What You Can Give (and get) From Your Kitchen Table {Falling in Love with the World Next Door: Part 2}

March 11, 2014September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

My baby boy is spooning oatmeal into his face faster than I can say hot-hot! He’s sitting at our kitchen table that my husband helped me sand and my children helped me paint and he’s just eating instant oatmeal out of the pack. It’s not even the good homemade baked kind my kids are liking lately with blueberries.

It’s just instant oatmeal that I made in five minutes because I have an electric stove and a microwave and a refrigerator that is always full even when I say it’s empty.

My kitchen is nothing spectacular and it’s not getting featured on HGTV anytime soon unless it’s on a remodel show because usually all I ever see is what’s wrong. Like, how my cabinets are unfinished inside and need new doors and that my super-deep cast iron sink could use a new finish.

And if I had $16,000 to put toward a new kitchen, you can bet it would be something spectacular. I’m dreaming of gas stoves and soapstone counters and pull out storage in brand new cabinets and one of those really big fridges you can put trays in and an entrance straight from the kitchen to the deck so people don’t have to trek through my bedroom anymore when we’re having a barbecue.

But in Maubane, South Africa $16,000 can buy a kitchen for dozens of families and the orphans they’re raising. It can buy a roof instead of a tent and a stove instead of a fire pit in the ground.

It can buy a place for a community to gather.

Untitled

It can buy a place where we can help save the future for the motherless and fatherless who are coming to know the one true Father and Creator of all.

Untitled

Now, that’s a pretty spectacular kitchen.

Today won’t you sit at your kitchen table and join the online community who is helping make this crazy dream come true? I’m part of a team that’s writing alongside blogger Lisa Jo Baker, who champions moms to believe they can do great things at their own kitchen tables.

But this is more than a project to her. It’s a lifeline because Maubane, South Africa is her hometown, her kitchen table, her community. It’s where her father is raising another family of rescued orphans and where he doctors during the week and preaches on Sundays.

This isn’t a random group of people. These are people who are connected to those of us who read Lisa Jo’s words and believe them because they are a part of her story.

So, when you bow your hands with your children in prayer, when you wipe the spilled milk and the stickiness off that table, when you set it with everyday china or Solo cups, give thanks for the table you have. And maybe consider giving this gift to another mom who’s a lot like you.

A mom who wants to teach her children gratitude for the hard times and the good times. A mom who wants to teach her kids how to trust in the love of people because we trust a great big God to bring us together.

Sometime we’ll dance in Heaven about how God was glorified in the building of this community.

Or maybe before then, we’ll dance in Maubane, together, in the kitchen while we peel potatoes and slice oranges and give thanks.

There are so many fabulous ways and rewards for giving to this project today (or any day between now and Mother’s Day). You can click here to visit Lisa Jo and read all the details, but here’s a quick set of links:

Pure Charity: Give right here directly to the fund and watch it grow!

Buy a Vintage Dictionary Necklace from Krafty Kash and $12 goes directly to the fund. (Mother’s Day, hint! hint!)

Donate $40 and Money Saving Mom will pre-order you Lisa Jo’s book, Surprised by Motherhood, to be released on April 1, 2014 (April Fool’s Day, of course!). She’ll also send you her own great read Say Goodbye to Survival Mode.

If music is your love language, click here to order this beautiful album and learn to sing Jesus Loves Me all over again while supporting the building of this community center.

Finally, if you just pre-order Lisa Jo’s book right here, a portion of her proceeds goes directly back to this community because she knows motherhood is never short on surprises or encouragement.

AND if you leave me a comment telling me that you donated and why you’re choosing to support this community, I’ll randomly select someone to get a sweet little package in the mail. It’s nothing big, but sometimes you just need a new dishtowel, yes? https://www.purecharity.com/widget?aff=jwgo5&slug=community-kitchen-and-welcome-center&utm_source=9jpa6&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=community-kitchen-and-welcome-center

birthdays · faith · giveaways

Birthday Wishes with 163 Design Company

February 21, 2014September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

I wore it like a talisman all those long days and nights that went by impossibly quick slow that last week of last year into the first days of a new beginning.

Jennifer, who was my roommate at Allume, and shares more than just a corner of this big internet with me, offered them up as gifts to us when we first spilled our luggage and our hearts onto beds in that hotel room in Greenville back in October.

It is well with my soul.

It takes courage to offer up those words. It takes courage to make a little piece of yourself and hope others love it and buy it so you can pay the bills but share it so you can know it means something.

The first time I choked on those words I was a senior in high school sitting in a church pew of First Baptist holding a hymnal with shaking hands and mourning the death of a girl I used to run the side streets of town with for cross country practice, a girl I’d known for as long as I could remember, a girl who should have gone on to live a longer life than just nineteen short years. It wasn’t well with my soul then.

But I grew up and I opened my heart more to faith and I saw the peace that passes understanding on so many whose souls were well.

And I want that. A well soul.

I’m 34 years old today and it’s taken me this long to learn and become well with the idea that I am not well. I am broken and scarred and flawed and made in the image of God. And everyday I get to choose to live in grace and forgiveness and joy so that all will be well–

or I get to choose not.

And let me tell you those days of choosing not, those days of choosing despair and self-deprecation and dilemma over delight, those days will eat through your soul and leave you with nothing.

So, everyday I’m trying and somedays, I wear my necklace because I need that little tangible reminder that

IT. IS. WELL. WITH. MY. SOUL.

Since it’s my birthday, Jen is letting me give one of these beauties away to you! And since she’s super kind, she’s offering up another one as well, so today’s giveaway will have two winners, which is perfect because she and I share hotel rooms and mom fears and coffee love and husbands who are recovered from perimyocarditis (how crazy is that?!?) and first names (yep, mine’s Jennifer) AND February birthdays. I tell you, no one but God could have crafted together a bonding like ours.

If the It Is Well piece doesn’t speak to you like it does me, perhaps you’d like this one?

It reminds me so much of Jennifer because she does seek to Glorify God in all she does whether it’s handcrafting these beautiful wooden necklaces (read about the process here) or designing prints and art to bring a little nautical joy to your home or blogging about ending the slavery of women.

If you’d love to win one of these, here’s the super fun widget from Rafflecopter. Enter as many times as you want and give me a birthday gift? Share this post even if you’re not interested in winning. Thanks so much!

And if you are yourself or know an expectant mother, send them over here to enter the giveaway for a free newborn session to honor my own baby girl’s birthday.

a Rafflecopter giveaway //d12vno17mo87cx.cloudfront.net/embed/rafl/cptr.js

amelia · giveaways · motherhood

What She’s Taught Me In Four Sweet Years {and another birthday giveaway!}

February 19, 2014February 19, 2016 Lindsey P. Brackett2 Comments

She’s four today. It’s really hard to believe. She wasn’t sure after so many days of counting down if today was really it. But it is. Today she’s four and in four sweet years she’s taught me how to live better.

She’s taught me that it’s okay to wear whatever I want, or rather, to let her wear whatever she wants because in the grand scheme of motherhood, arguing about matching is not always worth my energy.

She’s taught me to use my attributes and work my assets the way she works her really great hair.

She’s taught me to love fiercely with no idea that a hug could ever be too tight.

She’s taught me to laugh all the time, to rediscover my imagination and to find silliness in everyday.

She’s taught me to color to my own beat even though, at four, she’s stopped humming while she draws. It makes me sad. I miss the nonsensical tunes that used to accompany the dramatic shading of Winnie the Pooh.

She’s taught me not to boss my friends because it’s not nice and they won’t want to play with you.

In four years time, she’s made me a better mother and she’s let me try and fail to parent her with what worked before when the sisters were passing through the same stages. She’s let me learn over and over that every child is unique and perfect in their own quirky way.

She’s made me a writer. It was in the days before and the many days after she came that I waded my way into the blogging world. It’s often because of her, and the lessons I’m learning, that I stay.

giveaways · Home · linkups

The Printables That are Changing My Life {and yours too!}

February 6, 2014September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

I’m a former teacher, you know. A former teacher who didn’t just believe in the power of a great graphic organizer, I was that teacher who actually used them before it became mandatory to demonstrate every lesson with a thinking map.

Now, I’m unpacking the word homemaker into a title I can live with–a home maker. I make a home everyday with my words and actions and responsibilities. Which means I need a ~~little~~ lot of organizational help. Because while I might be able to churn out a lesson about independent and subordinate clauses that uses a graph I designed myself and meets the quotas of our new standards, I’m a little lost in the home making department sometimes.

I overwhelm easily. I don’t know where to begin and my lists all start to look the same.

Surely I’m not alone in this misery?

Thank the Lord for people like Kayse Pratt. She’s a former teacher, too, but she’s actually still using her amazing graphic design skills to conquer her home. She wrote this great ebook on home management that will walk you through a step by step guide to setting up your own home management notebook (like a lesson plan for my house!) and she also writes incredibly encouraging posts on motherhood and marriage on her blog. {and yesterday she released Worth the Fight: Lessons Learned in a High Maintenance Marriage if you’re needing some encouragement for your marriage as well}

So today, she’s offering you a treat! One of my readers can win her complete set of home management printables. She’ll even let you choose between the awesome teal and orange color scheme like this:

Or you can go pink and grey right here.

My absolute favorite printable is the monthly meal planner. You know how you think you’ve got the hang of something, but then you see how someone else is doing it and it just seems so much better?

That’s how this makes me feel. It inspired me to just create a list of thirty possible meals for the month and then when I go to plan weekly, I have this list to refer back to. This way, there’s only one time a month I’m burying my kitchen table in my favorite cookbooks and getting distracted by all the delicious looking finds on Pinterest when I meal plan.

We’re also about to start using the Spending Tracker to keep up with where all the miscellaneous cash is going, and even Joshua got excited about the Financial Goals sheet that I’ve already filled with a list of really important things we should be saving for, you know, like a new sofa.

Making home simpler. That’s my kind of plan.

To enter leave a comment on this post telling me one way you’d like to be more organized! I’ll use randomizer.org to pick the winner. One comment per person please. Oh, and if you’re one of my sweet readers from facebook, comments there won’t count, so please leave one here! If you don’t know how, just drop me an email at lindsbrac@gmail.com. Comments close on Tuesday, February 11, 2014.

Did you hear how I’m giving away lots of my favorite things this month to celebrate mine and the blog’s birthdays? Click over here to read about it and enter to win something else!

This post contains affiliate links.

Friends · giveaways

Pucker Up {and let’s giveaway some love!}

February 3, 2014September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

Update: this giveaway has closed. Congrats to Laura Beth Davis, the winner!

I know you’ve all heard by now about the great #snowjam2014 of the South. So if all my kind friends to the north are done teasing us about being inadequately prepared for two inches of snow and ice, I’ll tell you the truth: I’ve never seen anything like it. If I had thought for a second that my minivan with four kids would make it anywhere near the perimeter of Atlanta, we’d have handed out snacks and offered rides to stranded motorists, too, but sometimes, all you can do from afar is offer up a prayer and revel in seeing the goodness of humanity unfold.

It’s one of my favorite things to see people sharing love. Now, it’s February (seriously, where did January go?) and there’s no better time for thawing hearts and souls than post-snowstorm and pre-Valentine’s.

Also, it’s my birthday month and this year both the blog and my sweet third girl turn four! Crazy. So, I wanted to celebrate in a really big way.

That’s right, it’s a month of giveaways! Hopefully, that means I’ll return to some semblance of regular posting, but mostly it means, I get to share a little love and some of my favorite things with those of you who stick around even when I’ve had to hide out for a little while because words for some freelance work and words for a nearly finished novel drain me a bit dry of words for this blog.

Today I’m sharing goodies from my sweet friend Andi. She’s a flower-making, yarn-crafting, homeschooling mama of five who has the kindest smile and the biggest heart.

We connected last summer through a series of emails with Sarah, Holly, Marcy, and Vanessa as we all tried to stumble our way through designing and redesigning our blogs. She’s part of the incredible #fmfparty crew, too, and last October, I got to hug her in real life at Allume.

And she gave me a sticker that said You are Loved. I stuck it on the spiral notebook that I use to scribble down post ideas and words of inspiration, and whenever I get stuck thinking blogsphere is too big and trying to do this writing thing is too hard, I see those words. You are Loved. It’s the best reminder that always there are people who go from complete strangers to dear friends in just a matter of moments when your hearts connect.

Andi is one of those who makes me feel gotten, you know? Like even though we don’t know each other that well, I can bounce ideas off her and she understands what I’m fumbling around trying to say.

Then there’s her shop...

{source: Andi Gould Designs}

Seriously, how cute is this? I’m going to get her to Google hangout with me soon, so she can teach me how to crochet these sweet little hearts because I tried to teach myself and it. did. not. work.

Besides my sweet sticker, Andi also brought me one of my most favorite things to Allume: her homemade lip balm.

Y’all, it is the greatest chapstick ever. I’m never buying Blistex again. Ever. Even if it’s on sale and I have coupon. Well, maybe then, because my girls love chapstick and I’m not sharing mine.

Andi’s is all natural and comes in really great flavors like the one I’m using right now, Vanilla Creamsicle. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, you know this is exactly what you’re needing to get those dry lips ready for some smooching.

So kicking off my month of giveaways, a chance to win a 3-pack of Andi Gould Designs exclusive lip balm.

To enter, all you have to do is fill out the entry form below. It’s super quick and easy, plus it helps me share this around social media so everyone can check out Andi’s shop. I’d love it, too, if you left me a comment about someone who did something unexpectedly special for you recently? a Rafflecopter giveaway //d12vno17mo87cx.cloudfront.net/embed/rafl/cptr.js