New River Youth Symphony and Choir

The girls participated in the New River Youth Symphony and Choir concert over the weekend. It was a terrific experience and very well done. The youth in this symphony and choir are ages 8 - 24. Some of the kids are homeschooled and some attend public school.





The program was started by a few moms who wanted the youth of Southern West Virginia to have opportunities to be in such an organization and learn to play together as a group. Our directors have volunteered their time over the past two years. There is no parent organization that is supporting us. This is just a group of young people who are dedicated to bettering themselves and their skills and parents who are dedicated to bringing the children on a weekly basis for practice. The youth come from as many as 5 counties in Southern WV.





Below is a video of my girls (being the proud momma that I am) doing a trio after a week of laryngitis.





If you would like to hear the entire concert, a CD is available for $7. The concert was approximately 2 hours long. We will ask for $3 to help cover the shipping cost, but the $7 will go directly to the NRYSC. A receipt can be provided upon request.





Enjoy the trio and take care,


Elizabeth

Hey, Hey, Janet Faye!

Here is Evie pulling your name, Janet Faye, out of the cup. You're the winner! Please contact me with your mailing address and we will ship your coiled basket full of goodies to your door (or post office box).



Thanks to all of you who entered to win. I had a lot of fun with this and will be doing a drawing approximately once a month. To answer some of your questions, this basket is a coiled basket. I used a stripped fabric, wrapped around a cotton clothesline type of rope and stitched it on my 30+ year old sewing machine. The braided rug idea might work, but it would probably be a much more time consuming, finger puncturing process. If it works, let me know.

Take care,

Elizabeth

For The Beauty of The Earth

Do ya'll remember this old hymn? Many people no longer sing the old hymns, but this one has been on my heart this morning, so I thought I would share with you.

For the beauty of the earth, For the glory of the skies,

For the love which from our birth, Over and around us lies;

Christ our God, to Thee we raise This our hymn of grateful praise.

For the wonder of each hour Of the day and of the night,

Hill and vale and tree and flower, Sun and moon and stars of light;

Christ our God, to Thee we raise This our hymn of grateful praise.

May you glorify and praise the Lord with a heart full of gratefulness this weekend. Enjoy the beauty of the earth. He gave it to us to remind us of His love for us. Who wouldn't be grateful for that?

Elizabeth

Beautiful Bella

What a delight it has been to have Beautiful Bella with us recently. She is such a happy baby and it is a blessing to all of us to have a baby in the house again. Thought I would share a few of our favorite pictures with you all and let her daddy see how fun she is.

"So where did that Cheerio go?"

"I am so happy!"

"and you are too funny!"

We love little Bella and hope to have back really soon!

Take care,

Elizabeth

Back to School Give-A-Way

This week Money Saving Mom is holding her weekly link to free give-a-ways. I decided to participate and see what happens. So, what I am giving away is this basket pictured above. (doily not included)

The basket was handcrafted by this Mountain Momma and is full of all sorts of goodies. There is more included than what you can see in the picture, but it would be a great gift for a back to school college student or anyone, really.

If you would like to enter the drawing for this basket full of blessings, all you need to do is leave a comment at the end of the post. Your name will be entered once into the drawing. But, if you leave a link to this website on your blog, and leave me notice of having done so, your name will entered 5 times! Isn't that fun?

I will allow my five year old helper, Evie, draw a name from the hat on Monday, August 25, at 10:00 am. Leave enough information for me to be able to contact you that you have won. Or keep checking back on Monday.

Thanks for entering and have fun,
Elizabeth

Window Mistreatment Time

The Nester is hosting a window mistreatment party today and so I thought that I would show off my own creative mistreatment of my dining room windows.




If you notice, these mistreatments are not even on a rod. I didn't use a glue gun, I didn't sew anything, I just stripped the fabric and hung them up. Can you tell what I used?

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Yep, those are tea cup hooks that I screwed into the window frame, evenly spaced. Then to apply the fabric to the hooks, I used little tiny safety pins, also evenly spaced across the top of the fabric.

I like the over all effect, the off centered look and the ease with which I can take these down and put them back. Hope you enjoyed my idea of a good window mistreatment!

Take care,

Elizabeth

My Living Room

I have so many dear friends who have not gotten to visit me in my new home, yet. So, I decided to show a few pictures now and then of what you could expect to find here. Above is a dry sink that years ago my mother rescued from somebody's trash. She refinished it and eventually, I got it. I added the stencilling on the doors and the back splash. I love this piece of furniture. One thing you will notice in my home is that nothing really matches. It's all been given to us or rescued.

The dry sink sits in my living room and we use the inside for storing our cookbooks and some of our crafting supplies.

Below is the corner of our living room with the entertainment center. It was given to us by some very dear friends. They wanted a new one. Good for me.

The picture on the left side wall was left here in the house when we moved in. The candle sticks were bought at the Goodwill for $1.98 for the set. The wall art was made by moi and the Masai woman was purchased to sell in one of our booths but somebody knocked her over and broke her arm off. My mother glued it back. Then Amanda knocked her over again. Her arm broke off again. It was glued again. But I don't care, she's still pretty.

Now, in other news, be watching this blog, folks. On Monday, I will be participating in the "window mistreatment partay" that's going on over at The Nesting Place.

It promises to be a lot of fun. Later in the week, I will be giving away one of those "Baskets Full of Blessings" I have previously talked about. This will be also linked to from the Money Saving Mom website. It's going to be a great week.

Well, guess that's all for now. Thanks for your continued reading of the bits and pieces of my life.

Elizabeth