Post Card Pillow

Soothing, calm, lavender

Post Card Pillows

This little treasure caught my eye at Patina's here in Riverside.

If you look closely you'll see it has been stamped to look like a postcard, adorable!

I thought you'd like to make one...

"For we are to God the fragrance of Christ..." II Corinthians 2:15

You can make this for any season or occasion by changing the fabric and filling,
for Christmas pick holiday material and fill with cinnamon and cloves.

Instead of stamping perhaps you'd like to personalize one by
hand writing a thank you or sentiment to a friend,
even better a handwritten bible verse!

Perhaps you college girls would like to make one for the girls
you are going to share a dorm room or apartment with!

For a bridal shower you could write out the wedding date
and the bride and groom's new married name.

For a baby shower you could write the birth date
and the meaning of the new arrivals name.

You can fill your pillow with bath salts and scented oils

or lavender.

Pick out your favorite stamps

Tie it all up and your done!

Now for the step-by-step:

First I must explain this sweet group of friends who are a part of my demo. Once a month for the last several years I have gone to quilt night at the home of our friends Gary & Lynn. What's nice is our husbands come along they love to play board games and catch up in the other room (but not too far from the kitchen where all the handmade and baked goodies are.) Well we may live in a big city and go to a big church but this group is like a small church where everyone knows your name and everyone cares about you and we pray for each other and share our hearts around the table as we work on first one project and then another. Tonight we made the Post Card Pillow.

The first step is cutting a piece of material 7" for the width and 8" for the height.
(Tip: Keep in mind if the print of the material is too busy
you won't be able to see the stamping as well.)
Stamp the bottom 4" of the material.

Turn your material right sides together and sew a 1/4" seam.
Turn right side out then machine stitch or hand stitch one end of your pillow.

Fill your pillow up 3/4 full, (you can fold a piece of paper into a cone to help get the lavender or bath salts into you pillow, if you like.) Stitch up your last open side.

Kathy (l) & Sue (r) decided to hand stitch their pillows.
All these ladies are dear friends but Kathy especially
as her wonderful daughter is married to our son, Andy!

Judy used a decorative stitch on her machine to sew her pillow up,
a zig-zag stitch looks great also.
(Tip: where any sewing has been done you can use a glue gun if you prefer.)
Lastly tie it up with a pretty ribbon in the center,
and a suggestion Lynn made, you can even tie or pin a charm or button in the center
of the ribbon, how cute that would be!

A finished project!

front row: Sue, Emma, Sami Back row: Me, Shirley, Judy, Kathy, Lynn, and Renee

Girl Talk

You're Invited to Girl Talk tonight at Harvest!!
Meeting each Thursday night for the month of July ONLY!
7pm to 9:30pm

I attended yesterday at Harvest's Orange County Campus and was so blessed and encouraged by the morning event I wanted to make sure you knew about it. The first half an hour was such fun with home and party examples, patio chandelier and ceiling draping for a festive summer (or any season) look. Coffee filter and burlap flowers, a personalized burlap banner, chalkboard food markers and much much more! That was rounded out with book reviews and book give aways! Then we settled in to the meat of the morning, the guest speaker was (and is tonight) Catherine Martin whose teaching and sharing brought me such a picture of where I want my heart to be this summer and it begins with my QUIET TIME! That is what Catherine shared on, I think you will be blessed and encouraged, hope you can make it!

From Catherine:

The P.R.A.Y.E.R. Quiet Time Plan

Prepare Your Heart
Read and Study God's Word
Adore God in Prayer
Yield Yourself to God
Enjoy His Presence
Rest in His Love

"Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." James 4:8

P.S. The picture above, I had to post. It is a happy and festive plate that Pam brought over some goodies on and I love it! Well you know OUR group and their history with plates, I might have to keep this one for awhile! The plate reads:

Creating harmony through common bonds
Connecting with small acts of kindness
Laughing together
Sharing

P.S.S. There was an actual plate sighting (Yes, OUR plate) this weekend at Janie's!! Wayne is on high alert for not disposing of the you-know-what in the you-know-where. In Wayne's defense at least this plate is bigger and heavier, and glass! It certainly couldn't be mistaken for a mere toss out!! (I hope!)

Gestures of love...

"Grace is God's love touching you..."

Thanks to all of you who brought meals over, they were wonderful! I will be sharing some great recipes with you from those meals, like Linda J.'s Carmel Coffeecake that is a family recipe from her Grandma (Yummmm) and a delicious bbq turkey meatloaf!!!! Also a main dish from Pam that was Chicken n Sausage Spaghetti with vegetables that made us want more!!

I love the plates in the above picture!! Sandi brought her famous brownies and we had to clear them out so you could see the saying on the plate, just trying to help!

God's love has touched our family in so many ways this last month through all of you.
Thank you for your kindnesses, prayers, gestures of love, wonderful meals, flowers and much much more.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort."
II Corinthians 1:3 NIV

College Girls

It is so nice to have our girls here yesterday! They all had great things to share from this year of God's faithfulness!! We want to keep Katie Beechen in prayer she will be gone this weekend building a house with a group in Mexico and Jessica Miller is in Argentina for 3 weeks on a missions trip.


Girls Gathering:
Kari, Amber, Mel, Katy and Chelsea!


Amber made a wonderful dessert that she lassoed from friends in the heart of Texas! (Another recipe for our future Heart & Keeper cookbook!) Since many of you requested it here is the recipe:



Enjoy!


Jamison's Sopapilla Cheesecake

1 1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 packages (8 oz. ) cream cheese, softened
2 packages crescent rolls
1 stick of butter

Prespray a 9x13 pan

Whip cream cheese, vanilla, and 1 cup sugar. Mix 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon, set aside. Lay one layer of crescent rolls on the bottom of a 9x13 pan . Spread cream cheese mixture over bottom rolls and cover with other package of crescent rolls. Melt stick of butter and poor over the top. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar mixture.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, serve warm. (is great cold too!)

Spring Shower or Summer Storm

"In the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge,
until the storms of destruction pass by."
Psalm 57:1

I like to do Show & Tell, so at breakfast yesterday I had everyone bring an umbrella to go along with my devotion!
In the picture you can see some of them hanging and some of them at our feet!

Some notes from my devotion:

"Hearing Him in a Spring Shower or a Summer Storm"

"George Adam Smith a wonderful preacher and author, was on a mountain-climbing tour of the Alps. Exhilarated by the thought of the view before him and the triumph of having got to the summit ran the last few yards to the top of the peak. Suddenly, a strong gust of wind came up which threatened to blow him over the edge. From several feet away, his guide called to him, "Mr. Smith! On your knees, sir! The only way you're safe up here is on your knees!" When storm winds blow, we often try to stand on our own two feet-in our own strength. We need to fall to our knees because that is where we find our stability!

We have many examples in the pages of God's Word of people in STORMS and how they reacted, let's look at some of them:

Daniel - prayed
Noah - Obeyed & Didn't Get Distracted
Jonah - Ran
(And what about Jonah, when God asked him to go to the people of Nineveh,
he turned and went in the opposite direction, creating his very own STORM! )
Joseph - Waited & Trusted
Nathan - In a STORM of wrong choices by David, was directed by God
to go to David and speak some very difficult words of truth!
Samuel - Learned to Listen

As you go into this summer may you be like Samuel, and say, "Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears." If we are going to be women of God, we too must learn how to recognize God's efforts to speak to us. However, we can't wait until the maelstorm strikes to do so. It's when we lie restfully in the quiet moments that we should turn our attention to God and say,
"Speak, Lord, for your servant hears."

I want to encourage you to seek Him in your quiet time, seek Him on your knees, seek Him in the storms and in the showers!

Amish Country Back Roads

For years now my husband and I go every fall to Southern Ohio to visit his family. For many generations they have had large farms with crops of corn and soy beans. Some acreage has been sold with the passing of time but farming continues with a 900 acre farm Kim's cousin Richard still runs. These visits anchor Kim to wonderful memories of summers spent visiting with his Grandma and Grandpa and Aunts and Uncles. The last couple of years when we go to visit we reserve one night to go stay at our favorite Bed & Breakfast - Murphin Ridge Inn off the Amish Country back roads at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. As we drive the slow winding lanes we see harvested pumpkins, dried corn stalks, and shafts of wheat on every farm and enjoy the orange and yellow of the trees surrounding us. When we arrive the cabins are warm and inviting, the roaring fire in their huge firepit east of the main guest house beckons us near, and the Inn's food is exquisite! Today I made a Quiche from their cookbook, at your request here is the recipe, ENJOY!

Murphin Ridge Inn Quiche

4 eggs
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
salt & pepper
readymade pie crust
3 cups shredded cheese (any combination)

For the filling:
We like to use a mixture of sauteed mushrooms, spinach, onion, and tomatoes; ham and/or sausage. (today I added ham chunks.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat together the eggs, heavy cream, salt and pepper. Layer in the pie crust, two cups of cheese on the bottom, then 1/2 cup of your desired filling, then 1 cup of cheese on top. Pour liquid mixture over the entire casserole. Dot with butter. Bake for one hour. (Set timer for 50 minutes to make sure the crust isn't over browning, you may need to fold some foil into a long strips and wrap around the outer top crust while it continues to bake.)
Yield 6-8 servings.

Love and Hugs, Linda

A New Chapter - "Silver Suitcase Society"

The Heart & Keeper of The Home
a new chapter...

"Silver Suitcase Society"

"It is God to whom and with whom we travel,
and while He is the end of the journey,
He is also at every stopping place."
Elisabeth Elliott

Today Katy and I hosted Heart & Keeper - "Silver Suitcase Society" Breakfast in our home. Last fall I realized that our 12 girls were going in many new directions with jobs, ministries and college not to mention our schedules as wives and moms!! So I set up to get together once a month for breakfast if we were to connect at all.

Now what to name it...with our many changes and new seasons, I decided to call it "Silver Suitcase Society" to represent our upcoming travels and the journeys ahead. Now to represent our new little subtitle, something I could put in the middle of the table each time we met, something that would hide a treasure or two in the way of a give-away (like a new charm shaped like a suitcase!) I had a flashy, sparkly, silver suitcase in mind. The hunt was on but no matter where I looked I came up empty handed!

I reluctantly walked into one more store, and there I saw a simple white jewelry box that had a lot of promise, home it came with me. I spray painted it a sparkly silver and attached some charms and it was perfect.

Katy and I prepared and planned and the food was tasty as ever but as I looked around I knew the real meal was drinking in the sweet fellowship of friendship!

We are all in a new season of change, perhaps you are too. Join us as we navigate the journeys ahead.

You're Invited!

Welcome to

Heart & Keeper Connected!

"Through skillful and godly wisdom is a house
(a life, a home, a family)
built..."
Proverbs 24: 3-4

Rejoicing in God's plan for us,
Celebrating family and friendships,
Simply caring for the things of the home and heart,
Enjoying being a Woman, Wife, Mom, Sister, and Friend!



You're invited to join in the journey!

More to Come!!!