Christmas 2012

We had a great Christmas at Granny's this year.  Everyone was able to be there and my sister even found a pearl in her fried oyster.  We decided to do a Dirty Santa gift exchange this year...  here are some of the pics I took with our new camera!

Chase and I baked a gingerbread man.

Everyone posing with their White Elephant present...

Jake got an RGIII jersey...Todd was pretty happy about that!

Chase and I also made a "Christmas cake"

Mel was supposed to be in this pic but she ran off right as I was taking it.  

We had a great trip!  Merry Christmas!

Grace

Encouragement for Today

I have been getting these daily devotionals emailed to me for awhile now.  This came to me this morning, just when I needed it the most.  I decided to share it here in case it will help anyone else or incase you might like to go sign up for these daily devotionals.  They are very quick to read and it is uncanny how many seem to come at the most opportune times.

Some of my favorite excerpts from today:

Isaiah 55:8-9 "“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts."

"Perhaps you feel overwhelmed today. You may be experiencing some sadness, loss or worry. You may find that God has called you to a difficult path. "Surely," you think, "God has an easier road for me to travel."

The truth is, we aren't wise enough to assume another path would be best for us. Maybe the easier road won't make us into the person God intends us to be.

Perhaps the difficult road is a path of grace—protecting us from the worst.

Maybe this road is about learning something new about God or ourselves. Could it be the difficult journey is the path that prepares us for a greater purpose or a greater faith in God?"

Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

<3

Mini Makeovers...

I painted our corner hutch...

I found a chandelier at a yardsale I went to with my mom and spray painted it (of course)...

This pic is terrible because it came from my phone but you get the idea...

We found some cabinets at the Habitat for Humanity restore for $50 and painted them and used them to redo our laundry room...yes I realize this before photo is extremely embarrassing.  I have no idea why I cannot get these pictures to go right side up, they were also from a cell phone!

We added some beadboard panels to the doors of the cabinets and added some open shelving in the middle.

Much better!

Thens and Nows

I'm not even going to comment on the length of time in between posts.  All I will say is that one of my goals for this summer was to update the blog and seeing as how school starts in two days I figured I better get on it!  All before/after pics on this blog will hereby be known as then and now pics since I have come to the conclusion that we rarely ever actually finish something!  "After" implies that the project is done and "Now" gives us a little more in-progress wiggle room.  Please forgive the outrageous amount of pictures I'm about to post!

We'll start with the biggest project we've done lately.  We actually HIRED some people to paint the house!!!!  We got rid of "baby poo brown"...

and went with a nice gray with white trim.  Of course in typical Potter fashion, we couldn't actually let someone else do all the work.  We ended up have to rescreen the porch after they finished painting, redo the outside trim molding, and put in a new screen door.

This whole process took about 2 or 3 months.  Todd and I put the screens up one weekend and then waiting another two months until Don and Mary Kay came down to finish the project!

We also repainted the front door...

What do you think?

Christmas 2011