Thankful Thursday Gratitudes

Greetings and Holykisses!

It's Thankful Thursday and I've been setting here thanking God for each and everyone of you who visit the Shabby Olde Potting Shed! It's such a beautiful day here. Garrett our weatherman said to expect some gusty winds today.... who doesn't love gusty winds on an Autumn day?! To see those leaves spin around and twirl down from the trees.... makes me happy!

I have so much to share today! It's been a busy week and there are many changes in thee air!
So here I share a few more random blessings....
Surely you're sick of seeing this picture, but bear with me! This is in my soul journal and I want you to have another glimpse so you can see what God's been doing..... Here; he'd brought to my mind to put my armor on everyday- some of you prolly remember.- (I know it's spelled probably but all the cool young folks say prolly- including our sons so I'm goin with "prolly" today.)
Well, here's a beautiful tag my dear friend Char sent me after seeing thee armor picture. This is a two part blessing because not only is this great tag a God thing... but so is her friendship! We've never met in real life, but God crossed our paths through the open door; here at the Shabby Olde Potting Shed. (Thanks God!!!)

This past Sunday, as I got dressed for church, my mind drifted to putting on my Godly armor.
So piece, by piece.... I imagined putting it on. My helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness, belt of truth, and then I reached for my shield of faith. After that I slipped on my comfy gospel boots and before leaving gripped my sword of the Spirit. I was dressed...and we headed out.
We pass by this suit of armor every day to go to church. It actually hangs on a fence and I've often admired it but this last Sunday we were a little early so I asked Myguy to stop and take a picture of me next to it since God keeps bringing this whole armor thing to my attention. Soon as he took the photo, we headed on to church. Walking through the doors, the greeter handed me the bulletin:
Should I even be surprised I ask?????????????????????
"We must... put the armor of FAITH and LOVE on our chests, and put on a helmet of the HOPE of SALVATION. (Thank you Abba Father for revealing Yourself to me and speaking in the most amazing, awesome, cool, rock my world kind of ways!!! I hear You, I'm listening, and please keep showing me things! " Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not." Jeremiah 33:3


Another cool random blessing this week is this: I received an email from someone I didn't know that had once read a Post here at the shed. Let me further explain: A couple years ago, another blogger friend sent me a link to a Gardening site and she told me to go look at these "potting shed" advent calendars. I went to the site and loved them but they were really expensive. I waited and they were later marked down but still not enough where I felt I could buy one. I kept thinking about them though and when I went back again... they were "sold out." I sorta kicked myself! Must have been last year then, I blogged about advent calendars and asked people if they had any good patterns or ideas to make one? You typically see wall hanging advent calendars made from wool. -- Then I think I wrote about this particular potting shed advent calendar and how I missed out on it. Fast forward now to this new email I received from a gal who'd visited the Shabby Olde Potting Shed long ago and who had read that post. Still with me? She said she'd actually purchased one of those exact potting shed advent calendars and no longer wanted it and asked me if I would like to buy it? She priced it extremely reasonable and I bought it from her. A couple days ago it came in the mail and look at it!!!! It's so dadgum cute! It's really big too! See all those little doors? They all open and have things like rubber boots, a water can, ... gardening things to take out on those days and decorate around the lil potting shed. (It makes me smile) And what a blessing! Thankyou Susan!!!! You blessed me so much! I can hardly wait til December 1st!!!
Onto some more random blessings.... our lil flock! Some of you are "prolly" shaking your head at me. I can't help it.... they really do bless me! These lil guys n gals are my friends! So many of them will eat right out of my hand and even though some are now molting.... they lay the best eggs!
Remember the Christmas hen? Our neighbor gave her to me for Christmas last year.
She lays the most beautiful big brown eggs! I love her! She will even let me pet her for a bread crumb.
See her eggs? Which came first... the chicken or thee egg? The chicken of course!
And God said "It was very good too!"

Some of you have written to me about our old cupboards. This one was missing a cutting board, so my handy Hubby cut a new board for it recently. Works great! He even cut a cute lil groove on the bottom for my fingers to pull it out. (I'm thankful God gave me a Handyman Husband!)
Out in the garden, I was blessed to find the Snow Queen Clematis I planted in Spring, had bloomed this week! My Angel Mother once won a Snow Queen contest so I planted it in her memory. Seeing this big bloom this week really touched me coz I've been experiencing a few sad missing her days again.
After our garden died down in August, I mowed it and cleaned it out. But the zinnia seed resprouted as well as more morning glories. Everything you see here came up without me planting it. Even the one cockscomb in that pot. (I'd planted petunias in that pot and they died when it got really hot.)

On this particular day this past week, I cut a whole mess of zinnas and the cockscomb and brought them inside to put in old fruit jars.
The night that I did this.... we got our first freeze! All the rest of them outdoors died out.
But these are still on our woodstove! Oh and the lil birdnest is yet another lil blessing. I have such a thing for birdnests and feathers n things. I found this little nest on the same day I cut the zinnias. It had fallen out of our Pecan tree!
Into the kitchen, .... more blessings. Some of my Facebook buddies encouraged me to try making a pumpkin roll. I've always thought they are beautiful but they do look abit intimidating? Next trip to town, I bought thee ingredients and gave it a go. (If you want the recipe, I ended up using the one that can be found on the back of a Libbys pumpkin can.) -- Oh looky... this is where I got to try out the new cutting board!
It was so much fun trying something new....
And they actually turned out!
Not eating the whole thing was the hard part.
Happily, both Myguy and me have both met our weight goals now! Which is yet another blessing! Maintaining is alot easier than losing that's for sure! As my friend Heidi would say, "You can have 1 cookie." Or in our case... 1 piece of pumpkin roll.
If anybody is still with me??? .... we're now out back and counting more blessings. First, Myguy has been on vacation all week. It's been awesome having him HOME. And another blessing is we got to start building a wrap around porch. For 15 years now; this is what it looked like to go out our back door. It's quite a drop down to concrete blocks, and then the ground. See our clothesline out by the fence?
I used to push off the top concrete block carrying my laundry basket coz I was afraid a snake could be inside these blocks.
This is what it used to look like.
And this is how it's coming along. We're pretty excited about it and very thankful.
We still have a few boards to put on the floor later today and then the railing around the whole thing and the steps on the right. I asked Myguy if instead of a step on the left, if I could have one cool flat rock. So I'll be watching for just the right one when I go walking through the woods.

We won't be able to get the roof on until next year because God willing, at that time we'll have a green metal roof put on our whole house as well as this porch. We're very grateful because almost everything it cost to do all of this was more blessings. We'd been saving all our pocket change for a few years and tossing in an antique pickle jar. For two nights this week, Myguy and I counted and rolled all our pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters and discovered we'd saved almost 700 dollars! Then, yesterday we hauled off three of our calves we had this year. With God; one pickle jar plus three calves can build a porch!

Well, I have a doctor appt I better go get ready for. Just a physical; you know how fun it is after 40... you get to go have mammygrammys and all kinds of good stuff. I shouldn't complain; instead I "prolly" should be saying "I get to go to the doctor today!" (yeah right; who am I kidding.) :D

Have a wonderful day!!
God's good!
Holykisses xoxo
L