Tweet My Farmhouse Friday updates have been basically nonexistent because there has been nothing to report. I joked the other day I feel like the house is going backwards not forwards because on top of the mile long to-do list of projects, we have 3 messy humans living in it, one of which is zero help in cleaning it up. He certainly knows how to make a mess though and has started a lovely habit of throwing his food everywhere when he is done eating. But I digress. This update is to say there is indeed an update. After a month, we have a pantry. I know this is a…
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Put Down the Expectations
Tweet My word for the year was authenticity. And right now, being authentic means admitting to myself (and ya’ll) my expectations set me up for a dark dive into struggle. See, buying your dream farmhouse with dreams to fix it up is very different from living in said dream farmhouse in need of fixing up. Pinterest boards full of Farmhouse decor are exciting, but ants covering your counters and bathrooms not working are not. I have spent hours aimlessly wandering or doing nothing because I am so overwhelmed by it all. Perhaps though the aimless wandering gave me ample time for much needed soul-searching. I realized in all this expectations…
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Stop Striving and Start Seeking
Tweet Every once in a while I miss reading actual books because you cannot highlight and write in audio books. I am a highlighter of books. If you ever borrow one from me, they will have marks and double underlines and “yes” and “Amen” written in them. When I switched to the world of audio books because I have a toddler who refuses to sit still, I find I miss being about to go back and reference lines or quotes from the books. Occasionally, something hits me so hard, I hit pause, reverse, and hit pause again to write down a line. Near the end of one of my most recent…
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You Are a Missionary
Tweet Growing up, the term missionary was reserved for a group of people who left the comforts of America to go serve a foreign people group. I believe God calls people to serve in remote parts of the world and missionary is a very accurate term for them. As a church, we should support and pray for them and continue to send people around the world to serve. But this Sunday, the pastor at my church asked us to consider the fact we were indeed all missionaries. If Jesus is Lord of your life, you are part of the mission of God. You are a missionary. Over and over in…
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Farmhouse Friday Update #1
Tweet One of my favorite grammatical tools is alliterations. Hence the title of my blog-Amanda’s Annotations and now my Farmhouse Friday Updates. Currently I have very few super fun and exciting updates, but I did include a few more pictures of the farmhouse and property for your perusing. The past two weeks have been full of a lot of troubleshooting, fixing problems, and spending money. This has been tough on us because J is a saver and I like to spend money on currently frivolous things like new curtains and paint. Alas, I have practiced great self-control as I pay for things like fixing the furnaces, mold remediation, appliances, and…
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Dreaded Daycare Drop-Off: 4 Tips for Success
Tweet For most of the H’s first year of life, my husband handled daycare drop-off. I will admit, I didn’t realize quite how awesome this was until he got a new job and daycare drop-off become my job. Most of the time, I love being a working mom, but man, some days or most days, daycare drop-off is tough. There was something about saying goodbye to H at home while he was eating breakfast with his daddy that made going to work a little easier. Dropping him off in a room full of other sometimes crying children is not easy. But after several months of being solely responsible for drop-off,…
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The Story of a City Mouse and a Country Mouse
Tweet Aseop’s Fables were some of my favorites as a child and the story of the city mouse and the country mouse ranked near the top. While I didn’t grow up in a huge city, I am through and through a city mouse. My dream for the longest time was to move to a big city, sell my car, and live in a cute little studio apartment overlooking the busy streets. And then this city loving girl fell in love with a country loving boy. This turned out to be handy when I moved into a downtown apartment and had mice. One night I perched myself on top of my…
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It Starts with Sacrifice
Tweet In September of last year, my dear husband and I looked at a house. It was a big white farmhouse on three acres and we immediately fell in love. And I mean in love. We started talking and dreaming and pinning ideas on a secret Pinterest board. The house was a foreclosure so in our budget and although we were not looking for a house, this house was perfect. It had almost every detail we wanted in a house. It also had a lot of details we didn’t want like mold and mice. But nevertheless, we moved forward. Did you catch above we looked at it in September?…
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Love-Colored Glasses
Tweet The other day I saw a post on Facebook complaining about how awful the city I live in is and several people agreed with the comment. According to the post, it’s a violent, drug-ridden town and you should be afraid to leave your house. Now, I will give you for instance, that our city has been on several top 10 lists for worst place to live, fattest city, most unhappy etc. While I am not entirely sure where this data comes from and am sure not everyone in my city is the nicest person you will ever meet, these lists and the above Facebook post are poor representations of…
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The Best Chocolate Cake
Tweet A few months ago, after a period of some significant health struggles, I cut gluten and dairy out of my diet. The transition wasn’t terribly awful, but it has been a constant source of lessons in self-control, self-care, and humility. I hate asking other people to accommodate me so much so that I spent a lot of money on a lot of tests to tell me what I already knew. I needed to cut the gluten and dairy. But hey, now I have a doctor to blame my extra fussiness on right? In all seriousness, it had been a rough season of mothering, working, volunteering, and struggling every day…