“The RoseBouquet”

Receiving that check from ChristianBook got me going back to that site to check somethings out and I found that by asking, I could have permission to add their banners and links on four more websites. That may increase the size and frequency of those checks!

But then I also clicked on some links for their special bargain and deals on books and music, etc. and wow, I’d forgotten that it is possible to order books there for less than a dollar! That can sometimes mean 93% off the regular price. Wow! If you are a frugal shopper like me, you know to go check such areas of a site before you order elsewhere.

Our church librarian knows this site well, and she reminded me that the shipping cost is calculated on the prices you pay, rather than the full regular price. That’s another great advantage!

So is there anything on these pages that you might like? See their Giveaways and Great Deals.

Spring and winter are still playing tag this last week of March, but I think winter is getting tired and will drop out any day now.

On Sunday I had a guest at my house. Lois is a new friend, and a new Board member at Western Tract Mission, so the director asked me to interview her for her testimony or story of how she met Christ. And does Lois ever have an exciting story to tell. However, there wasn’t enough time to hear it all, so we’ll have to have another session to get the rest of it. It will be up on our WTM website eventually; I’ll try to remember to give you the link then.

For now I’ll just hint that it involves the loss of her right hand in a buzz saw accident when she was helping her dad to turn trees into lumber for a house way up in northern B.C.

Lois came by the office yesterday to ask for some of that extra typing that I haven’t had time to get to. She’s offering to do it at home. In fact, she’s coming again any minute now so that I can install a database program on her laptop so that she can enter old membership records too. That will help as I go to write the history book for the mission’s 75th anniversary, which is now only 4 years away.

I’ve got a surprise for her when she comes. I checked my genealogy database last night and found that we are cousins in four different ways!

Hmm… what can I say about the Silent Auction? The turnout was not as great as I’d hoped, and those that came – well, some were very enthused and others ignored the Auction table altogether. Those few who made bids had no competition, so they got the items they wanted.

What do to now about the things left over? Should we go ahead and try this again at our Music/Dessert Fundraiser night on April 27th, or say it’s not worth the bother?

Some want to see it expanded and to let others bring in items to sell as well. Is that wise? We don’t want it to become a place to dump stuff you want to be rid of like a garage sale? That would mean screening items.

If it grows too big I’d rather someone else took responsibility for it; I have enough jobs on my plate.

So I talked to our Director about it last night, and we agreed that we need to make a decision about this matter this week. Maybe even tomorrow.

If you have any good counsel, now’s a good time to let me know.

Oh, another thing. On Saturday I came back to the office in my grubby paint clothes and sanded down an old table Joe found by the furnace in the basement. He cut the legs down to the height I asked for, but I had to sand down the big black ink spots on it, and then I painted it. I think the top surface needs one more coat to make it evenly shiny and smooth, but otherwise it’s going to be a useful laptop table and will also be handy for crafts.

Are you still reluctant to go shopping online? How about if I give you my simple steps, especially so that you’ll get some money back each time?

1. Sign up for two or three Rebate Shopping portals like BigCrumbs or Ebates, and if in Canada at Great Canadian Rebates
2. Research online the product(s) you need or want.
3. When you find the site to shop at, switch to another tab and login to your rebate portal, to see which has that store on their list, with the best discount. (eg. 10% back is better than 4% or 2%).
4. Click from the best rebate portal (while logged in) to the store of your choice and make your purchase.
5. About 6 weeks later, you’ll get money back!

I’m having trouble sorting out my metaphors today. You’ve heard of March coming in as a lamb and going out as a lion? Or the reverse order sometimes?

Technically, spring arrived last night, but this morning I’m thinking of March, or spring, more as a temperamental child that run in and out of the house, sometimes slamming the door and sometimes leaving it ajar, distressing the adults. This is all to describe our recent weather.

Two weeks ago I was wading through a snowstorm of feathery light snow to get to the office. The sun came out and most of last week was delightfully warm. I saw people outside in shorts! On Sunday the weather got windy and threatening again, and yesterday the radio was full of travel warnings as another snowstorm came sweeping up from Montana and southern Alberta and up the western half of our province. Saskatoon did not get the brunt of it, however… that’s not all.

Just north of our city a power pole somehow got on fire, and a large rural area and small towns north of the city lost their electricity. By about 2 pm. it also affected our WTM offices. I sat and read for a while by dim daylight through the window until I got chilly and decided that I might as well go home in the hopes that there was heat and power there.

I had come by car so it just took five minutes to get there and yes, I had heat and power!

This morning I walked again and found a thin icy crust on top of the snow which was only 1-2 inches deep. Happily, the sun is shining again, so I think spring is swinging through the door once more.

On the weekend I attended parts of two conferences, found a good childrens’ book as a gift, and heard some good messages.

Last week I was telling you about the crafts my helpers and I were making for the Kids Korner of the WTM site. Well, there have been some more developments in this area. One friend suggested we sell them, and another suggested a Silent Auction.

I asked another friend who works with a mission that does use Silent Auctions for fund-raising what is involved in running one. She made it seem quite simple. You line up the items on a table with a sheet in front of them, and people can come by, look over the items, and write down their name and phone number and what they would be willing to pay for the item. Others might come along and put their name down with a higher bid underneath. You can also go back and change your bit amount. At a pre-announced closing time of the auction the organizers go to see what the highest bids are and collect the money from those bidders and let them take the items home.

There’s no auctioneer needed, and no hassle or shouting, or feeling embarrassed if you are shy. No cost to run it either, if the sale items are donated.

So I talked it over with our director and suggested that we run a small test Silent Auction this week Friday night when we have a Potluck supper and our Annual Meeting planned. It should only be a small crowd of 50 or more people. If it does really well, we can prepare more greeting cards and donkeys, etc., for another Silent Auction at the Music/Dessert Night fundraiser on April 27. Arnold agreed that was a good plan.

Ah, but guess what. Now I feel compelled to make more and better cards for this mini-Silent Auction. Priscilla, a co-worker here, found a stash of coloured papers and brought them to my office, so I took some home on the weekend, and found a couple of hours on Sunday to make a batch of 21 booklets with pretty covers.

Last night over my supper period at home I made another 3 small batches of greeting cards.

Now I wonder if this idea is going to grow legs and run away on me! I mean, in the sense that it adds another workload to my regular life.

Yet, I feel strangely alive and fulfilled when I’m creating things.

A few weeks back I received a free e-book from Booklocker, with whom I published my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses back in 2001. I just have started to peek at it today, and realize that I have truly neglected my marketing of that book. (Big Sigh!) Oh, for more time, or employees so I could delegate some work!

Anyway, that reminds me that I occasionally put a reminder here so that you might be tempted to go to my site, and read the sample chapters, order the e-book, Sit down, take your time; READ eight chapters of Ruthe’s Secret Roses for free! (http://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/rsr/RSR-index.html) or go to Booklocker and order the softcover. In particular I long for some good ‘reader’ friends to give me some honest feedback on the book so that I’ll know what approaches to take once I tackle the promotion of the book in earnest again. I know what themes and sub-plots I like best, but what do YOU like best about my book?

What high school grad would skip her banquet to dash away to help a friend in a crisis? Would you? Ruthe does this right at the beginning of this story. She can be quite daring for a shy, small town girl, when it is for others’ sakes. You’ll like her spunk! Get “Ruthe’s Secret Roses.” the softcover at Booklocker.com

With our temperatures going up to 10 to 12 above freezing these days, our snow is melting fast. Most of the sidewalks were dry when I walked to the office this morning. There are still some ice patches to skirt around, but barring any freak spring snow storms, I am cautiously convincing myself that spring is here.

Hey, I can even see some dirt beside the garden path at my place!

How about if I tell you about the Kids’ Korner crafts my volunteers and I have been doing? Judy comes on Wednesday afternoons to the office, and this last week Helen joined us again, and we’ve been spending the last few weeks of Kids’ Korner time on making crafts and taking photos of the steps, so that when I write them up for that website section of our mission’s website, I can include photos to show the steps. (I’ll give you the link in a moment).

Three weeks ago we melted some wax crayons in a tin pie plate on my hot plate in my office, and made a table full of wax art. Then we spent a week making cards out of them. (Though I got distracted and made some with cuttings from my wallpaper sample books). We’ve got a spread of about 39 such cards made.

Last week I suggested that we work at putting the text on the front, perhaps on the computer and then attached as 3-D cutouts, however, we started another craft first, so there would be a new Easter craft up on the website in good time. This is of a donkey that you assemble to stand up and we put a small blanket saddle on it.

But you see, I had once long ago done this before as centerpieces for a conference day at church, and that time had made little stretch baskets with tiny posies of crocuses and buttercups to go in them. I’d brought my box of the left over ones to the office, and we got quite the fun out of adding those. Even though, as I said several times, that would not be authentic to the Biblical story of Jesus’ Palm Sunday ride on the colt of a donkey.

A friend suggested that we should sell the cards at a silent auction when we have our Music/Dessert Night (fund-raiser) in April. Now I’m thinking over the work that would be involved, and how many more cards would I feel I’d have to prepare? What about envelopes?

Want pictures? See the top three links on; this craft index

Do you have a lot of variety in your work too? I got to thinking yesterday and this morning about that illustration of how to get the most into a jar, representing our lives. (I thought I had written this up in an article once, but can’t find it now. However, many others have, so you may recognize this).

This illustrates how to organize your priorities. If you think of your life as a glass jar and you want to get it as full as possible, but you know that it can only hold so much. Time-wise we all get only 24 hours each day.

In this parable we put the big stones in first. These represent the most important things in our lives. In my case, my devotional time in the morning before breakfast, and then my business hours towards my ultimate goal of being self-supporting, and my church priority for Sundays would be my most important things. They have to get into my jar, or life, first.

There is no more room for big stones, but we can get some gravel into the jar around the big stones. These are the smaller projects and priorities. I have plenty of those! My work for WTM, the hours I set aside for clients, my bookkeeping, and correspondence with friends would be of this category.

You might look at this jar and think, “Now it’s full.”

No, I can still pour in some sand, if I shake it down between the gravel. In my case, I guess that is the time I have for friends in the moments that overlap my various projects. Lunch with the other WTM people, and Anne, from the front office. Phone calls that come out of the blue, from friends or relatives. Emails and Facebook relationships are here too, though I think I should start classifying them as gravel and give them great space.

Is my jar totally full? Not yet. I can still pour water or juice into the jar and it will seep into the sand. Maybe for me that is the time I use for myself, like reading, sewing, or simply resting with my feet up and daydreaming. Sometimes it is quite invisible. Like when I do my reading in the bathroom.

Unfortunately, it is possible to fill our jar of life to overflowing, or to where we shatter the jar.

Remember – get your top priorities in first!

Last week I was hunting for suitable photos of ants to design a poster for the Kids’ Korner. I hunted here and there until I remembered that I have a membership at Dreamstime.com I went to look and oh my!! They have lots and lots of photos! I have to buy some credits and use those when I choose to download certain photos.
Actually $10 – 20 in credits lasts me quite a few months. I think I can safely say that this is a good place to get photos of excellent quality.

Where would you use photos like that if you don’t do websites? Well, supposing you were going to design a nice Easter card to give to someone? There’s only about 3 weeks left. (I know because I’ve got to squeeze that into my ‘jar’ too).