Independence Day 2012

4 July 2012, 5:14 am by Giggles
Categories: Life

I love this country. I love hearing the Star Spangled Banner and seeing the flag fly. I am ever grateful for those who serve this country with their lives. May God continue to bless this nation.

3 Shared thoughts

Personal Progress Projects

3 July 2012, 7:08 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Family, Gospel, Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting

It was right about this time last year that I was called to be the Young Women president in our ward. I had been serving in Young Women for almost a year before that in other ways and so I’d made vague attempts at doing some Personal Progress during that time, but I hadn’t really fully stepped up to it. Personal Progress is a wonderful program for young women, but it’s also great for women of all ages. As a leader we are encouraged to complete the whole program again. Which is great because it’s different from when I did it the first time around.

For many of the value experiences you are asked to read several scriptures and then discuss the topic with someone. For Family Home Evening each week, Brett and I take a walk around the neighborhood and talk. Often I’d bring up one of the topics from my value experiences and we’d talk about it and then I’d have him sign it off when we got home. Often he didn’t realize I was working on Personal Progress until that point, it just naturally worked its way into our conversations.

Selecting what projects I was going to do has also been fun. Personal Progress should not be something big and extra outside of your normal life. It should be part of what you are already doing. For my Faith project I made an effort to really pay attention during General Conference, take good notes, and then I followed it up by reading the Conference report in the Ensign when it arrived, noticing, as I always do, that the messages that touch me when I hear them spoken are often different than what stands out when I read them. I do that for every General Conference, but because it was one of my projects I ended up getting the reading done a lot faster than I normally do.

Knowledge is one of the values and that one is definitely a part of my life right now. The projects are supposed to require effort and take at least 10 hours. For my Knowledge project I decided I was going to propose my dissertation. That project required a lot of faith as well. And when I wrote down how many hours it took I wrote “too many.”

One of the suggestions for Divine Nature is to use a skill you have, or learn a new skill, and make something to decorate your home. Which is just the incentive I need to finish up some of the quilted wall hangings I’ve had all the supplies to make for a long time now. My other incentive is that we have the perfect spot by our front door to hang a quilt. Again, it’s something I needed/wanted to do anyway, Personal Progress is just helping push me to get it done.

Choice & Accountability has another suggestion that is definitely something I want to work on:

Choose to be more orderly in your home by completing a cleaning or organizing project. Record in your journal how doing this helped you in other areas of your life.

One look at the closet in one of our spare bedrooms will tell you that’s definitely something I need to work on. And as soon as that dissertation is not just proposed but defended, I’m going to get right to it.

Right now I’m making my way through a version of an Individual Worth project though. I’m doing a variation on this suggestion:

Compile your personal or family history using journal entries, pictures, and important papers.

Brett and I met online. A major portion of our courtship is in emails and instant messages. It is an amazing record of how the two of us got together. And it isn’t in one place right now. So for my project I am compiling and formatting all of them so we can print them in book form. Sunday I worked for a couple of hours and got all the emails from the fourth month we knew each other formatted. That means I have just 56 more months to go before volume 1 of our emails is ready to go. We laughed as I read back parts of it. These electronic communications are the journal we wrote together of how we got together, certainly an important part of our family history.

Personal Progress is giving me a great incentive to get some things done in my life that I needed to do anyway, and helping me think about gospel topics in ways I have not done before or to depths I have not explored before.

Update: See this post for my last two project ideas.

7 Shared thoughts

Shinies!

2 July 2012, 10:40 am by Giggles
Categories: Random

When I grow up I want to be a sweet little old lady that works in the temple. I want to be a docent at the Desert Museum. And maybe every so often I’ll be the crotchety old lady that sits on the porch and throws rocks at small children. And I really hope that when my hair goes gray it’s shiny. I want a white, silvery grey and not a yellow grey.

That last one might be a lot closer than the others.

In May (I remember because it was right about the time I was proposing my dissertation, and I don’t think the timing was coincidence) I was brushing out my hair and I saw a few strands that were a lot shinier than the rest of my hair. But I didn’t isolate them so I couldn’t be 100% positive.

A week ago I was brushing my hair again and this time it was unmistakable. I definitely had two grey hairs. I proudly showed them to Brett. And I left them where they were. I’m not afraid of getting old.

Yesterday I found another one. They are shiny and more white than yellow. I think I might actually get my wish of a lovely head of shiny grey hair. And I’m excited.

3 Shared thoughts

Camp 2012

30 June 2012, 1:43 pm by Giggles
Categories: Gospel

We had Young Women camp this past week. We were blessed with no fires and enough water so we were able to go up to the church camp site on Mt. Lemmon. Which meant I was able to make two day trips up there since I was unable to be there the whole time. And I’m so glad I could do that.

Going along with the mutual theme this year of “Arise and shine forth that thy light may be a standard for the nations” (see song at the end of the post, it’s great!), the stake went with an Olympic theme and “Going for the Glory.” Each ward was assigned a country along with one of the Young Women values. Our ward got Kenya (and was expected to learn “I am a Child of God” in Swahili) and the value Choice & Accountability, which is associated with the color orange.  Our ward also chose to focus on helping the young women really understand that they are daughters of God. Did you get all that? Our camp leaders truly made a miracle happen.

The happy campers! You can tell I really got into the whole “orange” thing our ward had going.

And the view was something else! Especially that first night after the rain went through. I just love a good sunset.

Brett came up with me for the last night’s program. We ran into several people from the old young single adult ward. Where are they now? They’re all at young women camp.

These are the moments.

5 Shared thoughts

Grocery Sack Holder

25 June 2012, 8:50 am by Giggles
Categories: How To, Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting

I made a grocery sack holder Thursday night. Brett asked me how long I’ve been planning to make one of these. Honestly – years. That’s how good I am at lazy procrastination. However I’ve decided I like projects that involve both a sewing machine and an electric drill.

Here’s how I did it.

  1. Get yourself a rectangle of fabric. Mine ended up being roughly 16 inches across by about 24 inches tall. I did some piecing because I liked the sunflower fabric but didn’t have that large of a rectangle out of just that.
  2. Make a 1/4 inch casing on both short ends.
  3. Thread about 10 inches of 1/4 inch elastic through the top and secure it.
  4. Thread about 6 inches of 1/4 inch elastic through the bottom and secure it.
  5. Attach a loop of ribbon/bias tape/fabric that you are going to use for the handle to the top. My handle loop is probably about 5 inches long.
  6. Sew the long sides together, right sides together.
  7. Turn right side out and stuff with bags.

Then:

  1. Get out the power drill.
  2. Drill a pilot hole in the pantry wall about eye level. That way the bottom of the sack holder will be about elbow level, perfect for grabbing sacks out of the bottom.
  3. Screw in a small cup holder hook.
  4. Hang sack holder on hook and feel funny about how happy it makes you to look into the pantry right now.
  5. But … also feel real glad about finally corralling the often exploding pile of grocery sacks under the kitchen sink.
  6. And … remember to take all the extra sacks back to the grocery store so they can recycle them.
6 Shared thoughts

Truly random

22 June 2012, 7:31 am by Giggles
Categories: Books, Random, Science & Tech

I am not a white noise person. White noise really bothers me. A house down the street had their carpets cleaned yesterday and the whirring of the carpet cleaning motors all morning long darn near drove me batty. I can’t think with that type of noise. Concentration is really hard with that constant droning on. The quieter something is the better. Although I do love music in the background. A melody. Something with rhythm. That’s the perfect background noise for me.

Some times I wish my finger nails would stop growing, or at least grow slower. It seems like I just cut them and already they are long enough to click on the keys of the keyboard, which means they are long enough to bother me. If they could just stay the perfect length for longer that would be great.

I’m thinking it’s about time to donate my hair again. It’s been two years. But just about the time I think I’m ready for shoulder length again I have a completely awesome day with it waist length and I think I’ll hold on to it a little longer. At least I know it only takes about two years to get it this long. And it is nice to be able to pull it back to a bun in this heat.

I love this article from Scientific American – Loving some complex melodies? You could be ovulating! Or not. for so many reasons. First, it brings up a lot of the issues I have with pretty much every evolutionary psychology theory out there. I have issues with that entire field of study. Second, since getting into the research world I’m realizing more and more the need for journals to publish insignificant findings. Because otherwise we are dooming everyone to go on repeating the exact same studies over and over again not realizing that someone else already discovered it didn’t work.

I know not all of my books will be preserved after I’m dead, but I hope that my grandchildren will enjoy reading the books I owned, physically touched, and read as much as I’m enjoying reading the books my grandparents held and read. NPR – Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books? There are some books currently in our house that will probably enter back into circulation at my will because our plans to build wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two of our walls are on hold indefinitely at the moment, so there is limited space. However the ones I truly value will most likely only go back out into the world against my will when I die. Or perhaps I shall will them to someone at that point. It really does say something about the books we value though that we hold on to them like that. I can understand the convenience of e-books, but they can’t beat the smell of grandma’s book. I like my books.

Even better, I’ve taken to spending some time each day sitting in my great-grandma’s rocking chair in our bedroom reading. It’s a creaky old chair. But it is the perfect size. It’s like it was built for me. My feet rest on the floor with my knees at the perfect angle. The back is high enough for me to comfortably put my head back and think. And the wide arms are just about elbow height and perfect for putting a small notebook on to take notes. I love this chair.

I’m trying to understand why people think that just because knit fabrics don’t unravel they don’t need to be hemmed. All of these on-line tutorials I see for knit sewing projects all look sloppy and unfinished because nobody is hemming the edges. Just finish the edge already!!

We have had almost 30 100+ days already this year. I only hope there’s a good monsoon season that goes with it. The past two years have been pathetic. There is a man on a corner I pass frequently who sells newspapers to the passing cars. The other day I noticed he held a small cardboard sign in front of the stack of newspapers he was walking with that read, “Smile. It’s a dry heat.” And it truly did make me smile.

I want to write a book some day in my life. But I don’t know what I could write about that people would want to read. I’ve wanted to write a book since elementary school. I used to think I’d be a fiction writer, but now I don’t know.

6 Shared thoughts

The importance of fathers

21 June 2012, 11:51 am by Giggles
Categories: Family, Gospel, Life, Relationships

In the course of my studies I have seen a lot of research on the importance and value of a mother. But fathers are important too. Recently BYU has had several news releases about studies done there on the importance of fathers – fathers teach persistence, quantity time with dad really is quality time, and one from last year – father’s continue to have an influence after children leave home.

Children need both a mother and a father. They meet different needs children have. “Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity” (The Family: A Proclamation to the World).

I feel truly blessed that I have such a wonderful father and mother. Both of them taught me so much and are wonderful examples of the positive influence parents have on children. Our home was a happy home based on the teachings of Christ. The “principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities” were always a part of our home and gave us the foundation we needed to be successful in life.

2 Shared thoughts