the couch story

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving yesterday.  Today I'm linking up with Susannah and Sybil for this month's Faith and Fellowship link-up.

This month I participated in The Thankful Project and wrote each day about things that I am thankful for.  I've done a lot of reflecting on thankfulness.  But just as important, if not more so, than being thankful for what I have is remembering who to be thankful to.  And so, without further ado, I bring you the couch story.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!

- Psalm 100:4 (esv)

My husband and I are fortunate (and thankful) to own this sweet house.  We moved in last summer and have been slowly turning it from a house into a home.  With a limited budget and limited furniture, however, we weren't able to do all that I would have liked to at once.  Our living room was one of those spaces for which we didn't have any furniture, so it sat virtually empty for months. 

At first, I didn't mind the empty space.  We didn't use the room very often and our family room was cozy enough.  But when football season took up the family room TV this fall, suddenly I turned into an impatient child.  I had envisioned the living room as eventually being a great reading room, and started to resent the fact that we didn't have at least two chairs in the living room, or perhaps even a loveseat, where I could retreat during the games.  Next thing I knew, I was terribly unhappy and realized that I needed to check myself.  After all, shouldn't I be thankful that we frankly had too much house to fill with our few belongings?  I was too blind to see how God had blessed us - all I wanted was a couch.  

After spending some time in serious reflection and confessing my materialistic heart to God, I decided to surrender my desire for a couch to Him.  I told Him how I would really like to have a sofa, but then I also gave thanks to Him for all of the ways in which He had already blessed Steve and me in our home.  And I gave up the couch to Him. 

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. - Philippians 4:6 (esv)

Fast-forward to last week.  When I received an unexpected extra holiday bonus at work, I had a sudden thought to look on Craigslist for a sofa.  After some careful reflection on the nature of my heart (and checking with Steve too), I popped on the website and immediately found the most beautiful set of furniture that was perfect for the room.  And it wasn't just a couch.  It was a couch, loveseat, oversized chair and ottoman - an entire set!  It was the furniture I had dreamed of all along but knew we couldn't afford.  Except this time - we could.  The ad price was almost exactly the amount of my bonus.  I couldn't believe it.

We picked up the furniture on Tuesday evening - the last night we were in town before we left for Texas.  Had we been a day later, we would have missed out on the deal.  But by 6:30pm that night, our living room was transformed.

I share this story not to say that if you ask God nicely, you will always get what you want - because you won't.  But I do share this story because this story is one that only God could have made possible.  Sure, I could have fought tooth and nail to get the sofa that I thought I wanted months ago - and then thanked God for it once I got it.  But by giving up my materialistic desire to Him and instead trying to be thankful for all that He had already given me, I learned so much about myself and about how He works.

God loves to grant our requests.  He gets joy out of bringing us pleasure.  But how much more does He enjoy spending time with us in prayer when we do more than just rattle off a list of what we want!  Through my prayers, I learned more about what God envisioned for the space - a place for conversation with friends and a relaxing setting for quiet times.  A space to serve others coffee and to gather together for prayer.  And His vision eventually became my vision.

I cannot wait to host friends in our living room.  I cannot wait to share God's word in that room.  And I am so incredibly thankful that His ways are higher than my ways... and that I didn't go out and get a couch months ago.  

  

And above all else, I am thankful that my God is more than just a God who hears requests and grants them.  He is a God who hears the deepest desires of our hearts - even those that we may not know of ourselves - and cares about each of us deeply and personally.  I am thankful for all the ways in which He has blessed my life, but more than anything I am simply glad that He wants to be and is in my life.

the thankful project day 16: something you own

{Linking up with Kenzie at Chasing Happy}

November 16th: Something You Own.

Today I am thankful for this pretty little place - our home.  

 We began casually house-hunting when we were engaged, but didn't want to commit to anything until after we got married.  Lo and behold, a short month after we were married, we found The House.  A few weeks later, it was ours.  Quite the post-wedding whirlwind, let me tell ya!

Being a homeowner has its disadvantages.  When things break, you have to fix them.  You're responsible for paying those pesky property taxes twice a year.  We live in a subdivision run by an HOA, so they get some $$ from us too.  Anything that needs repair or improvement - you're the one to do them (or to pay for someone else to do them).  It can get expensive.



All that aside, though, owning a home comes with many blessings.  I can decorate the house however I want, and have gradually learned what my tastes are.  We love our neighborhood and have some extra-special neighbor friends who lives just a few houses down from us.  We have a great backyard where Lyla can run and we can eat dinner on the patio in the summertime.

I am thankful that we have a place to rest after a long day in the office, a place to invest time and energy into (i.e. painting, landscaping, the works), and most importantly a place where we can have people over - like these wonderful folks in our small group. 

No home is perfect, but I love ours and for now it's perfect for us.

the homestead

It's official: my parents are all mostly moved in to their new house!  I am so thankful that I was able to fly down and help them get settled in over the long weekend.  As I mentioned in this post, the house is remarkably similar to my folks' prior house in Houston, so it felt like home from the start. 

Isn't it beautiful?  Even Herman seemed to figure out that it was the old house, only better.  He's a smart one.

Gannie and my little sister both came into town to help, too.  My sis was on a week-long break from med school rotations, so the timing was perfect. 

Seeing the house getting put together (or back together) was so fun.  This picture in particular holds a special place in my heart and reminds me that even though Steve and I may not live in Texas, both of  us are still there in spirit (and on display in the living room). 

Seeing our wedding pictures on the mantle makes my heart sing.

 

We spent most of the weekend unpacking boxes, but still took some breaks to have some fun (aka swimming in the pool, extended lunch breaks and tex-mex of course!). 

I also stumbled across a plethora of awkward ninth grade photos, aka the "Awkward Amy" stage.  Oh, to be young and in braces again....wearing denim on denim... although rumor has it denim on denim is back in?  I can't bring myself to try that trend - must be because I overdid it as a high school freshman.  Anyway, it was fun to uncover these memories.

My sister was the first to leave yesterday.  Saying good-bye to her is always hard.  She had to fill up her car with gas, so of course the entire family accompanied her to the gas station before she left.  We are big on family bonding. 

Love her.

It was hard to leave, but I am so glad that I was able to share in this special memory with my family.  Being far away from them can be incredibly hard at times, and while I was unpacking "my room" I couldn't help but wish I lived down the street so I could stop by any day.  That's not in the cards for us right now, but I am so thankful for God's timing in pushing the closing back just enough that I could be there with my parents on the first night that they spent in their new home.  And I can't wait to visit the homestead again soon.

 

mary mary, quite contrary

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells,

And pretty maids all in a row.

This summer, we decided to re-do some landscaping in our backyard.  The previous owners hadn't done much with the yard, and it was ridden with weeds by the time we moved in at the end of last summer.  Steve has a pretty extensive knowledge base for gardening (his parents are both avid gardeners), so while my exposure to midwest plant-growing was minimal, we felt confident that we could tackle the yard and plant some new pretty plants over the course of a weekend or two. 

 

Boy, were we wrong.

 

Before I get ahead of myself, we began with three primary target areas:

1) Backyard flower bed (we deemed this the redbud kingdom. More to come on that.), 

 

2) Patio flower beds (sadly, I never took a "before" picture of these bad boys, but essentially if you envision a weed-infested patch of mulch, you've got a pretty good idea of what it looked like), and

 

 3) Overgrown vegetable garden (or shall we say, weed forest?),

 

We visited our local Lowe's to stock up on pretty new plants.  It was actually quite fun planning out what we wanted to go where - not to mention the flower section in the store is so colorful and fun to explore! 

 

Once all of our new plants were purchased and ready to go, our next step was to pull out all the weeds and prepare the soil for planting new plans.  This is when we encountered two unfortunate realizations:



Realization Number #1: Our backyard was actually a baby redbud forest in disguise. See the lovely tree on the right side of this picture? 

 

That is a redbud tree, which releases seed-pods every year. Apparently our particular redbud has been especially seed-pod-happy over the last several years...and the previous owners never cleared the pods out when they fell...which resulted in baby redbuds growing everywhere. See all of those tall weed-looking things? All baby redbuds.  There were also redbuds under the patio, in the vegetable garden, and pretty much anywhere a weed was growing. 

 

Here's the difference between pulling weeds and pulling redbuds - the redbuds have big roots.  A lot of them.  Can't really blame the poor things, they were just trying to build an entire redbud forest so of course their roots would be huge and deep.  But that clearly did not make the job of clearing them out any easier for us.

After fighting with the redbuds for several days weekends, we finally cleared a majority of the redbud forest.  Whew!  Here's the flower bed in progress:

Much better!

 

Realization #2: Gravel in a flower bed is never a good idea.  Turns out the previous owners must have really hated landscaping, because directly underlying the mulch in the patio flower beds was a thick layer of gravel.  Our best guess is that, since our house was used as a rental in the early-mid 2000's, the owner dumped gravel everywhere to keep the landscaping as low-maintenance as possible.  Which is great and all, except 1) weeds still managed to grow through the gravel and 2) to cultivate a healthy flower bed, we had to remove all of the gravel and refill the holes with healthy soil. Terrific.

We dug down until we hit healthy soil - probably a good two feet below the surface - all the way around the patio beds.  The process took several weekends to complete and was pretty intense manual labor for us.  I don't know how landscapers do it...the work is exhausting! 

(Note Steve's "I'm exhausted, please stop taking pictures" smile below - he's a good sport)

We dumped the gravel next to the pond in our backyard.  All in all, that pile was about 2.5 ft high when we were done.

 

Once the gravel was removed, we were left with a clean slate for building up a new flower bed.  (As an aside, Lyla was very intrigued by the entire gardening process.  She followed us all around the yard each day, tromped through the newly-uncovered dirt and even posed for pictures.  Silly girl.)

While I was out of town visiting family, Steve took on the task of building up the flower beds with new dirt, peet and manuer.  I am blessed to have a husband so willing to work for hours to beautify our yard - he worked very hard and had everything waiting for me to plant when I got back! 

 

He also tackled the vegetable garden while I was gone.  I was a little skeptical about the vegetable garden, since I've never had one before, but he was very excited about the prospect of one so I let him run wild with it. 

 

 He cleared the weeds, cultivated the soil and planted beens, sunflowers, a pumpkin, squash, tomatoes and a jalapeno pepper.  When he was all done, the weed forest was completely transformed - and the vegetables have really thrived in the new garden bed!  Excuse the bad-quality photo, but you can see the beans growing on the right and tomato plants climbed their way up on the left.  It's been exciting to watch them all grow from just seeds!

 

When I got back into town, we finally got to put all of our new plants in the ground - a good 1.5 months after the process had begun.  Oh sweet, sweet victory!  It may have taken us a while to get everything done, but we are very pleased with the final results and now feel like we can really enjoy our backyard this summer! 

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

 

We are still working on a couple of things in the yard/patio (aka a new grill and new patio furniture that we ordered last week!), so I'll post more comprehensive pictures of the backyard once everything is complete.  Until then, you can find me outside enjoying our new gardens :)