Happy New Year!

Just finished celebrating London New Year (which happens at 7:00 our time), with my brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephew. Here's a picture of the younger members of the party. :)

Well of COURSE it's legit!

Dear User,
 
    We are sorry to inform you that we are currently working on securing our
    server for the year, during this process accounts which are not manually verified by us
    will be deleted, Please confirm and submit your information for manual
    verification.
 
    Information which is to be provided is below:
    User Name:
    User Id:
    Password:
    Date Of Birth:
    Occupation:
 
    Upon confirmation of information from you, we will manually verify your
    Hot mail! Account and reserve it from being deleted, we are sorry for any
    inconveniences this might have caused providing your information over the
    email.
    Warning Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two
    weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
    Thanks  Hot mail.. 


Spammers would be greatly benefited by some self-study on grammar and punctuation.  :)

Decorated Paper

In my class last fall, we learned to make decorated paper out of torn-up magazine pages. You layer them, sand them, then paint and wax them. I was working on a sample of this with a friend, and we finished ours today. Here's what I came up with.

It was great fun!

As with a lot of what I'm doing right now, it was a learning project. Next time, I'll definitely use smaller pieces, and will sand a bit more, and use paint with more color. But it was encouraging.

Some Sweet Fellowship Last Night

Last night our new interim pastor and his wife organized a Christmas get-together for the staff, elders and deacons at a camp out in Allegan.

It was a very nice evening, and one of the things he did was pass out a list of things to think about based on Christmas carol titles.

I found it brought up some really sweet memories, and I thought maybe you'd find it the same!

* Silent Night: Has God brought special direction or answers in the silence of a long, sleepless night?
* Joy to the World: Has your heart ever been so full of joy that you felt like shouting it to the world?
* O Come, All Ye Faithful: Have God's "faithful ones" been there for you in a time of great need?
* God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen: When has God brought a supernatural peace into your life?
* Go Tell it on the Mountain: Tell about a time when you felt led to share the good news.
* Winter Wonderland: Share a time when you were overwhelmed by the beauty of a winter scene.
* Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: Relate a Christmas that was meager with little resources, but became a blessing.
* Let it Snow: Describe a meaningful "snowed in" experience
* O Come Emmanuel: When did God's presence shine through after desperate cries for help?

Starting work on a Bible for a friend

One of my friends asked me to work on his Bible. Some pages were loose,
and pretty curled, so the first step will be to get them nice and flat again.

To do that, they need to start with 4-6 hours in a "humidification chamber."

So - here they are just before I put the lid on.

Any resemblance between my "humidification chamber" and my regular 9x13 cake pan is purely coincidental, I assure you. :)