Why I love to repurpose...

I love to repurpose. It's so much fun. I love the creativity it requires, and having something beautiful that I have made. But more than any of that, I love to repurpose because I think Jesus loves to repurpose.

He loves to find us right in the mess we're in. He loves to dig us out from the bottom of the pile. He loves to find us in all our ripped, torn, grease-stained glory.

Man, we were expensive.

His sacrifice puts my dollar rack purchases into perspective.

My point is, I wasn't worth much.
But he paid everything for my mess.

Because he saw something. A splash of colour. A beautiful piece of fabric just sewn into an awful shape.
He sees the potential. He has a trained eye. He knows what he can do with us.

He has to scrub our stains, sew up our holes, rip out our proud padded shoulders :)
He has to pull out his seam ripper and carefully pull apart those ugly spots where someone else put us together. He does it so much better.

He pulls us apart and shapes us differently. He hems us up a little, fixes up the sleeves, adds a few ruffles.
He gives us new life, new meaning, he repurposes us.

And then he looks at us with the same joy I look at my projects with and says "See how beautiful you were supposed to be?"

Just like it feeds my soul to create something beautiful, it delights His Father heart to keep working to perfect me.

I'm so grateful to Him.
And so, I continue my search for repurpose.

well, I had fun

My pirate name is:

Captain Anne Flint

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

#3 MJ

There are plenty of nice pictures of this guy, but I thought these would be more appropriate. A few lovely self-portraits.

Miles is...well...I don't really know how to describe him if you don't know him...

He lives to fish. No seriously. It's like he speaks this whole alternate language that nobody in the universe speaks except people who fish.

For example - "A good way to trout fish is to get a woolly bugger and attach it to a gang troll, then you troll at about 5 miles an hour."

And "Buzz bombs are quite heavy lures that are mostly good for jigging. They're mostly for salmon and rock cod, and sometimes you might catch a small halibut with them."

I may have quoted him incorrectly, my fishing lingo could use a little work.

He lives as if his entire life is on a comedy show. He's good at being hilarious. He'll strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere. He's super charismatic.

If he doesn't grow up to be a comedian, he'll probably be an entrepreneur. He's been selling stuff his whole life, from beans and tomatoes from the garden, to wooden carvings, to painted rocks and bouquets of greenery from the yard. One time he set up a stand at the road to sell buckets of water which he collected from the potholes in our driveway. When I asked him what they were for, he told me people could save money by buying it to water their plants with. He was charging $5 for a large gallon bucket.

Well, that's Miles.

Rebar Madness: Day 1

I have a wonderful challenge. I am going to attempt to cook my way through the entire Rebar cookbook. I'm not sure how long it will take me, and I'm not going to worry about that part...let's just say it will be less than ten years...or so. It'll be like Julie and Julia, only Rebar and Emma...I guess. ANYWAY,

My first recipe was breakfast this morning. I made fried eggs and potatoe latkes with hollandaise sauce. It was actually suppose to be poached eggs, but we don't have an egg poacher and the egg I tried to poach without one kind of exploded.

The hollandaise recipe had dill in it and it was TO DIE FOR.












Paired with a yummy blueberry smoothy, this was an excellent breakfast.

For supper I made 'Lotusland Linguini'. Super delicious stir fry with bok choy, snow peas and peanut sauce...ahhh...

My favourite part is that it was so colourful! I love having a rainbow in the kitchen :)

A very tasty day all round :)

#2. Flip Dawg

Aaron is my oldest brother. He's been my best friend since forever. At 3 and 5 we played endless games of our own invention. Our two imaginations worked magic together. He was an excellent little brother, almost always willing to go along with whatever his bossy big sister decided :) We're still bff's. We're in the same choir this year and it has been super fun to see him loving the things I love best too.

He's insanely talented. His art is incredible. He spends hours upstairs creating stuff out of lego, which he has adored since he was old enough to hold it.

The only pictures I can find of him are wearing his perma-toque...hmmm....but underneath it, he has fantastic hair.

I can't wait until we're grown up and get to be the cool adult siblings to our younger kiddies' friends :)

This dude rocks my socks.

1000 gifts - I'm in

Ann Voskamp of 'A Holy Experience' has written this book '1000 gifts', with a challenge to find 1000 gifts and record them. Pen them down publicly and in your memory. So, I begin.

1. My sweet Jesus. The lover of my soul, and the giver of life. I am ever so grateful for him.

I will take the next 6 days so post #2-7 :) I'll give you a hint. They all live in my house.

Scrap happy tree pillow

I got the idea for this super cute pillow from Cluck Cluck Sew. I am not great at following directions (hehe) and am more one to see the picture and then go make one on my own. If that's you, feel free to ignore the rest of this completely. If you like directions, read on :)


The infamous scrap happy box. I think I might move them out of this little storage unit thing and put them in a basket.

You will need:
- Your scrap happy box, whatever it may be :)
- A pillow form
- Fabric for the background


1. Start by picking out the fabrics you want to use and cutting the petal shapes. I cut 16, I think...mine were about 2 inches long and one inch wide, and in a petalish shape. I'm really not good at this...

2. Find a suitable brown fabric to be your trunk, and cut...er...a trunk shape out of it. My brother bought this lovely camo to sew himself a case for his flyrod. No joke. I never dreamed I would be using it for a project of mine...


3. Cut two squares of whatever you want your background to be about 1 inch around bigger than your pillow-form. If it has been sitting in a box for awhile like mine, you may want to iron it.

4. Arrange your petals on your fabric however you want them and pin them down on one of your squares.

5. This step is optional but I highly recommend it :)

6. Set the gauge wrong on your sewing machine and make a mess of your pillow front. A few times. Wait, that's just me.

7. Using the zig-zag stitch if you have one, sew the petals down.

8. And...the step where I forgot to take pictures. There's always at least one. Ah well. Sew your two squares together right sides in on three sides, turn it right-side-out, put your pillow form into it and sew it nicely shut.

9. Tada! Put your pillow in its new decorative spot and take a picture. 

10. Well, there really is no 10th step, but 10 steps is a good number. I know! Eat some ice cream.