My Holy Moses Score Booklist

Yesterday I stopped by one of the local thrift stores for "just a minute" and came away with 2 boxes of books! I usually always find a few good ones but never have I left with a cart FULL of them! I was so thrilled I thought I might share them here. I love to see what others are reading and I am known for snooping on bookshelves everywhere I go. I also have a habit of trying to see what books are in little inset pictures of ads. I can't help myself. I tend to lean towards reference books and childrens books and of course classics. I don't get too many fiction books for myself. So for those fellow book aficionados, here you go.

Now instead of making you squint and try to see all of the titles, I'm going to break it up into groups for you! Aren't I nice?

This is a neat set I have been wanting for awhile. I read the original book Simple Abundance by Sarah ban Breathnach years ago. Now there is a daybook (hb), companion workbook(large pb), and a study book(hb).

I just LOVE Cheryl Harness books! Excellent illustrations and information. Great childrens books.

This big book is brand new and will be perfect for the newest addition to our little one room schoolhouse.

And note the "teacher approved" label in the lower right hand corner of the cover! That sure makes me feel better!?! :-)

Here are assorted books for my littles including a sweet Precious Moments bible for my Lydia bug. Can't imagine paying full price for books that will get so much wear and tear. And they are all in excellent condition...for now. ;-)

This oversized hardback book is brand new and is a memory book filled with beautiful watercolor paintings. Every page is to be filled out with information about my life, my mom's life, and my daughter's life. It will be wonderful for a certain daughter's birthday next year. I just hope I can remember enough to fill in all of the pages!

This is a stack I am particularly excited about! All excellent condition including the matching full set of The Chronicles of Narnia!

Another stack of excellence! And do you see that 2003 Taste of Home cookbook? We collect those for the girl's hopechests. Also a hardback brand new I Spy book (the kids love those) and a Cartooning book with some of the best instruction I've seen for two of my kids. Details on the rest below

An inside peak of the top book; The Classic Herb Cookbook

What I like about this are the full page spreads of photographs and detailed information on each edible herb.

Poetry for Young People is a series I highly recommend. Great illustrations to accompany the text throughout.

 

Always a score when I find any DK Eyewitness books. It looks brand new!

My kids (especially the boys) cannot get enough of Stephen Biesty cross-section books. They check them out at the library all of the time! And these two huge oversize books are seriously in brand new condition.

Here are more goodies for me!

At the top of the pile are three quote books and everyone knows how I love my quotes! I especially love the one full of garden thoughts, so inspiring!

These are great standards to collect for the self help section of everyone's personal library.

For Men Only by Shaunti Feldhahn(great series for couples)

Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson (LOVE all of her books!)

Keeping Our Children's Hearts by Steve and Terry Maxwell (of MOTH fame)

boy meets girl with CD by Joshua Harris(gotta plan ahead!)

The Heart of Anger by Lou Priolo (highly recommend)

Five L♥ve languages of children by Gary Chapman(met him once-very nice guy)

Brand new hardback and the girls just love his stuff, not that our dogs are like his though! :-)

One of my favorite titles from my youth. Classic hardback with lovely ribbon bookmark.

A thick compendium by William J. and while I was flipping through it, I didn't recognise half of the books he recommends! That is hard to do; stump me on books so I'm excited to read through it and discover many more title to search for!

I have more deals from previous trips to share but I'll save them for later. So I am wondering how much everyone thinks I paid for my Holy Moses Score of books?? If I counted correctly, I've listed 46 books. Let me know what your guess is in the comments and we'll see if I really got a deal or not! But don't do what hubby does and under price it all. I did pay more than say 5.00 for all of them! No bursting my bubble of pride allowed! :-)

Too much freedom??

Is it possible to have too much freedom? I'm not exactly sure but after spending the last week thinking about all of the different freedoms I have, it seems that there are more than anyone realizes. I wonder if we as Americans deserve our freedoms if we don't appreciate, respect and honor them. In any case, I have enjoyed my week of personal contemplation and I have a renewed respect for the enviable position most of us find ourselves in here in the USA. Even in my darkest moment of financial difficulty I have it better than 3/4 of the world. I can't remember a time when I couldn't express my faith, buy what I needed, or give my vote on a political matter. I have also begun to center my world view around lesser recognized freedoms that are almost more important than the more obvious. Like personal freedom to have boundaries and say NO to people and things that would be a detriment to my life goals. Or how about the freedom that comes with getting out of debt? Owe no man....it's a worthy goal. To look beyond daily irritations and appreciate my abundant blessings. Not one of us can really complain.

We have the HBO miniseries John Adams and it's one of my all time favorites. Paul Giamatti does such a good job, but I'm biased because I ♥ Paul Giamatti. No matter how hard I try, I just can't  imagine living back then and accomplishing what they did. All I can do is read, watch, learn and remember. We also have a copy of David McCullough's 1776 the illustrated edition. Love it! And I hear it's being made into a miniseries as well. Can't wait! And as long as I have the freedom of owning books and videos, I will be getting them out every year for my family to learn and remember.

So I want to wish all of America a happy 4th and I pray we all take the time to understand what freedom really means. Here's a little youtube and even though it's on the "cheezy seen it a million times" side, it really doesn't get too old in my book. It's what the 4th is all about!
                                   

God Bless The USA

Freedom Week

For the next week I want to reflect on the freedoms in my life. There are so many that I just take for granted on most days without any thought. I want to remember what I have and to practice gratefulness in all areas of my life. It's just too darn easy to fall into the trap of expecting rights, that in light of history are actually hard earned privileges that can easily be taken away if I do not do my part in protecting and respecting them.Today I have been really thinking about my religious freedom. It is amazing to think about how it is possible in America to take part in any number of religious or spiritual groups without fear of harassment or being thrown in some horrible prison. And what makes my apathy about this even worse is that I've read countless books, watched numerous movies, and have even taught my kids lessons on the persecution that has happened through the ages. This is a subject that I am well acquainted with and yet on a daily basis I get so caught up in insignificant details that my mind is often blinded to the pure joy I should have in just being able to express my beliefs in whatever way I choose. What a beautiful thing. Something that should produce a daily happiness and yet I seem to rob myself of it all too often. So I am on a mission to regularly remind myself of the wonderful freedom I have. I am striving to remember the fragility of religious freedom and how very quickly it can be taken away. Here is what I'm going to use to ramp up our family's awareness of other cultures and religions. We have this beautiful book from 1944 to help us realize that other religious groups besides Christianity helped in the building of our country and I like to read aloud from this each July. And one of the best ways to help keep our gratitude is to delve into any number of  resources on one of the many world wars that have been fought over religion. In school this past year we studied the middle ages and my goodness are there plenty of examples of religious persecution. Corrie Ten Boom's life has always been a favorite of mine also. It seems that every year I find new stories and biographies to learn from other people's lives and trials. To keep this freedom of religious expression involves constant practice of discipline to focus, remember and be grateful. It is not a simple thing to be able to go to church or synagogue or to even be an atheist in most of the world. In so many countries none of those would be an option. I wonder what I would do? I wonder how many of us would be able to hold up under intense persecution?

First Amendment to the constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

The Glory of a Deal

I drag hubby out quite often to garage sales. Occasionally he has to come with me to the thrift store. He hates thrift stores. Really can't stand them. He says they smell weird and finds it creepy that they sell underwear. But, I have to say that I love other people's junk. Maybe not the underwear, but I love finding something useful out of a pile of stuff someone else thought was garbage. I don't mind washing off the dirt of a perfectly good coat or drinking tea out of a lovely old tea cup that has been used before. I imagine stories behind all of these things. Especially when I go to estate sales. I can see a person's whole life laid out. I suppose it could seem sad and disrespectful to traipse through someones house and haggle over their possessions, but not for me. I like to think I am honoring their memory by giving whatever little treasure I find a new home. We are so wasteful in America. Wasteful and prideful. I don't care if I can afford to go and pay full price for all my wants and needs. Not that I can, but I'm thinking theoretically. I think it would be wonderful if everyone would learn to reuse things. It's one of the best ways to go "green" which seems to be all the rage these days.  So without further ado, here is the latest and greatest in my 2010 thrifting adventure...

Pacific Trail down filled (machine washable) puffy winter coat .25 cents!!!

And it's for ♥me♥

3 beautiful tea cups Royal Albert bone china, and one Japanese

3.00 each

I Love Thriftiness

Look at my lovely thrifting finds:

A beautiful 3 piece tiered glass set

My new winter cookie plate

A special plate for special little ones

tea cup #1

tea cup #2

tea cup #3

And I have to say, the tea cups were the best deal! Bone china with no nicks for .80 per cup & saucer set!!

Now, if I were to be interested in lowering my carbon footprint, thrifting is an excellent choice! :)

Exercise Update

I am officially in phase 2 of my "lose the jello" exercise regimen. For all of February I will be doing strength training along with my yoga stretching. I have really enjoyed this so far. It has not been hard core crazy workouts that burn millions of calories, but I have been able to be consistent and not give up. That is important, making something work well enough to stick with it. I've learned this the hard way with so many failed crazy plans under my belt. An interesting side not is I have found my mental attitude is better since I have been exercising. Now if I can just get my snarkiness under control I will be much pleased with myself.

I am also working diligently at making healthier food choices. This is probably the most frustrating part for me. I used to be great at eating healthy and I never, ever had to watch calories. That's what I get for bragging about my metabolism. So now I am addicted to cupcakes and cookies and pie and I really don't want to give them up. I am trying to eat healthy during the week, and then reward myself with the good stuff on the weekend. Friday night dinner should always include carbs and sugar! Now since it is still the weekend, I am off to make a double batch of: 

           Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

2/3 cup butter

2/3 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups oats

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup craisins

2/3 cup white chocolate chips
2/3 cup Macadamia nuts

bake @ 375* for 10-12 minutes

FPU

I am excited once again about some new directions my life is taking this year. Because a nice friend (thank you very much Carrie) sent an email coupon for Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, I decided to give it a go. It was on my to-do list, but I really wasn't going to tackle it until the Fall. But, after I bought it online, it showed I had only 16 weeks to finish the course. Crap! So now I'm in whether I like it or not. It will end up being a good thing since I always work better under stress though! Don't we all?  I've already done lesson #1. I'm suppose to be journaling so I am starting a special category for my thoughts on money. I am also suppose to find a "buddy" or "buddies" for accountability and encouragement so if there is anyone who wants to be my buddy, let me know!

Right off the bat, in lesson 1, I got depressed. I had heard most of it before, years ago from Larry Burkett, and it seemed sad that I had to be relearning this information. What really got me was the compound interest segment. That is amazing! One person saving 2,000 per year between age 19-26 (a total of 8 years @ 12%)equals 2,288,996 at age 65. Second person saves 2,000 per year between the age 27-65 (a total of 38 years @ 12%) equals 1,532,166 at age 65. What a difference!  When I was younger, it seemed so hard to save a little and I thought for sure that there would be years to save etc... Now, years later, I'm not that much better off. Frustrating! Dave is right when he says things WILL happen and they can be devestating when you're not prepared. He also said it's never too late so I'm going to go with that. I know I will regret it 10 years from now if I don't work on it now and I'm trying really hard to stay away from pity parties. They get so boring after awhile!

So here I go on yet another adventure towards my future. I have decided to quit waiting for my ship to come in and start canoeing my way out to the sea of financial peace. If anyone cares to join me, it would be a good, good thing. Remember, a small bit out of a tax refund invested in this course would pay for itself with the moneywiseness (my own imaginative word) you would come away with!