Flower Bucket by Sabrina Tolbertson Visit Sabrina’s gallery for instructions and all about this lovely project! Supplies used: The Paper Element’s Glory Collection Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Devotional: How Does Your Garden Grow? By Betsy Burnett Part 1- The "garden of weedin" "Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times." Mark 4: 3-8 I was once at a craft show and they had the most adorable handmade sign for a garden it said "The garden of Weedin" boy did that give me a chuckle. Where as we have a garden, I'll be the first one to admit, that I am a rather reluctant gardener. My husband grew up with garden fresh veggies and fruits, I on the other hand grew up with a mom with a self proclaimed "black thumb" she would try to grow things in our back yard and inevitably whatever it was that was being grown would well, to put it mildly die. Part of mom's problem was we had horrible soil in our yard; it grew grass and dandelions but not really much of anything else. So while I didn't grow up "growing" things, my husband on the other hand did. So ever since we got married we have had a garden. Now the problem with this is that he's an over the road truck driver who is gone 6 days a week, this being the case the "joy" of gardening falls on my shoulders. Now I admit it I love a good garden fresh tomato just like the next gal, but well I just don't like the whole process... well that isn't completely true, I love the planting part it's the maintenance and upkeep that do me in! (I just joke with my husband that I am the "evangelist" of the garden...I'll "plant the seeds" someone else can water them but God has to make them grow!) I think my biggest pitfall when it comes to gardening is the WEEDING! UGH how I dislike that task! You know I learned something VERY profound about weeds, you don't have to do ANYTHING to plant weeds, they grow (and very well I might add) all by themselves! Every year it's the same thing, my husband gets out the great big tiller, and loosens up the soil for me, overturning all the weeds and mixing them in chopping them up so when it's done there is lovely black dirt ready to receive the tomato plants (and peppers and cucumbers, and watermelon, and pumpkins.) Inevitably though something happens, it rains or we get busy so things don't get planted right away. Does that fresh overturned earth stay all black and weed free ready for us to plant? NOPE, birds come and bring seeds, some of the roots that were not destroyed star to grow again, pretty soon there are weeds "planted." Meaning we have to go pull those weeds before we can go plant the good stuff. We need to do the totally despised the task of pulling and cutting, and yanking to be able to have some room to plant in. Because if I don't pull the weeds, they will not only steal all the nutrients from the soil but if it gets too bad, there won't be any room to even plant my veggies! If want my really good BLT sandwiches I better get busy!
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Jesus talks about our hearts being like soil and his word what is planted there. As He explains in Mark 4: 13-20 you don't need to plant weeds in your heart either, weeds happen. Then Jesus said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop--thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown." Life has a way of happening its part of well... being alive! Because of life happening, we need to be extra diligent in tending to what is planted in our hearts. We hear God's word, we even KNOW what we are suppose to do with it but then things happen, you get busy so you don't have time so that word that was planted gets choked out by lack of care. Or Someone close to you gets sick so you start to worry and forget to trust. Or in the opposite extreme, you are going great and therefore forget to remember that it's God who is your provision. Just like it takes diligence in tending a veggie garden, it takes diligence in tending the garden of our hearts. Daily we need to take the time to remove the things that distract us from hearing God's word. We need to take time during trials to remember God's word and allow it to sooth our souls. We need to remember in times of prosperity that it's God who is our provision. The goal of my veggie garden is fresh produce to feed me and my family. If I don't tend to it, the weeds that have volunteered to grow there will eventually crowd out the good stuff. In the same way life can choke out the word of God planted in our hearts. It takes daily tending to remove those things that get in the way from it growing. But as scripture promises us, with careful tending, it will produce a good crop of "thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown."
Blessed Beginnings Cards
Growth Journaling Prompts Verses on Growth -Supporting Scripture Celebrating Growth in your layouts Sketch-based on layout above Floral Bouquet Idea Card Garden of Our Heart -journaling prompts
***Blessed Beginnings cards are designed to be printed out on index cards and put in a 3 x 5 file box. These little idea cards can then be used as springboards to sharing your faith through your albums and projects.
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Layout Ideas:
Layouts by Karen Patterson, Lisa Votaw and Melissa Czapor
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Devotional: How does your garden grow? By Betsy Burnett The “Garden of Weedin” Part 2 Here we are in the middle of the growing season. My garden is doing quite nicely I might add (thanks to some black landscaping fabric helping to control the weeds.) Every once an awhile though, a really stubborn one comes along and it takes extra care to get it out it’s then I have a choice to make exactly how much time do I want to spend on this. If it was me, I would cut it down and forget about it. My friend from church on the other hand is a bit more, persistent when it comes to her weeds. A couple of weeks ago, she shared this story about how she was out in her yard weeding. She had finished her yard when she noticed a weed growing in between the cracks of her sidewalk. Since everything else was pulled, she started working on this weed. At first she tried pulling it. Some of it came out, but there was still more, she pulled and she yanked but couldn’t seem to get all of it out. She knew there was a root down there and if she didn’t get it out that weed would come back. It was too big for a spade to get down in there so she grabbed a knife and started digging away at this weed. She worked and she worked. Laughing at her self that she must be the only one obsessive enough to get this weed out between the cracks. The Lord spoke to her heart then, telling her that He too was just as obsessive about removing ALL of the weeds between the cracks of our hearts. I can almost picture God as the loving gardener, on his hands and knees digging in the garden of my heart, seeing a dandelion in-between a couple of cracks. Wanting it not just pulled from the cracks so it can’t be seen but dug out so it won’t produce again. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. Hebrews 12: 15
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Devotional: What do you plant in your garden? by Betsy Burnett It’s amazing what we can grow in our gardens! I have friends that spend the Winter pouring over seed and plant catalogs carefully planning out what they will be growing come spring. But even in the best planned gardens you sometimes get “volunteers.” Those are plants that just spring up their seeds brought there from last years crops or a gust of wind, sometimes bird droppings. Whatever the case you find these volunteers happily growing in the fertile soil of your garden among those things you have carefully planted there. My friend Linda, was out tending her garden one day when she noticed this lovely flower, it wasn’t one she had planted, but was overwhelmed buy how pretty it was. So she carefully weeded around it. She watered it daily and even gave it some fertilizer every once an awhile. She was amazed at how hardy this plant was and decided to look it up and see what it was. Imagine her surprise to find it was a WEED! She had been spending time nurturing and caring for a WEED! Sure it was “pretty.” But it was a weed, wasn’t that something you were suppose to be pulling from your garden? Even things that even seem good might not be. How many times in our personal lives have we tended things in our heart that we thought belonged there but then discovered that we were spending time on something that was simply robbing us of time or energy, or worse yet our joy and contentment? Proverbs 4: 23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Have you been nurturing a weed or two? No matter how pretty it may look, if it’s robbing you of your time and taking you away from tending to the things that really matter it’s not worth it! Know what is in your garden and tend to those things that really matter. ***above layout by Kimberly Colliss, click image for details Garden Journal by Carla Jennings
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Beautiful Blooms by Kimberly Colliss Create a fun floral gift using your diecut flower shapes or chipboard shapes. 1. Create layered flowers by cutting double of each flower shape. Curl petals on top flower & off set it when you attach it. 2. Use wire or painted skewers for your stems. A wire trick for this is to thread a double length of wire through a button in center of flower & twist. 3. Use green ribbon for leaves or you could use diecut leaves. 4. To make a vase, create a cylinder with stiff paper & decorate. You could decoupage a dollar store vase as well. 5. Fill vase with beans or small stones to weigh it down. Add some styrophom to insert your stems into. 6. Add ribbon, tags with words of encouragement/scripture on them. ***This is a great gift for someone in hospital or has floral allergies.
Decorated Flower Pots by Betsy Burnett (with lots of help from the kids in our Children’s Ministry) In our Children’s Church this month we kicked off our Fruit of the Spirit unit. We are starting off by talking about abiding in the vine! For our craft project we decorated flower pots and planted in them. (What’s really ironic about our plants is when I went to buy them the recommendation of the worker (not to mention cheapest) were INPATIENTS…great thing to grow at the beginning of a study on the “Fruit of the Spirit” Flower Pots are fun to decorate and a great kids craft! (They also work well for mom’s day gifts) You need:
Unglazed flower pot/saucer Opaque Paint Markers and or Paint (I used the type for non porous surfaces (enamel) A bunch of kids something to cover clothing and the work surface as it is permanent.
Let the kids go to town and decorate their flower pots. The paint is nice as when it dries it’s permanent so the water won’t effect it. When they are done plant your flower/plants etc. The paint markers are nice as the kids can actually draw with them giving them better control.
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Devotional: Volunteers by Betsy Burnett When we were weeding the garden to plant my eagle eyed daughter called me over and said “Mom aren’t these tomato plants?” Walking over I was quite pleased to discover a couple of ‘volunteers’ in my garden. Occasionally in a garden you will be blessed with a plant that you WANT just springing up naturally. These surprises you never are quite sure what variety you are going to get but hey they are free. Sometimes life hands us volunteers. Those things that spring up in life that might not be exactly what you planned (or how you planned it but they are good (or at least good for you!) When I first started to homeschool I was very caught up in making sure everything got done every single day. With three kids 5 and under that was sometimes a difficult task and I felt like a failure! The problem was it just wasn’t the kids that interrupted, there were the calls from a friend that needed to talk, or someone that need help with something, or even someone getting sick and needing to be taken care of. I ended up feeling guilty if I did and guilty if I didn’t. It was shortly after this I went to my first homeschool convention. The very first workshop I attended changed my life! The workshop was put on by a mom of seven (who was pregnant with her 8th!) I figured if anyone could help me be more organized with my day she could. Surely she would have the secrets of getting everything done that I had been missing! What shocked me though was the very first thing she told us “There is no such thing as an “interruption” to you homeschool day there is only an opportunity for God to teach you something” … She paused for a moment and allowed that thought to sink into our heads and our hearts. The she went onto explain. What I ended up learning from her is that homeschool and well life in general isn’t just about the three “r’s” it’s also about growing up into the person God wants you to be. It’s about being available to what He has in store for you that day, or even that season. She then went on to talk about how sometimes the most precious characteristics can’t be learned in books, they have to be learned in life. The only way you learn them is to as Nike is fond of telling us “Just do it” She went on to tell us about the different seasons she has experienced with her children, she talked Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
about her kids learning to grieve when her mother died, she talked about learning compassion and caring when their brother broke a leg. On and on with different examples, the more she talked the freer I felt. I realized that if I watched my attitude checked my heart and consulted God about these interruptions to my day we could learn a whole lot more than school books could teach. Math could be taught while helping to prepare a meal for a sick friend on top of learning to reach out as Jesus did “when I was sick and in prison you visited me.” (Matthew 25:36) Compassion could be learned (not to mention how to REST) while helping to care for a sick sibling. Patience (not to mention oral reading skills ) could be learned when your little sister wants to have Wait for Elmo read to her for the 6th time. I was also reaping the blessings of not just godly character traits in my children, but seeing the blessings of growing relationships in them as well. As time went on I learned that the kids weren’t the only one that benefited from this new approach. I was learning too. I was learning to seek God about things that came up. I was learning to seize opportunities when they did. I was even (very ) slowly learning to recognize those things that that needed to be done vs. those that were just time wasters. Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time and a season for everything under the sun. (Ecc 3: 1) So the next time you want to get annoyed because of a seemingly interruption to your day or even life, stop and ask the Lord if he might just have something for you in what’s come up. Because you never know, that tomato plant that sprung up in your garden might not produce those great big beefy sandwich tomatoes you planted, but it does produce tasty little salad tomatoes perfect for snacking and they were just what you needed!
Layout by Kimberly Colliss
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Devotional: Final Thoughts on Growing by Betsy Burnett This month our focus has been on what we grow in the gardens of our heart. From the weeds that spring up (and need to be uprooted) to the things that “volunteer” in our lives and need to be tended to tending our hearts is a daily process to be able to produce lifetime rewards. For our final thought we want to leave you with this adaptation of a classic verse. For the Garden of Daily Living Plant three rows of Peas: 1) Peas of mind 2) Peas of heart 3) Peas of Soul Plant Four Rows of Squash: 1) Squash gossip 2) Squash indifference 3) Squash grumbling 4) Squash selfishness Plant Four Rows of Lettuce: 1) Lettuce be faithful 2) Lettuce be kind 3) Lettuce be patient 4) Lettuce love one another Don’t forget the Turnips: 1) Turnip for church 2) Turnip for service 3) Turnip to help one another Lastly you need Thyme 1) Thyme for worship 2) Thyme for prayer 3) Thyme for family 4) Thyme for friends Water freely with patience and cultivate with love. There will be much fruit in your garden because you reap what you sow (original author unknown) We pray the garden of your heart is growing all types of good fruit that will reap 10, 100, and 1000 times blessing!
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
Garden of Daily Living Book Mark Instructions: I love doing simple “hybrid” projects. My computer makes it easy to format the text and with a bit of copying and pasting I can have multiple projects on the same page ready for me to cut out and share. For this project I took the verse from today’s devotional and formatted the text in a text box. I then added appropriate clip art and then copied the entire thing multiple times on the page to be able to use every inch of paper. I printed this out on cardstock and then trimmed them and layered on cardstock and added a touch of ribbon. The result is a cute card (when you write on the back) that can be used for a bookmark. We have included the file for you to create your own version. Garden of Daily Living Bookmark Supplies used: Daisy Bucket Front Porch, ribbon, white cardstock
Card Sets: Giving the Gift of Handmade Cards By Briana Kimmel One of my favorite gifts to give is a set of handmade cards—handmade gifts add just that extra little something that says, “I care about you” and a set of cards allows the recipient to pass along that special something to yet another person. I’ve given sets of thank you cards as gifts at bridal and baby showers, for the new bride or mom-to-be to send to the guests from her shower. A set of handmade cards can be a group of cards that all look alike, or are completely different from one another. There really are no rules, and so the possibilities are endless! The card sets I prefer to make have some sort of unifying factor, whether it is using the same sentiment or using the same patterned paper (or several coordinating papers). Look at the 4 sets of cards I have provided as samples: in the first set, the unifying factor is the patterned paper I used. In the second and third sets, I used several pieces of coordinating patterned papers and cardstock to make 2 sets of 5 “Thank you” cards. The unifying factor in each of these sets is that they are all made with the same group of papers and the same basic color scheme. In the fourth set, I used a paper kit (patterned papers, coordinating card stock, die cut shapes and tags, and coordinating alphabets) to keep the same color scheme, but each card uses a different patterned paper or embellishment from the kit. They
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net
also each have a different sentiment, the perfect gift for someone who likes to have cards on hand, for any occasion. Here are just a few ideas to get you started: • Use a favorite verse or several verses as inspiration, and use them as the “sentiment” for your cards • Use up your scraps! • Experiment with shape—scalloped edges are all the rage in the scrapbooking nowadays, as are brackets and circles • Experiment with color combinations—instead of using white cardstock as your base, use colored cardstock (or purchase a set of colored premade cards) as the base, and layer coordinating colors or patterned paper • Tie your card set with coordinating ribbon, or decorate a plain gift box with scraps left over from creating your card to create a box that coordinates with the card set • Have a favorite embellishment? Make a set of cards that showcases that embellishment in several different ways • Have a favorite card sketch? Make a set of cards that are all the same sketch, but with different papers or combinations of papers • Adapt your favorite layout sketch to card-size • Maybe your friend loves frogs or monkeys or cows, or is very proud of her rose garden—use your friend’s favorite things as inspiration for the card set, and decorate them with embellishments or stickers, or her favorite color Want more ideas? Check out the sketches I made based on one of my card sets. Basic Card Set Sketches Happy card making!
Brought to you by www.FaithfullyYours.net