and playing to!  A lot of the songs sung in churches are so sad sounding…so funeral-esque…so boring.  And when God is portrayed and painted as boring then no wonder when children grow up and go to college…they never darken the doors of a church again. I’ve seen it over and over…kids get off on their own and they wave a happy little hand good-bye at the Church or being involved in it.

I think some of the problem also has to do with seeing a lot of empty promises and claims.  A lot of pastors will hold “revivals” and tell the church how God is going to use them mightily to change their city and revive their community…when at the end of the weekend…everyone goes on leading their lives like they did before and nothing really changes.

So…as I sit in the pew and I look around at the sad faces and I listen to the less than mediocre music and I shake the hand of the stranger in front of me and I say “Good Morning! How are you?” …I have to stop and wonder…

God, Where in the world are you in all of this? 

Where is the God of the Bible who threw hail stones down on the Amorites to help Joshua and the Israelites gain the victory?

Where is the God of the Bible who allowed Himself to enter into human skin so that we might be justified and put in the clear?

Where is the God of the Bible where in Psalms 97 it says that clouds and thick darkness surround Him…fire goes before Him…and the mountains melt like wax before Him? 

Where is He who formed the little fire fly and also the enormous hippopotamus or crocodile whose bite could kill you in an instant? 

Where is He who invented sound, light, color, the eye-ball, sex, a flower, air…? 

Where is He in all of our futile and meaningless rituals and traditions? 

I don’t know! 

God help us…we are merely humans and we aren’t going to get it right for sure…but honestly…church should be…WE should be as THE CHURCH growing in love for one another…eating meals with one another…serving with one another IN our community-not inviting the community to come to church…growing in skill and talent wherever that may be…laughing and crying with each other…seeing and experiencing the God of the Bible in all His glory and might…we should be doing this marvelous and difficult Christian life together.

I don’t know about you, but I think thats a start.

I’m sorry if I have offended anyone…just venting I guess.  Once again your comments and opinions are always welcome here.

Hope you are staying warm 🙂

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