‘Ink Re-Cap 161: Happy New Year 2022
‘Ink Re-Cap 161.
Random Sketches and Scribbles
about a New Year, a new roof and good-old-time family gatherings.
New Roof
As we speak, my hard-working husband is above me, scraping and prepping for a new leak-free New Year. He has worked so hard taking off the tile, removing rolled roofing, replacing with new, then nailing the wood slats back that hold the tiles in place. This is a slow time for his regular job: caring for retiree’s yards. They’re enjoying the Holidays with their spiffed yards. But the rain we’ve been having bodes well for lots of work in the New Year. There’ll be weeds sprouting everywhere through their rock landscapes, and we can’t have that in a retirement development! The homeowner’s associations would get after them. So, our phone rings. And rings. With work and more work.
And my loyal husband is right there with his sprayer and gardening gloves.
So he’s quite determined to get this home project done before his New Year of work gets into full swing. It will be nice to be all set with a roof we can depend on. When we get our 7 inches of annual rainfall. Which can create havoc even if it’s not a lot of water.
Did I tell you I have the best husband on the planet?
‘Ink Re-Cap 161: Two Holiday Weeks on the Blog
Two weeks is a lot of posts and a long time on a blog. Too much to go back and refer to every post.
The week before Christmas we worked on the DIY Wedding Planner, Christmas Star Piñatas for the littles, Neighbor Christmas Gifts, finished our Minimalist Christmas Village and got it up on the stair ledge, and made Red Velvet Layered Cheesecake for our good-old-time family gathering. All of it was worth it. Each one of those things, except maybe the wedding planner, contributed to our enjoyment of Sunday, when we all got together. But we did have fun teasing the grandpa-groom! He’s definitely Carried-away!! (Her name is Carrie.)
We had a special Merry Christmas Message 2021 for you on December 25.
And then the quiet week between the Holidays. Watching the groom’s children work at erasing some of their old lives from his house to prepare for the new family. The feelings and emotions of Adjusting When Parents Remarry.
The rest of the week we re-posted and updated old posts to make them more current. This blog is 5 years old! Here’s the list:
Our Master Task Check-off Lists For Planning a Baby Shower
How To Eat Gourmet The Easy Way And A DIY Cookbook
1000 Gifts Personal Challenge And A Watercolor Card Tutorial
How to Live Mindfully in the New Year
‘Ink Re-Cap 161 Search Engine Spotlights:
These posts were the most-viewed the past two weeks:
Note: There’s a side bar on all blog pages that helps you get to the topic you most want to read about. The main topics are Weddings, Babies, Kitchen, Crafts and Inspirational Stuff.
* means it’s an affiliate link. If you purchase an item through the link we get recognition for sending you over to Amazon. As if they need any help, but there you have it. They like us better if we do that, even though it doesn’t change any prices. Links without an asterisk mean they are not affiliate.
Happy New Year 2022!
Our work this week was all about calendars. Baby calendars, event calendars. Family calendars.
My favorite was this one:
Inspiring Inklings of Real Life
The World Outside Our Work Window
We’ve had the best Christmas weeks! (Except for missing our Little Farm on the River family. And even our City Family was gone to see her parents for a week.)
Still, lots of the nieces and nephews brought their little families home, so we had extended-family gatherings. They all came for Sunday. Then on Monday evening we did a Hassayampa hamburger fry. The rain had the riverbed just wet enough that we could all drive our vehicles down instead of ferrying with 4-wheel drives. My niece took me on a hair raising, glorious side-by-side ride. She’s one fun-loving kid! If you ever meet Luci, you’ll never forget her.
Yesterday a girl who used to live with us stopped in with her family. It’s always, “My goodness! These are the babies we saw a few minutes ago?” How time flies. Her children couldn’t figure out why their mom and I were such good friends, as they never remembered meeting me before!
Aren’t holidays the best?
Celebrating family and friends is a side benefit of the great celebration of Jesus’ birth…
(And here’s where I quickly note that that’s the reason we sell cards and memory calendars and planners…)
Smirk:
The joke my oldest g’little told me at our New Year’s Eve party last night:
What did Adam say to Eve the day before Christmas?
“Merry Christmas, Eve.”
Only they didn’t celebrate Christmas, did they?
Books of the week:
“The Insanity of God“*
by
This is a reader’s recommendation. Thanks, Michelle!
We sent this to our son for Christmas, but he hadn’t read enough to give me his opinion. He thinks he’ll like it.
Amazon:
“The Insanity of God is the personal and lifelong journey of an ordinary couple from rural Kentucky who thought they were going on just your ordinary missionary pilgrimage, but discovered it would be anything but. After spending over six hard years doing relief work in Somalia, and experiencing life where it looked like God had turned away completely and He was clueless about the tragedies of life, the couple had a crisis of faith and left Africa asking God, “Does the gospel work anywhere when it is really a hard place? It sure didn’t work in Somalia.”
Our children’s book pick,
“The Berenstain Bears, Kindness Counts“*
by Jan and Stan Berenstain, 2010
Around the fire on Monday night we got to talking about the books the nieces and nephews remembered. Berenstain Bear books are into their second generation now. All of them are fun, but I hadn’t kept up with the fact they had a faith based series, which this book is part of.
Amazon:
“Teaching your child about kindness can be challenging. In this addition to the Living Lights™ series of Berenstain Bears books, young readers will learn how to treat others with kindness. Children will discover ways to implement traditional values and share God’s goodness.“
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DO ANY OF YOU HAVE SUGGESTIONS FOR BOOKS WE CAN SHARE, THAT HAVE INSPIRED YOU OR YOUR LITTLES? WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU.
Inspiring Quote
Now for the week’s fridge quote.
This is the January calendar page from our Minimalist 2022 Calendar. It’s a small size, only 6″ x 9″ and you can pin it or prop it up anywhere. In spite of the small size, there’s space for adding notes if you wish. (It looks light, almost unreadable, but the printed page is just right!)
How To Get It:
Go to this page and fill in the form. This adds you to our email list, or, if you’re already on it, verifies you’re still one of our GIFTees.
Then comment, “Quote 161” and we’ll zip the two options over to you.
