Category Archives: Guest Posts

November 7, 2012 · 10:48 am

The Morning After

I keep trying to write something about the US presidential election, but every time I get a few words down, I delete them. It’s hard to say what I want to say, but this girl has done a pretty good job, so (for now) I’m going to defer to her.

Right after I share this quote, which I love, from C.S. Lewis:

“He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.”

…

So, it is election day. I am not telling you who I voted for. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I am one of those pesky independents that the campaigns are trying to woo.

I don’t know who will win today. But, I do know this:

I am thankful for men & their families who are willing to serve their country. Sure, there are perks to being President. There are also high costs. You couldn’t pay me to carry the amount of stress, responsibility or schedule that being POTUS requires. I am glad there are people willing to do it. It is tougher than it looks people.

I am thankful that they are willing to go first. I can’t imagine the obstacles Obama has had to overcome to be the first African-American to hold this office. Also, Romney is a Mormon. That isn’t the most popular religion in our country & I imagine all the scrutiny makes him feel so vulnerable at times. Both these men have guts.

I am thankful that they are doing what they believe is best for our country. Now I am sure you seriously disagree with Romney or Obama. However, I think they are suggesting what they think is the best solution for the issues facing our nation. I appreciate people who stand behind their beliefs…even if I disagree. Gotta give props for saying what you believe.

I don’t know who will win today. But I do know:

The Office of the President should be spoken of with respect. Voice your disagreement & complete despair if your candidate doesn’t win. Fine. But, be respectful. Otherwise you get annoying really quick. No offense.

Our voice matters after November 6th. If we stop voicing our opinion and trying to impact our country when the election is over…we all loose. The change we are looking for isn’t found in one election on one day. It takes continued dialogue and action on our part. We are all America. We are all a part of the solution.

Bumper stickers & yard signs should be taken down this week. Okay, this is just my pet peeve. No one driving behind you needs to know that you voted for Gore in 2000. Just take it down.

…

My Dreams are Sneaky

Today, I’m so thankful to have Liz Griffin from Lark & Bloom writing about her sneaky dreams.

Come on, folks, give her a warm Great Smitten welcome…

(I don’t know what a Great Smitten welcome is. Maybe an aggressive high-five? A screen-clink with your coffee mug? Do what feels right.)

It would be appropriate to say I have been a dreamer since birth. My childhood was filled with crazy ideas and a sketchbook of possibilities. Most of my dreams have been a bit ridiculous. I would go completely insane if I actually worked in a small bakery in a remote French village. Glad that dream didn’t come true.

As I matured, so did my dreams. By the time I was in college I dreamt of social change. I planned on attending law school & working for the U.N. I wanted to fight bad guys. My other dream was to have a family. Those two things seemed incompatible. I knew what I wanted to do, but had no idea how to do it.

After college I had a job offer to get into military intelligence. Basically, I would have been like the chick in Top Gun. Minus the sleeping with Tom Cruise part. Intelligence officer job, possible U.N. internship, grad school applications…my dreams were about to come true.

Or so I thought. Turns out God had a different plan. My husband & I ended up planting a church in Seattle & having children right away. Instead of helping solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I was changing diapers and discipling women.

It was a different journey, but one I followed whole-heartedly. Fast-forward seven years and a few moves. I now live in Texas. I have two kids and am adopting two more. The family dream is in full swing & the justice dream is waiting patiently.

My dreams got real sneaky this past fall. God began to merge the two and suddenly I was helping form an anti-trafficking organization called UnBound. Things began to happen in ways I never expected. After tucking my kids into bed at night I would head off to the university and speak to a group of students at anti-trafficking events. UnBound now works directly with law enforcement organizations & is going to be launching international efforts soon. I get to raise my kids and fight the bad guys while they nap. God is brilliant.

As you read this, you may think that sounds impressive. Don’t be fooled. It doesn’t feel impressive at all. I don’t have a high-rise office. There is no assistant to tell me I missed ten important calls while I was addressing Congress. Instead I spend my day potty-training & pushing kids on swings.

The other day I was making peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for the kids’ lunches while on the phone with a maximum-security prison. Negotiating the release of a trafficking victim while loading the kids in high chairs wasn’t in the original dream.

Giving a phone interview while wiping poop from a child’s bottom wasn’t in the dream. In fact, this wasn’t the dream I planned at all. This is a better dream. This is the kind of dream only God could orchestrate.

He is sneaky with our dreams. In my mind, my dreams come true in a fantastic moment. Usually involving a rooftop terrace, a city skyline, and a soft breeze that blows my hair gently away from my face as I gaze into the distance. Cue swelling music and then I have my moment. The moment I realize my dream is coming true. I smile and the camera zooms out. The End.

But that isn’t what happens. Dreams creep. They hit the boundaries of our seasons, & wait quietly while we deal with life. God blends the unblendable and creates a custom built life for our dreams.

My dreams seem ridiculous at times. I’ve never stood before Congress. I don’t own a power suit. I only have 327 followers on Twitter. But I have God. I have a family who gets the best parts of me. In the middle of all that I get to play a small role in seeing slaves freed.

God’s dreams for me are better. God’s dreams for me are balanced. They aren’t based on my passion, but His destiny. I’ll take those dreams any day.

Even if it wasn’t what I expected.

8 Comments

Filed under dreams and realities, Guest Posts

Tagged as anti-trafficking, elizabeth griffin, lark & bloom, Liz Griffin, unbound, unexpected dreams

May 11, 2012 · 7:49 am

A Dream Deferred

First things first.

Notice anything different?

Jessi has been hard at work and Great Smitten is looking gorgeous! I’m pretty much in love. We’re still tweaking a few bits and there will be a few more changes, but seriously, how good is it looking?

Now, on to another beautiful thing – Ellen Parker, from handmade recess, and this beautiful thing she wrote for you.

I used to be a High School English Teacher.

I fell in love with books and American poetry and I was done for.

It’s been years but, still, Langston Hughes’ epic question pinballs through my brain.

What does happen to a dream deferred?

In January of this year, I walked right into that brick wall of a question.

For four years, I had been running a fairly successful handmade business. I dreamed up big plans and I smeared my heart all over them. I hired interns. I expanded to the far reaches of my glorious limitations.

Those glorious limitations? 36, 9, 7 and 4. They are my people. I live, breathe them in and out every day.

Something happened as I pushed on the good boundaries of my life. I started to feel farther and farther away from who I wanted to be. Soon, it began to feel impossible to touch what I really wanted.

What I really wanted was to invest in my marriage. What I really wanted was to be a mother who says, “I choose you.” Even when I had to say no. What I really wanted was to be fully present when I was present.

Sometimes the work of your hands and choosing your family don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But sometimes they are.

My husband and I stepped back. We boiled it down. We shaved off all the things that stretched me too far gone.

I let go of my handmade business. I took on sewing for someone local. I let go of the weight of direction and sales and marketing. I kept creativity.

And the gift has been that when I am present, then I can be every bit present. My story is not about stay at home mothers or work at home mothers and work at home wives or work out of the home women.

It’s just this: every time. Every time I have the chance to choose what is best and let go of perfectly good. I’ll do it. Because deferred good is better than not knowing best.

…

Ellen has also written a beautiful post over on her blog – a letter to young mothers. And I’m not lying when I say I just cried in a coffee shop as I read it.

So yeah, I think you should read it too.

3 Comments

Filed under dreams and realities, Guest Posts

Tagged as a dream deferred, Ellen Parker, handmade recess

April 17, 2012 · 10:01 am

I celebrate, I create.

I was just writing a note to God in my journal about my dreams. About celebrating them, about creating.

And then I got an email from Jessi, asking me to write about that very thing.

…

You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence.

2 Comments

Filed under dreams and realities, Guest Posts, women, writing

Tagged as celebrating, creating, creativity, dreams, jessi connolly, naptime diaries

December 31, 2011 · 8:58 am

Sarah’s Holiday Crafts, Part II: Prayer Cards

Today’s craft from my friend Sarah is a great little something to work on as you think about ringing in the New Year and getting 2012 started off right. I was just talking to Simon the other day about wanting to invest more in my prayer life and spend good quality time talking to God, so this project gives me some great inspiration. Also, for someone like me who needs a bit of help with organization and time management, and who gets distracted very easily, even while praying (“Dear God, Please watch over my…wait…did I turn off my straighteners?…Anyway, yes, watch over my family and…my family. I miss my Mom. I should call her later…”) this is a big help.

Enjoy it, and please send me photos of your finished projects!

Hi again, Great Smitten readers! Last week, I wrote about my sister and her gift of generosity. Karla and I would agree that her generous and kind heart had a great deal to do with my mother.

My mom, holding my little boy minutes after he was born

I call her my steel magnolia because she has the most joyful soul and tough-as-nails heart of anyone I know. She is also a prayer warrior. So much so that my friends call me just to ask me if she will pray for them. She takes prayer seriously. And she does it with faith and determination.

One of my favorite childhood memories is waking up around 5 or 6 am when it was still dark outside and sleepily walking into the kitchen to get a drink of water. So many mornings I would glance into the living room and see my mother kneeling at the foot of our couch, her heart wrapped up in a desperate prayer.

I never knew exactly what she was praying for on those quiet mornings, and I usually padded back to my bedroom without interrupting her, but what I did know is that my mother had a heart for taking things to the Lord and that when someone asked her to pray for them she did.

I want to be like that. I try to be like that. But I am not there yet. While I am still figuring out how best to juggle the roles in my life now that I’m a mother, one of my biggest goals is to be more accountable with my prayers. No matter how God has gifted you, everyone is called be to faithful prayer.

Because I love visuals, I made a set of daily prayer cards. I ripped out a few pages from a beautiful journal (another Lotta Jansdotter find at the consignment sale!). Then I laminated the sheets to make them durable and wipeable since I’d be using them in the kitchen.

(By the way, laminating things is one of my small pleasures in life. I bought my own personal laminator from Target to use in my classroom when I taught elementary school. For twenty dollars you can experience this amazingly satisfying experience for yourself!!)

Before writing, I sat down and wrote a list of the people I wanted to pray for regularly. I divided them up into groups and assigned them a day. This doesn’t mean that I only pray for these people on this assigned day. In fact, I pray for people all of the time when I happen to think of them. But it does ensure that they are prayed for, earnestly and faithfully, every week.

I wrote my prayer list with a Sharpie marker. This way, it’s durable but I can wipe it clean with nail polish remover if I want to change or update it.

Here’s what I wrote on each card:

Give Thanks!

I always want to start my day with a prayer of thankfulness first.

Pray for Steve/Sarah

My husband is using these cards too and praying for each other is essential for our marriage.

Pray for Wyatt

Sarah’s Holiday Crafts, Part I: Wrap it up!

In honor of Christmas this weekend (eeeeeeek!), I’ve asked my lovely friend Sarah to give us another craft project tutorial. The one you’ll see today is so timely – I think you’ll see why. If you’re super-organized and have already wrapped all your gifts, well done you. If you’re like me, and have wrapped a couple, but are still rushing around choosing last-minute things which you’ll be wrapping Christmas Eve at 10pm, well then, this is for you…

The second project, which I’ll post next week, is perfect for starting the new year out right.

That said, enjoy the first of these two special projects! Take it away, Sarah…

Hi Great Smitten readers! I’m so happy to be back to share a few more ideas with you. These ideas are inspired by the two most important women in my life: my sister and my mother.

My older sister, Karla, has a knack for finding things. If I’m looking for a certain hard-to-find item, I don’t even attempt to try to find it myself. I know the only way I’m going to get it is to call her. She loves the thrill of the hunt and I think she secretly hopes things are out of stock so that she can find them “her way.” But I don’t judge her because she knows I can eat an entire tube of Pringles in one sitting and she doesn’t judge me for that.

Here's Karla...amazingly beautiful with her little boy.

So, besides my sister’s unrivaled search skills, perfect skin tone and extensive knowledge of 90′s rap music, she has another quality that I admire more than any other. She is generous – with her time and with her money. She loves to give gifts. When she’s out and about she shops with more than herself in mind. More often than not, when we see each other (which is usually once a week), she will open up her bag, whip out an item and slide it across the table. She does this without any expectation of a “thank you”. She just sees something that she thinks I would enjoy or have a need for (usually something toddler related since we both have 18 month old boys) and buys it out of pure kindness, thinking nothing of it. To her it is a small gesture. To me, however, it means I thought of you, I wanted you to enjoy this. It’s never the actual gift that she gives me, but her kind intention behind it that reminds me over and over again that she loves me. Who knew a three-dollar sippy cup could mean so much?

In honor of my sister and her generous heart, I wanted to write about gifts and some fun and unique ways to wrap them. Wrapping a gift is nearly as fun as giving one!

My go-to wrapping paper is brown butcher paper. I pick up mine at the dollar store. It’s a huge roll for just a buck! The bow options are endless with such simple paper. Here’s a picture of the brown paper with a stack of brightly colored ribbon. I wrapped this for my Goddaughter’s 2nd birthday party.

Other ideas for the brown paper are:

Tying a twine bow and adding a simple flower from your yard, a sprig of Baby’s Breath (for a baby shower), or a beautiful Christmas ornament (so many can be used throughout the year).
Tying a long thin piece of fabric into a pretty bow. I love the frayed edges.

Scrapbook paper is such a cheap and pretty way to wrap a small gift.

A simple and clever wrapping for a teacher’s gift – notebook paper.

Calendars are a fun way to make a package pop. Recycle your calendar after you use it! Here are the art and month pages from my 2010 Masha D’yans’ calendar (one of my favorite artists!).

Write Happy Birthday on your recipient’s birthday date.

If you have little ones, get them involved too! Before celebrating a play group buddy’s birthday, Wyatt decorated this plain-white paper with his own design. Watercolors on white paper can be a fun and beautiful way to wrap a gift. For a more sophisticated look, paint it yourself with a simple flower or design.

Mailing envelopes can make great wrapping paper. It’s fast and easy. No scissors or tape required. These fun envelopes are designed by Lotta Jansdotter (I found a pack of them at a consignment sale).

Another simple and sweet wrap idea is to use a paper doily. I bought 30 for a dollar at my local dollar store. Here’s a little gift our group put together for our dear friends, Emily and Rusty (and their sweet little girl, Larkin) before they moved away. The 4×6 frame was the perfect size for a large paper doily. It’s pretty and simple. Top it with a flower from outside and you’re done!

Come back tomorrow for a Christmasy recipe, and next week for Sarah’s second holiday craft!

4 Comments

Filed under Guest Posts, Hand Craft, seasons

Tagged as cheap gift wrapping ideas, christmas wrapping, gift wrap, holiday craft projects, holidays, unique gift wrap

July 12, 2011 · 10:44 am

The Long and the Short of It

Last week I introduced you to my long-time friend, Sarah. This week, I’ve invited Sarah to write a guest post on some DIY projects she’s been working on. Sarah likes to do crafty things during her son’s naps, and here she’s going to tell you about one long project (as in, over several naptimes) and one short project (one naptime). Get it? Enjoy!

Hello Great Smitten readers! I’m Sarah and I am so happy to be guest blogging for the lovely Faith. Faith and I share many interests including a love for sweet tea, punctuation and most recently being mommies to two adorable boys.

I live in North Carolina with my high-school sweetheart husband, Steve, and our little guy, Wyatt. I am reminded on a daily basis how blessed I am to be loved by a man that still makes me swoon, loves me without makeup and graciously allows me to reenact So You Think You Can Dance with him as my partner (Hot Tamale Train!).

I thought I’d share with you a few of my favorite meaningful projects that I’ve done while my little Wyatt has been sleeping. I can find something meaningful in just about anything. I’m a sucker for anything that reminds me of the love of family, marriages and children. I call these my Nap Projects. Some take several naps but my favorite are the ones I can finish in one nap.

The first project was a huge undertaking for me. It took me about 10 naps (over a few months) from start to finish. When Wyatt was born I knew I wanted to make a quilt for him. I couldn’t find fabric that I liked enough to use for such a big project so I decided to make a quilt out of my husband’s old dress shirts. He had recently put a few of his most worn shirts in a pile to be donated so I secretly snatched them. The thought of my son snuggled up under the warmth of his daddy’s shirts was the perfect motivation for me to get started.

Since it was my first quilt there was a lot of trial and error. It is not perfect by any means, but I actually prefer it that way. I decided to put blue flannel on the back and I used embroidery floss to tie it after talking to some experienced quilters who recommended I tie it because of the likelihood that it will be used and washed a lot. I really love the look of tying and I especially love that it allowed me to keep my patch-work squares free of extra stitches.

Here’s how I did it:

After cutting my squares (6×6) and sewing them together, I made a quilt “sandwich” with my top, cotton batting and flannel backing. I used tons of curved safety pins (easier to hook and unhook) to bind the three layers together (about every 4 inches starting from the center and working out) so that it would stay in place while I tied it. Then I took a needle and threaded embroidery floss down and up through all three layers at the corners of the squares (I did every other square). I tied a square knot and snipped the ends so that they were about 3/4 of an inch long.

I left in a few pockets (I can just imagine Wyatt keeping his little treasures in there), some buttons and cuffs to give it the character of an actual shirt.

I gave the quilt to Steve and Wyatt on Father’s Day. To see my son sleeping and covered in his daddy’s shirts was almost too much for me to handle. The love of a father – one that is passionate, protective, committed and kind – is one of the greatest gifts a person can be given. My own father did not have these qualities and Steve’s father died when he was younger so covering my son in a blanket that symbolizes love, hard work, strength and integrity was a profound moment in my life.

The next project is a one nap project and is so easy Steve and Wyatt could do it (with each other’s help).

Napkin pillows!

These things are seriously simple. I found some cloth napkins at Target, stuffed them with the stuffing from an old pillow downstairs and then just fabric glued the edges together.

Done!

Now every time I go to Target, I look in the napkin section for pillow ideas. Total, these pillows came out to about $3 a piece including the glue! Since the edges are already sewn with folded seams, it looks like you sewed them together. No one will know (unless you get excited and tell them, of course).

If you want to go a step further, make a personalized pillow. I used plain linen napkins that I had from when we got married and added a print using inkjet iron-on printer transfer paper (I got mine at Target).

I saw this sweet print over on Bower Power and emailed Katie to get a pdf copy (she gives it out for free!) I made it a little larger, reversed it and then printed it onto my iron-on transfer paper. Then I just ironed it onto the napkin. So easy!

This pillow stays in Wyatt’s room and is there pressing up against my back every time I rock him. It’s been through the early days of learning how to nurse, has heard lullabies, hymns and bedtime stories and is there in the quiet hours of the night when I can’t sleep and the only remedy is to pick up my slumbering little boy out of his crib and rock his heavy, deep-breathing body. A few stolen kisses, a deep smell of his neck and a whispered prayer of thanksgiving calms my heart – it works every time.

Thanks for asking me to share a few ideas, Faith!

Have a great week everyone!

Sarah

1 Comment

Filed under Guest Posts, Hand Craft

Tagged as daddy's shirts project, diy throw pillows, easy baby quilt, easy quilt, quilt from old shirts, Sarah Kearns