Needle & thREAD

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    I guess that just before Lent Karoline heard me say that I was going to make Easter dresses during Lent. All through Lent, she insisted that one of her Lenten "sacrifices" was to be making dresses for her dolls. She spent a great deal of time in the scrap basket, twisting and turning and pinning scraps to make clothing. She also spent a great deal of time begging me to help her make "real" doll dresses. I had every intention of making dresses for dolls to match the girls' Easter dresses. I just didn't get to it before Easter.

    Yesterday, I was operating on very little sleep--just days and days of deficit. I planned to push through it to super-clean my house and get ready for Frist Communion festivities this weekend. Instead, I delegated a few housekeeping jobs, sewed with Karoline, and binge-read Heaven is Here. Have I mentioned that sewing with Karoline is really just an excuse for me to have her on my lap so I can inhale her sweetness? 

    It is.

    It occurred to me as I was sewing for a doll that this pattern takes just as long for a doll as for a six-year-old girl and I have some girls who need clothes. So, I think I might make my girls some dresses to match their dolls, too;-)

    And the book? I couldn't put it down. I'd take a picture of it by I handed it to Mary Beth at bedtime and I'm pretty sure she fell asleep on it around dawn. Best part of homeschooling is all night binge reading...

{Warning: there is an incident of religious bigotry that is sadly aimed at Catholics. It's clearly a product of the author's ignorance, but, there it is.} 

    What about you? Sewing? Reading? A little of both? What's on your summer reading list? Do you have a summer sewing list?  Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo (or more) and a brief description of what you're up to? Will you tell us about what you're reading, also? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much.

    Make sure the link you submit is to the URL of your blog post or your specific Flickr photo and not your main blog URL or Flickr Photostream. Please be sure and link to your current needle and theREAD post below in the comments, and not a needle and theREAD post from a previous week. If you don't have a blog, please post a photo to the needle & thREAD group at Flickr. 

       Include a link back to this post in your blog post or on your flickr photo page so that others who may want to join the needle and thREAD fun can find us! Feel free to grab a button here (in one of several colors) so that you can use the button to link:-).

my little bookcase

There is a sweet new meme floating around Instagram to start the month of May. Using the hashtag #mylittlbookcase, folks are invited to share the best of children's books. I'm going to join in on Instagram. You can follow along @heartofmyhome, or just click the camera icon on the top right of the sidebar.

Here on the blog, I've invited my ten-year-old daughter, Katie, to share her favorites every day. Maybe you have a young writer who'd like to join her?

Confidence

I was up early this morning to write nearly 800 words about how inspired I am by the confidence of my children. I got all those thoughts onto the digital page and uploaded five out of six pictures. Then, Typepad crashed. Poof! The words disappeared. 

The thing is, I write because the words are inside of me and they beg to escape. These words aren't in me any longer. I'm not sure where they are, but they aren't here. I wrote them. 

So, I Ieave you with pictures. I only wish I had pictures of the boys. Even though I wasn't with them this weekend, they were very much a part of my confidence inspiration and they were there in the words...

Have a very blessed day!

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Lord, Hear Our Prayer

Gospel

JN 13:31-33A, 34-35

When Judas had left them, Jesus said,
“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him,
God will also glorify him in himself,
and God will glorify him at once.
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
I give you a new commandment: love one another.
As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.”

Think

“I gave her a share in this love, which is the Holy Spirit, within her will by making her will strong to endure suffering and to leave her house, in My name, to give birth to the virtues for her neighbors. Not that she abandons the house of self-knowledge, but the virtues conceived by the impulse of love come forth from that house. She gives birth to them as her neighbors need them, in many different ways. For the fear she had of not showing herself, lest she lose her own consolation, is gone. After she has come to perfect, free, love, she lets go of herself, and comes out, as I have described."

~ Our Lord to St. Catherine of Siena

Pray

Dear Lord, Help me to go forth from my house with confidence, knowing that you will show me the countless ways that I can love my neighbor. Help me to forget myself and instead, to offer genuine consolation and friendship to those around me.

Act

Do it. See the weary soul, the wisp of hair that needs a gentle tuck, the shoulders that could use a hug. Have the courage to reach out.

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The internet is a formidable force for bringing the comfort and consolation and hope of the Lord to all of us. It can be an incredibily powerful medium for community. There is an unfathomable resource for prayer here. We have on the 'net the privilege of praying for people and of being witness to the miracles brought forth when fervent, faith-filled people pray for one another.

Let's be that community of hope and faith for one another.

How about this idea? What if I pop in here every weekend, share Sunday's gospel and talk a wee bit about how we can live it and pray it in our homes? And then you tell me how we can pray for you that week? Deal?

{And please, do return and let us know how prayer is bearing fruit.} 

needle & thREAD

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Most of my "sewing" this week has been of the lace/sequin/tulle type. And it's not really sewing; it's more "rigging." When  you measure and order costumes months in advance, there's a good chance lots of them won't fit at showtime. Time doesn't stand still and little girls grow (big girls do, too). I've seen lots of sizes and shapes in the same costumes in the past couple weeks and it has me thinking about those all too familiar themes. One of the reasons we made a dramatic change in studios last year was I was super concerned about emotional balance. We've found it here, I think. But, oh my! What a lot of work the whole wardrobe thing is:-) Well worth the tradeoff to be surrounded by healthy bodies of all shapes and sizes.

Karoline has organized our sewing box to take on the road. The girls have a dance competition in Baltimore this weekend. We're ready to go and I'm here to tell you that packing for dance is very different from packing for soccer:-). Quite an education I've gained this spring. Soccer was a good warmup; packing for dance is not for the faint of heart.

I've been promising Karoline I'd sew with her "for real"--promising for about three weeks. Sigh. Life is rocking and rolling here, folks. Sewing keeps getting shoved. As Karoline gets older, I notice more and more how "spirited" she is. She flits; she floats. For the most part, we've just smiled at her along the way. But as she gets older and, say, she is called to pay attention to a dance for a whole three minutes, we're noticing how easily distracted she is. We've been down this road before--I'm determined to apply what I've learned. Reading? I'm dusting off my favorite parenting book: Raising Your Spirited Child. I'm also doing a great deal of research on essential oils. We've always dabbled with these-- little lavender on the sheets, eucalyptus with Espom salts in the tub, tea tree oil for almost everything else. Now I'm seeing how essential oils might be helpful in lots of other ways, including focus and anxiety and hyperactivity.

Back to the sewing promise. Karoline was flitting all over the house this morning. There is a pre-competition pep rally in 7 hours and 13 minutes (who's counting, right?). She's so excited she cannot contain herself. Mike is working from home. He required complete quiet for a conference call. Um. "Karoline, how 'bout we go in the sewing room and close the door?" The only way to quiet her is to have her focused and on my lap. We made a cover for her new journal (inspired by the Junie B. Jones books). Just a few straight seams and she sighed happily, "Oh, I love that feel! Don't you love the way you feel when the sewing machine is humming and fabric is in your hands?"

Yes, my sweetheart, I do. And I'm grateful it calms us both.

What are you sewing and reading this week? I really do want to hear all about it!

Make sure the link you submit is to the URL of your blog post or your specific Flickr photo and not your main blog URL or Flickr Photostream. Please be sure and link to your current needle and thREAD post below in the comments, and not a needle and thREAD post from a previous week. If you don't have a blog, please post a photo to the needle & thREAD group at Flickr. 

       Include a link back to this post in your blog post or on your flickr photo page so that others who may want to join the needle and thREAD fun can find us! Feel free to grab a button here (in one of several colors) so that you can use the button to link.