October Compassion Share & Tell

Compassion Share & Tell

Last month, I introduced a new thing here on my blog, Compassion Share & Tell! Each month, I want to be able to share with my readers what I am sending to my sponsored and correspondence Compassion kids. In return, I am hoping that each one of you will share what you are sending to your Compassion kids! Also, this will be a great way to help us all be accountable to each other, making sure we write to our kids on a regular basis.

So here is what I put together for this month:

printable ornaments First, I printed off the printable Christmas ornaments from Compassion’s Second Friday Letter Writing Club Pinterest board. (This is a great board to follow! {wink!}) It took a bit of time to cut out all of the ornaments, six in each set.

ornaments Since I happen to have a laminating machine (found one really cheap at Costco), I put each ornament through the laminator, then cut them out….again. If you don’t have a laminator, you can just as easily cover these with clear contact paper.

Since we can’t send a lot of ribbon in our mailings, I did hole punch each ornament near the top, then tied a bit of ribbon to just one of the ornaments in each set. Then each set of ornaments went into a ziploc bag. On the outside of the bag, I placed a label. I print out a sheet of labels with my name and sponsor number, as well as my child’s name and sponsor number. This makes things go a little quicker when you are sending multiple items at one time.

Christmas letter Since I typed out my letters last month, I wanted to handwrite my letters this month. So I went on a search for some printable Christmas stationary. Here is what I wrote in each of the letters:

Dear Lina (or Abner, or Victor),

It is only October here, but by the time you receive this letter, it might be Christmas! For Christmas, our family likes to decorate a Christmas tree with many ornaments. I am sending some ornaments to you. These ornaments all have Bible verses to remind us that Jesus is our Savior.

I have a couple of questions for you:

  1. Do you have a favorite Christmas song?
  2. What special Christmas traditions are there in your country?

I am still spending a lot of time studying the book of Ephesians. One verse from last week was from Ephesians 4:7 - “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”

You are a special person, created to do amazing things because God loves you!

And I love you too!

I stapled the ziploc bag to the back of each of the letters, folded the letters, and placed all the letters in a 6x9-inch manila envelope to mail. So for just a little bit of time, and a little bit of money, my October letters are on their way!

Are you ready to join in?

Here are the rules:

  • Link up by posting your blog post URL- not just the blog URL
  • Visit other blogs and leave comment love.
  • I reserve the right to remove any links that don’t fit the link up theme or that I find inappropriate

Blog hop will remain open until Friday, November 1, 2013, so be sure to come back and share your blog post with us at the Linky Tools below:

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Capture Your 365

Here are a few of my photos from the latest Capture Your 365 Photo Challenge:

two become one
two become one

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/100 sec

Day 278 – Two Become One: the ‘task’ for this day was to combine two photos using Photoshop Elements or Photoshop. Since I don’t use either one of those programs, I thought it was rather appropriate that we were attending a wedding on this day. Perfect! While I didn’t get a photo of the bride and groom, I was able to capture this photo of their wedding cake table. Very cute cake topper don’t you think?

repetition
repetition

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/3200 sec

Day 280 – Repetition: In our little makeshift beach area in our backyard, I have a cute little table that we found at Hobby Lobby last year. It has a great repeating heart pattern.

mirror image
mirror image

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.0, 1/10 sec

Day 281 – Mirror Image: One of the things I love to do with this challenge is to take a little bit of creative license to make the photo prompt for the day work for me. Since I have started burning fall candles, I thought I would capture the reflection of the candle burning.

spider webs
spider webs

ISO 400, 55mm, f/5.6, 1/13 sec

Day 283 – Spider Webs: Now, I am sure there are a few spider webs in my home right now, but I decided to see if I could find any in our backyard. Looks like this spider has been quite busy!

Grab your October Photo Challenge list and start looking for your everyday photos!

Photo Treasure Hunt - Purple

For the past two weeks, my friend Jill and I  have been on a photo treasure hunt to find purple objects as we travel through our days. Purple is one color that I don’t really have a lot of in my home. Little snippets of it here and there…

water jug
water jug
apron fabric
apron fabric
tea cup
tea cup
toys
toys
tea cup
tea cup

Are you ready to join in on our weekly Photo Treasure Hunt? Here is what you need to know:

Link up by posting your blog post URL- not just blog URL

Link back to one of us (grab button if desired)

Visit other blogs and leave comment love.

Be sure to take note of next theme and start collecting more photos. Jill always has a fun transition photo, so be sure to visit

her blog

to see what the theme is for next week!

We reserve the right to remove any links that don’t fit the link up theme or that we find inappropriate

The Photo Treasure Hunt theme for this next week is….orange!! So get out there and find some fun orange items to share with us!! The next link up will be Tuesday, October 22nd.

Be sure to come back and share you blog link with us below:

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Learning to trust in Him

When I was little, I used to have terrible nightmares. Many of them were very weird and didn’t make any sense (I am sure a shrink would have a field day with me!). But one dream I would have repeatedly was one where I was falling, not knowing if someone would catch me or if I would land softly somewhere. Have you ever had one of those dreams?

Sometimes I think our trust in God is kind of like that falling dream. We want to take that leap of faith and trust Him fully in all things. I don’t know about you, but I kind of like being in control of things. I like to have a list, I like things a certain way, I like to know what is going to happen next, I like to plan things out. But when I live this way, am I being fully surrendered to how God wants to work in my life?

Eduardo
Eduardo

Back in May, when we decided I would take the leap of faith to go on this Compassion trip to Mexico, we knew that I would be visiting Eduardo. Then we found out that his center was being closed and there was no way for us to meet up with him.

So over the last few months, I have been in contact with our trip leader, e-mailing him once a month to see if he knows what centers we will be visiting so we could choose another child to sponsor, because ‘I want to know who we will be sponsoring before we go on this trip’. But is it really so important for me to know this before we go?

No

Yesterday morning at breakfast, we discussed this very issue. God knows what child needs us, and He knows who we need to sponsor. I believe this is one of those times when I need to let go of trying to control the situation and allow Him to be in control. Because He has the perfect plan in place already. And that is where I can have peace that surpasses all understanding…

countdown
countdown

So we leave in 86 days…on a journey that God has already worked out all the details…praying I learn to trust Him more on this journey…

Treats, Tortellini, and Chicken

This week, since the weather has started feeling more like fall here, I decided it was time to start working through my Recipes I would love to try board on Pinterest.

scarecrow treats ingredients
scarecrow treats ingredients

First up was Scarecrow Treats! Candy corns are one of my favorite fall treats, so combining them with some of these other yummy ingredients sounded like a hit to me. And it was! The original recipe calls for using a 15x10x1-inch jelly roll pan though. Guess I read over that part, because I made these in a 13x9-inch pan. This will work as long as you bake the cake part of the recipe just a little longer than the recipe calls for. Oh, and I did add just a few more candy corns than the recipe called for, just couldn’t resist…

chili tortellini
chili tortellini

Next, was Chili Tortellini! I just love making soups for dinner in the fall and winter. Soups always make the best leftovers for lunch the next day. This recipe came together so quickly and was so filling! I did change it up a bit. Since I wanted this to be more chili-like than soup-like, I did not add any chicken broth. Instead I added a can of water. Also, I used tomato sauce and diced tomatoes, as well as black beans and white beans. Since I doubled this recipe, I used pasta shells and cheese tortellini. My husband gave this recipe 5 stars!! It was that good!!

kitchen after dinner
kitchen after dinner

This last recipe took a little more effort than the other two combined (and used every counter available in my kitchen!)! One of the very first recipes I pinned on Pinterest (2 years ago!) was a recipe for Lemon Chicken. We all love the Orange Chicken at Panda Express, so I thought I would finally give this one a try. The flavors on this one were really good, but without help from my kids, there would have been no way I could have gotten this all together myself, unless I had eight arms. Oh well, at least I gave it a try, right?

Have you found any good Pinterest recipes lately?