“The RoseBouquet”

It’s fun to plan surprise parties, but not so much fun if you’re left out of the planning. I’m thinking I need to work more with the surprise-ee in the future when I plan some.

Why?

Well, there is this surprise party a foot, to honour Dad this weekend. Saturday I found out not everyone is coming after all. Yesterday I found out there is no plan to come here to the house, as I’d heard earlier. Now all those that are coming will just show up at church to sit with Dad. (And that will wow him)! Then we are all to go to a Greek restaurant in the city for a lunch. Followed by cake and sandwiches at the hotel.

I remember that we planned a surprise 45th anniversary for Mom and Dad some years ago, and kept Mom in the dark to keep her from fretting or trying to help plan. In the end she was hurt that she had not been informed at all. She would have wanted some things differently. I feel some of that tension now myself.

Maybe surprises are like gift horses; Gr’ma used to say that you shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth. That is, don’t try to determine how old or valuable it is. Just say a sincere “Thank you.”

I wonder, how do you feel about surprises? Is the planning, or being surprised, better?

This week is so busy! In my effort to see to it that Dad has his dentures in time for the weekend - and any possible four-generation photo ops, we’ve ended up with three appointments in one week. One Monday, one this afternoon, and the last one I hope, on Friday. (I must slip the denturist a thank you card today to explain why I’ve been a bit pushy on this).

It just happened that there was a funeral yesterday in our church for the mother of one of our lay ministers. Dad and I wanted to be there, so we took off yesterday afternoon. - That comes to four afternoons this week that I’m sacrificing my email hours. Oddly enough, by sacrificing some other blocks of time, I’m not as far behind as I first thought I would be. But then, the week is only half done.

I gave up my writing night last night, to prepare a photo story for you. It’s a walk-about tour of Hague, my hometown here. You’ll find it at Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/A/Hague-Tour.shtml The photos were taken a week before Easter, and you’ll spot some clumps of old snow. Those are all gone now, the grass is turning green everywhere, the trees are budding and should be in full green leaf by the end of this week! Walking is a real pleasure early in the mornings.

I was going to work on the Author photos too, but it got too late. I have pulled out about 8 out of 27 shots that I think have some potential. I’ve cropped out some of those, but they need a bit of doctoring yet. I promise, I’ll get on it as soon as I can!

On Monday morning I did whip up an article to answer a question asked me on Sunday about my mission work. As I thought about it my answer got longer and longer. You can read the start of it below in Ruthe’s Roses.

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The RoseBouquet is a weekly blog. blogs.Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/
(You’ll need to register as a user to make comments at the blog. Registering helps me screen out riff-raff who fill the comments section with garbage).

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If you’ve been holding off on eBay selling as a way to make money, this is probably a great time to step into the waters, and learn to do it up right. I mean, not only could you do a piece-by-piece riddance of stuff you don’t want in your house, you could also discover where to get stuff wholesale and sell it at a marvelous profit on eBay. Jason James know how to get the wholesaler to do the shipping, so you don’t even have to muck around with the packing tape.

Have a look at the advice he offers: at Auction Resources Network

Tip: If you hesitate, sign up for his newsletter and study that a while for good free advice. The Newsletter

If you understand affiliate programs, you would be pleased at his commission rate of 50% (and sometimes 80%), and at all the helpful resources you get access to then! Look it over at the Affiliate plan

Christians can often tell a lot about another person when they learn what kind of things they do to show their love to, and for Jesus. Doing good and kind things for others in Jesus’ name, which means we are doing them by His power and authority, is suppose to be the natural Christian lifestyle.

Some people are so absorbed in their own problems and neediness that they don’t get around to doing much for others. It is even less likely that they are deliberately sharing the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, so that others may believe and be made whole.

I have found that the more intimate I have become with Jesus, to the point of knowing He is my BEST Friend, the easier it is to see things I could do, even in little ways, to express His life and love that is in me.

Now there are church-folks who think that to be in ministry means you have signed up for non-profit mission organization, and have trained so many years, and gone to work abroad in another country. Or, at the very least, you have a full-time paid position in a church or such an organization. That is not the Bible’s definition of ministry.

It is that lifestyle of behaving like your Lord and Master and Best Friend, Jesus. Furthermore, the Bible teaches that upon receiving Christ by faith, into our lives, we receive a gift of the Holy Spirit of God to dwell in us, and help us live out what we have learned from the Bible, and to comfort and guide us. That gift also gives us a special abilities to express God’s will and to help in the spread of Christ’s reign in many more hearts. These gifts are sometimes referred to as ministries too.

So then, if someone presses me and asks point-blank, “What is your ministry, Ruth?” I have to stop and think. I take most of what I do for granted. Some were a highlight when I began to do them, but now they are very ordinary parts of my daily and weekly schedule.

I do recall a weekend workshop where this was taught and I discovered that God had given me several spiritual gifts. They have shifted somewhat depending on the stage and roles I have had in life, but I know these are special abilities the Holy Spirit gives me when I need them.

[To read the whole article go to Intimacy.Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/ministries-missions.shtml]

To read sample chapters of my first novel online, start at The Novel’s beginning

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer; Order page
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use; Booklocker.com

Last Wednesday afternoon we were in the city and made nine different stops - one busy, BUSY afternoon. One of my goals was to find some cheap white paint to add to the peach/flesh coloured paint I had left from the kitchen, so I could do the one long wall in the living room and the entrance hallway. I found a litre tin (nearly a quart) of a creamy white at the Restore where Habitat for Humanity sells off their excess stuff real cheap. I got it for $3 and went off a happy camper.

Saturday morning I took things off the walls, washed them, and did a test mix in a yogurt cup to see what shade I would get. Looked satisfactory, so I stirred most of that creamy white into the larger pail, and went to work.

Or was about to - Oops! I’d forgotten to tape up the door frames so I wouldn’t paint where I shouldn’t. I stopped to do the taping first.

Then I began with as much energy as I could muster, and there were times I had to sit down until I stopped panting for breath. But when I was done I was pleased. Looked great!

The paint dried quickly, so I was able to put things back, and pull off the tape well before supper time. Only in some places the fresh paint came with it. Oh-well, I told myself, I’ve got enough paint left for touch ups.

On Monday Dad’s friend Jona came around, and helped us put the wall mirror back up. That’s when we noticed. If we scratched the walls my new coat of paint came off - way too easily! Jona figures I should have done a primer coat first, because the old paint was a high gloss varathane.

Primer? Maybe. But the dining room walls look fine. I’ve been hanging my head in shame. It’s the fault of that cheap $3 paint I mixed in. Sometimes cheap is NOT such a good deal after all. Especially if you don’t know if it has been stored at wrong temperatures, or where it has been.

I’m expecting company yet this month, so I’m just going to do the touch ups, and then leave the re-painting until later in the summer. Right now I’ve lost my enthusiasm to paint.

Subscriber Denise, asked about how my author photos turned out. Well, i picked them up yesterday, and out of 27 shots, 8 might be good possibilities. However, for most of them Kathy was about a pace too close, so my face looks quite pale from the flash, and there are shadows behind my head.

However, I’m hoping once I put the CD in the computer and pull these photos up on the screen in GIMP, I’ll be able to doctor them up, and then I’ll have to narrow down my choices some more. I have ‘fixed’ some photos that way before, so it is now a matter of finding time to fiddle with this.

By the way, I had quickly filled up another film in my camera to clear the way for that photo shoot. I see I have some fine photos of my home town here. I’ll see when I can set up a photo story page just about Hague. A walk-about.

Now as for progress on my web sites; I’ve discovered in the last few days that I’ve been coding the background graphics to my sites wrong for xhtml standards. It should be in my .css file instead of the body tag. They’ve shown up fine, but while I was looking for the answer to another technical problem, I discovered this. Guess I’ll be going through all my sites again to fix it.

First though, I still need to find the answer to the question that got me going on this. (Why do people with Internet Explorer see my center columns as centered text, when it is okay in Firefox?) I also want to have my author photo ready, so that I can change that on every page, as I’m going through them. Might as well collect two or three little changes and do them all at the same time.

One thing I started in January was to put at least two to three Google AdSense blocks of links on each page. The other night I went to check something in my Google Admin area, and discovered to my astonishment that it is paying off! I should be getting a cheque soon.

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The RoseBouquet is a weekly blog. blogs.Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/
(You’ll need to register as a user to make comments at the blog. Registering helps me screen out riff-raff who fill the comments section with garbage).

You can also get The RoseBouquet as an RSS feed in your news Reader. Just paste in this link; http://ruthes-secretroses.com/RoseBouquet.xml

Or subscribe to it as an ezine; Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/sub-ezines.html

A friend and subscriber to the RoseBouquet (ezine edition) has a sense of call from God to start up a magazine for godly business women. She is sending out a call to friends to help her out.

I knew I had already seen a web site for such a magazine, so I checked in Google, and what do you know? There is only one such magazine or site out there. http://www.godlybusinesswoman.com/ Mind you, it appears to be first class, but I would think then there is room for more such sites and magazines.

Now, my business site, http://BouquetofEnterprises.biz, doesn’t say it is strictly for godly business women, but that is my intended market. I try to impress on visitors that we must conduct our online businesses with the highest ethical standards, and I spell mine out. My site makes suggestions for online businesses, and I try to be available to help those who are new to the net, and trying to understand how they go about this. There is of course, still room for much expansion.

Researchers say that there are more women then men using the internet, and once they catch on, they really know how to use it! There are some sites specifically for Christian Moms who want to run businesses from home. Here’s just a few;

cwahm.com
christianwahm.com
smallbusinessbrief.com/cwahm/
websitetoolbox.com/too/mb/momsoffaith
christianladies.net
christian-mommies.com

[Ed. working with my collection of older articles I have come across some gems, including those gathered from others that I had forgotten I had. Occasionally, I’ll share some of these with you in case you haven’t seen them].

Fly High - the Answer is Above!

If you put a buzzard in a pen that is 6 feet by 8 feet and is entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of its ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of 10 to 12 feet. Without space to run, as is its habit, it will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top.

The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkably nimble creature in the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.

A bumblebee, if dropped into an open tumbler, will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.

In many ways, there are lots of people like the buzzard, the bat, and the bumblebee. They are struggling about with all their problems and frustrations, not ever realizing that the answer is right there ‘above’ them. Don’t be limited by the ‘low’ problems of today. Instead, climb on to Him and then fly high.

- by Dr P G Vargis, mission statesman and communicator, leader India Evangelical Team: pgv.com

To read sample chapters of my first novel online, start at Ruthe’s Secret Roses

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer; Order Page
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use; Booklocker.com

When you want some nice photos you go to a studio, right? Well, frugal people with good friends like I have, don’t do that.

I’ve been wanting to update my photo on my web sites for over a year. Last July, for my birthday, my friend Kathy gave me a special film, and promised to come over some time to do another photo shoot with me, like we did a few years ago, out of which came the photo I currently use on my sites. Kathy has done wedding photos for friends, and usually has great success with her photos. However, we were both busy about that time, so we put it off. Then other things came up, when either I or she were too busy. We had to put it off some more. Months passed.

Recently Kathy had some job changes that suddenly freed up more hours for her. She called last week and asked if we could make a new appointment for a photo shoot, for my updated “author photo.” That day was yesterday morning.

Remembering the different things we tried out that didn’t work well the previous time, I got myself organized. I picked four tops or jackets that I thought would look best, and found three places in the house where the lighting seemed reasonably good. Some diffused daylight from a window nearby, and another two lights or lamps to clean up shadows on the face. And of course, against a soft-coloured wall with distractions moved out of the way. The first two were in the guest rooms, and the third in the dining room against the newly painted wall of two weeks ago.

When Kathy arrived she told me that she had only one hour to spare. So we got to work. I was already wearing the first outfit, so she shot two pictures at each location. I changed quickly, and we shot two more at each location. One floral blouse looked like it might stand alone nicely without the jacket, so we squeezed in just one shot of me in it at each location. We were at the second spot in my last outfit, when the film was full!

We did it in one hour. This afternoon I’ll take the film into the city to have them developed. If I have a hard time deciding which one to use, you might be roped into helping. Is that okay?

Thanks so much, if you prayed last week about my technical problems at the one mission site. I was able to solve that problem that same evening! Naturally, I still have lots to learn. . .

This being the week before Easter is full of interruptions to my work schedule. The photo shoot yesterday was a very pleasant one, but this afternoon we need to go to the city, Dad’s first denturist appointment for just one thing, and then there will be special services to attend at church tomorrow night, a community service on Good Friday morning, a Sunrise service outside the church at 6:06 am and the 10:30 Easter Musical-Drama inside the church.

I’ve offered to go fetch my brother Tom for the weekend, but he says he has the flu, so I’m not sure if that will work out. If not, we’ll go take a meal to him on Sunday.

And I’m still debating whether to paint some more walls this Saturday or wait until next.

Now I bet you’re wondering if I’m going to get any business done this week at all. Me too. But I’ll try!

One thing I can report is that I finally caught up on one huge folder of backlogged emails. So I’ve switched to my ezine folder for that one half hour a day - when I can squeeze it in. Some of those ezines date back to October and November of last year! But I’m making a marvelous re-discovery. When I read them I find links to the most interesting sites, and I learn new things about running an online business. Suddenly I remember that was how I kept current on many fronts before I had all that Linux transition kerfufle last year. That was when I started filtering ezines to a separate folder, and just focused on keeping up with urgent emails and those from friends.

I tell you, trying out various ezine subscriptions, and then sticking with the best ones, is a wonderful way to keep informed, and growing in your fields of interest. Smart move!