Monday, October 3, 2011

Making our home a Haven

  This week I am following along with Monica over at The Homespun Heart in working to make my Home a Haven. This is something I hope to work on all the time but I do like setting aside times now and again to really concentrate on it.

  This week I decided to really focus on the Fruits of the Spirit and seek to let the Holy Spirit work in my life so that I could better bear those fruits. I decided to study on them one at a time each day and then share them with my children as well.

  Yesterday I shared about Galatians 5:22 & 23 and today we concentrated on developing love in our lives. I read through 1 Corinthians 13 and then I read some aloud to the kids at lunch time. I also had Megan and Aaron copy some of the verses for their writing today.
 "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Can you imagine how wonderful our homes would be if each of us always had that kind of love? It is something to strive for! And that is only one of the fruits of the Spirit!

I also am hoping to work on a certain area of our house each day this week and try to bring order, cleanliness and some extra beauty to that area. Today I decided to tackle the kitchen as I have really been struggling to even begin to keep it clean in this very busy harvest season.

Here is a messy before picture:

God really helped and guided in my efforts. Here is the after:
I do still have some canning cooling as we canned mince pie filling and tomatoes today but the counters are otherwise clean and the dishes are all done. Yea!

As far as adding some beauty....

I have never been very fond of my counter tops but today I realized that they match blue canning jars which I do really like. So today instead of pretending that the counter tops weren't even there when I went to decorating I decided it would be fun to highlight that color. So I had fun adding some decorations that used the blue canning jars.



I am excited to get up in the morning to make breakfast in my lovely clean kitchen!

I thought I would share another picture from today. Megan was in the Fairy mood and wanted her picture taken so Mara lovingly went outside and did a photo shoot with her.

How was your day?

7 comments:

Monica Wilkinson said...

Hi Abbi, I love your day of beauty! YES - how lovely our homes and hearts would be if we were dedicated to developing the Fruit of the Spirit! And, what a neat little pumpkin - your kitchen looks fantastic! Blessings on your day today!

Love,
monica

Melia said...

Abbi,

Your inspiration and sweet spirit are a gift from God to me! I love reading your blog. I have really been struggling lately with trying to homeschool and keep my house clean. You are such a light for the Lord. Thank you!

Melia

Keren Ruth said...

Such a sweet fairy sitting in the tree. :)

Abbi said...

Thank you all very much! God is so good.

Nola said...

Blue canning jars? I've never seen such a thing. But I don't think they sell Ball canning jars in Canada. We have bernardin mainly. I have a few bell ones here and there I think must have come from the US but they were second hand. It must look very different to have food in blue canning jars! :) I love how you used them.

Abbi said...

Nola,
The blue canning jars are antique. They don't make them like that anymore but there are still relatively easy to find- in fact for one wedding this summer the bride had collected around 60 of them which I filled with flowers. I have never heard of bernadin jars- I guess not many have made it down this way. I wonder if yours are different sizes than ours too since you use the metric system?

Anna said...

Your fariy is so very sweet!

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