So here's to catching up!
Day Seven: Shopping
One thing I am proud of this year is that I have successfully kept a budget all year. I have been keeping receipts each month and then at various points in the month, I clean out my wallet and enter the numbers into an Excel sheet. It helps me see where I am spending more money and how to do better the next month. It also keeps me more aware when I am spending money. So for shopping I thought I'd share a picture of the receipts that I need to clean out of my wallet from the past week or so. Christmas shopping mainly! (I don't always shop at Walmart by the way. Those are just the two on top.)
As I was downloading pictures from my phone I realized I really had another shopping picture there. I already shared it with you all, but there's another chance to shop this weekend. The Ceramics department is having their holiday sale. I just might make a stop over there on Saturday morning. I've technically finished all of my Christmas shopping, but it's never too early to start on birthdays for the year! Plus, I love ceramics. :)
Day Eight: Wrapping Paper
Another thing I am proud to say is that I have all of my presents wrapped. It helps that this year I have a place to keep them and I have space to spread out and wrap them. In the past there just hasn't been enough room in the dorm room to store many presents or to wrap them. Normally I use newspaper but since I bought wrapping paper this year for some reason, I wrapped them in wrapping paper. There is something nice about the uniformity of the gifts. To add a creative flare, I used puff paint to write everyone's name on the gifts.
Now you may be wondering what this particular gift says. It says Merhap Birthmas Marcus. It's a combination of Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday. My younger brother's birthday is on December 24. I know, poor guy. Even worse, for some reason my family always opens gifts on Christmas Eve. He's a good sport about it though. I typically do not combine his presents, but since I bought him a rather expensive gift this year that comes in two pieces, I decided to combine them. He'll laugh at my word play.
Day Nine; Peace
Peace seemed like such a hard challenge to find and capture in a photograph. Then a verse from Sunday morning's sermon at church came back to me. It's the start of a letter that Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica. I've always admired Paul's letters and I wish we still wrote letters to each other like he did to his friends at various churches. Oftentimes Paul starts his letters with this phrase "Grace and peace to you". The pastor on Sunday pointed out that the word order is important to note. First we receive God's grace, which means that we receive forgiveness for disobedience or selfishness or whatever it is that we did even though we don't really deserve to be forgiven. Then we feel the peace that comes from receiving that grace. There is a calm after doing that. On Sunday I experienced that peace. I have been feeling for a while that I needed to officially join Bethel, the church I have been attending for five years. I kept making excuses as to why it was fine to just attend and not join. Sunday, I stopped making excuses and was obedient to God. I joined and I definitely felt peace. No longer was that decision eating at me.
Well this has been a long post. I'll try not to get so far behind again. I've enjoyed reading all of your posts. I'm excited to see more glimpses into your lives. Farmer's Daughter, Captain, and I were talking last night that we should create our own photo challenge for another month. We were thinking we could each add six items to a list and we'd have 30 things to find. Maybe in a couple of months, we could do another challenge. For now,
Granny Eyre.
