Strawberries

Photo Copyright  Stephanie Wolfe Photography 2013©

 

Strawberries are one of the many gifts from God.

We were at Costco yesterday after church and I found a huge box of beautiful strawberries.

They taste greenhouse grown...but they're still good.

You've never tasted a strawberry until you've grown your own, garden ripe strawberries.

Mmmmm

If you're interested, here's a tutorial on how to grow your own strawberries!

http://melissaknorris.com/2013/04/03/howtoplantstrawberries/

 

And don't even get me started about when we make a family trip out to the orchard and pick strawberries in the summer heat and occasionally sneak a couple juicy, yummy strawberries into your mouth.

I think they should start weighing you when you come to the orchard and weighing you when you leave, just like they do with the empty container before it has strawberries in it and after once the container is full. Haha!

Strawberries are just that good!

And sometimes we'll buy strawberry-lemonade slushies. Yum!

They're soooo good!

 

I love the berries that grow in the summertime.

 

-The girl wearing that yellow sundress

 

 

 

April Thrift Store Haul

      I don't know about you, but thrift shops are one of the most wonderful places in the world to me. My family lives off of one income, since my sister and I are homeschooled, my mother stays home to teach us. Besides that we also have two/three side jobs, delivering the gazette, cleaning a local church, and my mom makes and sells soap on the side. So naturally, we can't always go to the top stores to stay in style, instead, thrift shops have been a basic staple in our shopping. That's where I tend to get most of my clothing and jewelry. My favorite thrift store is in Pennsylvania called Community Aid. Rows and rows of clothing- and cheap! My family usually goes on Wednesdays because all clothing items are 50% off except for one color tag. It's a fabulous deal!

     If you came into my room, you would obviously be able to tell that my room is collected, not decorated. Not that my room looks bad, but because you couldn't find some of my items in a typical store. I can point out so many things in my room that was a sweet deal from a thrift shop.

     Most people wouldn't say that we're spoiled, but I find it that we are. We get great stuff for cheaper prices, but when we go to a top store we find that $30 is just ridiculous for any shirt. And it's funny that $8 is cheap for a shirt at a top store, but expensive at a thrift store!

 

First we went to Marvin Chapel and I found this adorable seahorse pin, it was $2 which was a bummer...(bad price if you ask me) but I love nautical jewelry (or just everything nautical really) so I couldn't pass it up. I need to figure out a way how to turn this adorable pin into a necklace!

 

Then I spotted this adorable envelope necklace! I've seen ones like these on etsy and it was only $1, just another thing I couldn't pass up. It originally had a red string as the chain, but I had a gold chain at home that I wasn't using, so I put it on this!

Did I mention that it's a locket? I wanted a locket for Christmas to put a picture of my dog, Mandie and I in. We searched lots of places but couldn't find the right locket. So I figured, why not this one?

The next stop was "The little house" we don't really know what it's called! I've been trying to collect Disney classics, and the one I hadn't been able to get my hands on yet was 'The Little Mermaid' I was excited to find it there! And only 50cents. And the book is from the Arthur Trilogy, ever since I started watching Merlin from BBC I wanted to find Arthur books, only 25cents! Good start!

THIS WAS JUST ADORABLE!

They. are. salt. and. pepper. shakers.

Just. Adorable.

And only $1! I looked it up on Amazon and it was $10 on there.

I believe this is what you call a "steal"!

 

&

$3 each!

And they are adorable. They would have been around $20 each!

So excited to use them (and they're lavender scented!)

Last stop- the church. I finally found a pillow pet! And it's a Zebra! Gahhh!

Only $1.50!

This was an interesting find.

The product is called Sweet Rock and there was at least a dozen choices of  their Incense Burners for a dollar each (except for the huge ones, which were as big as a large restaurant plate, which was $2) I'm really excited to use it!

The purple packet on the left is Cedar incense powder and the yellow packet on the left is Egyptian Musk incense powder which is probably my favorite(It smells so good!)

I finally found their website for when I run out of powder:

http://sweetrockincense.com/catalog/sweetrock-powdered-incense-p-95.html

And they have so many choices for only $4 a packet.

Though I would search on ebay first.

I think Poison and Wild Flower incense powder would be interesting to try.

 

The woman that checked out my items must have been selling a lot of the Sweet Rock products lately, and gave the whole thing away for $1.50

That's $1 for the burner and 25cents each packet of powder!

(Also a steal!)

 

A total of just over $13 for 11 items! I LOVE thrift shops.

 

-The girl wearing that yellow sundress

 

 

 

 

 

Captured Snow Flakes

  One of my most favorite things is to wake up in the winter, look out my window and find surprise snow covering my entire yard.

Snow is such a beautiful thing. Snow is lighter than rain, and they just drift down from the sky as they please.

One of my favorite things about snow is when it's covering every single branch on every single tree. Have you ever noticed how much more beautiful the world is when the trees are covered in snow?

Snow makes everything so beautiful, even when it falls into my hair as I walk outside to catch them on my tongue, it gives everything a soft, and complimented appearance.

-The girl wearing that yellow sundress

Dancing in a down pour

In all the years of my life, I have never been able to understand why people enjoy going outside in a down pour and getting completely soaked. The rain is so cold and then you're so wet afterwards. What's the point when you can stay inside and say warm and dry?

Well, yesterday evening I allowed myself to run outside in a down pour and enjoy it. My hair was completely wet and I was so cold afterwards, but it was fun!

Rain is so beautiful, it's a part of the amazing water cycle that God made in the beginning along with light and creatures.

I love how if you watch it fall into the grass, it doesn't have a hard fall, and it easily slips into the earth beneath, but when it hits the pavement, it has an equal and opposite reaction and part of the rain drop is forced back into the air, it seems like such a hard fall for the little rain drops, and then all the rain on the pavement enters  water run off and continues on it's journey until it enters a drain.

I can't imagine what it was like when there were no hard roads, and the rain had a completely soft landing.

It's more natural that way, I believe.

-The girl wearing that yellow sundress

Ocean Waves

I have always felt a very close connection to the ocean.

The ablity to be able to hear sound is priceless, and the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore is something I would never trade.

 

"There's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away." ~Sarah Kay

 

Sometimes I feel like it's crazy how deep my affections are for the sea. I live three hours away from the closest ocean and I visit the shoreline only about 3 times a year. After reading the Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan, my feelings for the ocean have grown stronger than ever. I have a strange since of connection to poseidon, god of the sea, even though I know he doesn't exist. Jesus is the true God of the sea, if only I could exchange the tide of that feeling and make them turn into a deep connection with the God of the universe...

 

 

"As water reflects the face, so does one's life reflects the heart."

~Proverbs 27:19

 

-The Girl wearing that Yellow Sundress

 

 

 

The Dance of the Forest

I was looking out a tattered window, and glancing up at the evening sky.

I have never taken the time to appreciate how gorgeous trees are when there's a slight breeze making them dance as if they're talking to one another about old times, and laughter fills their being.

I noticed the leafless trees swaying ever so elegantly back and forth, branches slightly locking with the tree next door, seeming as if they were desperately reaching out and trying to grasp each other's hands.

Beauty is sometimes found in the most simplest of things.

Sometimes you just need to look up.

-The Girl wearing that Yellow Sundress

 

Shine like a Star

     Have you ever just taken the time to turn your gaze up to the heavens at night fall and appreciate the wonderful and all glorious shining stars that men of old took the time to align and connect them into pictures and folklore?
     It's such a wonderful experience to just stare at the little glowing orbs of light that are millions of miles away but yet make a pin point dot in the sky right outside my window.
     I always wanted a window seat and a balcony in which I could simply sit and look out my window and fall asleep, or open my window doors and sit cross-legged in amazement of the stars.

     My favorite constellation is Orion, the hunter- as I like to call him, the archer. He was one of the first constellations I ever learned and is still very easy for me to point out in the night sky:

 

"Orion's seven brightest stars form a distinctive hourglass-shaped asterism, or pattern, in the night sky. Four stars—Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix and Saiph—form a large roughly rectangular shape, in the centre of which lie the three stars of Orion's Belt—Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. Descending from the 'belt' is a smaller line of three stars (the middle of which is in fact not a star but the Orion Nebula), known as the hunter's 'sword'.
Many of the stars are luminous hot blue supergiants, with the stars of the belt and sword forming the Orion OB1 Association. Standing out by its red hue, Betelgeuse may nevertheless be a runaway member of the same group."
-Wikipedia
If you're interested in learning more about Orion, visit the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)

There's still so much more to Orion then the paragraph I copied, you can go to Wikipedia and learn about the deep space nebula's connected to Orion's constellation.
 Everything about the myths and folklore just makes me feel so close to something a lot of people have missed.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Have a great week!

-The Girl Wearing That Yellow Sundress