Bowls ~ Rescued ......

I think my biggest temptation as far as a possible, must have purchase, would have to be bowls.  There are those that are vintage (my fav), then there are those that have awesome colors or shapes..... or spark a memory of  " the old days ".  Once I see one it's so hard to walk on by without touching....then, as I get further away  I can't get them out of my mind, fighting a magnetic pull back to rescue them from the cold shelves and with thoughts of the many hours they spend just sitting there without a shopper in sight. 

My pulse rate I'm sure is increased, euphoria runs through my body....oh how I love this bowl !! I love the Barefoot Contessa's pantry of bowls and dishes.... how I would love that kind of kitchen storage! I wish it were something smaller that I loved like ....maybe thimbles, stamps or wine corks...it would leave me with more storage space or more space to fill :-).

One summer trip to Colorado required making room for two, okay four new finds in our already packed vehicle. It started with this white odd shape bowl/serving dish...."wouldn't this be perfect for asparagus?", "no really can you imagine how awesome asparagus would look in it?" I sometimes must convince others (hubby) of my vision for the future of "the bowl".

Colorado Bowls :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

                             Above a Colorado bowl I walked away from kicking and screaming, only to be received as a gift for my birthday days later from my BFF......

      
      

I have bowl memories such as the tan Tupperware bowls my Dad would serve us the giant scoops of ice cream in.  These are my ice cream bowls. I fill them like my Dad would have and think of him while doing so.

I have memories of the exact bowl my Aunt would  have at every dinner with onions, cucumbers and pepper.
There is the bowl memory of the bowl that Mom used for the boiled potatoes and the dreaded peas.

I have the bowl for macaroni salad or  taco salad. I have the bowl used for salad/popcorn, I have the bowl for cream cheese covered with spicy hot jelly ... a bowl for everything...... I could go on but the topic is bowls after all...not everyone gets it :-)

A gift from our daughter Jackie!

I love,love, love music so I really had to rescue this one from the shelves !

This was my Mom's that she gifted me...I love that it has texture and that it was her's.

A set of three...huge to small....

The middle bowl a gift from my son Mike and D-I-L Katie, I was lucky to find the matching serving bowl and rescue it.

~

I was reading a blog I follow that happened to have a photo of two vintage bowls that were rescued from a dumpster at an estate sale.  It was love at first sight and an instant idea for blogging! Who in their right mind would throw those beauties in a dumpster?  I confess, I may have did let her know if she should decided to sell them, I would be interested....... I love that she rescued them, obviously a good hearted woman.

This a gift from a friend..love it!

These three bowls started it all.  I purchased them from Speigel Catalog when I was 23 years old, a very large purchase for me then.  Thus began my love of bowls.......

New thought:

Animal rescues caught on,

might I start a bowl rescue?

Would he understand if I brought

home yet another bowl, if I prefaced

 said bowls introduction with....

I rescued it?  

Genius!!!! This is what echos from my heart today......

I Asked ...

Yesterday I lay in bed and asked God to show me where I need work.

Of course, I asked so He did!

I grabbed my coffee and went to catch up on blogs I follow......

The first one I read included a poem on the aging, posted at the bottom of the page....

God knew I needed to read this and 

he used my friend Judy at,  http://justalittlesomethingforyou.blogspot.com ..to make

sure of it!

No, it's not easy to deal with the aging, in fact it can prove to be the most difficult thing ever. We generally end up parenting the parent.  It can be very, very frustrating. I've seen it's very easy for those not caring for an aging  parent to judge those who are!!  You know who you are...

  So many times wanting to say, walk in my shoes for a week and get back to me....

The aging parent doesn't see that you may know what is best for them, they tend to see it as we are telling them what to do.  I trust they feel they are losing more independence if they should adhere to our advice.

My own Mother tells me, " all the ladies sit around and say the same thing, their kids are always telling them what to do as if we can't think for ourselves".

Mom, is that a coincidence you are all about the same age saying the same thing? 

Coincidence that all the Mom's with bossy children happen to live in the same place?

  Why aren't you sitting around talking about how lucky you are that you have children that are always looking out for you?

In another blog I follow the author writes about forgiving, a parent... "experts suggest imagining a parent as an infant, a child of God.  They suggested that this helps heal old sores." 

Praying about this wasn't all I needed to do, I had to forgive and 

I had to take my eyes off of me.........again.  

I am a constant work in progress, thankful for a forgiving God who allows me to start new every morning.

My job is to "ease the days".....and I plan on doing so.

Great Grandma and Khloe

Thanks Judy for responding to His nudge, you have been a gift to me countless times. This is what echos from my heart today...............

"Blessed In Aging"

"Blessed are they who understand

My faltering step and shaking hand

Blessed, who know my ears today,

Must strain to hear the things they say.

Blessed are those who seem to know

My eyes are dim and my mind is slow

Blessed are those who look away

When I spilled the tea that weary day.

Blessed are they who, with cheery smile

Stopped to chat for a little while

Blessed are they who know the way

To bring back memories of yesterday.

Blessed are those who never say

"You've told that story twice today."

Blessed are they who make it known

That I am loved, respected, and not alone.

And blessed are they who will ease the days,

Of my journey home, in loving ways."

~Esther Mary Walker

"Wasn't it Time to Fully Live" ?

So I haven't flown in over twenty five years....I'm talking plane not broom for those of you who were thinking it :-)

I have had a horrible fear of flying....it's not the possible dead  idea that bothers me, I know where I am going without a doubt.  It's the, when the door closes will there be enough air for me to breathe?  Will I panic? There is no STOP the plane I want to get off........And then there is the terror one would have to experience should a plane go down, on the way down ....that is what has kept me from flying the most.

So my sister Deanna calls one day and says, " I think you should go to Montana for Aunt Wilma and Uncle Ray's Anniversary party, it'll be fun....you, me and Mom".  She knows how I feel about flying and told me (again) that I need to get over it, I'm missing out.  My Aunt and Uncle I see every summer when I go to Montana, and they are my favorites!!! Yes, I have favorites in all things other than children and grand children :-) 

 I agree and think to myself what have I done?



My Aunt and Uncle on their wedding day 65 years ago!



That was almost a month ago and I will be boarding a plane at 7:45 A.M. tomorrow.  I have been so busy that I haven't the time to worry about it. 

Then there was all the excitement with Khloe being born and lots of running around this last week, which has helped.....

Most importantly, the book "one thousand gifts" by Anne Voskamp that I have been reading. It has really made me look at things differently......fully in fact.  She, an agoraphobic and went on a plane to Paris, by herself.

 She says in the book as she is conisdering if she can do this,

" if the plane crashes? I have no idea what those seven days in Paris could hold.  I think that's the point."

"Wasn't it time to fully live? "

....and I (debi) think to myself, "why, yes it is time I fully live"....

after all, I am feeling very much alive with the birth of our Khloe....my luv bug....

...then she boards the plane......

"I board, breathe, buckle,, bow my head, and murmur thanks to Him who never takes leave.  It's impossible to give thanks and simultaneously feel fear."

If you know me you know that, I believe that nothing is by chance, nothing....  I know it was God's timing that I was so busy these last few weeks.  I was so happy  about Khloe that I couldn't think of much else.  And, it was not by chance that my dear friend Jane suggested this book to me.  This book that has opened my eyes to really, living fully....

............and then there was my last visit with Khloe last night....

I told her Gram was leaving on a big airplane and I would miss her. 

She assured me everything would be o.k. !

and I believe her.......

"He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears.  He will rejoice over you with joyful songs"

Zephaniah 3:17

....this is what echos from my heart today..........

One Thousand Gifts ~

Sharing with you my blogging friends, today's post from "One Thousand Gifts".  This blog is from the author of the book of the same name.  I will post the blog address at the end in hopes you will take a look see for yourself.  Her photography is amazing as well as her gift of expressing herself in the written word.

 http://www.aholyexperience.com/

My hope is you will be blessed by it and follow it alongside me!

Read it below if you wish, however going to the blog itself with the photos is a "holy experience"......

Enjoy!

Words of Ann Voskamp follow......

where love comes from

‘Each wheat head is full this year —- large. Like that year when you were in France.”
He pulls out a long, slender stalk — shows me the wheat kernels filled out right to the end.
France?
The wheat, out past the barn and to the north, it sways in mid-summer’s wind. Heads bowed, the fields sing like a hymn.
We’ll roll in the combine today, let the streams of wheat run.
Our wheat harvest begins and he remembers me telling him about wheat in France?

Three years ago now, how I had stepped out of St. Sulpice, out of the dome, out onto the street, out of the strains of the organ pipes that stretched up to heights and streams of light.
How I had walked up towards Jardin du Luxembourg in the twilight. How I had found it right there on the sidewalk —- a full, bowed sheaf of wheat, laying there up against a maple tree.

I’d stopped. Had looked up and down an empty side street at suppertime in summertime. A bundle of wheat, gold and ripe and there in the middle of the city —- in the middle of Paris, in the shadow of a cathedral?
Really? Some farmer had walked the streets of France’s metropolitan with heavy heads of wheat under his arm?

Where had he come from and where was he going and why had he bent down and left this bouquet of wheat stalks on the sidewalk just down the street from St. Sulpice?
Or was it —

Had Someone known that a homesick farm girl with a pining heart in the heart of the city would need wheat — the memory of the wide open gold fields, of Home, of the promise that He never leaves or forsakes?
Strange —- how love always leaves a trail.

I had knelt right there on the sidewalk of Rue Ferou, the cathedral shadow falling long along the street, across my hands.

I pluck two heads of wheat and I walk on to Jardin du Luxembourg with two heads of wheat in my pocket.
Far from our own wheat fields, far across the ocean, far away in Paris, I carry wheat in my pocket and shake my head at the wild grace of it all, and I tell Christ about it and I am home.

I fly home to the farm with those two heads of wheat in my pocket.
I lay those two heads of wheat on my prayer bench — two heads of wheat, one curved into the other, found in the center of a city in front of a cathedral — two wheat heads whispering, “Communion — wherever you are. 

Three years later, two heads of wheat from far away, still giving testament here, “Communion with Christ, the continual conversation of the heart, wherever you are, this is what makes the heart love.” 

Love can only be what communion is — a pouring out, a breaking open and a passing around, a sacrifice.
And if love is what makes itself into a roof around a heart to absorbs all the storms, love is the only real dwelling place, and communion with another is all we have to offer and it’s all we have to crawl up under. When I don’t live love, others live homeless. When I don’t love like Christ, I evict souls. 

Christ is love embodied and no matter where we are, He and His body are Home.
What else would God have?

(She ends her posts with a running list of what she see's as a gift, something to be thankful for which is the idea of the book.....)


Wheat harvest 2011, it runs heavy.
The boys run hard.
A family works together.
I watch the Farmer’s hands on a steering wheel, how he turns.
How he’s lived a whole season under the sky, relying on, communing with God.
How sacrifice is communion, how a heart can be a roof…
How love makes these days large kernels, filled out right to the very end.

 ~

 After reading the book which really is life changing, I have started my own list of things I am thankful for.......

Eucharisteo

grace, thanksgiving, joy....

 I hope you will read and begin your own list and daily note what your are thankful for, this is what echos from my heart today.......

Is July Really Over ?

This is a very busy month in our family....it started out with our annual trip to Arcadia to my cousin Linda and her hubby Pat's awesome 4th of July party...always a great time....so great neither Bob nor I took pictures? Not a usual thing to happen....

My great neice Ruby (whom I still adore after Khloe's arrival) turned three!

Son Joseph and his wife Angel celebrated their 2nd Wedding Anniversary ...

Our son in law Ev celebrated his 40th !

Bob and I had our 11th Anniversary xoxoxoxoxoxox

Bob's Birthday





Khloe's Birthday !

Grandson Calib's Birthday

Brother Tony's Birthday

My Birthday, photographed holding my "gift".....

It has been requested by a couple of the family members

that there be no futher births in the month of July.....

“Children too are a gift from the LORD, the fruit of the womb, a reward.”

Psalm 127:3

Gramma says, "keep'em comming no matter the month".

Matthew 19:14

“Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them;

for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

This is what echos from my heart this last day of July 2011 

I am indeed blessed........