Category Archives: Personal

Formerly Hanging Out the Wash, this is where I blog about family and faith.

A Nostalgic Outing

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Recently the kids and I took part in a visit to Dawson Creek’s Pioneer Village. It hadn’t opened yet for the season, but the homeschool group was given a personal tour and we enjoyed poking around the heritage buildings on the site and hearing about their histories.

The gentleman who opened the fire hall had actually been a firefighter in Dawson Creek in the 60′s and had a lot to say about how things have changed over the years, and his personal fight to save the two fire trucks that are on display at the Village.
fire truck | Angela Fehr I love antiques and would have loved to take home some of those old pieces of furniture. My plan for my new studio is to decorate it in the style of an old-timey general store, and so a trip like this is always good for ideas.packed | angela fehr

The kids enjoyed trying out the desks in the two one-room schoolhouses on the site, and my son was the perfect model for the dunce cap! He’s a clown.

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This is just a quick post – it’s a beautiful Saturday and I’m going to dash outside and help my girls fill some hanging baskets with annuals to decorate our home. How we are loving the spring, now that it is finally here!

Book Review: A Story of God and All of Us

The History Channel series, “The Bible” has gotten a lot of buzz over the last few weeks, and once again I’m juggling my yearning to watch with knowing that I get a lot more done around here with only “peasant-view” channels on our ancient TV set.

I’m sure my kids are better readers for lack of television to watch as well. Right now my daughters (ages 8 and 10) are washing the dishes (we also have peasant-cleanse meal clean-up!) while listening to an audio drama on the radio.

I was given a copy of A Story of God and All of Us, Young Readers edition to review and was looking forward to getting a bit of a preview of what The Bible series is all about in literary form. This companion book is based on the TV series and includes several pages of colour photos from the film in the middle of the book. The kids turned to that first, of course. They take after me in that respect. (I also often read a magazine back to front. Shhh!)

I began reading it aloud to the kids yesterday, and noticed a few things right away. First of all, the kids love it, and listen well. They are familiar with the Bible stories covered already, and are quick to correct me if they think I’ve left something out. “Mom, her name wasn’t Sarai, it was Sarah!” In this case, Sam learned something new when God changed Sarai’s name in the next paragraph.

There are a few style and editing errors that give me the sense that the book was published hastily as a companion and promotional piece to The Bible series, which irks me. Also, am I the only one who is bothered by the possible confusion caused by writing about The Bible (TV series) and the Bible (the inspired word of God)? Also, I have never been able to enjoy a book that was based on a movie or television show. They are always dreadful. Books that spawned movies, on the other hand, top my must-read list.

The introduction to the book makes it clear that A Story of God and All of Us is not intended to be a factual Biblical retelling. As in the television series, the stories have been dramatized and abridged, and for someone who has grown up with the Bible, this is quickly evident. In the story of Abram and Lot, for example, Lot’s wife is credited with instigating the trouble that caused Abram and Lot to part ways and Lot to move to Sodom. This is not true to the Biblical account of conflict between Abram and Lot’s herdsmen as the cause of the division. Earlier in the book there is a brief description of Noah closing the “hatch” of the Ark. The Bible tells us (and I’ve been taught that this action contains great spiritual significance) that God closed the door. There is a description of the disciple John having a “gift of intuition” that I don’t see as Biblically supportable (unless by “intuition” you mean Holy Spirit), and an episode where, following Jesus’ resurrection, Peter serves communion to John, again, not found in the Bible. 

These are little things, and yet they concern me. So much has been omitted from the story, and I understand that these things happen in a Bible story for the sake of brevity. But I am more troubled when things are added because it makes it just that much more difficult to tell truth from fiction, especially for children. I feel very conscious of the need to stop and explain any digressions from the Biblical account to my children as I read, as they are accustomed to stories and teaching that relies on a traditional Bible narrative that sticks closely to the facts.

The cover of the book does describe it as a novel, and this is emphasized again in the note to parents that opens the book. But I am reminded of a “novel” I read once based upon the life of Marilyn Monroe. I don’t to this day know what was fact and what was fiction, and much of what I believe I know about the actress, comes solely from that book. Fortunately in the case of A Story of God and All of Us, we have a true, factual account that is fully reliable in the Bible, and my sincere hope, (one shared by the producers of the History Channel’s The Bible series), is that the series and the books will motivate the viewers to search out the Scriptures for themselves.

There are many excellent resources out there that retell Bible stories both dramatically and factually. Eggermeier’s Bible Storybook, The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes by Kenneth Taylor, My Bible Friends by Etta Degering are books we have used and enjoyed for different ages and stages in my children’s growth. Now that the girls are reading independently, they have their own New Living Translation Bibles that are easy to read and they are reading a chapter a day and writing down their thoughts, in addition to taking part in family Bible study and memorization. We aren’t perfect, and we miss days, but through this daily familiarization with the word of God, we will all be better able to “rightly divide the word of truth.”

I do have a copy of “A Story of God and All of Us” to give away. Leave a comment by noon PST on Monday, April 1st, and I’ll select one person to win.

The finale for The Bible on the History Channel airs this Sunday – if you’ve been watching at all, and even if you haven’t, this is the one you don’t want to miss! 

Review and Giveaway: VeggieTales: The Little House That Stood

This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner, Tami Grandi! Watch your email for instructions on how to claim your DVD.

How fun to be given a copy of VeggieTales newest DVD, The Little House That Stood to review and give away!

VeggieTales have been a part of my family’s entertainment for about eight years. One of my oldest girl’s first songs, when she was learning to talk was the VeggieTales theme song, and through VeggieTales my kids have learned about St. Patrick, fedoras, great musical themes (we love singing along to Larry’s High Silk Hat) and what an “umbilical equivocal” is. A hundred meaningless points to anyone who can identify the shows that those references come from.

TheLittleHousethatStood

I asked my kids to review the DVD for me, so they watched it last night. And twice this morning, as I slept in. (Boy, this reviewing business is a tough gig!) And the reviews are good!

Rory (age 10): “It was so funny to see those guys arguing over a hot tub made of wood. And then they turned into clowns! Hilarious!”

Sammy (age 8): “I think kids will like this show because it teaches them a lot of good things, like not to be selfish, but it does it in a good way.”

Wes (age 6): “Can we watch it again now?”

Does it hold to the same standard as VeggieTales episodes of yore? I don’t know, and the kids aren’t really that critical. The Silly Song was funny, the lesson was taught in an entertaining way, and I’ll be hearing quotes from the DVD for weeks to come, I’m sure.

I have a copy of VeggieTales: The Little House that Stood to give away! Just leave a comment below to be entered to win. Deadline for entry is Monday, March 18th at noon, PST.

Chasing Off the Winter Blues with Exercise

Happy Saturday! The house is quiet, as the kids spent last night at their grandparents. Wade and I went out for supper to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary. We should really do something for our anniversary that doesn’t involve stuffing ourselves. Though it was delicious. We didn’t even have room for the cake we brought home from the grocery store, so now it’s breakfast. (Hey, the kids are gone, so why not?)

I love January. It’s a long month, and winter is usually pretty brutal in January, but this year we’ve got so much to keep us busy that I didn’t even have to make any resolutions about exercising more and living healthy! I joined the Futsal league in town, and our games are Sunday nights (starting tomorrow!). I’m one of only three girls in the league so that will be interesting…and the sports guy from the paper came during our orientation scrimmage game so I’m already in the papers playing Futsal.

The kids started cross country ski club last week. I guess the technical term is “nordic skiing.” I bought myself a pair of skis so I can ski with them every Saturday afternoon. The trails are beautiful and the class is set up so that I can ski with some parents while the kids do their drills, and then join the kids on the trail for the last half of the class. Since the kids take their loaner skis home every week, we plan to ski the trails every Wednesday afternoon as well.

With swimming on Tuesday and Thursday, fitting in a spinning session and a running session once a week, I’ve got fitness happening every day and that is exciting. It’s impossible to get in a rut with so many different disciplines to train in! I track all my workouts using Endomondo, because I am then challenged to beat my own personal bests and impress myself with how many kilometres I can travel in a year. From April to December of last year I went 684 km (running, biking and swimming) and however you add that up, it’s more than zero.

Just a few years ago I only exercised incidentally. You know, taking the kids for walks, the occasional hike or a single game of badminton. To be committed to my own health with regular exercise has energized me and I’ve learned that I do like sports after all. That was a complete surprise after the negative sports experiences of my childhood. I think it’s important to take a no-guilt approach to exercise. A little bit is better than nothing, and you’re stronger than you think are the two mottos that push me to continue.

I just joined Instagram and stuck a couple of photos of skiing with the kids from Wednesday on there that you can check out if you want. It’s definitely easier taking pictures with the phone when I’m wielding skis and poles than my clunky Nikon. (I love my Nikon but it’s not exactly sleek.)

My oldest turns ten this month and she desperately wants to go downhill skiing for her birthday. I think we’ll try to make that happen, but lessons will be mandatory. Wade and I have skied twice in our lives, and it’s been nearly twenty years since our last time. I think my parents will want to come just for the laughs.

How do you cope with the mid-winter blues? If you’re struggling, trying adding some motion to your day. It sure helps me.

A Word for 2013.

In just a few days it will really seem like the new year has begun, as I brew an extra cup of coffee and the kids open their books for the first time in 2013. I always have great intentions to manage my time better; like money, time is one of those things that you never manage perfectly and always want to do better.

This year I also have a Word for the Year. It just came to me, I think because I spent the last two days driving from Saskatchewan to British Columbia following a visit to my in-laws and thirteen hours of driving lends itself to a lot of thinking time, even with kids along.

Hiking in Jasper with my daughters, July 2012.

My word for 2013 is Satisfied.

It comes directly from my theme of 2012, which was gratitude. I really learned last year that being thankful brings joy in all circumstances, and so the word “Satisfied” is a natural follow-up to learning to be joyful.

My natural instinct is to throw myself wholeheartedly into everything I do. I master a new skill, and I want to either profit by it or compete in it or make myself a professional at it. While this has brought about some really neat opportunities (like teaching scrapbooking and having paper craft projects published in magazines!), it can also mean that I am always striving, and never satisfied. Occasionally I have to stop and speak firmly to myself:
“Angela, you will not become a competitive cross country skier. Just enjoy the trails with the kids.”
“Angela, you do not have time to paint vintage signs for anyone but your husband.”
“Angela, the internet is full of instructions on how to use Facebook safely. Let someone else worry about the newbies.”

Me and my boy, August 2012

Enjoying Vegas with my husband at the wheel, March 2012.

I have a fantastic life. How foolish would it be to spend this year trying to make it better instead of recognizing how great it already is?

I have an amazing husband (we celebrate our 15th anniversary next week!), three fabulous kids, and a home filled with life, laughter and colour. I get to do art every day, and spend my days with my favourite people, and we have everything we need. Satisfied.

Finally, this quote from John Piper has been resonating in my mind since I first thought of my Word for 2013: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” I am not only seeking satisfaction in my circumstances of home & family. I am a child of this amazing God whose eternal qualities can never be plumbed to their depths. Every day of this year can reveal something new about God’s infinite character; His love, His faithfulness, His mercy & compassion, His creativity in creation. I want with all my heart to seek to be satisfied in Him this year.

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
~ Romans 11:33-36 

Emmanuel

Merry Christmas! This Christmas my wish for you is that you would know the significance of Emmanuel, God with us.

I’ve been listening to Steve Bell’s Keening for the Dawn CD, especially, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Poet Malcolm Guite reads between the stanzas and the meaning of the song became so much richer, the melody haunting:

Even in the darkness where I sit
And huddle in the midst of misery
I can remember freedom, but forget
That every lock must answer to a key…
…I cry out for the key I threw away
That turned and over turned with certain touch
And with the lovely lifting of a latch
Opened my darkness to the light of day
O come again, come quickly, set me free
Cut to the quick to fit, the master key

O come, Desire of nations, come and bind
In one the hearts of broken human kind
Make all our sad divisions cease
And be yourself our King of Peace

Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel! Shall come to thee, O Israel!

This Christmas I can’t stop thinking about dear ones who are walking broken-hearted. We never dream it will happen to us, and when the bottom drops out of our lives, where do we turn, and who do we trust? In all the pain and heartache, there is Someone who understands abandonment, suffering and hurt, and who promises to uphold us, to be a rock, to sustain us, comfort us, and give us peace and even joy in our sorrow. How I wish that everyone would turn to a Creator God who holds everything we need and so freely gives it. Won’t you seek to know Him more deeply in 2013?

Champion Spark Plug Sign and a Farewell.

Today is my final post with Scrapbooker’s Paradise. How fun it has been to share projects weekly over the past year! Visit the blog for a host of Christmas memories from the rest of the design team, and a special farewell from two of us. I’ll certainly do my best to continue competing in the challenges, and you know I’ll continue to shop their site and take advantage of the frequent special offers.

I’ve been feeling like it’s important for me to make painting a higher priority, and to do that, it will help to have fewer non-watercolour commitments. I’ll still be teaching paper crafting and making projects that I will share on this site, but I’m hoping paintings will be appearing more frequently on my web site as well.

With that in mind, I’d also like to share another type of painting that has been occupying me this week.

My husband loves vintage signs to add colour to the walls of his shop, but getting a large vintage auto sign is tough around here, and my jaw always drops at the prices they command. Several months ago he had me print the Champion Spark Plug sign above, enlarged to four feet wide, and he attempted to paint his own sign. Wade is not a guy who gives up on a project, but he gave up on that one. Things just did not go smoothly, and he finally stuck the sheet of wood in the lumber shed and forgot about it.

I thought it would make a great gift to surprise him by finishing the sign, and so I pulled it out of the shed and went to work. It didn’t go quite how I thought, and it took so long, and was so large that it didn’t remain a secret for long.

All Wade had done was paint the yellow, leaving white for the spark plug and the “bow-tie” shape of the logo. Turns out he’d used a special mix of paint for the yellow, so I couldn’t paint over any mistakes were I to get paint on the yellow part. I used a paper stencil for the Champion letters and the navy blue paint seeped under every part of the stencil and made a huge mess. I ended up using a large quantity of a special dry paint remover to clean the letters after painting them.

I was able to use my Silhouette machine to die cut a stencil from adhesive vinyl for the block printing at the top and bottom. This prevented that awful seeping and went much more smoothly.

And I freehand drew the outlines for the large spark plug, and then painted it in. Just after I had finished the last coat of black paint and left the room, my six-year-old son came in and just had to touch that shiny black paint. Aarrgh! Deep breath, more paint remover, and a few hours drying time before I tried again, and finished it. I think it will look great on Wade’s shop wall, and he says I am his new official sign painter. He already has an idea for the next one!

Dashing (slow motion-ish) through the snow: Our Christmas Tree Hunt 2012

After weeks of frigid temperatures, it finally chinooked. We in northern British Columbia yearn for the chinook, the warm winds that spring up unexpectedly in dead winter, dropping the mercury from -30C to above freezing in less than an hour, and providing a reprieve, however blustery, from the thud of cold and snow.
Wade and I knew we had to grab the opportunity (plus he had the day off work!) and went out Thursday afternoon to harvest our Christmas tree. We love having a wild tree in our home at Christmas and going as a family to choose one is a tradition we try not to miss. The cold temperatures definitely delayed us a bit this year as usually we choose our tree the first week of December.

We drove out to our secret spot, along a maze of oilfield roads that snake through the forests of our region. Wade used to drive grader, clearing snow along these roads, so he’s a great guide.

It was our boy’s first time sawing the tree himself and he did a great job. I doubted whether his six-year-old arms would be up to the task, but he got the knack and even shouted “TIMBER” when it toppled.
 It’s snowed a lot this year, but I didn’t expect that we would be plowing through HIP DEEP snow! Most areas were above the knee, and then you’d unexpectedly plunge into a hole and be up to your waist!

The girls proudly hauled the tree to the truck. They couldn’t decide which end was heavier and kept switching ends.

The sun is in perpetually rising or setting this time of year as we near the winter equinox. The sky apricot-tinged even at three in the afternoon.

We chose a tree for Grandpa & Grandma. While our beauty was spruce, my mum prefers pine for its scent and longer needles that don’t make such a mess on the carpet. I don’t mind sweeping short needles off our hardwood floor. Our boy was fascinated by the saw and sliced the snow all the way back to the truck.

And I was thankful for my new, tall, brown winter boots. Though I wished I’d worn snow pants!

Our tree is lovely. I think that if even Christmas trees were not such a time-honoured tradition we would be finding an excuse to bring in a tree from outdoors and cover it with lights and pretties. When all the world is white, it’s good to have a home that glows.

 

Homebodies.

Our community mail boxes on October 29th. They are wearing twice as much snow now.

We’ve had a winter’s worth of weather since the middle of October. Standing objects wear a cap of eighteen inches of snow, the temperature keeps dropping (it’s -28C today), and the roads are caked with snow, worn to glass. Home is the best place to be.
From the outside, our home is unprepossessing, and even a little odd. It’s a modest 2 1/2 bedroom in a faded yellow-not-quite-almond chippy vinyl siding, and I’ve never been able to grow anything pretty in front of the front porch. There’s a strange ladder that leans against an ancient little balcony off the upstairs loft, and it’s just as well that the lawn is covered in snow for half the year, because it’s patchy and weedy, dotted with wild strawberry plants and dandelions.

But, how thankful I am for my home! Stepping inside, one finds a welcoming open space, alive with colour (even more so with my new kitchen countertops) and clustered with objects that make me smile. Here the children and I spend 90% of our time, and Wade can hardly be convinced to leave our property once his work day is over and he comes home. It is our school, our playroom, our downtime, and our haven. It is scattered with Lego, unfinished embroidery projects, and always a little dusty. Recently while vacuuming, I felt my temper rising as I picked up bits and pieces too large to vacuum up. Toothpicks, chunks of cardboard, pipe cleaners, Scotch tape, bits of egg carton. I was getting frustrated, this always happens, when I realized that every item in my hand was evidence of my children’s creativity, something they had used to make something else. How could I criticize that?!

We have one room we call the book room. Before we added on to our house, it was the living room in our tiny space. Now it holds three enormous bookcases, chock full of books. I love the section that glows with the yellow spines of vintage Nancy Drew books, and my Anne of Green Gables collection, tattered and not quite complete, sits beneath. Games spill out of another storage unit, and several stacks of plastic totes house school supplies. It’s not a pretty room, and far too dark, but how bountifully blessed with books we are!

Upstairs lies even more wealth. Fully half of the upstairs living space is dedicated to creativity. The huge room where I scrapbook, paint and create with my children is wall to wall shelving, full of materials we can use to make something wonderful. Music is almost always playing, or Adventures in Odyssey cassettes on the old tape player. I can host art classes to eight students in this large room, and tell my guests, “This is only the temporary class space. One day we’ll be meeting in my real art studio, above the garage.”

It’s not perfect. The water pressure in the shower is a misery, and there are cracks in the drywall where the roof leaks if ice builds up on the roof. Mice sometimes find their way in, and the kitchen window is always speckled with water marks. We need a water softener. I do my laundry in the entry way, which can be embarrassing if company drops by unexpectedly and I’m drip-drying my unmentionables. But I don’t need a magazine home. I don’t even need this home. It’s happiest because it holds my four favourite people, and I get to keep them all with me for a few years yet.

A Red & Retro Kitchen Counter Reno

When we bought our acreage, on the first walkthrough, I commented, “Well, we’ll put new counters in right away. Guess I’m no fortune-teller, cause it took us fourteen years.

My kitchen, 2008.

In 2009 I managed to talk my husband into painting our oak cabinets. I’ve never liked oak au naturel, and I love the fresh look of our white cabinets. But we’ve debated for years over the best way to redo our counter tops. And in all that time, we’ve done dishes in our single bowl sink.

In my mind, my kitchen decor is 40′s farmhouse, but it’s not been easy to tell. There is a mix of old and new that’s more of an 80′s cheap meets vintage quirk. I really wanted my counter redo to make my farmhouse kitchen a reality, but I couldn’t justify the cost of the apron sink that would really put the retro into my kitchen. I had settled for stainless steel and had picked out a pretty terracotta coloured laminate for the counters, and we were days away from ordering it, when it occurred to me that there was a way to make my kitchen retro without increasing the cost of the renovation at all!

Our kitchen during the reno – which seemed to take forever! We have a very open concept house – I’m standing in the living room from this perspective, and you can see the stairs up to the second floor on the left.  And the finished product:

Squeal! So retro! So red! My new kitchen makes me so happy.

In addition to replacing the countertop, sink and faucet, we extended the length of the counter (on the right) to give me another 18″ of space.

When we decided to take a risk and go red for the countertop, the next debate was how to finish the edges. Wade wanted to use more laminate to edge the counters, and add a bevel, but that’s so 1992. My father-in-law said, “If you’re going for retro, you should use aluminum edging -that’s how they did it back then.” Only aluminum didn’t match the hardware on the cabinets. So we painted it! To match the “oil-rubbed bronze” hardware, we sprayed our brushed aluminum moulding with copper spray paint, and then brushed on black enamel. The black was rubbed off slightly while wet, so some of the copper could show through. Over time, I expect more of the copper to appear with use.

So, that’s my new kitchen! I’m so happy to enter this room every morning, to work in such a cheery space! It is just perfect for my style, and it fits so well with the rest of our home. I’m so thankful to my husband for being willing to tackle my new counters and give up his evenings for nearly three weeks to put this new look together. I helped him as much as I could, and I can tell you there were so very frustrating moments in trying to make everything work out!

The laminate we used is Red Xabia from Arborite.
The aluminium moulding is from Richelieu Hardware.