Some thoughts on the birth of Jesus

I started my baby keepsake display series because my favorite time of the year is celebrating Jesus' birth.

I wonder what Mary kept as keepsakes? Don't you want to know or do you ever wonder? Did she keep some straw from the manger? The strips of cloth from swaddling him up nice and tight? Did she put them in her best clay jar and look at them periodically like we tend to do?

Luke 2:19 says she treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. Now this is refering to all the happenings surrounding the birth of Jesus but I bet she had keepsakes. And one of the first things I am gonna do when I get to heaven, besides dance with abandon by Jesus' side, is ask to see what she saved.

I also wonder later in life, did she dig around the house and find those same baby cloths and compare them to the cloth strips that had been used to wrap his body in the tomb?  One set of strips once held the newborn savior, yet to save the world. The other set, could not hold the Risen Savior as He defeated death for all eternity for you and me.

Did she realize while on earth the enormity of the importance of both of those strips of cloth?

Have you? If your curious, read on.

Today in Church our Pastor was talking about the character of God and how He loves us.
He loved us enough to let us have free will, knowing that we might not choose Him. He was willing to have a Plan B for us. He sent His own son to take our place on the cross and bear our sins, in return we could have the free gift of salvation if we accept it from Christ.

Our pastor compared the difference in how we accept God's love is similar to the difference between snorkeling and scuba diving. Some of us choose to accept God's love by snorkeling. We float on the top of it. We feel it but we choose to let it sit on the surface of our heart and our hurts. It does not make it into the deep crevices of pain and shame. We are happy there. Nothing much changes but  its okay.

What's the difference with scuba diving? Deep total immersion. Scuba diving in God's love means letting God into the deepest crevices and the darkest hiding places of our hearts. The hidden parts that only we know exist. Guess what? God's knows about those hurts. He wants to heal them. He Loves You!! Unconditionally He loves YOU!! Snorkeling allows you to get a far away glimpse of the beauty God has for you but scuba diving,  you are in it, touching the beauty, feeling the beauty as it flows all around you. It heals you and makes each crevice seem not so deep maybe, or the hurts of the past, less painful as He fills up your view.

God's storerooms of love are bottomless like the depths of the oceans and He longs to share them with you. TRUST. Trust that his character is good and He is who he says he is. He is Love. And if you don't know how to trust, ask Him to help you. He will give you what is necessary to take those steps. But you need to take that first step.

And not just a dip in the wave with your toe will do.

Put on your wetsuit.

Now the flippers.

Clean the mask so you can see who you are swimming towards.

Put on the oxygen, because like the Bible, it breathes life into your lungs.

Now take the best risk of your life and



dive



Always being renewed,

If you have any questions about this post or would like to talk further about how you can take that step and ask Jesus into your life, please email me. I would love to hear from you.

Lock of Hair Display

Locks of hair from babies are an essential part of the baby book wouldn't you say? So here is yet another way to display the usual baby stuff in an unusual and creative way. You can see the other ideas here and here. The best is for last so don't forget to stop back in a day or two to see THE ULTIMATE BABY DISPLAY IDEA! Just kidding, well not really. It puts Happy Feet to shame!

This is going to be my longest post to date but if you stay with me, I think you'll like the end result! I love to create and  I am a maker. I make things. All sorts of things. I like all sorts of mediums.....I dabble in cake decorating, I sew/craft, and I do a little bit of stained glass among other things.  So I decided to display Jake's hair in a stained glass-like frame.

This post involves a few different techniques so just bear with me and I will give a complete list of tools as I go through the post. You can decide which you want to use based on which display you want to use.

I found some beveled glass at the stained glass store and sandwiched the lock of hair between that and a piece of glass I had already cut to match the size of the beveled glass. I will show you how to cut glass further down. If you are a stained glass master then you will foil both pieces of glass, clean the glass thoroughly, and then sandwich the lock of hair in between and foil everything together. Then you will solder it together and add two jump rings to the back.

To etch the initials onto the glass I used 1/4" vinyl letters.


See the "A"? Cut out around the "A" and leave the actual letter on the paper. See below.

Use a guide line to place your letters like above. I usually start with the middle letter and then place the ones on either side. Much better symmetry.

Now you will use etching acid cream to etch the initials onto the glass. You just need a very little cream on a fine tip paint brush.

You will paint the cream inside the letters. Carefully. Anywhere the acid touches, it will start to etch immediately. I should probably say something about safety but truthfully, I do not protect myself in anyway and I have never been "etched" so I am a very poor example for OSHA. Wait about 5 minutes and then wash everything off, letters and all. Dry the glass and add a ribbon!


And now you have a beveled glass Lock of Hair display!  Now what if you are NOT a stained glass aficionado?

Don't worry, I wouldn't leave you hangin!

You will need a picture frame and some glass. If you do not want to cut glass then buy two identical picture frames and use the glass from the second frame along with the first frame. Or go to your local hardware store, they usually can cut glass for you as well. Bring your measurements with you.


 If you DO want to learn to cut glass, read on!


You will need a straight edge, glass, cutting oil, glass cutter and glass nippers, the green plier looking things. I am not sure if nippers is the right name however. It has been a long time since I bought these tools and that is what I call them so nippers it is.



 A close up so you can see what these look like.

 

Use the existing piece of glass from the picture frame and outline it onto the larger piece of glass with a fine tip Sharpie.

 This is what it looks like after outlining it.

 

Dip your glass cutter in the cutting oil and let it drip off.

 Pick one of the lines you drew and line up your straight edge. You should place the straight edge just slightly inside the line to leave room for the glass cutter. Then with even pressure, pull the glass cutter towards you. You will here a scratchy sound. That is good. You only have one shot so make it count. Score the entire length of the glass.


 
Get your nippers and line up the white line on the nippers with your cut line on the glass.

Squeeze the handle until the glass breaks. Now do the same thing exact process for the other line that you drew and you will have a cut piece of glass the same size as you original!

Good job and now you have a new skill in your pink toolbelt of DIYing! What? do you honestly think mine wasn't pink?!?

Clean the glass well. You do not want fingerprints etc. on the inside of the glass. I held the glass using one hand and the edge of the paper towel and used my other hand to clean it.

Take your lock of hair and curl it into a curl and then hairspray it there.  Let it dry and cut any stray hairs.

Place one piece of  glass in the frame then the lock of hair, and then the other piece of glass. Check for fingerprints or dirt at this point and clean again if needed.

Because you are not using the back of the frame, the two pieces of glass may be loose. I just used two toothpicks on each side like a shim under the tabs.  Also, because you are going to see clear through, do not push the tabs all the way or you will see them when you turn the frame over.

This is how it should look from the front.

So with all of the scrapbook sticker choices out there, pick some alphabet stickers that you like. Here is one that I liked. 

This one I already had at home.

Decide where you want to place the stickers and draw your guidelines on a piece of paper or paper towel. Place frame over top.

I use an X-acto knife for placement because it only holds the edge of the sticker so less sticky stuff is removed and I can see better when I am placing the letter. Again, start with the middle initial and then add the outside letters.

Looks okay but I think the letters where a bit small for the frame.

Now these I like but the white not so much.

So I  painted them gold to match the frame.

It took about three coats to cover well and smoothly. Use the edge of the X-acto knife to cut away the extra paint. Do this before lifting them up from the plastic they were sitting on. 

 Much better!

Ta-Da! You have now created your own version of my Lock of Hair display! Well Done!

 I hope everyone had a wonderful day of feasting, family, and of looking back over the year and remembering all that we have to be Thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving, a day late.

Always being renewed,

Linking to these creative hostesses:

Baby Picture Nursery Border

So here is another idea, you can see another one here, on how to make a unique baby picture display for your nursery.

Our old nursery had a dropped ceiling and textured walls. When we took the ceiling down, there was nothing wrong with the ceiling but it did leave a design dilemma.  Do we texture the rest of the walls up to the ceiling or leave it as is? Since I was in no mood for more work, "leave it alone" became my mantra, along with "I need more chocolate, NOW!"

We painted the ceiling yellow and the walls a sage green because back then no one found out what was cookin' in the oven, so neutral colors it was.

As much as I liked the color scheme, I did not like that the walls looked unfinished with the two colors. But baby #1 was born and it stayed like this for a while.......then one night while nursing him in a blurry fog I came up with an idea.

Blurry, sleep deprived fogs are sometimes when inspiration strikes apparently. I mean, your mind is free to wander wherever as you try to keep from dropping the baby from your lap and/or drooling on the poor thing as your mouth lays gaping open. And forget the whole changing the diaper at 3am. I am surprised my children survived the first year.

So, as I was gazing at the ceiling trying to stay awake, I must have thought, "why not make a border out of all the baby pictures I take!"  I could not possibly afford all of the albums it would take to house all of the pictures I had taken and I like to look at them and smile so this is how it went down, or up as is the case here.

These pictures are from 2002 and I had to scan them in so I apologize that the quality is not good but it will give you the idea.

Actually if you look real close, it was exactly 4/30/2002. So now if someone asks, I can say I know exactly one thing I was doing on that date. Taking a picture of  pictures. Sounds odd but that is my life.


I went through all of the pictures I had taken thus far and chose a mix of horizontal and vertical as it looks a bit better to me.

The idea is that there will be a progression in age as you add more pictures. So as your baby grows so does your border. Kinda cool.

Just an FYI, after you fill your four walls, your baby continues to grow.  Your on your own for figuring out how to document from there on.

After I picked the pictures that I wanted, I copied them at Kinkos into black and white. I love B&W photos and it really made it look more uniform than the color photos. But do what you like, it's your nursery!

I originally decoupaged the first 3 photos to the wall and then realized, "what happens if we move?!?" Which seems to be our modus operandi , as soon as we get the house how we want, we move. Any body else smellin' what I'm cookin'?

So....

 I bought those little black picture mounting corners and put them on the corners of the remaining pics. And added them to the first three decoupaged pics for continuity's sake.

I layed them out on the floor to see how I wanted them and the just started hanging.  

Every time I would walk in the room or pass it in the hallway, I'd have to stop and take a look. The pictures just made me smile.

And that is a good thing.

What do you think?

Always being renewed,

Linking to:

In Honor of Babies!

My sweet friend Sara just had a baby girl. Harper. She is a little peanut of a thing and just too cute. Well, with Baby Jesus' birthday around the corner  and the arival of Harper, it got my thinker thinkin'. I love celebrating babies and everything about them but I am not much of a scrap booker. But I am a memory maker. So I thought I'd share some clever ways I have saved typical baby stuff but put it on display instead of in a box. I mean who really wants to look at a box when you can look at a baby!

So check back regularly as I am going to post several cool ways to display locks of hair, a cool ornament, and a really cool border that will grow up with them!

First up, Baby cards!

These are so stinkin' cute that I really did not want to just put these in "The Box".
So first you have to do the unthinkable....... cut them up. Breathe into a paper bag if it helps.

Cut out all the cute phrases, pictures, cartoon characters. Crumble up some tissue paper, spread flat again  and wrap around a mat. Tape to the back to secure.  Arrange all the cut outs around the mat and glue in place once you have them the way you like them. Put in that cute baby face and fall in love all over again.

Did the same thing for when he was 1! The numbered cards really help identify the year.  

What a quick year it was.....he's 12 now. Sigh.

Do you have clever ways yo have displayed baby cards? Please leave a comment so others can enjoy as well.


Always being renewed,