boxes on a budget...

wrapping paper from hobby lobby + ribbon from walmart = precious gift boxes! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

so i can't cook. i can, however, whip up lots of fun recipes from my family fun magazine and turn food into festive holiday animals... like this turkey made of fruit, cheese and bell peppers. :) i also know how to make cookies that look like spiders, turkeys and reindeer. have some family fun this holiday season!

childhood revisited. no... make that relived.

i'm not sure how exactly santa is going to get this one off his sleigh, but i suppose that's his problem. i've been waiting a long time for the day my children would get their very own playhouse and admittedly, i am probably more excited about it than they will ever be. i've blogged before about the playhouse of my childhood. it was, like most other things from my childhood, absolutely enchanting in my distorted memories and a pitiful, run-down, spooky shed-like structure in the reality of adulthood.

distorted memories. the phrase immediately evokes the mental image of my pony. i had a pony. a real live pony. every little girl's dream. this was a pony that - in my memories - had a beautiful, smooth, thick coat of chocolate brown fur. it was like a real, live version of 'my little pony' toys. and then, in adulthood, i found a picture of the poor, pitiful creature that somewhat resembled a pony. in the photo, i'd already outgrown the pony and my sister was perched atop its saddleless back while it ate loaf bread scattered on the ground. its coat was more multicolored and graying with a scraggly, unkempt mane. this was clearly not a pony it its prime. no. this was definitely a geriatric pony. maybe thats why my great-grandparents got a great deal on it. i never knew.

when we bought our first house, i immediately had plans of rescuing my old playhouse. those are the plans that would later evolve into rescuing my childhood house, but i've already blogged about that and am consequently, still working on letting it go. i had visions of it repainted, reshingled, with a new front door, new windows, a nice little window box. we drove out to leeds and found it in a neighboring, abandoned yard. the property was for sale and the realtor said i was free to take it. we later found out the foundation was so rotted that it was impossible to move without it falling apart. in hindsight, this was the point when i let go of the playhouse and set my sights on the actual house.

now that both are no longer options of restoration, i've moved on to recreating similar things in my own children's lives. minus the geriatric pony. i just don't have the yard space.

i hope they will spend as many hours and make as many memories in their playhouse as i did in mine. and i can guarantee you one thing: they will not come back in three decades to find it rotting in a neighboring yard. no. mama's gonna keep up the resoration on this one, remembering and reliving my own childhood along the way. :)

Freedom. Unbelievable?

i don't have time to blog. i really don't. not today. not for the last twenty days or so. but i have to. right here. right now. if not, my head may explode. i don't know why i have such harsh reactions to [what i perceive to be] a paradoxical mix of both hypocrisy and ignorance, but i cannot hold it in.

i get this email today. it's the one that urges me to boycott muslim stamps (or - in reality - usps stamps that celebrate islamic holidays). why? because that's so, um, what? UN-American? i don't think so. it's UN-Christian, certainly. it isn't the content of the email that is so disturbing, but the fact that i know so many people that forward it to their entire address book and add their own personal comments like "UN-believable"... religious freedom, unbelievable? maybe. but not un-constitutional. seems some of us would prefer that it was.

the reply button clicked automatically. before i have even thought through an adequate reponse, my fingers were burning across the keyboard. i was born in birmingham. raised in leeds and then in vincent. i am an alabama girl by birth and by heart. right down to the baptist in me. all this to say, most people forget (or are oblivious) to the fact that i am also half Afghan and consequently, have an entire family of Afghan immigrants on the west coast, many of which remain members of the Muslim faith. it wasn't enough to 'reply to all', i've got to blog it before i'm satisfied and my frenzied brain can find peace. fingers unleashing key by key, i typed:

I hate to be the proverbial bearer of bad news, but Muslims are Americans, too. Why is it we only want freedom of religion only IF it's OUR religion? Not all muslims are radicalists or terrorists. I know this because I am HALF-Afghan. My own father was born and raised in Herat, Afghanistan, raised in the Muslim faith and did not convert to Christianity until his thirties. The vast majority of my father's family are still members of the Muslim faith... as well as American citizens.

Not only are many Muslims in fact Americans - many American soldiers of Muslim faith are dying for our country and fighting against the radicalism that WE perpetuate.

Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan , whom former Secretary of State Colin Powell invoked in his recent political endorsement is a prime example:

Khan was a 20-year-old soldier from Manahawkin, N.J. , who wanted to enlist in the Army from the time he was 10. He was an all-American boy who visited Disney World after he completed his training at Fort Benning, Ga. , and made his comrades in Iraq watch "Saving Private Ryan" every week. He was also a Muslim who joined the military, his father said, in part to show his countrymen that not all Muslims are terrorists.

"He was an American soldier first," said his father, Feroze Khan . "But he also looked at fighting in this war as fighting for his faith. He was fighting radicalism."

As Christians, we ourselves have to become wary of selective moral outrage. Members of the Muslim faith, which include close family members of my own, are NOT going to be drawn to Christ in us if this is how we choose to share the gospel.

Standing on my soapbox,
N

blogapolooza.

i'm tired. halloweenapolooza marks the beginning of my "busy season". with the holidays and both of the kids' birthdays colliding within a six week period, sanity takes a holiday.

someday soon, i promise, i'm going to sit and have a blogapolooza, but right now, i'm up to my eyeballs in cardboard boxes and ballet classes and the like. (not to mention this part time gig of mine.)

i've received a few worried inquiries, but i'll be back to the blog very soon. i'm gathering a plethora of materials in the proverbial school of hard knocks and learning some of those long overdue life lessons. i'll share the wealth of wisdom soon. blog by blog.