Changes come slowly, but they are worth the wait...

 

Hello dear friends, I'm Jennifer. 

When I was growing up everyone called me Jennifer, and all my life I've loved my name. I used to think that was because my Mum named me and it must have been very special to her. 

She died in a car accident, aged 21, just one month after my 3rd birthday, so holding on to the name she gave me was special, and that's how I'd always thought of it - special, a gift of love from her that no-one could take away. 

Then in high school all my new friends called me Jenny, and I let them because it sounded much nicer than when the teachers addressed me as Jennifer in their gruff and serious voices. I wasn't a naughty student, but I had chronic migraines and needed to spend a lot of time in sick bay if I wasn't already home at Nana's resting quietly. The teachers thought I was pretending and labelled me as such so their tone with me was never all that pleasant.

The years passed by and 'Jenny' stuck, except that my husband always introduced me as Jennifer and when he said my name I felt that special love again. 

Lately this has been on my mind a lot, or perhaps it's been simmering in my thoughts for longer...time is an odd thing these days, it flows past like a running stream and weeks become months before you realise. Yet, this longing within me to go back, back to my full love-gifted name, has become so important that I decided to change how I address myself here and elsewhere. 

(honeyeater cooling down under the sprinkler, beside the raised garden beds)

When I made this decision to use my full name again, another aspect of who I am was magnified in my thoughts. The homemaker. 

For twelve years I've been designing, beginning just after my 50th birthday - who would have imagined a homeschool mum would embark on a career such as this when she's had no lessons or training, when she'd only picked up a needed and rotary cutter at age 46? Only God can do things like that; so unexpected, and not a path I had ever for-seen in my future.

(this green tree frog lives in my oregano pot, high off the ground where the cane toads can't hurt him)

As I shared a couple of months ago, I've begun to wind back my business to far less that what it was last year, leaving social media and spending more time immersed in the joys of homemaking again. My days are quieter now, there's a calm and peace in my soul which I've never quite experienced before. I still work on Elefantz Designs but its only an hour or two a day, and some days barely at all.

Home calls my heart when I open my eyes each morning and my heart really lifts with joy as I go about the chores, following natural rhythms, becoming more productive and alive with each passing week. I never really thought about 'enjoying' the previously disliked chores like scrubbing the shower or cleaning the oven, but now I do. I smile as I vacuum, sing when I'm dusting, and feel the deepest pleasure ironing my husband's work clothes. It seems as though a veil has been lifted from my homemaker heart.

(little Honey Cakes cooling as I make sage and onion stuffing for the Sunday roast chicken dinner with Blossom, Ross and the children today)

Don't misunderstand me, I was born to be a homemaker, wife and mother, and though I thrived in that environment, I don't think I felt the depth of gratitude or delight that I do today. Those emotions have magnified considerably this year, and continue to abound in both mental attitude and physical ability. It surprises me constantly how the more I work around home and in the garden, the less pain I feel in my body and the better I sleep at night. 

(a large linen dress found on the clearance rack for a few dollars became a beautifully soft bed cushion and apron on Saturday)

I'm swimming again every afternoon in the pool, and where this used to exhaust me, now it invigorates my body and gives me a second wind of energy to prepare a nourishing dinner before my husband arrives home.

If only I could express to you the change of mindset all this has brought about, and the numerous benefits mentally, physically and spiritually, but also in self discipline, attitude and self-assessment. 

(the finished cushion also used recycled buttons; perfect addition to the autumnal coverlet)

There's also been another change. I've started a new Instagram account, but this time it's not business. Now it's all about home life; in fact I've called it Home Life With Jennifer. 

I did begin an anonymous account to stay in the loop with my daughter Blossom, and my husband, and did not imagine doing any more than that with it. However, when you remove the business aspect, the professional need to 'grow' your followers, and just enjoy the opportunity to encourage homemaking as a joy, a privilege and a delight - well, it takes on a lovely tone, one it never had before. You can follow along HERE if you like.

I shan't be returning to Facebook though. After I left them both, it was not having a FB personal and business page that really made the difference to my time and stress. What a wonderful thing it has been to only receive messages via email or my Etsy Shop. So, please, if you do follow along on IG, don't message me about patterns or any business matters, okay? That's for email or Etsy only. Thank you. 

(the apron made from the linen, which I'll show more of soon)

Do you like the new blog header? It's very much 'me', as I am today, the woman I have grown into, the woman God has been slowly and patiently changing me into.

Sweet one, if there's one thing I really want to say to you today, it's this - pray and ask the Father to show you who you truly are. Let Him peel away the habits of time and reveal to you that precious and most beautiful YOU underneath. 

I have found contentment in a new way, and I believe that's probably the most important gift God has given me because the striving has ceased, and though I live with a dear husband who is always glass-half-empty and naturally very stressed in his nature, I can nurture peace and sanctuary within my own home and show heartfelt softness and kindness in my words, attitude and manner - and his response is to relax almost immediately. You see, we are most blessed when we give the blessing first.

I shall leave you now and return to my beloved who waits with soft music and a cuppa...

God bless you always,

Rain, garden, goodness...

 

Since Christmas the rain has continued to fall with just two short morning breaks where I was relieved to hang sheets and towels on the clothesline and have them dry. One thing about the tropics and the wet season, it's still hot. A break in the weather will dry your washing rather quickly.

 The ground is a mushy well of decaying grass and water which cannot drain away as the clay soil is beyond saturation and cannot take any more.

For so long this year our city was dry and parched, our gardens struggling to manage with limited town water...and we grumbled about that. A lot. The forecast was for a wetter than usual summer, an earlier wet season - but it did not arrive and we waited and we grumbled a bit more.

Then December 25th arrived and surprisingly it was the coolest Christmas day anyone I spoke to could remember. And then, the rains came. And the grumbling ceased.

But the rain kept coming.

And it rained day after day after day.

It's still raining. 

A different grumble.

But then Psalm 103:2 came to life for me over the weekend and the grumbling ceased.

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits."

You see we really needed the rain and it's better to have this weather than no rain at all. I'd rather wake again to another grey wet dawn than lament the parched ground, shrivelling garden and the intense burn of the sun all season. 

This morning we gave thanks and marvelled at how tall the trees have grown since Christmas and how spectacular are the multiplying Ixora, Murraya, Bougainvillea, Roses and Euphorbia blooms.

The only vegetables coping now are the spring (green) onions and the kale. Everything else rotted on the vines or were completely infested with bugs - but you know, in a climate where we grow summer vegetables in the winter it was an extraordinary blessing late in 2020 to be growing right up to summer and eating cucumber, tomatoes, capsicum and rockmelon for so long!

All the herbs are hanging in, in fact the chives, sage, tarragon, oregano and rosemary are thriving.

At night as the rain falls we listen to a choir of hundreds of green-tree frogs and the sound is deafening - but it is also incredibly beautiful. I often drift off the sleep with their loud song acting as a white noise which ushers me along into slumber. A hidden 'benefit' I did not consider.

I think it's easy to focus on what's uncomfortable, inconvenient or overdone in life. The things which weigh on us for a period of time can easily cloud out the blessings which come alongside the trials.

In our life we have many trials, many challenges which exhaust and overwhelm, and those experiences faced day after day can leave us empty both emotionally and physically if we're not given some reprieve. Those seasons may also be so consuming that we forget to look outside our line of sight at the goodness and beauty and hope which can often be found in the smallest things. We forget to bless the Lord and remember all His benefits.

The word benefits in Psalm 103:2 means a bounty bestowed, and when we consider the countless times our Father in Heaven has bestowed upon us the bounty of His love, the bounty of His provision, the bounty of His healing, the bounty of His forgiveness, the bounty of His comfort and numerous other bounties which are as unique to our situations as we are to God - surely our souls will indeed bless the Lord.

Yes, I'd like the rain to move on for a while and quite possibly our feathered girls would enjoy that too, but until that happens I shall endeavour to consider each day the blessed benefits my Father has poured over my life - in this and all other seasons.

In case you weren't aware, you are a blessing to me...you who drop by the blog to read my wordy thoughts, share yours, encourage me and pray for our family, offer some ideas and teach me things zi did not know.

I love that you are here and do not take that lightly.

((thank you))

I'll leave you today with photos of my second tag for the #52tagshannemade challenge this year. The theme was 'heart' this week and once again I turned to my stash of vintage linens and lace...

For the base I covered the tag in cream linen, then covered the linen with very old lace.

The heart was chain stitched onto the corner of a damaged napkin and I added some little cross stitches.

The final embellishments were a piece of cardboard measuring tape, a small crochet flower cut from a very damaged tablecloth and a couple of cream glass seed beads.

A satin ribbon and my week 2 tag was complete.

If you want to see the tags each Saturday as I make them pop over HERE to my Instagram page. The theme is shared by Anne (she is running the #52tagshannemade project) on Fridays but as I'm in Australia and a day ahead I don't find out till Saturday morning so with hubby working till 1.30pm each Saturday I have decided to make my tags that day.

For those who have emailed and asked how Blossom is doing now, she's much improved but not yet recovered. In fact, Ross came down with the same nasty head cold so your prayers are treasured. 

I haven't seen them for two weeks and am praying healing is soon so that I can visit again and lend a hand with the girls. 

Let us remember all His benefits today, and become a blessing to those who are walking in dark seasons by shining the Light of Christ in all we do and say.

hugs

Vintage linens and a year long challenge...

Over the past couple of decades I have collected and been gifted many pieces of vintage embroideries, doilies, linens, tatting, crochet, cotton spools, cutlery, scissors and even a few uncompleted tablecloths which I felt the need to rescue in the hope that one day my own fingers would finish them.

I'm not sure when my love affair with all the loveliness of vintage kitchen, dining and sewing pieces began but I can say with certainty that it's always been connected to memories growing up in Nana's small home.

The older I became the more I pondered her life and felt more keenly the loss of her presence. No-one hugged like my Nana and I used to think no-one laughed like her until one day I realised my own laugh was a very real echo of hers. Loud and joyful. That brought a deep abiding smile to my heart.

What I consider vintage loveliness now she would have thought quite ordinary and everyday in her time because every day is exactly how she used her embroidered linens, bone handled knives, stork scissors, fine laces and thread. 

Anyhow, I am revisiting my rather overflowing boxes of all things vintage at the moment spurred on by a challenge which I came across through a friend on Instagram. Being that my daily employment is to design and embroider patterns for purchase, I was rather intrigued to take on a challenge which was outside my comfort zone - making pretty paper backed tags.

Fifty two tags to be accurate. One each week through the year.

The host of this #52tagshannemade challenge is Anne Brooke of @hannemadebyanne. She's a UK textile artist and tutor who does lovely things with a variety of textile pieces and after reading through the details of this year long adventure I decided to jump right in and have some creative fun that wasn't associated with anything else I do. 

The week one tag was to be all white and that's what got me digging through all my vintage bits and pieces again, a reminder of how much pleasure they give - especially when I make use of them creatively. 

This is my completed week one white tag. They all slip onto a large ring over time to keep them together but I am yet to find a ring large enough. 

I'll be sure to show my tags each week as I make them. You might like to join in? You'll find the #52tagshannemadebyanne information HERE on Anne's Instagram or HERE on her Facebook page.

Now, back to those vintage linens and laces...

I have occasionally embroidered a design onto the centre of a crochet edged doily but this is done very carefully as the first time I tried this the pigma pen I trace with bled into the fabric as the material was old, fine and had a looser weave than what we use today. Now I take extra care and don't have the same problem but still, its been a while since I last used a vintage linen to stitch on.

I really like the pieces which lend themselves to this opportunity and look for them whenever I'm op-shopping, at garage sales or markets...

Something else which sends my heart aflutter is vintage lace and to be honest this is what I collect more than anything else. Just the feel of that feathery softness across my hands is pure delight.

I mentioned earlier that I also like to rescue unfinished pieces. There's a few in my collection for 'one day' but this tablecloth is my favourite and the only one I have already begun to work on...

Only one corner was completed when I found it and there were no threads in the accompanying plastic bag so I spent a good deal of time looking for the same or very similar threads to work with. I did find a variegated blue very close in colour so I began to copy the one completed corner by filling in the little chain stitch squares and the stem stitch connections in the opposite corner. Later I found the right green and yellow. This will be a long process to complete the cloth but I'm not in a hurry; embroidery should always be done gently, without rushing...that's the advice I give to everyone who asks because it truly makes the world of difference.

Two years ago I shared a tutorial to make a vintage style needle-book which featured a pretty cross-stitched doily. At the time I was just embarking on a new love, crochet, and added that to the inside as well as some lace and English paper piecing. 

Everything added to the vintage style I was aiming for in this project and it became such a special needle-book that I have it always on display in the sewing room.

If you'd like to follow the two-part tutorial I shared back in 2019 for this needle-book the links are below. Just click on part 1 and then part 2...

PART 1

PART 2

After becoming re-acquainted with all my vintage bits and pieces earlier this week, an idea formed. I want to see how I can use and repurpose quite a few of my lovely pieces this year because I'm really not the kind of person who likes to pack things away in order to save them from harm. In fact, and some of you may shudder at this thought, cutting up vintage linens to create something else doesn't bother me. I just like to see all that handwork made use of again. 

So I did a little roaming on Pinterest the other night and found a few ideas to inspire. Aprons, bags, lampshades, coat hanger covers and so much more abound there.

If you go HERE to my Vintage Linens board on Pinterest you'll see many more!

There's also a wide variety HERE on my Shabby Chic Crafting & Decorating Board.

I especially like the way this apron has been trimmed using a section of embroidered linen so it might be the first thing I try next week.

Well I think that's all for today. One new plan for blogging in 2021 is to share an Ideas post each Friday, something to stir your creative cells over the weekend because if you're like me there just seems to be a bit more time on the weekends to 'play' in the sewing room - especially now that my dear husband works on Saturdays and won't be home till 2pm, so our usual habit of visiting garage sales that morning has come to an end. Perhaps I'll pop out every so often if there's an interesting one close by? But then it's just not the same on your own. 

Thank you for your prayers of late. Blossom is almost well again and the children have recovered. She has her best friend (also a mother of three) from homeschooling days flying in to visit for a few days next week and we're all very excited to see Abi again. They chat a lot on the phone but haven't seen each other in 16 years. May the Lord bless their reunion and grow even stronger the love of Jesus they both share. 

God bless you sweet friends,

till next week,