Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Recipe, Recipe....Please Don't Drink This

This weekend I made a drywall mud 5 gallon bucketful of laundry soap. How you might ask...and what's with the picture you could ponder. Well, the how is below. The picture is a gold spray-painted recycled frame, some new kitchen drywall and the fruit basket to hold up said frame. And the recycled pickle jar home of about 24 oz of said laundry detergent.


1/2 cup borax (Found in a box near the bleach) ($3.99 and this will make at least 9 batches.

1 cup washing soda (Not baking soda. Washing Soda which is made by Arm and Hammer and found near bleach.)($2.99 and it will make at least 7 batches...it was harder to find. Not at Target...hint, hint should any Target buyers read my blog.)

1 bar of soap. (We used an organic lavender/vanilla scented bar. And we grated it with a cheese grater...)

Grate the soap into four cups of water you've already poured into a five gallon bucket. (Took just a few minutes, really easy to grate). Stir soap til melted... Add more warm water til bucket is half full. Add the borax and washing soda and mix. Fill the bucket to the top with more warm water. Stir. Cover and let sit for 24 or so hours. Stir again and then place into smaller containers if you so desire. (Note. it is kind of a funky gelish texture. It's watery and a little gloopy but becomes more consistent as it sits). Use 1/4 Cup per load. There is also the option of adding a few drops of essential oil for scent but if you use an organic scented bar you've covered it.

I had a friend give me some of this a few months ago and I used it. I didn't see any difference cleaning wise. She told me it was easy. And I assumed she wouldn't lie but I didn't know HOW EASY it was. Seriously. And for the cost of about $11.00 I've got 5 gallons of detergent and will only have to buy a $5.00 bar of soap the next several times I make it before having to part with another $6.00. I don't think you could get much cheaper. Plus. It's got no additives.

Serials and Scenarios ~ Do You Know Who I Am? Angela Thomas

Description

Whether you're feeling broken, afraid, or disillusioned, God sees into your heart and knows who you are. But do you know who God is? Through biblical teaching, storytelling, and practical application, Thomas reveals that spiritual fulfillment doesn't depend on getting yourself together but on understanding that God has a purpose for you just as you are.

Product Information

Do You Know Who I Am?
Angela Thomas
Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 240
Vendor: Howard Books
Publication Date: 2010
Dimensions: 8.716 X 5.5 (inches)
ISBN-13: 9781439160701



My Review:


With a clever twist on words, Angela Thomas has written about her struggles and trials and shares what she's learned about God through His own words and His action on her behalf. She tackles some of the issues women wrestle with, inadequacy, insecurity, fear, self-loathing and shares how those issues are sometimes based on truth and sometimes on deception and how God's character blasts both our truth and our lies out of the water. Compared to God's goodness, love, character and holiness, our issues can melt away.

Women who struggle, no matter how long they've known Christ, with exhaustion, disappointment, fears, failures or just feeling overwhelmed should be able to soak up Thomas's soothing voice and the scriptural balm she offers.

The information presented could go beyond soul-nourishing into life-changing if you have yet to grasp that God does indeed love you. Or that He has plans for you that are full of life and hope. I am in the middle of Kay Arthur's study "Lord, I Want to Know You" for the second time through. The ultimate information is the same, basically God is so big and we are so small, and He really loves us so much, that we really need to just trust Him. But if it were that simple, there wouldn't be the need for books or mentors, or Bible studies. Thomas does a solid job with scripture and makes the information easy to navigate in her conversational "I've been there or still struggle with that" delivery. This would be a terrific small group study or with a mentoring/discipleship relationship.

Happy Thanksgiving from Man Vs. Tool

Turkey carving contest. Will man or tool win?

Serials and Scenarios ~ Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

I've been going to read this book for months....maybe even a year. Finally, while driving the many miles to and from New Mexico, 24 and I read it out loud.

The thing that amazes me...is how we gum up, gunk up and confuse the clear and repeated teaching of Christ. "Christ in me, the hope of glory." among others. But we do. And since we are sheep we often need sharp whacks upside the head. So. You looking for a smack? You might want to look into this one. And it dovetails beautifully with the Cut the Crapathon.

Description

The Christian faith is supposed to produce deep, positive change. So why doesn't it seem to work in "real life"? That question screamed at Pastor Peter Scazzero when his church and marriage hit bottom and every Christian remedy produced nothing but anger and fatigue. As he began digging under the "good Christian" veneer, he discovered entire emotional layers of his life that God had not yet touched. And that emotional immaturity had fed his spiritual immaturity. In this book, he unveils what's wrong with our conventional means of "spiritual growth" and offers not only a model of spirituality that actually works, but seven steps to transformation that will help readers experience a faith charged with authenticity, contemplation and a hunger for God.

My Review:

Peter Scazzero has hit on the heart of the problem with Christianity...in a nutshell, the heart. The heart of each individual who has claimed the term, Christian.

I think many of "us" have mistakenly accepted the belief that we can just add Jesus to our lives rather than give our lives to Him for Him to do with as He pleases.

The problem with just adding Jesus to our lives is that Christianized religiosity gives us a glaze of sugar substitute with an awful aftertaste, or extreme self-sanitization complete with noxious bleach fumes, and both extremes allow us to "function" as "Christians" without dealing with our junk.

Scazzero tells his own story toward that discovery and what he had unearthed as help along the way. Sometimes the book feels overwhelming. There is SO MUCH to do to get emotionally healthy, but then he boils it down to simplistic additions and subtractions in life. It ends up being simple as in fairly clear, as in cause and effect, but not simple as in easy. Because the bottom line for emotionally healthy spirituality looks a lot like dying to self and letting Christ live His life through us -- giving up our control for His -- and that is not easy at all. Do I recommend this book...yes, if you are really serious about changing, this one can help. But if you don't want to put the work in, you'll be frustrated.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Out of My Comfort Zone Yet Again

A friend and I are writing a mystery together. We've been working on this bugger for about three years and its about halfway done and has been languishing in our computers for at least a year.

We had someone slightly (if you know anything about the publishing business, you know how laughable this statement is) interested until that particular line was shut down, locked up tight and the windows were boarded shut.

The book idea then went to my friend's agent who suggested the addition of a few plot lines. Lines that required knowledge greater than what she and I possessed. So. There it sat. My friend went onto write a historical all by herself and I wrote nada save for blog posts and devotional articles for my church newsletter.

But. The manuscript has to come out and play again. And I'm a little afraid. I've been assigned a new character point of view and I've got to write it so she can move forward. And I committed to exactly that. She writes every week, which means I will have to do the same. I've grown very content reviewing the work of others, knowing full well that I don't have the drive that so many of them do, to have my words read. I did. But I don't. And the more I read and review the more I feel like I have even less to say.

This should be interesting. She's offered to take over what I'm unwilling to do, but it's a commitment I made, and I love the characters and the writing with a buddy has been fun. So. Back in front of the computer I go. Writing the voice of a male detective. Definitely out of the frying pan into the fire. Title of the book. Out of the Frying Pan. Hmmmm.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Scrambling for Something to Say

In our 6 month Cut the Crap fast, we each grabbed two days a week for assigned tasks. One of us sends health tips to the others, one of us sends devotional or scripture passages to the other two and I was assigned words.

I've found some fun words, words that have been meaningful or dovetailed into what is going on in our lives. I've also found words that have convicted me or caused me to pause and wonder if I don't need to stop and rethink the way I'm doing things.

A word I recently found did just that.

VITIATE

PRONUNCIATION:
(VISH-ee-ayt)

MEANING:
verb tr.:
1. To impair or spoil the effectiveness of.
2. To corrupt.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin vitiare (to spoil, injure), from vitium (blemish). Earliest recorded use: 1534.

As I ran across this word, vitiate, meaning to corrupt and spoil, I couldn't help but notice the VITI beginning. I know vita is a Latin root word meaning something to do with life... so are the two connected? I looked up Latin roots and found this page full of fascinating parts and pieces of words. http://www.english-for-students.com/vita.html. This site didn't shed anymore light on Vitiate or even give me a connection, and I didn't dig any deeper.

But the impairing, the spoiling, the corruption and the possible connection to life just kept poking at me. And I wonder if we really aren't sometimes our worst enemies. The choices we make. Do we often chose to vitiate our own lives by choosing things that bring corruption and spoilage and death? Those hundreds of daily choices, what we will say, think, do, eat, drink? Are we making choices toward vitality or choices toward vitiatity?

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Sunsets, Fun, Family..Great Weekend

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity...some for fun...some for necessary. I don't know why I let things pile up and finally wait until the possibility of death via pile collapse looms, but I do. After all day Saturday, not kidding, cleaning, chopping, cooking I was totally able to enjoy a clean, chaos free home and a great time with family. My Dad, yes Pat, has a birthday on Wednesday and I had the fam over to celebrate. Pumpkin cheesecake bars, Grandma's chocolate cake with the frosting that makes your eyes sweat, home-made from actual pumpkins pumpkin pie by 24 and Naan bread prepared and rolled out by Toad-Boy's sweet wife. Grilled meat, veggies, salad...yum.

Great night, and my brother whom I've never bested in any game, stayed for a few "hands" of Bananagrams. I STOLE this win from him. He had a lousy J to place and had been in the lead throughout the entire game. But I swooped in and scored. Yes!!!!!

And though we were so sad that the sun set at 5:30ish, I did get a beautiful shot of it's "goodnight."