22 years of bliss

It seems like yesterday that I stood at an altar with tears in my eyes barely able to say my vows and here I am, 22 years later and more in love than I thought was possible. 

I know the Lord meant for Johnny and I to be together. It wasn't luck, karma, or even destiny, no it was the will of God. I'm sure we were made for each other. 

He is the best thing that has ever happen to me here on this Earth outside of accepting the Lord Jesus as my Savior. He has met all the human needs of my heart. He fills every day and night with acceptance, love and friendship. I'm so blessed to belong to Johnny Leslie. 

Happy 22nd Anniversary Baby, I will love you forever!

A Bucket of Turquoise Gold

One of the things of the to-do list was to move Hannah into the boys' old room. It's larger and her room will son become my sewing *whoohoo* room/guest room. Anyhoo, we had to cover up Josh's scuffed gray walls before she could make her move. Hannah loves chartreuse and turquoise (like her Mama) so we went and got the paint and went to work.

We debated back and forth between several options, diagonal stripes, chevron, diamonds and her idea for huge circles. Finally I usurped my seniority and trumped her circles for chevron.

The pattern was a booger at least for this beginner but once it was measured and taped the painting went really quick.

In case you're wondering, I used a fancy square top to our Bible trivia game to lightly draw squares starting at the top left and then covered the entire wall. Then I just went corner to corner of the draw on squares to make the chevron. It was really pretty easy, a little time consuming but it would be a great project for a smaller foyer wall or any focal wall. I wold love to do a tone on tone in my foyer and maybe will, I'll letcha know.

In case you're puzzled, we continued two of the chevrons onto the little corner thinggy (boiler smoke stack) just 'cause we could. Not sure if I'm sold on it but Hannah likes it.

So we finished putting all her stuff in her room so it's not sparse like the above photo, not even close and guess what...I still had a bucket of turquoise paint. I hate to see good paint go to waste 'cause after a while it starts to separate and eventually it's useless so I found something to use it on.

I bought this little table at a thrift shop in the Sates several furloughs ago and brought it to Croatia when we shipped a container of Bibles here. It originally looked a bit better but after living on the back patio and seeing too much action it's a little worse for the wear. So...No, I didn't chunk it, I got my turquoise paint out and rescued the sad little thing.

I didn't want a new-looking table so I decided to try something different. I painted two coats of the paint on the table and then sanded the paint off  of the places that would be most touched or bumped in regular use.

You can see below what I mean. I have several close-ups to show the distressing. After that I took a can of

walnut stain from the stash in the garage and decided to age it.

I dry rubbed stain very sparingly all over the sucker! I was pretty hap-hazard about it. I did add a little extra stain where I had distressed to make it a little dirtied-up. I love Super-love the final result!

You can see in the above photo how the stain gave the turquoise paint a nice aged look and the distressing actually looks believable, I think.

I really distressed quite a bit on the corner posts, amazing how it looks like worn paint.

Oh yea and it had old, ugly brassy looking casters on it and I removed them when I painted so I could spray them black but after careful consideration (yeah right) I decided the old, ugly caster actually lent to the aged look. I love it when not doing anything makes things awesome. :0)

So I'm pretty pleased with my little serving trolley and you can be guaranteed that it won't weather the elements on the patio anymore.

They're slowly leaving the nest.

So as you have guessed from the activity on my blog, I'm back home. Being back home means that life slows down enough for me to even think about blogging.
Our short 2 month furlough was a whirlwind. We were in 25 churches and got to spend tons of time with family and friends. We also got to watch our second son Joshua graduate from high school. Then we said goodbye to him on Tuesday as we flew out of Dallas and left him behind.

I can't even tell you how hard it was to leave Josh. It was so much different leaving him than it was leaving our oldest son Cody. I've thought about it many times in the last few days and I think it has to do with Josh being our last boy in the house. Here we are with only a daughter. It's so strange having only Johnny's clothes in the wash, I mean all the boys socks are his. I don't have to look at the size in the jeans to figure out who they belong to, they're all his cause he's the only male in the house. It's strange and I'm defiantly feeling "empty nest" even thought I still have Hannah. 

We had a great time seeing good friends, 

and adorable nieces whom we adore. 

I loved being with my boys, both of them. I cherished the time with Josh knowing we would soon be leaving him. He's doing wonderful though, he has a plan for his future and is preparing for Bible college in the fall. 

It's been a very hard two years here in Croatia without Cody and I loved being with him while in the States. It's crazy to look at your son and see a man. I'm so proud of him and my prayer for him is that he'll make the Lord proud of him. 

Our life is changing whether I'm ready for it or not. Here we are the 3 of us watching The King and I in our slowly emptying home. I better get ready cause I only have a few more years and they'll all be gone. Since I can't do anything about it, guess I'll just have to give it to the Lord.  

HOME!

I'm home and what a difference 2 months made to my backyard! I'm pretty busy de-cobwebbing and putting junk up but I'll be back soon. I've missed you blog!