A beautiful quote from Little Women

I was reading Little Women yesterday to get a refreshing break from my studies and the busyness of getting ready for christmas and cleaning up from thanksgiving and I came across this wonderful quote.

Meg and John finally find meaning in their home after conflict with each other. Meg finds her place and John also does. They both work togeather to parent their twins instead of working against each other. The last sentence inparticular I love and think is so beautiful!

"This household happiness did not come all at once, but John and Meg found the key to it, and each year of married life taught them how to use it, and unlocking the treasuries of real home love and mutual helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy. This is the sort of shelf on which young wives and mothers may consent to be laid, safe from the restless fret and fever of the world, finding loyal lovers in the little sons and daughtars who cling to them, undaunted by sorrow, poverty, or age; walking side by side, through fair and stormy weather, with a faithful friend, who is, in the true sense of the good old Saxon word, the "house-band," and learning, as Meg learned, that a woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor the art of ruling it not as a queen, but as a wise wife and mother."
- from "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott the 38th chapter entitled On the Shelf

This is so encouraging to me, I think Louisa put is quite eloquently the role of a wife and mother is not be belittled and unimportant, but a high calling worthy of glorifying our Lord with. I pray that God will keep molding me and showing me how to encourage younger girls while I am at home. Lord willing I will be able to minister to my children someday in a loving way as this quote describes.

In Christ,
Rebecca

Christmas gift teaser and winter thoughts

Hello everyone! I hope all of you had a great and very blessed thanksgiving! Wish I could have been with all of my blog friends and other friends for the holiday! I wanted to post a teaser for some of the projects I am working on in preparation for christmas. I am making mass quantities of something. I am crocheting and sewing just for a hint. And here is a teaser of some of my projects. All of friends out there I am sending presents to I don't want to spoil it, so I will post a hint.

Here are my two baskets I keep under my Ikea chair in my room. I keep all of my yarn and current crochet projects under here. I also have a cross stitch I have wanted to do for a while. I got it on sale at Michaels craft store about a year ago and have not started it yet. I think this winter when things start to die down in January without all the busyness I may start it. It has a Bible verse on it. Its the verse from Matthew that says "With God all things are possible." I love that verse and it hit me hard when I saw it in the store. It had been a verse I had been pondering for a week and then I saw it in the store and I knew I had to get it. I plan to frame it and put it in my room when its done.


I also keep all the yarn that I have left overs of from projects and such in these baskets. I am going to use all of this yarn for granny square blankets and baby hats and booties. My sister and I used to make granny square blankets, hats, and booties for a hospital in Texas. Our friend Susan would get them from us and give them to her local hospital. I want to start doing this again soon when I have more time. I have lots of extra yarn I can use, so I have no excuse right?! Here is Susan's lovely blog. --->
http://homesteadmomma2.blogspot.com/

Here is my current crochet project basket. My mother and father gave this to me last christmas. Its from Samaritan's purse. It was made in a foreign country so that families over there could raise money to live on. I love it and it fits a lot of yarn!


Here is my purple purse! I love this purse, because it fits absolutly everything and it is one of my favorite colors! I thought I would share this with you because it was a thrifted purchase from about 2 years ago. And it was 6 dollars well spent. I love this purse! My first favorite color is ice blue! But purple is a close second. My current christmas projects are in there that I am working on as well as everything else a girl needs. My parents, sister, and my grandparents went to the movie "The Blind Side" today and I took this along. The movie was pretty good, it had a good message, but still some humor and content that was not necessary for the movie's message to be told. Good movie though! I worked on the christmas gifts in the car, but it was too dark in the theature to work on them during the movie. And I was so into the movie, I forgot about my idea of working on the project anyway. Besides wouldn't the weird teenage guys next to my sister and I think I was crazy anyway! lol No they probably would not have even been paying attention to my lap during the movie. lol


Here is the teaser, the projects I am working on for christmas are in my purse in the picture.:)

And here another tease, all the yarn I am using for my christmas gifts this year! I love sugar and cream cotten yarns! They are so wonderful to work with and are nothing like the acyrlic stuff I used to work with when I started crocheting about 4 years ago. I was so glad to learn to crochet in a homeschool co-op with friends! I am so much better now and can even read patterns! I am so happy. It took 4 years, but now I can crochet to my hearts content without my project turning into a big ball of matted yarn! lol You should have seen my first granny square, I should have saved it! It really would have shown how far I have come along in the crochet department. I never thought I would get it, but it takes practice. You can see the granny square blanket I recently made for my mom on here on my blog as well.

And lastly here is my cat Oscar, my family has two cats, the other one is Felix. They are brothers and Oscar looks exactly like Garfield. He is about a 20 pounder! lol I thought it was a cute picture of him in my loft bed!

In Christ,

Rebecca

My music studies

I wanted to share with you all what I love to do! I love to sing and play the piano with all my heart! It is a passion of mine and I love worshipping the Lord through music. Here are some of the books I have been using for the christmas season and that I use all the time.

But first before you even get the books and a teacher for piano or voice, you need a piano or key board. Mine is a 25 year old up right kawai. My mother received this piano from my father when they were first married. My mother is a piano and voice teacher and teaches me and has taught me all my life. I have been privledged to learn from her and I love using her piano.

For my piano studies, when I practice I always start out with my exercises in my Hanon book. This gets my fingers warmed up. Its like when you sing you warm up to get your voice ready to sing. I also play scales to warm up and cadences as well.

This book is called Hanon The Virtuoso Pianist in sixty exercises for the piano from Schirmer's library of musical classics translated from the french by Dr. Theodore Baker.

I highly recommend this book especially is one wants to become better at scales and getting faster at scales and other finger exercises. This really helps with many classical and other types of piano peices that have scales and other finger exercises built into the peice.

To warm up before I do harder pieces I always play a few hymns in this hymn collection. It is easy versions of hymns for me and I can sing along and play as well to warm up my voice for voice practicing as well. I also love getting in some studying of the old hymns as my church only does contemporary music. I miss the old hymns. I have memorized many of them by heart after getting this book. I would recommend it for any person who wants to play hymns for worship at home and for enjoyment and also for playing at church. Its a great way to start out accompanying singing.


This book is called The World's Greatest Hymns for piano and voice selected and arranged by Jerry Ray

This book is titled Christmas Encores- contemporary arrangements of christmas favorites by Melody Bober. Anything by this lady is wonderful! She has great books and I would recommend them to any eager student!

Here is a book that has contemporary arrangements of the old favorite carols like Hark the Herold Angels Sing,O Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night, and Angels we have heard on high and more. I love the arrangements in here and I have used it for 2 years now. This year they are not as challenging, but still fun to learn and play!

This next book is also by Melody Bober and is a wonderful collection of 10 all time favorite hymns. I especially like her version of Be Thou My Vision and Be Still My Soul arranged with It Is Well with My Soul. Those are the only two I have learned in here, but I would buy it just for those two. I want to explore the rest after the christmas season and I am not playing so much christmas music.

The book A Classical Christmas for Piano compiled by Mark Bardard is a new book I bought at the music store for this year's christmas.

I am pleasantly suprised by the wonderful choices of music. They are all classic carols with wonderful classical themes and beautiful added in different rythems and sounds. I am learning Joy To The World(my favorites carol) and Ave Maria in this book. My mother and I will be playing along with her students who also play the piano at a nursing home this year for our christmas recital. My sister will be playing her harp as well and I will also be singing some christmas peices.

The book Yuletide Cheer by Eugenie R. Rocherolle is an old book my mother used for her piano studies when she was a teenager. Now I am using it. I am enjoying learning What Child is This? in this book currently.

I really like the book series What Can I Play on Sunday? by Cindy Perry as well for general studies. I am learning some christmas music from the November/December book right now. Including, Break Forth Oh Wondrous Light and some others. Then in Jazz Up Your Christmas I am doing a jazz version of Silent Night. Its very relaxing! I love this book too.

Now for my voice studies I am in a choir at the Patrick Henry College. It is a choir for high school and middle school homeschooled teens. I love it and I even sang the solo for our first christmas concert at a local nursing home. The song was called Once Upon A Holy Night. Its gorgeous! I love singing with the choir.

I am enjoying singing some hymns such as What Child Is This? and Joy To The World for two of my friends wedding. I am also singing The Church's One Foundation, Be Thou My Vision, and Onward Christian Soldiers. I will be singing these with some of my friends from our reenacting group for their reception. During the ceremony we will be singing We Gather Togeather and The Church's One Foundation. I use the Celebration Hymnal for these hymns.

I love the celebration hymnal of the piano addition. My mom and I aquired this one from our church after they got rid of some of the old ones. We snatched it up! Its great and has a lot of choices and is nice and big for good reading.





I love learning to read the music and sing and play at the same time! I am so thankful to be able to learn to do both.





I also am enjoying the First book of Mezzo Soprano/Alto Solos, its a great book for my lower range and it has some higher vocal range peices as well for me to be able to challenge my range to be a higher. Right now I am singing O Rest in the Lord by Felix Mendelsson. I love his music! The song is from his opera called Elijah. The song is the scriptures from Psalm 37, which is my faovite Psalm! I was so glad to find this song after memorizing this scripture. It has helped me remember to trust in the Lord and wait patiently for Him even better! Its so easy to memorize scripture when it is put to music.





I also love the book Amy Grant put out a while back called Home For Christmas, all of her songs are great for lower ranges. The song I am singing in there is called Breath of Heaven or (Mary's Song). It has a great message and I love the interesting melody. My mom has been working out an alto harmony so we can sing it as a duet for christmas.





I also am so glad to be singing Italian again! I found this great book at the music store recently and its called 24 italian songs and arias of the 17th and 18th centuries. It is based on the editions by Alessandro Parisotti and is from the Schirmer Publication. I am currently learning O cessate di Piagarmi which means in english Either cease of Wounding Me. It is from the Opera Il Pompeo by Scarlatti. Every musician I believe should learn Scarlatti at least once I believe! I love his music and its challenging and beautiful. This book is wonderful because it has translations and pronunciations for all of the italian words in the songs in this book. It also has breath history of each composer and song and when it was first perfomed and written. Its great for learning music history along side musical classics.





And lastly this is what it looks like when you are a music fanatic like me! You have huge stacks up music everywhere! In your room, closet, and on your piano.







And if any of you want to know where to get any of these books I would recommend http://www.amazon.com/ they have lots of these books, I have bought from them before. Or if you have a local Music and Arts Center or music store you can go there and have the order the books for you. There is no extra charge for having to special order at my local music store. Sometimes they won't have some of them in and you just have to ask them to order them for you. But shopping online you should always be able to find them.

I will probably be posting music posts a lot and be posting my current studies. I am possibly going be teaching some of my mothers piano students and I will update about that as well. I love music so much and want to share what I learn and love with you all.

I will be sure to post pictures from my friends' wedding come january when all the christmas busyness is over.

In Christ,
Rebecca

A granny square blanket for my mother

A few weeks I finished a crocheted afghan for my mother and I wanted to share it with you all. It is made out of 100% cotten yarns from the Michaels craft store. Its the sugar and cream cotten brand of yarn. My mom kept begging me for years to make her her own granny square blanket, so I made this for her birthday. She loves it and uses it on her bed. It even matches her color scheme in my parents bed room.

Here is a close up of the edging I did. I have this wonderful book that is all about different edgings you can do on an afghan for crochet. It has 50 different edgings and I was so happy to be able to finally use this handy little book.

I

There you have it the completed blanket. It took a really long time, but now I can do granny squares quite quickly and I plan to make some more in the future for my family and for my hope chest.

In Christ,

Rebecca

Twilight why I am concerned for my sisters in Christ

I was just hearing from some girls at my church the other day how they love the books and movies called Twilight and that put up red flags all over the place. I already know that some of them are not christians, but for the ones that I think are this scares me! I did not know alot about the plot or any of the story line, but Ana Sophia and Elizabeth over at Visionary Daughtars did a great article showing why this series is dangerous to us as christian young women. It is something that is tempting and then leads us to discontentment and sin. http://visionarydaughters.com/

So go and read their article, it really made me say even more that I don't want to read those books. When I saw in their article why there was an apple in a girls hands on the cover it really disturbed me.

We can be encouraged that their are people that are reading and seeing that this series can be damaging and are doing something about it by letting other christians know.

In Christ,

Rebecca

Welcome and hello blog world!

Hello and welcome everyone!

Some of you may know me from the sense and sensibility forum (http://www.sensibility.com/mainpage.htm) and from my old xanga blog( www.xanga.com/icebluechick). I have been wanting a blog for a few years now and I am finally getting around to switching to a blogger account. I enjoy reading others blogs and I wanted to start one to share with others. I am the sister of Bethany over at diary of a seimstress(http://diaryofaseamstress.blogspot.com/) and I thought I would post some new pictures from our latest reenactment. I am thinking of maybe in the future using some of these pictures for my graduation pictures this year.

My sister and I are both graduating from our homeschool this coming May.

That is my sister and I waiting for the parade to start.

Here is my sister Beth all bundled up.

Thats my dad in his dashing outfit made by my sister Beth. Go to her blog I posted above to see more pictures from the event and she shares what patterns she used in the making of our outfits and more details about them.

We went to Gettysburg, PA this past saturday for the Remembrance day parade. It is a parade to remember all the veterens from the american civil war and to remember reenactors. So we were in the parade with our group. My father and another dad from our friends family are starting a Pinkerton spy group and Telegraph agency. My sister and I are excited to be telegraph agents and we probably won't be spys. We are more interested in the Telegraph impression for our reenactments. My dad just bought a telegraph key on ebay this past weekend that is actually a real 1860's key and we are very excited! Because this means we can start getting our impression togeather for the coming spring reenactments.

In the picture above is my family with our banner for the parade.

Here is my dad and I walking as we went to the parade starting point. You can see a good view of the civil war period coat my sister and I made that I am wearing. They called them paletotes back then. Don't you love the plaid pants my sister made for my dad?!! I do!

All these pictures I want to possibily use for my graduation pictures.

My good friend Hannah was so kind to take some pictures of me in my dress. I might use some of these for graduation pictures, but I am not sure. I might do a modern dress for graduation pictures to relate to people that I would be sending the pictures to better. You know everyone does not reenact and I want to be real.

I especially think I will use the one below for my graduation pictures even if I don't use the rest at all.

Here we all are, my friend Hannah, me in the middle, and Bethany on the end.

I plan to post pictures from our reenactments, my thoughts, lots of posts on music and what I am learning in my piano and vocal studies, and hopefully some videos from my choir's christmas concerts. I also want to post about sewing and other everything things. So be on the look out for new posts. My next post will be about my music studies. Maybe a post on homemade christmas
gifts next and I have to do a post because I was tagged by Ashley over at Bramblewood fashions.

Have a blessed week and a very peaceful thanksgiving!

In Christ,

Rebecca