One Thousand Gifts

I'm not sure where I have been but apparently, (in)courage, a blog I follow, has a book club. The book that has been introduced is called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.

I have to shallowly say that the cover is what drew me. A nest with two blue eggs being held out by a young girl in a white dress...I was able to preview a chapter online, and this is what happened....

1. My throat closed in raw emotion
2. Tears stung the back of my eyes
3. My soul's stomach rumbled as Ann spoke the Word through her painful and beautiful life stories...
4. I felt like I had tasted choice morsels of grace
5. I was hungry for more.

I went immediately to my Nook account online and downloaded it for 9.99. I have read through chapter 5 already, and I will most likely finish this tonight. I will then read it again probably, because this is real. This is real hurt. Real love. Real questions that you nor I dare to voice because we are afraid in doing so, we may somehow lose our salvation...Real grace. Real Thanksgiving. Real Jesus.

Always Jesus.


I have decided to comment weekly on the chapters, just as the book club Bloom is doing. Would you like to participate?

Go here to read the details of this book.

Visit with the author, Ann Voskamp, here.

Grab a blog button for yourself!

Well, I'm off to make some chili, settle in for the night, and read some more. Let me know what you think after looking at the links!

Imperfect Heart

Update: This post was originally published in January. I am linking up with The Nester today, which is March 21, 2011. This book creation, one of many, was far removed from the vision in my head. I took a risk in butchering the pages, but I love the result. I now have it flipped the other way, which now looks like a butterfly! Perfect for Spring...

See below for original post:

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I did it again.

I pilfered through my book library for another willing participant. This time, it was a hardback book with a fittingly red inside cover and back. Perfect for Valentine's Day!



I had a vision in my head of a heart of book pages miraculously standing at attention once the book was opened and casually placed on the mantle. I used one of my Christmas gifts from Patrick, an x-acto knife set, to create this vision.

Well, my vision quickly dissipated when I realized I had cut the heart the wrong way. It was an imperfect heart. I felt kinda sorry for it. I decided to not tear out any of the unused book pages, just so the heart would still feel at home. The more I looked at it, the more I loved it.



I placed it on my mantle and opened it up. This imperfect heart fit right in with my imperfect mantle decorations, imperfect chipping windowpane, imperfect style. Just because it is not perfectly placed or perfectly designed, it is beautiful to me.








What imperfectly beautiful things have you created lately??

Goals for My Green Gables

I’m not a bit changed—not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me—back here—is just the same. It won’t make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at heart I shall always be your little Anne, who will love you and Matthew and dear Green Gables more and better every day of her life. ~Anne of Green Gables

Every New Year, resolutions are as common as a long line at Starbucks at 8am on a Monday morning. However, resolutions fade, whereas the lines at Starbucks just get longer.

I am linking to The Nester today. Instead of resolutions, I will set goals for my house. Although my name is not Anne (Anne, with an "e"), it is close enough. Just call me Anna of Winding Winterfield Drive. Anna, with an "a".


1. Add to my gallery wall going up the stairs. I want this to be regularly irregular in its patterns, colors, and pictures. I have an "S" made of rusted brown metal and a chipping blue grate that were both found at an antique/artsy shop in Asheville over Christmas. These found, worn and loved objects have added character to the standard photo collage, and I want to continue with meaningful pictures and objects.

View from Loft


Blue Grate with Special paper memorabilia such as wedding invitation


From living room: Room to add special faces and momentos!




2. Organize our bonus room and purge our garage. Since Jonah was born, we have used the bonus room as the resting place for all things infant...Baby swing, bouncy seat, pack 'n play...Patrick has a wealth of books and teaching supplies stacked in boxes...Although we have half of the room clean, we need this space to grow our little family. Jonah needs a little corner of the world to transform lincoln logs into HGTV dream homes. As for the garage, I choose to not go in there. We should make some money on the side by turning our garage into "Sams' hardware and tool supply". We have any and every tool you could need, thanks to my husband's addiction to tinkering and my addiction to turning old things into usable ones.

3. Dining Room Table Creation. We have a dining room table. It is a lovely one. However, I somehow had the notion to create another dining room table. This one will be out of an old door from Patrick's grandparent's place in the mountains (this is in the garage, of course). I found two large porch posts from an antique store in downtown Winterville. I am cutting them in half to make four legs.

4. Seasonal Wreaths. I know this sounds nerdy. I can't help it. I've turned into a compulsive seasonal observer. This means the door has to observe the season as well. So far, I have Christmas...


Valentine's Day...


and fall.


I want a spring and summer wreath as well.

5. A Green Gables' home. This may not make sense to you if you have never read or watched the stories of Anne. As qouted above by Anne, life is seasons of changes and growth. At heart, she was the same girl who loved her home but more importantly, those people who lived in it. She loved them more everyday, and home became dearer to her regardless of how old she became. I want my green gables to make others feel at home, loved, cherished, and remembered. I want my family to grow in grace within these four walls.






I will never be fully done with this list. I seem to have random ideas and fly from one project to the next. The goal that will never change or finished is nurturing my home. Regardless of the paint color, latest antique find, or wreath, my most important home goals are raising children that can't wait to return home from college break, or bring their special someone to meet mom and dad, and building a partnership and relationship with my husband that will stand the test of time.

What are your Green Gables goals??

Simple Kind of (wo)Man

I do it every year.
I unwillingly take down the ornaments from the tree and unwind the garland from the banister. Somewhere between halfway up the tree and the 6th rung of the banister, I turn into an obedient, maybe even excited, Christmas taker-downer. Removing these material items make my insides feel like they have been thoroughly dusted and vacuumed. I even get so inspired that some of my everyday decorations never quite make it out of their designated holiday hibernating holes.

My inspiration?

Simplicity.

As qouted in the book Anne of Green Gables, "Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it".

My house is not a tomorrow, but it is fresh. And because it is fresh, I am excited about the tomorrows that are to come.

I simplified my mantle, partly because I wanted to and partly because I couldn't remember what I had on the right side of it before Christmas. That's a sign that simplicty is greatly needed in my life...

I want to live simply.

Simply love.
Simply live.
Simply forgive.


Here is a simple picture from my phone of my updated mantle. The right side of the mantle, also known as the side I can't remember, has two colanders from an antique store down the road. Don't worry, I have rearranged the little wood flowers so they don't look quite so....simply stuck in there..





Here's to being a simple kind of WOman!!!!

This post may be more inspiring if you listen to Simple Man by Lyndyrd Skynyrd while reading.

Keep it All the Year

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.... ~ Charles Dickens

This post will be annoyingly honest. I caution you to skip this if your emotions are still floating in homemade hot chocolate, because the first part of this confession may be scalding to the taste and without any good marshmallows. However, if you are brave enough to join me on this journey, you will hopefully be rewarded with a new brew of chocolatey goodness to sip the whole year through...not just during the Christmas season.

First, a little background information about me. If I didn't think Christmas sweaters were so tacky, I would wear them starting in October. The Christmas season is a time for my dramatic self to don silver bell earrings, pins that say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" on my labcoat, and adorable Christmas shirts from Target that are a steal at 5$. The Christmas CDs are pulled out of their resting places, and I sweeten my coffee with peppermint mocha creamer. If you could see inside my heart, it would literally have white twinkling lights, beautiful creamy and silver bows, the scents of pine and sugar cookies and love, and most likely a book creation of some sort. (That is for you, Lucy!) I enjoy decorating my house for Christmas, and I savor each ornament's memory as it finds a specific place on the tree. You can't just hang them anywhere. There is a rhyme and reason. Trust me.

We had plans this Christmas. We were going to enjoy Christmas Eve as a little family of three and wake on Christmas morn to cinnamon rolls and warm coffee. Then, we would travel to Charlotte to see my family for Christmas lunch then off to Asheville to see my husband's family.

Christmas Eve went as planned. We spent it with our friends, the Damerons, eating a comforting meal of steak and baked potatoes with a dessert of red velvet peppermint cake. Because neither of us was with "blood" family that evening, we made our own family together.

On Christmas Day, I woke up at 7am to finish packing for the planned trip west. Patrick woke up an hour later and checked the weather forecast. Even though the snow wasn't supposed to come till later that night and early the next morning, he thought it was best to stay here until the snow had passed.

I am a planner. Any disruption in my plans causes havoc. Even a good disruption. I provoked fights for the next 4 hours. I took breaks from my nagging to put on different faces such as the "I'm genuinely happy to be with my little boy on Christmas" face and the "I'm genuinely irritated at you for changing plans on me at the last minute and now we have no food for lunch" face.

Don't misunderstand me. I cherished every moment of this Christmas morning with my Jonah. I wish I could have wrapped the moon for him; however, somewhere between the opening of presents, my selfish third-grade self emerged. I began to resent the decision my husband and I had agreed upon weeks before: no stockings or presents for each other. We had already upgraded our phones and exchanged one semi-expensive item a few days before (translation: 50$ or less.) I was discouraged that we wouldn't see either of our families on this specific day...Christmas Day. I wouldn't see my cousins or grandparents, sister or aunts and uncles. There would be no honey baked ham or warm pecan pie. No clanking of glasses or rattling of forks as the dishes are washed and dried. No traditions that I had grown to know and love that I could have recounted in my sleep.

My soul was scrooge-like in all of its musings. Around mid-afternoon, we took Jonah and his new John Deere tractor outside to experiment. It was here, in the silence of the Christmas afternoon, with the dying brown grass beneath my feet and the sound of a battery-operated wal-mart toy, that I was visited by Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

My past, with all of its homey glitter and magic, allowed me to see Christmas through a child's eyes...my own, and His.

My present, with all of its simplicity and silence, reminded me to be still. To know. To trust. To strip away the gaudy bows and personal plans so that nothing could get in the way of love. The love of a family. My own little family of three.

My future, with all of its unknowns and uncertainty, reminded me of the one absolute that never changes. Christ. Christ came here, so that my damaged heart could be decorated all year long. Twinkling lights of a hope in things unseen, which are eternal. Creamy and silver bows wrapped around simple love. Scents of grace and mercy and forgiveness.

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The next day, snow blanketed the dying brown grass. My little family of three walked to the grocery store together with large flakes hitting our eyelashes. We built a fire in the backyard and roasted s'mores. We made our own traditions of Christmas and laughed, but we still desperately missed our families. Our journey eventually led us to each of our childhood homes, and I felt complete. Although December 25th had passed in ways I had not planned, Christmas was not over.

Christmas is never over. The tree will come down, the stockings will be folded once again for the next year; however, these are just materials that symbolize the decorations that stay in the heart all year long.

Merry Christmas, today and every day. May you keep it all the year....