This Week: A Pinterest Daybook

Follow Colleen Mitchell's board This Week on Pinterest.

So I was right. This Pinterest planning idea is pure genius! Well, it's working anyway. The post has had a lot of hits, but more importantly, it inspired a great week in our house. I'm looking forward to seeing if it keeps us on track for the week ahead too. Here's where I hope we're headed this week based on the board above:

School Stuff:
I wanted to dig in a bit to how solar energy works with the kids and some of the amazingly cool products featured here but we just didn't quite get there last week. It is science that is pertinent to my kids since when we visit our Cabecar friends in their homes in the reserve, there is no electricity. A few friends have solar panels. I wanted my boys to understand how that works. Who knows maybe one day they'll be the ones coming up with an innovative solution for a need they see in their friends lives. I haven't found a video that I think is perfect to explain the concept yet, but I am digging more this morning and hopefully we can spend some time on this this week.

I'm writing lesson plans for a Survival School unit that will cover many subjects, so you'll start seeing lots of pins for that. I'm trying to take advantage of my boys obsession with those survivor shows and the fact that Daddy is willing to take this and run with it if I write the plans.

My boys thoroughly enjoyed our jaunt through Beowulf with H.E. Marshall, and were quite entertained by this reading of the Old English. We all were amazed at how much it reminded us of the native language our Cabecar friends speak. I want to get the Heaney version eventually, but I think we'll play around with Chaucer this week.

Some good math stuff happening here lately but I want to give it another week. I'll highlight next week.

Creative Stuff:
I have been trying to make some type of creative activity available to the boys most days. They have joined the Rainbow Loom craze so that and modeling clay (I just had to type that in Spanish and translate because I couldn't remember what it was called in English) worked well for daily creative fun.

For an art project, we tried a version of these foil owls but did it our own way. The end results were mixed but everyone really enjoyed the process and I think the boys benefited from a project that was done in stages and did not give them immediate gratification.  So for this week I think we'll try a version of this project that I found at the same blog when I went searching for the foil owl pin link.

Faith Stuff:
This Ordinary Time pin is chock full of good stuff. Like overwhelming kind if full. But I found the gem of the Acts of Faith, Hope and Love in there, and I think we will aim to memorize those during Ordinary Time.

I've been using the pin from Jessica's book list to remind myself what saints to read about from the volumes we have. St Thomas Aquinas' feast is around the corner and he is my Evan's patron, so I'll be searching for some pins to celebrate in a special but simple way.

I'm trying to decide whether to get the boys in on the Scripture memorization project or just let it be a "me" thing. I know that sounds terrible but a mom needs some stuff, even in the spiritual realm that is just for her, right? We'll see what I decide to do this week. Maybe I'll just invite but not insist on participation.

Home Stuff:
There are a few black bean recipes pinned there. I hope to try something new this week. We've been obsessing over butternut squash lately (finding something new in the grocery store is exciting) and our new missionary volunteers at the orphanage are vegetarians, so I think this soup would be great to cook on the day they come to hang out and have community time this week.

I really want to bake bread this week. Ditching an old pin that has been hanging around a while and hoping that one will provide the inspiration I need.

And maybe I'll finally get around the making a curtain for under my bathroom sink.

Me Stuff:
Finding a lot of richness for myself in this pin about mindful living and still going back to it often.

And it looks like we might be passing around a nasty cold for the duration so I'll be digging up some of those natural cold remedy pins this week.

A weekend internet outage kept me from posting about Voice at Velvet Ashes this week but I hope to get that post out tomorrow since it's taking up much needed space in my head.

Kid Stuff:
I didn't do much digging through boards this week as I had a lot pinned to go on, but I realize that I don't have much fresh inspiration there for just fun kid stuff. So I'll look around a bit and see if I can find something to bring a little playfulness to our house this week.

And maybe look for some other conversation starters as I'm not finding these grab my attention very much.

Other Stuff:
Still finding lots of good marriage building material in this pin.

Eucharisteo:
708. Inspiration for mindful living
717. Friends I can count on for prayer
720. An American boy and a Cabecar boy sitting on the kitchen table painting a paper volcano
725. Ordinary Time
729. Feeling relaxed in my skin
730. MAIL!!!!
and a full seven gifts thankful for one variety of visit or visitor or another. Truly the thanks of an extorverted missionary's heart.




I'd love to hear about it if you started your own Pinterest board for planning! What's inspiring you for the week ahead? What are counting thanks for, feeling blessed by, friends?

Providing Meaningful Work: A Patron

One of the best ways we can help protect women and children from the vulnerability that can lead to exploitation and enslavement is by providing meaningful work opportunities. I have been thinking long and hard about an outreach in this realm since April or May. 

I am still trying to think it all through and make the necessary contacts to flesh out my ideas, but I am developing a basic outline of the stages we could take at the St. Bryce Foundation take make real strides in the area of providing meaningful work for women.

Over the next week or so, I would like to share those ideas and plans with you, ask for your input where I still need help figuring things out, and show you where you might be able to help out. It is going to take some thinking to put it all into words and articulate the needs clearly. Today will not be the day I can get it all out.

So today, I will introduce to the patron I have chosen for this particular outreach, Blessed Zelie Martin, and ask you to pray with me that she intercede for the success of this endeavor.

Blessed Zelie Martin                                     

Blessed Zelie was the mother of the much beloved St. Therese and her siblings. She also worked as a maker of Alencon lace in France. As the lace maker, her work was not simply to make lace on her own and in her own time, but to find women and train them to properly create the designs she had sold. Each woman would then work on her piece of the project and return it to Zelie, who would then painstakingly piece together the work of each to create a seamless and beautiful final product.

I have developed a deep devotion to Blessed Zelie over these last few years. She, like me and even more so, suffered the loss of much loved and deeply wanted babies. In reading the letters that accompanied these losses in book The Story of a Family, I found a companion on my journey of loss who showed that it was possible to find sanctity in the terrible pain. 

I have looked to her often since then as a model of peaceful, gentle motherhood, of balancing home life, work life and spiritual life, of being a holy wife, and in many other aspects of life as well.

I look to her now as I embark on this endeavor that feels overwhelming, as I try to piece together the pieces of an outreach that is growing grander in thought by the minute, as I try to link women from various communities in various parts of the world all with a willingness to work and a valuable role to play.

I know the lace maker will understand and I know her intercession will win grace for pieces and the whole of this project. So will you join me in asking the intercession of Blessed Zelie Martin over the next few days as I try to put these ideas in to words and then put the words into action? And as we approach the feast day of her little saint, also patron saint of missions, perhaps you will consider including all the work of the the Saint Bryce Foundation and our proposed projects in your novena prayers?