Counting Our Blessings - Linkup

It's the second Tuesday of the New Year - how have things been going for you? I hope well. I'm doing my best to stick to my goals and not beating myself up for those days when I'm too tired or too much in pain to do a lot. I look at where I was last year at this time and I see so much progress! That's what I choose to focus on. I hope you are doing the same and giving yourself grace on the hard days.

I'm so thankful for these two...

I shared that Muffy, our pug, is now 16 years old. She is completely deaf and almost blind. She also has been having a harder time getting around and, because of that, wasn't eating out of her bowl enough to keep herself healthy. I decided she needed to be fed canned food and so now I feed her twice daily (off a fork!) the richer canned food and she is doing so much better! She sits on one chair and I sit on another and I hand feed her. It's quite a sight! lol  I've seen a huge improvement in her mobility and strength so I'm so glad that I can do this for her. One of these days, I'm going to take a video of me feeding her. 😉

The other guy in the picture does so much for his mama. He has become a dependable person that truly cares about his family and others. I could write pages of what a blessing he is but suffice to say, he is a wonderful man and I'm so proud of him!

I haven't done as much creatively as I would have liked this week but I am working on a new cross stitch kit by Mill Hill Beads.  I know I keep working on these kits, but I enjoy them so much and think they are so beautiful when they are done. Here's the kit I'm working on now.

Isn't this such a cute kit? This reminds me so much of when I lived in Nevada and all the burros that were there. It's such a great project to commemorate my time of living there. There is a lot of bead work to this one on Santa's outfit. I always do all the stitching first and them the beading so looking forward to that.  Here's what I have done so far

You can see my pencil marks on the paper where I figured out the center.  I will erase them if they aren't stitched over at the end.  Such a cute little burro! I love when I get enough stitched to be able to see what it is.

I hope you had a week full of blessing.  Please share on the linky below!


Blessings - Julie

Counting Our Blessings - LinkUp!

21. It's good and truly Spring here! The weather has been amazingly warm and lovely and we had a high temperature of 82 yesterday and 74 today. Just perfect! I'm hoping and praying that we don't get a late freeze as all our fruit trees are in bloom. My rose bushes are bursting forth with new growth and I'm seeing hints of buds here and there. Weather like this truly is a blessing!

These are the views from my front deck.

22. We had beautiful weather to celebrate my youngest son's birthday on Saturday. He wanted to cook outside and it ended up being perfect. It was our sweet family of four celebrating together and I just cherished this precious time that has ended up being harder to do as they get older.

My husband and I bought him the complete series of "The Middle". It's a hilarious show that we all recently just discovered even though it's been on for 8 seasons. Here he is with some of his DVD's.

A few years ago, my youngest son started a tradition of gag gifts to his brother and it has stuck. I think this gift was the craziest of all...

You can see him laughing as he looks in the bag...

Seriously? Who knew there was such a thing as a Snuggle Tail?! LOL We all had a good laugh over this.

My son requested hotdogs, burgers and bratwurst on the grill plus I made my baked beans that he loves. He created this for his feast and wanted me to take a picture of it.

Yes, that's a bratwurst with bacon! :)

He always requests this dessert for his birthday and this year it was exceptionally pretty.

He said it was really good, too. Unfortunately, I couldn't taste it because of all those little seeds in those berries. I'm so glad he enjoyed it, though!

Here's my oldest on the birthday with his pug, Muffy. She is now 14 years old and still going strong!

23. As always, this sweet girl just blesses me over and over. She has learned to now sit in her bed on the table while I work on my Bible study. I love having her close and she feels the same about me.

Miss Mitzi is such a joy!! I love that sweet girl!

So many blessings! You can share your own on the linkup below.


Blessings - Julie

Counting Our Blessings - Link Up

It's a new year and I am so hopeful about this year.

Now to start counting our blessings for the year of 2015!

1.  My wounds are staying sewn up and so far, so good. It's been a month since my last surgery and I'm starting to see the incisions healing up. Such a blessing - such a miracle of God to have my knee and calf sewn up. Praise God!

2.  One thing I've decided to do this year is to be more creative. With that in mind, I've joined an online art journaling group and it's been so great! I was really looking forward to doing this and it's been so good for me! This is my first pages - step by step - for the first week of January. The prompt was to use book paper or other printed papers as the base. I used a text book, some comics from the newspaper and some Japanese newspaper pages.

\

I then sprayed through a stencil doily with inks and smeared some more ink around the page. I did more than is shown here, but you'll see it on the next picture.

I added some elements here. A small tag with a January calendar on it, the word, "Hopeful" which is what I am going to be this year, a little pouch that has my goals tucked inside, and finally Jeremiah 29:11 written on gesso covered Japanese newspaper. I may add more elements later on, but right now, I'm really happy with it.

3.  These girls just brighten my days. Cookie and Mitzi continue to get along better, although, Cookie does have her times where Mitzi drives her nuts and she lets out a growl. Mitzi respects the growl and backs off. They play every day and have a lot of fun together.

Muffy is such a sweetheart and here I am with her having a little snuggle.

I hope your year is very blessed! Let's all be hopeful - looking to God for all His blessings and love!

Please link up with me and share your own blessings. You can grab my button off the "Grab My Button" page above. Thank you so much for coming by, leaving comments and participating in the link up!

An InLinkz Link-up

Blessings - Julie