My new buddy

Many of you know that I have long sought after a canine companion. It has been a long process mostly due to the fact that I haven't lived in a place where I couldn't have one. But with my new place this is no longer an issue.

On Thursday Nicki sent me a link from a local rescue that had a dog named Phoenix available 3yrs old, house trained and good with other dogs and kids. He seemed pretty ideal, but I wasn't wild about the name. However, after Saturday church clean-up Nicki and I went to the shelter to go take a look, and he was just a bundle of cuteness. He was dropped off at the shelter and his fur was in a matted mess, so they had to shave him, and he's not that wild about men right now, but with a little more training and a suitable name he'll be the perfect pet.

I had decided to name him Bo after Boaz in the book of Ruth. But then I realized that the name "Bo" rhymes with "No" and he may get confused if I have to scold him, and I don't want him to get a complex. So if you have any name ideas you want to contribute feel free to do so. I'll let you all know what I come up with/decide on.

Just As I Am

Just as I Am, Without One Plea

By: Charlotte Elliott

Just as I am, without one plea

But that thy blood was shed for me

And that thou bidd’st me come to thee

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am and waiting not

To rid my soul of one dark blot,

To thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, though tossed about

With many a conflict, many a doubt,

Fightings and fears within, without,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;

Sight, riches, healing of the mind,

Yea, all I need, in thee to find,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, thou wilt receive,

Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;

Because thy promise I believe,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Obviously you can tell the inspiration that serves as my new blog title. I changed my layout because I had an extra column added to make it 3 columns, instead of 2, and then my cherry layout no longer fit the columns.

The title changed because last night on my ride home from the county fairgrounds I heard a version of this song on the violin that just caused me to stop and ponder the lyrics unlike I had at any other time.

This hymn was written by Charlotte Elliott. Charlotte was born in England in 1789. About the age of 30 Charlotte became an invalid (sort of ironic that I happen to be writing this blog at my age of 30 then). I couldn't find out the exact reason why, but of her condition Charlotte wrote, "My Heavenly Father knows, and He alone, what it is, day af­ter day, and hour af­ter hour, to fight against bodily feelings of almost over­pow­er­ing weak­ness and lang­uor and ex­haust­ion, to re­solve, as He en­a­bles me to do, not to yield to the sloth­ful­ness, the de­press­ion, the ir­ri­ta­bil­i­ty, such as a bo­dy caus­es me to long to in­dulge, but to rise ev­ery morn­ing de­term­ined on tak­ing this for my mot­to, “If any man will come af­ter me, let him de­ny him­self, take up his cross dai­ly, and fol­low me.” Luke 9:23"

More of her story can be found at this link.

And so this is it . . . Just As I Am, which suits me quite well since I make no pretense to be anything other than myself and who the Lord designed with perfection, Psalm 139:14 ~ I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

Yes, My Blogs Name has Changed

A few months ago I was considering changing the name of my blog. Previously the name of my blog was 525,600 minutes, from the play Rent. There was no real thought put forth in it I just wanted something different (that's ME). Eventually the blog title fell in step with the goals that I set fort for myself last year with my 30x30 list. At first I had to explain the title to people, that those are the amount of minutes in a year, and then the light bulb would go on! "Oh that makes sense". . . I got that a lot. However, now that the list, as is was (trust me there will be more lists), is no more I didn't think that the title had relevance for what I've been feeling about this year. Plus, as my regular readers will attest to, I was never completely satisfied with my layouts and I've been wanting establish something more permanent. But what to name it? Well as you can see I was obviously inspired this afternoon at lunch.

I saw the cherry layout on the cutest blog website and I was sold. Then I remembered a song that I remembered as a commercial jingle from when I was little "Life is just a bowl of cherries, so live and laugh at it all." But before I decided on it I wanted to make sure I had the correct meaning of the phrase so I did what any other computer savvy blogger does, I Googled it. and here is what I found, courtesy of usingEnglish.com.

The idiom "Life is just a bowl of cherries" means that life is simple and pleasant. Definitely the direction that I want my life to go in. It was also a song back in 1931, the height of the Great Depression. The song and YouTube clip of it is below for your enjoyment, with lyrics below.

Life is just a bowl of cherries
Don't be so serious,
Life's too mysterious
You work,
You save,
You worry so
But you can't take your dough
When you go, go, go

So keep repeating "It's the berries."
The strongest oak must fall
The sweet things in life
To you were just loaned
So how can you lose
What you've never owned

Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh, aha!
Laugh and love
Live and laugh,
Laugh and love,
Live and laugh at it all!

There are other things I like about the song, like it brings certain scriptures to mind.

Like. . .

1 Timothy 6:7 ~ For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. (Referenced from verse 1)

Anyway, I hope that you find that you can live and laugh at life as well.

The votes are in

The people have spoken. By a majority vote of 2:1 my "Followers" and hereby now dubbed "Carolyn's Crew". Thanks for voting

What do you want to be called?

I want to change the name of my "Followers" gadget, but I'm not sure what to change it to so I thought I'd let you decide by putting up a poll. I'll leave it up for a week. The winning vote gets the prize title. Of course I'm also open to suggestions.

Name my recipe

In my last blog I mentioned that my friend renamed my recipe, which is fine, but I want to get your feed back on it so I posted a poll. Let me know what you think the recipe should be named and I'll name on it based on the results. I'm leaving it up until the end of the year (New Year, new recipe), so you have a while (and you can vote more than once, just in case you're really passionate about what it should be called).

Continue to vote on my hair color too! Right now the blonds are ahead. My friend Dave told me on Sunday, pretty emphatically, that I SHOULD NOT dye it brown. Normally I'm not looking for other peoples opinions, but this is a pretty big deal, and Dave is always good about giving me feed back if I'm making a fashion/cosmetic disaster. Plus it's always nice to have the opinion of a guy, every now and then, especially since I'm on my own. So it was appreciated.

My name means. . .

So today at church we had Bro. S.M. Davis preach and his SS lesson got me to thinking about what my name means so I decided to look it up at http://www.babyhold.com/. I think it got my personality pretty right. So I just wanted to share. . .

Carolyn
Italian meaning: Strong
English meaning: Song of happiness/joy

Ann
A variant of Hannah
Hebrew meaning: Favor or grace/gracious