Ok.  I don’t do a lot of product recommendations so when I do, it’s because I really think the item is outstanding.  My leather sofa was in need of some serious attention.  It looked dry and sad and I was sort of falling out of love with it.  In the past I’ve tried to condition it every 6 months to maintain it’s youthful allure, but to very little avail.  I might as well have been applying Oil of Olay.  My sofa needed botox.  Or surgery. Or something.

Enter Leather Honey.  This stuff is thick and sticky and messy just like it’s name implies.  I coated my cushions and sofa in it and then left them to cure overnight.  Leather Honey does not mess around- immediately I could tell it was something different from all the disappointing creams and lotions of my past.  It was penetrating and healing and sealing.  And after 12 hours of relaxing, my sofa looked amazing.  I wish I had taken photos.  I didn’t know it was going to be this dramatic!  Just imagine your sofa looks like Mick Jagger and then overnight turns into Taylor Swift.

I haven’t tried it for these uses yet, but it’s also wonderful for leather shoes, purses, etc.

And just when you thought things couldn’t get more exciting- we have a give-away!

So if you’d like to take part, just share with a friend/on social media and comment to let us know you did, then we’ll add your name to a random drawing for an 8oz bottle of Leather Honey.

At first I was going to try to make an indoor tent like any one of the myriad of lovely teepees I’ve seen pinned, but when I mentioned it to Tim, he said what Valiant really needed for his birthday was a bank.  Well, three actually.  One for tithe, one for saving, and one for spending.  After hunting around for bit in search of some adorable bank that he would like to clink his coins into, and realizing that it probably wouldn’t arrive in time for his birthday, I finally decided just to make one.

I started with three jars I liked the look of, all with metal tops that don’t flex– in my case: horseradish, garlic and peanut sauce containers.  I first washed them and soaked them in bleach.  Why is it that the cutest little jars I could find were also holding such pungent stuff??

After removing the labels wit Goo-Gone and having Tim cut a quarter-size hole in the tops of the lids,

I took three Schleich-like animals and painted them and the jar caps with liquid gold leaf.

(Keep in mind if you use this type of paint you will need mineral spirits to clean up with).

Then I used stamps to make little labels of my own designating “Church”, “Saving” and “Spending”.

After affixing the labels I used some super glue to attach an animal to each lid.

I felt a little like the Tailor of Gloucestershire laying out the boys Easter outfits tonight.  I am trying to make Easter the biggest celebration of our year for them– that’s the goal– but I’m glad that I have a few years before things really start to settle in their memory, because starting great traditions takes time I’m realizing.  Right now I am just thankful for store-bought cinnamon rolls.

Here’s what did get done this year:

1.  I bought some Easter candy early (and even unwrapped the Peeps because I like them best when they are dried out!)

2.  We got baby chicks to raise

3.  Put together an abbreviated egg hunt (church starts at 9:15, plus they’re not very aggressive finders yet… Actually those are just excuses. I don’t really want to be personally responsible for consuming my weight in hard-boiled eggs and I didn’t get around to buying plastic ones. So it’s really more of a treasure hunt for their Easter basket– which if you must know is actually just a serving bowl filled with all their loot. I didn’t get around to the basket either.)

4.  Bought the boys a little gift– this year it’s flashlight/lanterns (I mail-ordered some really great ones but I’m pretty sure they were stolen off my front porch, so I went with the ones for $1.99 at the hardware store at the last minute.  I don’t think they’ll care. It does bother me just a little that I  provided a thief with two excellent flashlights though….)

5.  Dyed eggs (Ok not very well… a friend and I forgot that you’re supposed to use vinegar instead of water for the dye which meant we had extremely pastel eggs… this is what I mean about improving this with each year)

Rather than dye eggs, Atlas chose to eat them.  Shell and all.

These were the sorriest looking bunch of Easter eggs I have ever had a hand in making.  The brown marks are due to the fact that once we realized we were missing that pungent smell of dying eggs– that we forgot the vinegar– we also discovered my friend had only balsamic vinegar to use.  I think it was only fitting that as soon as we got home Atlas pulled the whole carton of them off the counter and smashed every one.  The boys however thought they were amazing and proceeded to eat about six for breakfast the next morning.

6.  Went to a Good Friday service as well as a kid’s program– we’ve been reading through the chapters on the Passover and Christ’s death/resurrection in the Jesus Story Bible so hopefully more than the candy will stick in their brains.

7.  Made the boys Easter outfits

I have never been much good at following a pattern so I tend to make my own out of brown paper

8.  We’ll have lunch with Grandma J after services. I’m assuming the boys will probably polish off their life-size chocolate bunnies, not eat lunch and crash in short order; but I think feasting to a toddler looks a lot more like a candy rabbit than it does a ham, so we’ll just let that one go.

We are planning a long over-due girls’ trip for the end of April and after much debate over dates/locations, we have finally settled on New York City.  Now I’ve done many posts that include New York City but I’m not sure that I have ever posted a Big Apple bucket list.  It seems a little cliche- as though I am some sort of authority on the city and could add anything that a billion people haven’t covered in a million blogs, but here it goes.  Selfishly, the point is, I would like to have readers include their favorites in comments so we don’t miss a thing!

Places to Go:

The Plaza- on a cold day a friend (Laya) encouraged going there for hot toddies.  Haven’t done this yet, so it’s still on my list.

ABC Carpet and Home- I have always seen this place in my design magazines and was not disappointed when I finally went.  It’s magical to go from floor to floor of this enormous building drinking in each new gorgeous theme.

Eataly- I list this under places to go because it can’t simply be boiled down to a place to eat.  It’s much more of an experience than that.  Imagine a huge covered market that contains several different restaurants and coffee shops, not divided by actual walls but by different menus, interspersed with isles of food like an Italian grocery.

Williamsburg

The Highline- an elevated park built on a 1.45-mile section of the former New York Central Railroad.  I think this is a little over-rated.  People (mostly New Yorkers probably) rave about this place and I think it’s worth a walk-through.  Building a park on an old rail-road is cool but probably less cool to people from areas of the country where you could buy that park and 15 thousand acres to go with it for about $10.

Tenement Museum: could be fun.  I was there pregnant, in the freezing cold which made me feel like a poor immigrant so my memories are somewhat tinted by that.  It is historically interesting though you will probably have a tour-guide who tries to make you think that life was incredibly awful back in the day for new folks coming to America (i.e., and better now that the soft bigotry of low expectations reigns).

Chelsea Market, The Met, Guggenheim, Central Park, Soho shops…

Mom will definitely want to make a pilgrimage to Redeemer.  She teeters on the edge of idolatry when it comes to Tim Keller so I just hope she isn’t devastated if he isn’t preaching that day.

Places to Eat:

I was exposed to Norma’s on my last all-girl trip to NYC which may or may not turn out to be a good thing.  The food is amazing, the service is 5 star but you may have to choose between shoes for your children and 4th smoothie-of-the-day.  It’s a little spendy but well worth it.

Waverly Inn: Tim and I went here on a day-trip when we didn’t do much of anything and hung out in the warmth of their glass-domed courtyard having brunch and sipping our hot drinks.  I sort of reveled in not being a tourist that day.

Upstairs (that’s the name of the place) at the Kimberly hotel if you want a roof-top brunch with a view (recommendation of The Mari-Scarlet)

The Ace Hotel: I would like to grab coffee here.  The last time I went I just gawked.

Prune: Mom has written about Blood Bones Butter so I am wondering if she will want to go to this restaurant.

I have to admit I took that line from a website called “Homicide Watch DC”.  I’m glad that there’s attention given to the death of every person in our city who “counts”, but what about those who don’t?  And why don’t we ever talk about the fact that abortion is our own form of ethnic cleansing, especially in a city where race tensions typically run so hot and no-one is afraid to call any number of things “racism”.

It’s hard to believe that stopping the massacre  of unborn children is a disputed issue in this country.  It’s impossible to understand how simply mentioning it could somehow be offensive.  It reminds me of a White Stripes song:

“I guess you have to have a problem if you want to invent a contraption
First you cause a train wreck, then they put me in traction
first came an action and then a reaction
But you can’t switch em’ round for your own satisfaction
Well, you burnt my house down then got mad at my reaction

Well, in every complicated situation of a human relation
Makin’ sense of it all takes a whole lot of concentration
Well you can’t blame a baby for her pregnant ma
And if there’s one of these unavoidable laws
It’s that you just can’t take the effect and make it the cause”

Valiant, Atlas and I were among the hundreds of thousands of wing-nuts who turned out in sub-freezing temperatures on the National Mall to force the recognition of America’s on-going holocaust.  It was a pretty sobering event.

Last night I was up with Atlas who was repeatedly vomiting from midnight to 4 or 5am. As soon as he managed to drift off to sleep he (and I) would be jerked awake as he dry heaved, struggling to catch his breath. Tim made a speedy exit to the guest room while I turned our bedroom into the sick ward, and tiptoed around the boys’ room trying not to wake Valiant as I shoveled bedding into a towel and disinfected the crib.

This morning as I attempted to give Atlas some Gatorade he again threw up all over me, himself and our bed.  Enter Valiant, who has been in the process of potty training for several months now, walking rather delicately, having just filled his pants and gotten poop on the floor.

So while Atlas slept off his rough night, Valiant and I made a barn out of the raisin box from breakfast, covering it with brown paper, using Washi Tape for a flower boarder and window trim and topping it with a glitter-snow roof.  Then I covered the coffee table in more paper, drew roads and streams on it and pulled out some farm animals from Great Grandpa Leroy.  And that was enough to keep him occupied for a couple hours.

Meanwhile I am trying to shrink my laundry pile using my doll-house size washer and dryer.

But since this is a blog post, here are some photos which, if viewed without the text, could be rather misleading. (although the observant person might notice that it’s about noon and Valiant is still in his bed-time shirt with only underwear on his bottom)

I was doing a little reading the other day and read through an article that a pastor’s wife wrote about why you should be glad if you (or in her case, her husband) is slandered.  It got me thinking about persecution in general and I decided to write this little reminder to myself.

(First of all, let me clarify– I don’t think that slander and persecution are the same thing (although she seemed to).  Slander is what we endure if we say something another person disagrees with and they twist our words and impute us with a guilt that is not ours.  Persecution is what the Christians in Nigeria are undergoing right now.  There is some difference.)
I don’t know the specifics of her case but I know in my own circumstances it can be very comforting to assume I am being persecuted when in fact I am getting negative feedback from people who think I am 0ff-course or out of line. Now granted, that feedback can be done lovingly or it can be an angry-backlash sort of way.  She quoted the usual verses about being persecuted (Matthew 5:11-12, 1 Peter 4:14).  I took the time to look up the verses in Matthew and Peter and also to read them in context.  The Matthew passage is part of the Sermon on the Mount, of course, and the verses preceding vs 11 where Christ talks about being blessed for being persecuted for His sake are, interestingly, chock full of encouragements to peacemakers, the merciful, the meek, the poor in spirit…. not really virtues that shine out from the times I can think of when I may have been slandered.  Further, it’s interesting to note in the verses following the 1 Peter 4:14 passage that it says specifically “let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler”. It’s pretty clear that meddlers, people who stir up controversy unnecessarily, are not blessed for their suffering– in fact, they are put in the same sentence as murderers, thieves and evildooers!

I do think that there is a time and a place for controversy, planting your flag, dying on your hill, etc, and then there are thousands and THOUSANDS of other areas where (to quote Peter 4 again) “above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins”. Taking the Bible on the whole, it appears that the times when we are assured of being blessed for our suffering/persecution are those times when we are standing up for the gospel and Christ. Pretty simple test: were you sharing the good news of Christ’s salvation? It doesn’t really mention those times when we are defending ideas that we hold dear but that other faithful Christians might not.

Which does not make me a peace and happiness, butterflies and rainbows Christian, by the way.  In fact, I have a very good stomach for controversy and love a good argument, in case you haven’t guessed! Which is why I have to keep myself in check constantly (or perhaps I should give credit to my husband here).  Going at someone with a metaphorical 2×4 is the easiest thing in the world (at least for me).  Especially when I know they are in the wrong, there is nothing that gets me more worked up. The much harder thing to do, the harder “fight” you might say, in reality is to deny that desire and instead to cover another’s sin.

And if covering the sin is not the thing to be done, then, the Bible talks to that as well.  Now if we want to get good and mad most of us will cite the places in the Bible where Jesus made himself a whip and literally drove the money changers out of the temple or where the Israelites waged war against the people living in the land of Canaan. That’s all well and true, but I don’t think that what those passages are driving at is how to convert a money changer or how to show a Canaanite their error.  The purpose of those passages is to show GOD’s holiness and HIS intolerance of sin.  In several places Satan is referred to as the accuser (see Rev 12:10).  As a general rule, I think it’s safe to say that satanic characteristics are not ones that we should espouse.  I remember hearing a very good sermon on this (David and Bathsheba from the series: The Life of David 2009 by Dr. Timothy J. Keller ) where the pastor basically encouraged Christians to approach sin the way Nathan did with David.  In other words, we should not accuse in a manner that inclines the other person to dig their heels in and sink deeper into sin, but we should approach it lovingly, almost winsomely.  When Nathan came to David, he did so in such a way that David’s own mouth accused himself. David identified the sin, all Nathan had to do was bring God’s word.  We should want to see a sinner turn from their sin, and if this is truly our motivation, we should use the means most effective for doing it.  The result, of course, in Davids case was Psalm 51.

Now that’s effective.