The good, the bad, and the blog

Earlier this month we hosted a Hymn Sing at our house. It's an event we do occasionally at our church where we come together to potluck and sing hymns together. We had chili, cornbread, cool weather, friends new and old, guitars and violins all crammed into our house and backyard...it was a sweet time.

As an adult i've really come to appreciate hymns. I love the lyrics, often so real and relatable. One of my favorites is Be Thou My Vision.

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best thought by day or by night
Waking or sleeping Thy presence my light

Be thou my wisdom and Thou my true word
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord
Thou my great Father, I, Thy true son
Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee one

Riches I heed not nor man's empty praise
Thou mine inheritance now and always
Thou and thou only first in my heart
High King of heaven my treasure Thou are

I'll admit, I often don't act this way. I often fail to put God first and am distracted by this world sometimes. I often don't find my full satisfaction in Him. There's some honesty.

These lyrics resonate with me and pray that they will ring true in my heart more and more.

On the conversation of lyrics, I made this for my friend's 1 year-old baby girl. I saw this quote on Pinterest and recreated it in the colors of her room. Hopefully these words she'll take to heart some day.

And I don't know if I ever shared this, but I did another painting a long time ago in the same style but for our master bedroom. It's Zechariah 4:6.

It's nothing fancy, but I like that I can also make a piece of art the exact colors I want and be picky, ha! And it's a good reminder to wake up to and go to sleep seeing every day.

So David and I are a little crazy, and we decided to paint the exterior of the house...ourselves!

Our house color before was fine - a nice neutral gray. However, we noticed it was starting to fade in spots and it needed a fresh coat. So we figured if we were going to repaint it, why not change it to something different and add some color?

I'll admit that I wasn't thrilled with the idea of painting it. It sounded like waaaay too much work and knowledge of a paint sprayer that I did not possess. But David was gung-ho about it. He had visions of telling legendary stories to our future children of how we painted it ourselves (no joke, it was cute). And once we got professional quotes that were several thousand dollars, I came around to DIY-ing it.

Luckily we have a friend who is very handy and already owned all the equipment we would need. So with a lot of his help, and a few other friends, we were able to do it! A very big thank you shout out to them.

Before:

After: finished front side, except that upstairs window... and we haven't put all the shutters back up yet.

When we were planning we worried it might be a little too bright for our old historic neighborhood, but we absolutely are in love with the color (Mesmerize by Behr). And so far, our neighbors seem to love it as well (whew!).