1st Sunday in Advent

I just wanted to share my kitchen window all dressed up for the Holiday Season. Yeah, it's me you see in the window reflection...

In the front of the table you can see a little rectangular shape, it's my advent candle holder, we light one candle each Sunday until Christmas. (It is lit, but you can just barely see it....)

Credits: Photo by me, I've used Bud's Actions - Bud's Hayes Island Cafe and and someones action to make frames and mattes in Photoshop. (Sorry whoever you are, just can't find it right now....)  

The Fruits of the Sabbath - playing hide and seek...

Chris at People, books and the glory of Christ writes openly about how he is slowly learning what the Fruits of the Sabbath really are.

During seminary a friend of his gives a challenge in a question:

"Do you know what one command people broke the most in the Old Testament? What one thing God complained about the most when Israel was disobedient?". I took the bait. "Uh... no. What one thing did God complain about the most with the Jews?" I queried. "Breaking the Sabbath!" Keith fired back delightedly "God complains over and over again that Israel just won't take a break and let him take care of them. They keeping working and working to get more stuff. It's idolatry. They didn't believe that God would take care of them. They wanted to be the chosen people but they wouldn't live like they were really loved. When you are truly loved you can rest in that love. You don't have to do everything yourself."

This haunts Chris for a long time while working harder and harder into exhaustion and suddenly its not only a theological question anymore but plain reality:

Freed from the constant struggle of work I dragged myself into a coffee shop and curled up in a corner to rest. This time I had no theological conversation partner. Just a notebook, a bible and a fresh cup of Starbucks. I was too tired to even think clearly. But Keith's words continued to haunt me. Did I really believe that God loved me enough to take care of me? Was I willing to rest in that love and give up on constant striving to achieve and influence people? Was God frustrated with my unwillingness to let him care for me? The Sabbath seemed a useless waste of time to me. What good is a day spent doing nothing? It seemed like that it was no good at all. Read more.

Slowly Chris starts to realize what it is all about.... The thing is I know that this is one of the things I need to come in to. Why? Well I do run away from the Sabbath - that is spending time just being with God and trusting Him to take care of me. This I do in so many ways, reading books, sitting here at the computer, having fun for sure, but still hiding...

Now I am here, having constant colds, being tired and frustrated. I have been resting though, which has given me more energy for redesigning my blog, posting and other stuff. But the thing is, that's just another trip around the mountain... again... These insights are really playing hide and seek with me, that's for sure.

Small Blog Redesign

Being home from work, tired but bored, I set about to do some small redesigns on my blog template.

Knowing it's far too content-heavy, but having no time to do a major redesign I choose to make it a little bit more easy-read. Some of my friends suffering from dyslexia have been complaining.

I do hope this makes it at least a bit easier for them to navigate.

Scandinavian Style and health update.

As you've notice I still haven't been blogging for a long time. Still not healthy, being very tired, bad chest and other cold symptoms. It's very annoying, I keep staying at home, go to work, having to stay at home again, feeling much better, going to work, having to stay home. It's not good for my economy this.

I have joined the Digital Scrapbook Place and am planning on doing beautiful layouts (LO's) of my photos. Some time ago when I introduced myself I asked for Scandinavian Style digicropping elements, papers etc. The question came up about what Scandinavian Style really is, this was my answer:

There is some different Scandinavian styles such as "Scandinavian Modern", "Scandinavian Cottage" and "Gustavian".

Generally speaking: Light, simplistic, Pure forms, Light Woods, Sparse Ornamenting, Mixture of old and new, Carl Larsson, also bright colours, linen, cotton, red cottages, whites in different shades....

Since it is so hard to describe with words and also for my own inspiration I have collected a lot of Scandinavian design and heritage links at my del.icio.us. That should give more insight and inspiration. Scandinavian Style Links

I thought it would be nice to share it here with you also. I would be very happy if you submitted your own descriptions of Scandinavian Style and what you associate too...

I haven't been so well for a while, an annoying cold has been bugging me. So since I haven't been updating for a while please enjoy one of my first digiscrapped layouts. This is from the castle garden of Ulriksdal's Castle in Stockholm. My sister and our cousin's daughter are the beautiful models....