A. and I live in a pretty small apartment, though you wouldn’t know it by the amount of thought and searching I put into furnishing and decorating it. Some of that was because I wasn’t working when we first moved, so I made it into my “job” to hunt down the perfect pieces, and some of it was because it’s actually really hard to find small furniture, since big, overstuffed seems to have been in for awhile. But some of it was just by choice, for sure.

Now that our apartment has been lived in for almost a year, it’s basically done. But all that means is it frees up mental space for me to agonize over every small decision we DO get to make about it! This led to a low point in my pinning life the other night when I spent half an hour pinning pictures of….doormats.

A. and I have a little brown doormat that we used inside the door at our old apartment. (It’s designed to be an indoor one, I think.) But because of the weather stripping around our door here, we were unable to put it inside, because the door wouldn’t open over it. So it is outside. But every time there’s an level of wind, I come home to find it folded over on itself and/or blown 3 doors down the balcony hallway of our apartment building! Clearly we need a new one, a heavier one that is actually designed to live outside. I joked to A. that I could probably search Pinterest and find entire boards dedicated to doormats….but instead of doing that, I created one myself! (For what it’s worth, I think Pinterest itself contributes to my willingness to agonize over small design decisions. The ability to create boards of beautiful images makes it more fun than annoying! Plus I’ve been reading more DIY blogs lately, so I have decor on my mind.)

Here are some of the contenders:

The beauty of Pinterest is that, when I posted this first one from Target, my cousin commented saying she has this doormat and has been disappointed in it because it’s pretty flimsy. It’s like real-time online reviews! So even though I like the looks of it, I’m ruling it out based on her evaluation.

This second one may be my favorite, but it unfortunately doesn’t qualify for our Amazon Prime free 2-day shipping!!!

Amazon.com, 100% coir

This next one from Amazon is really sweet:

Amazon.com

And this one to me is delightfully kitschy:

uncommongoods.com

This recycled flip flop mat is really cool, but I have a feeling it might have the same flimsiness problem we have now:

uncommongoods.com

And finally, another striped on similar to the first. I like the looks of it, but at only $12.99, I’m skeptical of its quality.

Target

So there you have it. I have now devoted more time to pinning and blogging about doormats than I ever would have imagined possible. The morning after my pinning extravaganza A. asked me if I had picked a doormat. I said, “Oh. I guess I hadn’t really thought about actually picking one! I was just having fun pinning!” But now I suppose I will give it some real thought. I swung through Home Goods on my way home from work the other day to see if they randomly had any, and they didn’t, so I guess online is a good way to go.

I know I can’t be the only one who’s gotten caught in the Pinterest trap. Is there anything lately that you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on just because it was fun?

And most importantly, which doormat would you pick?!?

Today is Ash Wednesday.

That didn’t used to mean anything to me. I didn’t grow up going to church, so the rhythms of the church calendar were not a part of my life at all. And when I did start going to church, it was to a very traditional Southern Baptist church that did not follow the liturgical calendar. Easter became familiar to me, and the sunrise service that I went to a few times was one of my favorites of the whole year. But I didn’t learn about Ash Wednesday until late high school, when several of my close friends were Catholic and celebrated a special mass on that day. Though I often went with them to church, I don’t think I ever tagged along for that particular service.

In college, though, I experienced Ash Wednesday for myself while attending a Baptist church that chose to follow a traditional church calendar. I remember the Ash Wednesday services as being times of great peace for me, and at one in particular I had a very vivid experience of the presence of God with me. It was wonderful.

And so we enter into Lent. As much as I came to enjoy Ash Wednesday, I haven’t yet figured out a good rhythm for lenten practices. The tradition is to give something up. A few times I gave up soda; one year I gave up coffee AND soda. But what I found those years was that I replaced them with things that were even worse for me, like sugary juices and sweet tea. And ultimately I feel like that “sacrifice” on my part misses the point of Lent. I gave up those drinks almost more as a diet effort, because they were bad for me, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could go without something I enjoyed and even sometimes  felt like I needed. At the heart of any Lenten practice, though, should be a desire to draw closer to God.

If I felt like my drinking soda was something that placed a wedge between God and me, or if I felt that by not drinking it I was more closely following His will, that would be valid. But unfortunately for me that was never the real motivation. So for the past couple of Lents I have done nothing. I read a lot of Christian blogs, though, so it’s never far from my mind. I have become more enamored of late with the idea of adding something to my Lenten season rather than taking something away: a discipline, a new rhythm for my day. As I have yet to really delve into my quasi-New Year’s Resolution to read the Bible, I think I will take these 40 days as a chance to give it a shot.

There are countless Lenten devotionals out there, and by the end of today I would like to pick one (or even a non-Lenten book…I started following Practicing God’s Presence last year and never stuck with it, so that’s an option). I’m not sure when in the course of my day I’ll choose to add it in, but I know I need to be intentional about it and carve out the space if it’s going to work. I don’t have any preconceived notions. I’m not going to hold myself to a standard of perfection. But why not strive after God? There can be no downside to giving it a try!

And tonight I will go to the Ash Wednesday service at my church. It will likely be unlike any I have attended before. The plan is to have different prayer and worship stations set up to encourage personal reflection and meditation, with only a short central time of corporate worship and the imposition of ashes. I am a little apprehensive, to be honest. But I hope within it I’m able to feel that peace of God and enter into this time of Lent prepared to seek His heart.

How do you practice Lent? What does this season mean to you?

A. moved into the apartment where we lived the first year of our marriage well before I did, but I helped him furnish it a bit. I didn't truly get my hands on the space until after we were married, and even then it was an ongoing process. But for weekends when I came to visit, I definitely wanted things, like, you know dishes to use, so the kitchen was the first priority.

We bought some inexpensive drinking glasses from Target that look pretty much like this:

Yep. Plain, clear, glass. We got a set of 8.

However, I started to realize that when I was growing up, we never had matching glasses! We had an assortment of hand-blown glasses and other things. And when we would go visit my parents, I realized the mish mash of glasses was nice, because you could always remember which one was yours. With our clear ones, A. and I were forever getting confused (though I could usually tell mine from the chapstick lip marks on it!).

So I decided to get A. a Christmas gift that would be mutually beneficial: a new set of unique glasses. I got it in my head that I wanted to find some made from recycled wine glasses, and ultimately picked these from Etsy:

Source

I put the plain glasses on a high-up shelf in the dishes cabinet, and I haven't looked back since! We also added the 2 souvenir pint glasses from our Red Brick Brewery tour, and I've now got my eye on these cuties, spotted at the art museum gift shop:

It's so fun to me having different colored glasses to choose from! I have a similar philosophy when it comes to bowls and plates, in that I like having a dish just the right size for what I'm serving. We have a fun collection of small plates and bowls, and I like that we're diversifying our glass selection now as well. For all I may be matchy-matchy about a lot of things (like belt and shoes--I have yet to be able to break that rule), for some reason opening the cabinet to a smorgasbord of dishes is satisfying to me. There's a store near our apartment called Desperate Housewares (rim shot!) that sells vintage/used dishes and furniture, and I wish I could just exchange our stock there all the time.

What's your dishes style? Do you go for classic and elegant or fun and funky?

P.S. We do have some nice glasses for special occasions. They look a lot like this and were a wedding gift:

I'm far from a one-trick pony when it comes to dishes!

My small group at church is doing a Tim Keller Bible study on Genesis called “What Were We Put in the World to Do?”. The last two sections have been on work, and I’ve read a few things that resonated with me, and a few others that have made me think.

In the first 2 chapters of Genesis, God works. He creates the world. And in reading those two chapters, we find an outline of the biblical view of work: that it is necessary for personal fulfillment, that it is for the common good, and that it is a duty. But we in our modern world have several skewed views of what work is: that it is or can be our sole identity, that it is just a way to make a living, or that it is a necessary sacrifice for others (not ourselves). The truest vision of work out of all of this is that it is a partnership with God.

It’s important, too, to rest, as God also did. Resting is hard! And even when we participate in what we think of as rest, we often don’t come away feeling refreshed. The study suggests 3 ways to truly rest: to nurture our created bodies and souls once a week (in church); to enjoy and protect the wonders of nature; and to cultivate a society in which life is protected and honored. My group leader asked us how we would like to follow God’s example of Sabbath rest better in our own lives, and I decided to make it a point to get out in nature more often!

We were created in a garden, and as gardeners, our job is to cultivate. That includes the dictates God gave Adam to be fruitful and multiply and to continue God’s work of filling and forming the world. We are to be respectful stewards of nature with a high and dignified view of work as an extension of the very work of God. Keller made the point that nature is not necessarily better left untouched, which I found interesting. He definitely encourages treating nature well but promotes “drawing out the resources and powers of the material universe.”

Ultimately when it comes to work, we should seek 4 things:

• work we can do well
• work that benefits the human community
• work that enables us to do family building (i.e. earn a living)
• work that allows us to benefit the field of work itself

I have to say, my job and my life don’t reflect many of these things. I often find that the parts of my day that involve doing things that make me come alive lie outside the hours that I spend at my workplace. And while I am there I don’t always view what I’m doing as part of God’s work–I just do the tasks that are required of me and certainly don’t exude the joy that should come of partnering with God. When we’re simply checking things off the list, we don’t find the true fulfillment of Sabbath rest, because we haven’t truly experienced work in its purest form. But Keller writes that God offers a share in His own Sabbath rest: the enjoyment of His finished work not merely of creation but of redemption. We can’t experience that rest by trying to live out all the Sabbath regulations of rest. He continues, “If we rest from our work, by trusting in the finished work of Christ, we will be able to truly enter into the rhythm of work and rest that God calls us to.”

And even though I’m not much a drummer, that seems like a rhythm I’d like to march to.

I’ve had my second guest post published on Money Saving Mom!

It’s humbling to be published on a site with so many active readers. I know I have learned so much from Crystal about saving money and living a frugal lifestyle by choice. This post about using our apartment complex’s washer and dryer facilities has generated a lot of comments already! It’ss not a choice that would work for everyone, but it works well for us right now.

…although I will definitely be excited to have my own washer and dryer some day. :-)

If you are visiting from Money Saving Mom, thank you for stopping by! I would love to “meet” you in the comments.