Gateways to Joy

If you are unhappy about where you are there are a few things you can do about it.  This is the second part to the first half of "are you unhappy about where you are?" Remember, you are the only one who can change your situation, with the help of God, and that hard times aren't necessarily bad times.  "Everything if given to God can be our gateway to joy," remember that. You and I can use the hard times in our lives as motivations to stay focused, on course, and to work at getting ourselves to the place where we want to be. Believe me, I'm learning this first hand, right alone with you. Now.  The next step for people who find themselves unhappy where they are is: 4.   Be thankful.  Really.  Count your blessings.  We all are blessed in many ways if we just stop to see it.  There are so many hurting people in the world, but just because we're hurting doesn't mean we are not blessed.   Although you may not be where you want to be, I...

I will be perfectly blunt with you: I am in a few situations that I don't like where they have me positioned.  For a while, a few years, I had found myself complaining, complaining.  After much prayer and soul searching, I realized that the only way my situation was going to change to my liking was for me to do something about it.  Make it happen. God had said, "yes," but nothing was going to happen unless I took actions in the direction I wanted to go. Friends, are you in a situation that you don't like?  Your situation could be a relationship, job, weight or anything.  Have you ever thought about doing something about it? I mean really doing something-- something more than just talking about it and complaining. Why not start planning now, today, to take real deliberate actions on changing your situation? Make something happen. I've talked about Whitney English the Day Planner and one of her quotes, "the key to a well-designed life is consist...

With the approaching of a new year, I've been thinking about being focused and taking inventory of where I am in relationship to what I am doing with my hands...my talents. Before I get started in sharing my thoughts on this subject let me say that I did not forget about the Advent reading.  I have been home in bed in excruciating pain from an ear infection and bad tooth.  My tooth will be extracted this coming Thursday so please pray for me. I have been laid out in bed, sometimes moaning like a lady in labor because it hurts too bad to cry. So I've been stilled and quiet on purpose.  The things that I'm sharing with you today were actually scheduled to be shared with you weeks before now while we talked about Advent. Right now I'm feeling pretty good, and I pretty much had this post laid out in draft waiting for me. So I decided today would be the day.  Sorry for all of the "so." So what do you love to do?  Are you doing it? What are you good at...

Y'all I am very excited and nervous at the same time.  For about a year now, I have highly respected Amy Locurto as a professional business "blogger" woman.  I knew she did something creative with party things, but I never knew what.  It has only been recently since I started creating paper goods myself that I have come to understand what she does and how talented she really is. As you all know from me posting here.  I have a love for graphic designing.  I only got interested in graphic designing when I thought I wanted to design websites and blogs.  But when I started I knew absolutely nothing about Gimp, let alone, Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign.  Being who I am, I told myself, "Oh that's nothing.  I will learn it all in a couple of weeks.  So I set out to teach myself.  I was in for a very rude awakening.  However, thanks to Creative Live and Lesa Snider among a few others after three years of staying up 24/7, cr...