What I'm Doing At Church

 Before I get to the meat of this post, I want to preface it by telling you about  a problem I have.   

It's something I've struggled with my whole life and I thought I'd outgrow it someday, but, alas, I have not.   

I have a deep-seated desire to not be normal....but not so abnormal that I'm too weird.  I just want to be  original and a little unexpected.  You know, totally an easy balance.     

That  may or may not make you laugh based on how well you know me, but it perhaps does explain a little of my quirkiness.  

So, if you were to peek at my LDS Tools right now, you'd see I have three callings....

One of those callings was extended to me by a member of the bishopric, the other two I volunteered for. If you've been following along here for very long, you know that making church programs  is something that makes me super happy.  It's not work to me; it's something I just weirdly enjoy doing and consider a creative outlet for myself.   And it's good that I don't usually have to lobby too hard to get this job, since it's not one that's in high demand! 😁  

I try really hard to make the programs beautiful, informative, and unique--though the church copier often leaves them looking less beautiful than I'd prefer.  Here is a glimpse at the inside of this week's, though I admit, it was an off week for me because I'm working on a different (much smaller screened) computer than usual.  

I am very proud of my back page, which spotlights all the missionaries serving from our ward!  

So every week I create these paper programs, update an online ward bulletin, where I include many more details about the items mentioned, and create a kids' activity sheet to go with the Come, Follow Me lesson for that week that gets handed out in sacrament meeting.  All in all, I probably spend 3-5 hours on all this in a week  and mostly love every minute of it....though it's not my favorite thing when I'm traveling.  

My other calling is *still* Relief Society Activity Coordinator (going on almost 2 years now).   It's  a calling I struggle with, but I'm doing the best I can with it.  We had a few month lull without an activity, because of some stake and other Relief Society things that I had nothing to do with, and I think that lull got me out of my routine and made this last activity  a little extra hard to plan.  I had the hardest time lighting a fire to get buy-in from the sisters on it and I literally had 5 baby pictures collected for it two days before.  So when sending out my last minute email (something I do at least once a week for the online ward bulletin), I wanted to make it more than just a boring old email.   Here's what I ended up sending....

Somehow my goofy email worked and I got 24 more baby pictures in the two days before the activity started.  The turn-out was great...

The food (prepared by a member of my committee) was  delicious and beautiful! 

And people loved the baby picture game!  I had them hanging up like this, making them a gathering place in the room. 

I made worksheets  and had copies for everyone, so they could guess.   It was such a fun conversation starter and I loved watching all the sisters discuss among themselves who was who.   Totally a hit! 

Apparently I made my picture too easy and people guessed me right away...

So that's me right now.  Just plugging away, doing my thing, and {mostly} loving every minute.    

Dreaming of Postcards!

Anyone who’s been following along with my blog for very long, knows I have a bit of an obsession with postcards. I’ve always loved sending and receiving them—even when I was a child. Then, about 10 years ago, I discovered a postcard exchange website (called Postcrossing) that I decided would be perfect for our homeschooling geography studies. That’s when I really got obsessed. Suddenly I wasn’t limited to only friends and family who’d occasionally think of sending me a postcard when they went somewhere cool. I joined a community of bonafide snail mail lovers who enjoyed sending and receiving postcards as much as I did! I was hooked!

We used it as part of our homeschool geography for a few years, but the kids never got as into it as I did. Somewhere along the way, I embraced it fully as my hobby and haven’t looked back.

Now, my family knows that I will spend a part of every trip we go on, not only looking for postcards, but also places to buy postage and mailboxes to send them from. In the US, finding decent postcards is the hardest part. Usually I can find some in some quirky souvenir shop, but not always. I bring postage with me and just drop them off in the local post office. It’s usually easier to find postcards in foreign countries, but much harder to procure the correct postage and find places to send them from. I try to send postcards to family and friends from every stop on our journeys.

At home, it’s a different story. When life is calm, I generally send 5-10 postcards a week to people on postcrossing ( the postcard exchange website). Just for fun. I sign up for how many postcards I want to send, then get assigned that number of names/addresses. I look at their profiles and pick a postcard I think will suit them. When my postcard is received, the recipient registers the card, and my name/address gets thrown into the mix. So I receive postcards from different people than I send them to. I’m sure the mail deliverer is entertained by the stacks of postcards I sometimes have waiting for me in my mailbox!

Have I ever shown you my postcard files? No? Well, here they are in the drawers of my coffee table...

I've got them organized alphabetically  by subject and can usually find what I'm looking for pretty quickly.   You’d be surprised at the eclectic postcard tastes of some people on the postcrossing website, so my collection is also quite eclectic.  From animals, to insects, to national parks, to books, to food, to weather, to vehicles, to bridges….it is a rare thing for people to stump me with their requests! 

I also have this bin of random postcards --mostly from other countries --that don't quite fit into my other categories.   This bin is  a bit more disorganized, but it definitely has some treasures in there too! 

Then there's my collection of received postcards, which is admittedly a little lame and not worth showing here on the blog.  This may be heresy to some postcard collectors, but I actually weed out my received postcards pretty regularly and just keep my favorites.  

Here is a sampling of my favorite kind of postcard to receive….

On my postcrossing profile, I call them artistic touristy cards and they make me very happy.  They’re also my favorite kind to find when I’m traveling and I’ve been known to walk down touristy streets peeking into souvenir shop after souvenir shop looking for the “right” kind of postcard.  Yes, I married a patient man!  Haha!  

 I also love these Inge Löök Old Lady postcards that make me laugh every time! 

This past week, I was very excited to start receiving a slew of texts from family and friends saying that the last batch of postcards from our Middle East trip were starting to arrive!  It took 2-1/2 months, but they made it! 

And in other exciting postcard news…

CHECK IT OUT!!!! 

I got a postcard FROM FREAKING ANTARCTICA from a friend and I couldn’t be more excited!   😆

Need a boost and want me to add you to my postcard list?! Send me an email or text, and I’ll get you added! 💌 

A Thailand Reunion

Yeah, yeah.  It's barely been a month since we got home from Thailand, but if you've been following along with this blog for the last few weeks, you may have gotten the impression that that trip was pretty life-changing for Ellie and I.  

And I honestly just can't stop thinking about it.   

 Not only was what we did pretty epic (the sight-seeing, the long days on the worksite, and the time we spent with locals), but  we also went with some pretty incredible people.   Those 21 young people were exactly the jolt I needed to wake up, shake me out of my comfort zone,  and give me hope for  the future of this world! They are a generation on the cusp of adulthood who gave up a huge chunk of their summer to be a part of something bigger than themselves.    The experience cracked open my heart and I feel like I have 20 new honorary sons and daughters (-1 from the total number, because one of those 21 actually is my daughter) that I want to keep in touch with! 

Since I've been home, I've had a deep desire to...

1) continue to foster friendships among the kids
2)  be a loving, supportive presence in their lives
3)  help them keep alive the spiritual nudgings they felt on the trip
4) continue fostering the feeling of relevancy I gained on the trip (#midlifeproblems)

I've floundered a bit in knowing how to pursue those desires and to redefine my role since coming home, but I'm here to share that I've successfully done two things so far: 

We hosted a Thailand reunion at our house (hopefully helping with desire #1)!  

We had a great turn-out--especially considering that 9 of those 21 people were from out-of state and 2 of them actually flew in for the occasion.

Hosting things at our house is often stressful for me (though not near as stressful as it was in Virginia), but I honestly loved every second of it.   I loved the chance to see their faces again...

And welcome them into our home...even if they all ended up gathering in Ellie's room, which she had not only not cleaned for the occasion, but she had not even made sure the corners of the fitted sheets were in place on her bed!

Haha.  Bare mattress aside,  I love these great kids.  Though they're more like young adults than kids.   Ten of them are high school graduates, two already have mission calls, another one started his papers right after the trip, and all of them were good-hearted and seeking to share their light.    

I love that they even Facetimed Jacob (our Thai friend and worksite interpreter) during the reunion.   It was great to see his face and remember what brought us all together in the first place. 

Right before  the reunion, I found out about an amazing Shutterfly coupon and decided to attempt to make a photo book for everyone before it expired.   Paul (the trip Dad) had offered to chip in half if I made a photo book and though creating photo books kind of stress me out, I went for it.   I knocked myself out for  a few days straight and created this....a hundred pages of memories! 

Design-wise it ended up being a bit of a disappointment, but it's done and that is an accomplishment itself for me, since I usually second-guess myself too much on these types of projects and never finish them.   Unfortunately they were delivered right AFTER the reunion, which meant I had to mail them to the people who live far away and hand-deliver them to anyone within about 20 miles of me.  

All but one of the books have now been delivered and I'm hoping, in some small way, that they're helping to accomplish desires #2,3, & 4 that I mentioned above.   I haven't heard much from anyone since receiving them, but, if nothing else, it was  a meaningful project for me. 💗

What's next to keep those desires alive?   I've got a few ideas, but we shall see.  

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The Phoenix Phlowers

Any of you who knows me in person, knows that I have a very limited skill set.  My skills mainly involve making programs {I sometimes think this gift/passion of mine must have been a joke when God was bestowing talents on his children because it is probably about the most useless/unappreciated skill in the history of the world}, walking {yep, plain old walking}, and dabbling half-heartedly in pursuits I think I should like, but have a hard time getting into.  Sewing, gardening, gourmet cooking, making friends, yoga, papercrafting etc are all among those things that have sparked my interest, then eluded me.   I keep hoping that one of these days something will "catch" and I'll find my next fun hobby to get into, but, alas, my efforts thus far have remained rather unsatisfying. 

Today I'm going to tell you a little about my efforts at gardening.  I love spending time outdoors and I love fresh fruits and veggies, so you'd think that gardening is something I'd be really excited about.  But not really.  One of the main hurdles I've faced with it, is that the prime hours for gardening (early in the morning before the heat of the day has set in), happens to also be the prime hours for hiking, of which is a part of my day I rarely compromise on.   My walking/hiking time is sacred and an integral part of maintaining my physical and mental health--day in, day out, month in, month out.  I rarely miss more than a day or two of hiking in a week and when I do, it's usually for a good reason (like being on a cool trip or being sick or something).  

So despite my time limitations and lack of passion, I keep trying to plant the darn garden....year after year after year.     I almost always plant a little late in the season and I do minimal upkeep (because there are a million places I'd rather be  when it's 95* and sunny outside), but we usually manage at least a meager harvest that, if nothing else, at least about covers the cost of seedlings and dirt that we put into the garden.    So that's me.  A lazy gardener who takes more after the Little Red Hen's friends than Little Red Hen herself. 

  Back in Virginia, we  had this beautiful pergola on our deck where we'd hang flowers and birdfeeders.   Hanging flowers are another love of mine (though we have no place to hang flowers in our current house) and I *usually* was able to keep them alive through the summer, at least in the back of the house, where they could catch the water that fell from the sky without any effort from me.   The hanging flowers in front of our house  didn't always fare as well, because I actually had to remember to water those.    This little corner of the deck was my happy place and I LOVED being able to see it out our kitchen and dining room windows. 

 

 See those orange flowers in the pot on our deck?   I got those one year and loved the pop of color they brought to our deck.   We enjoyed them all season, then they died of natural causes and I just left them alone.  I just left the flower pot there {dead parts and all}, assuming I'd plant something new in it the following summer.  Then something weird happened.  

Without doing a darn thing...literally nothing...they came back to life the next season.   And they were just as pretty the second time around. 

 That original deck picture was taken in 2017.  That may have been the year I got them, but, honestly, I have no idea.  They've been a part of our summer deck decor for many years now (even through 3 moves) and it's a happy day when they start to blossom again each year and occasionally even blossom twice in a season. 

In Pennsylvania, they still grew without effort, but grew in a little funky. 

Here in Utah, I have to water them...

But still they come back. 

  I think they might be tiger lilies, but I call them my Phoenix Phlowers.  

PHOENIX:  ˈfiːnɪks   (in classical mythology) According to ancient legend, the phoenix is a bird that cyclically burns to death and is reborn from its own ashes. For this reason, the phoenix often serves as a symbol of renewal and rebirth.

This final collage is comprised of photos of my Phoenix Phlowers from this summer...bringing a spot of color and joy to me once again.  

It's fitting that they're even the color of flames.

I'm Sort of Famous....

I MADE A FLYER!!!!   

And it was sent out by email to 1000's of people all over the DC area and was posted by two members of Studio C on their Instagram accounts (see here and here)!!! 

Check out my creation....

So, I'm not actually famous, since no one (except a couple of people who helped with the planning) actually knows  that I made it, but I still felt kind of cool that my self-taught photoshop skills got to go to a good use.       

The event turned out much bigger than the planners anticipated, a fact which drew the wrath of the security guards at the Lincoln Memorial and brought the whole night to a premature ending.  Ellie still got to meet the cast members briefly though, so she definitely called the night a success!

Alright, now that I'm done gloating about the tiny little role I played in this awesome event, it's time to shut the computer and get back to real life again....

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Project du Jour

I like me a good project.   

I enjoy putting my heart into something and having some creative product at the end that didn't exist before.   Unfortunately, I don't often have the time I'd like to put into these kind of extra projects that almost always get in the way of daily life.  

So, when I found out that Cami's Christmas package had to be sent by mid-October, I got a little nervous that I would struggle to pull together meaningful gifts for her.   After all, it wasn't that long ago that I was shopping with her to buy all of her mission clothes and supplies.    And she is not the easiest person to shop for in the first place.   

Actually, though, it probably ended up to be better timing than I expected, since I didn't have the rest of the Christmas expectations to keep me distracted.    I bought a few things, but then got the idea to make her a day-by-day quote and photo calendar.  I had a very specific vision in my head of what it was supposed to look like and got very excited.    It took me many, many hours of work, but in the end, I am very happy with how it turned out.     I can't wait for her to open it and for us to be able to follow along with our calendars too.   There's something kind of exciting knowing that we will be turning the pages each day and seeing the same photo and reading the same quote.  

And since Cami can't look at my blog, here are some pictures of the finished product, which turned out every bit as cool as I wanted it to!  

Up Close and Personal with Ellie

The last post  showed a nice little glimpse of Ellie's baptism day.   This post will give you a more personal, albeit more candid view of the day:  

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Ellie's dress may have looked pretty from a distance...

but look more closely and you will see that I still can't sew in a straight line. 

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I never did get around to printing her invitations, but I did send this by email to a few people who I didn't think would be insulted by receiving it a mere 12 hours beforehand.  

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Here's the ALL ABOUT ELLIE section I put in in the baptismal program:

All About Ellie

Full Name: Eliza Sandra G.
Eliza—after maternal ancestor, Eliza Ann Perkins
Sandra—after her Grandma Sandy

Born:
March 23, 2005
Virginia

Favorite Color:
Fuchsia

Favorite Food:
Homemade Bean Taquitos

Favorite Scripture:
Article of Faith #4
(she’s had it memorized since she was 5)

Favorite Scripture Hero:
Nephi

Favorite Primary Song:
“A Child’s Prayer”

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And here's a look at the "I apparently photoshop about as well as I sew"  picture of Ellie I put on the front of the program:

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I had nothing to do with this cute candy bar note the primary made for her, but I thought I'd put it in here anyway. 

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And one last glimpse of my sorry attempt to make up for the "C-" I got in Sewing 101 at BYU. 

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And last, but not least.....

Ellie's slightly menacing note written to Adam the night before her baptism: 

Translation:

Hi Adam,
Can you set the alarm clock for 7:40? 
Thanks,
Ellie

PS  Write back on piece of paper.  There's no choice if you want to see me get baptized. 




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