June Compassion Share & Tell

Have you gotten caught up in World Cup fever? We usually don't spend a lot of time watching professional sports, but with six of Compassion's countries having teams competing in this year's World Cup, we are just a bit interested in following along. And we have children in three of those countries!

My mailing to my kids this month includes quite a bit about the World Cup. Let me share with you what I am mailing:

• World Cup trading cards we found at Target
• World Cup stickers we found at Walgreens
• World Cup word search I found on Compassion Canada's World Cup Pinterest board
• World Cup coloring page, also from Compassion Canada's Pinterest board
• World Cup world map, with a listing of the countries competing this year
• And for the girls, I found some fun stickers in the Dollar Spot at Target

This month, I decided to keep the content of each letter the same. I typed up the letter on my computer, and as I was printing out the letter, I made sure I changed out the child's name and number on each letter.

Here is what I wrote:

Dear Victor,

"For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations." - Psalm 100:5

How are you and your family? Are you enjoying a break from school yet?

One thing we have been doing recently is watching some of the World Cup soccer games. Are you familiar with the World Cup soccer games? There are teams from 32 countries around the world competing in Brazil for the world championship of soccer teams. We have enjoyed watching the team from your country play.

With this letter, I have included some activity pages about the World Cup that I thought you would enjoy. On the map, I have colored in the country where I live and the country where you live.

Do you like to play soccer? I used to like to play soccer when I was in school.

Is there a sport you enjoy playing?

I love you and pray for you and your family often. I pray you always know that God loves you very much and He has a plan for you and your live ahead.

Sending my love and hugs to you today!

Have you had a chance to write to your Compassion sponsored child lately? 

Tackle It on Tuesday: Change of Plans

Just so you know, I am a blog-on-the-fly kind of a blogger. I don't have weeks worth of drafts prepped and ready to publish, I am lucky if I can put together 2-3 posts a week. So on some weeks, when I think I have the perfect post put together in my brain, life happens and my perfect post takes a different turn.

You see, last week, after I wrote my last Tackle It on Tuesday post, I was all ready to share with you how I would be tackling a pile of Food Network magazines I have been wanting to go through.

The magazine subscription was a birthday gift from my sister a couple of years ago. I have been wanting to go through them and 'pin' some of the recipes onto one of my Pinterest boards. But then yesterday, I listened to this podcast with the title, Freedom From Stuff.

The podcast really made me think about how I handle some of the 'stuff' in my home. Which brought me back to this pile of magazines. While I enjoy looking for new recipes to try with my family, there are other things I could be doing with my time. And if you look close enough, you can see that those magazines have been taking up space in my home for a while. Time for them to find a new home!

So speaking of stuff, there are things that need out attention every now and then. During the podcast, Joshua and Tsh had mentioned that as much as we try to simplify things in our home, there is always 'stuff' coming into our homes.

And right now, I have a sock drawer overflowing with socks. In a perfect and completely organized world, as soon as I purchase new socks, I would take the time to go through my sock drawer and give the 'old' socks to my husband for the garage. But, because I don't take the time to do this, I end up with a drawer full of socks that I can barely close because it is overflowing with socks! Yikes!

Rather than beat myself up for this happening (which is what a lot of us do), I plan to take a bit of time one day this week and clean up this sock drawer (and probably the underwear drawer too, but I probably won't be showing you pictures of that drawer!)

Do you have an area of your home or a task you have been meaning to tackle for some time? Plan a bit of time this week to tackle it. Let's encourage each other to tackle these tasks, so we have more time to enjoy our family and friends. Ready? Let's go!

Tackle It on Tuesday: Denim Star Garland with Tutorial

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This week, I tackled another fun creative project (Pinterest inspired!) using some scrap pieces of denim, burlap, fabric, buttons, and jute. I tried to take pictures along the way so if you want to try making this at home, you can follow along and make one of these for your own home.

The supplies you will need for this project: denim, fabric, burlap, quilt batting, jute, buttons, embroidery floss, star stencil, scissors, needle, and a disappearing ink pen.

I found a star stencil in my scrapbook supplies and used that to cut a star template out of cardboard for tracing around on the denim. My template was about 4 inches across. The garland has seven stars across and I doubled them up, so be sure to cut out 14 stars from the denim.

Your embellishments for the star are going to be a bit of burlap, a fabric heart, and a button. 

Layer your embellishments on one of the denim stars. Then with some embroidery floss, sew through all layers (denim, burlap, fabric, and button) to attach the button to the denim. You will repeat this step seven times, once for each star that will be along your garland.

Once you have attached all of the embellishments to the stars, you will start attaching the stars to the jute. Take one plain denim back, one quilt batting star (I cut these just a bit smaller than the template, the jute (which you have cut to about six feet or so), and the top denim star. Fold the cut jute in half to find the middle. This will be your starting point for sandwiching the star pieces to the jute.

Pin the star pieces in place, take some embroidery thread, and begin stitching around the outside edges of the star with a running stitch. Once you have finished with the first star, place the next star where you think it will look best (mine are about 3 inches apart).

After you have attached each star to the jute, you will now have a festive garland to decorate your mantle or food table for a summer party or wherever you decide to display it! You can get really creative with this project using a variety of shapes and materials. If you give it a try, be sure to let me know in the comments with a link to your finished project!

My project for this upcoming week? Going through some old Food Network magazines. Next week, I will let you know what I do with them.

The inequality of it all

This morning, I put on my new sneakers, plugged headphones into my iPhone, started up my walking playlist, and headed out on the concrete sidewalks around my safe neighborhood for my one mile morning walk. Not a big deal, right? A lot of people start their morning like this, why should mine be any different.

But then I start thinking....thinking about our walk to Felix's home just months ago...thinking about our other Compassion kids and wondering what their neighborhoods are like...are they safe? are they scared?

I feel my eyes filling with tears...and I get angry, frustrated, and disappointed that more people don't step up to sponsor a child through Compassion.

But then I remember something I read just this week:

"Let's be honest: it's hard to swallow the fact that some people won't believe in you or what you're doing. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It just means you've got to remember who you're doing it for." - Kristen Welch from 'Rhinestone Jesus'

And then I am humbled...we have only been sponsoring children for 4 1/2 years...and we are only financially sponsoring 4 children. There are many people who are doing so much more for God than we are, and have been doing it for so much longer than us.

Then I read this:

"When it comes to building God's Kingdom, the "bigger is better" mentality doesn't apply" - Kristen Welch from 'Rhinestone Jesus'

God is helping us to make a difference in the lives of a few children. It may not seem like a lot to us. But as I have been processing through these thoughts this morning, I have to remember, for these four children and their families, our small sacrifice is making a big difference.

Tackle It on Tuesday: Fabric Letters

This past week I tackled - Fabric Letters

I was really excited about starting this new project and had high hopes about this one, that is until I realized how hard it is to machine sew some of the curves on the letters, yikes!

Hard to use purple ink on purple fabric

Plus, purple disappearing ink does not show up very well on purple fabric...

Almost finished...

At this point, I just need to cut around the sewing lines and add a little bit of fray check to keep the fabric from fraying.

So will I be mass producing this project? Um, I think not. As cute as it is, I will finish this one up and keep it in our toy basket for when little people come over to play.

To tackle this week - a surprise

Burlap and fabric project in the works

Working on the fabric letter project over the last week gave me an idea for a new project using burlap and fabric. Be sure to check back next week to see what I come up with!

What project are you tackling this week?