Well that's embarrassing...

     Hello. *waves awkwardly*

     I feel I must issue a quick apology to those of you who have left comments over the past two months.  You may have noticed that your comments were never moderated and therefore never published. 

     I was just scrolling through my dashboard and discovered that in my distracted/diverted/overwhelmed-with-life state of mind I've been swimming through due to various and unexpected happenings within my family and life lately that I neglected to actually publish them.  Whoops.

     So again, I'm sorry.  Please don't think it is because I don't love you, because I do!  You are all amazing and every time you leave a comment you brighten my day! 

     Talk to you soon!

~Emma

Choices

     The choices we make, the choices we take, some we regret, some are mistakes.  Some lead us near, some lead us far, all serve to make us who we are.

 

     But still, whatever choices we decide to make, they are what turn us into the people we are.  They are the weft thread that makes up the pattern of our lives, that shapes our character and builds it to what it's meant to become.

     Sometimes the decision is difficult to make, other times we are entirely confident in what we have chosen. Either way, there will be many, many times in our lives when we will turn and look back and imagine that life would be better or things would be easier had we made a different choice.  Tread a different path, followed a different dream.

     This is tempting but serves only as a distraction, an excuse to stand still.

      So remember this: nothing in our lives is ever wasted and there is a plan and purpose to absolutely everything.

      We may never know what lives we've touched or to what extent our seemingly simple or insignificant choices have affected the people, places, and things in our lives for the better.

Nothing goes to waste.

God uses everything...

...even our mistakes.

 

Fresh starts and new pizazz

Well hello. 

It's just me, your elusive neighborhood blogger, back from who-knows-where doing who-knows-what.  Again.

It seems like lately I'm writing into an echo chamber.  I apologize for my absence, post something guilt ridden and half hearted, and repeat the process over when I seemingly inevitably disappear yet again.  And to be perfectly truthful, I am quite sick of that ceaseless pattern. 

Alright, scratch all that out.  I don't want it to be that way anymore, and I've got a fresh idea!

I want to write you about things that are important to me, things that are "me".  I have a tendency of convincing myself that no one who doesn't already know me well really wants to hear what I have to say.  This causes me to keep things at surface value, revealing my true depth only to those closest to me.  And in doing so, I rob myself of the opportunity of writing in my own voice-of using my own words and not just a parody of someone else's.

Anyway, I am sooo tired of doing that here on my blog.  MY blog!  Of all places, here I should be totally me.

And so this is my proposed solution: I want to write my posts as posts that I would want to read, not lame copies of another's vision.

 

My new official motto

 

 I was looking through a list earlier of various post ideas I've either scribbled down or begun to draft and then abandoned, I want to share a few of them with you to give you an idea of what I have in mind.

"The World Needs More Happy"

 "Admit it...Things we all did as kids"

"I wanna see the world...Or not"

"Why I don't like Mr. Darcy"

"Hometown Vignettes"

"All the words I would say..."

And I even have a couple series I'd like to write.

"Reclaiming Beauty: Modesty in a modern world"

"Pages Through Time"

"What Defines Gentleman: Reigniting chivalry in the 20th century man"

"On Being a Lady: Timeless femininity for the 20th century woman"

This certainly isn't an exhaustive list, but I think you catch my drift.  Regardless, I want to hear what you think!  Are any of those ideas things you'd like to read?  Do you have any suggestions or ideas to add?  Please, don't hesitate to throw your thoughts into the comments!  We're in this together, I want to hear from you :)

Always,

~Emma

Brothers and sisters...

Happy Siblings Day to my brother and sister (and brother-in-law, too!) 

You guys are so absolutely positively wonderful and I'm so very blessed to have you in my life!

I thought the following to be rather true of us and they made my think of you :)

 

 

 

 

(No, names mentioned...you know who you are)

 

 

 

 

xoxo

 ~Emma

Bits and Pieces: February/March '18

Hi there!  Remember me??

I haven't a valid excuse, so I shan't invent one...

Instead, I thought I'd give a pictorial account of my adventures/excursions/mischief that has evidently kept me so thoroughly occupied as of late. (Or something like that).

New chapel veils I hope to review soon...

Bacon and puff pancake for Shrove Tuesday....

One of my latest projects I did in February (more on that to come.)

~

At the end February, my brother and I went up to NY for a week to help our sister and brother-in-law move into their new place!  It was a lot of hard work, but also fun to be doing it together.  And seeing my niece was a nice bonus, too :)  Here are some pictures from the trip...

A little sleepy...

Now these, I will have you know, are the best swings ever!!!

Trying for an artistic angle...how'd I do? ;)

 Being silly with her Uncle Matthew!

Part of the view heading home again after a busy week...

Woohoo!

A warm welcome home from the greeting committee!

Homemade Lenten pretzels...mmm

When will I learn to read one book at a time???

Hopefully the last snow of the season!

It is awfully pretty, though...

Benjamin caught being nice for a change!

 

 St. Patrick's Day! Only a few days late...

Okay, so I pinky promise you I'll have a "real" post up very soon!  This has been an especially busy time for me and, as you can tell, life kind of pushed blogging to the back burner.  That doesn't mean I haven't thought of you, though, because I have!  That's partly the reason for the excessive flood of pictures, so I'd have something to share of my adventures!  I hope you enjoyed :)

 Happy Feast of Saint Joseph! 

Always,

~Emma

 p.s. Please let me know if you have trouble viewing any of the pictures, either on the blog or email version, as I was having a difficult time uploading them.

Words, pages, paragraphs

Helloooo,

I love how I always have these spectacularly wonderful ambitions that never quite come about in a timely manner.  It's great, it really is.  Take this post for example, it probably would have been far more relevant had I written it last month when 2017 had just ended and everyone was still interested in what happened during the span of that year.  

Well guess what, I still care.  And because I care, I'm still going to tell you about all the books I read last year! So ha! (If you do not care, I encourage you to discontinue reading this now.)

There, now we may proceed!

 

 (I can only make out "David Copperfield" in this picture, a book I am not particularly fond of, but they all look so pretty! They must be good books, heehee)

You're going to be just amazed when I tell you how many books I read!  It is shocking, absolutely shocking!  You ready?

23!!!!!! (boo, Emma, boooo!)

 One of my go-to quotes, ask my family ;)

I know, not a lot.  Oh well. I don't really know how that happened, I mean, other than the obvious fact I just didn't read many books.  I think I read almost twice that many in 2016, so I'll have to try to beat that score this year!  (Because I know I don't have a chance at beating my brother!)

You might be thinking, "That's still a decent amount of books, Emma, it's okay!"  But here's the thing, a rather large majority of them were school books or picture books.  (What can I say?  I have a thing for rereading Beatrix Potter stories (maybe in accents...)  My dear sister will back me on this.)

  

Anyway, onto the books I read!

I'll spare you the textbooks and such, I don't think they'd be of much interest to you.

 

The first real book I read was "The Hidden Treasure of Glaston" by Eleanor Jewitt.  It was an adventure story set in medieval  England about two boys living in Glastonbury Monastery who search for the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend and uncover many more hidden secrets about themselves along the way.  I enjoyed it!

Also:

• "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte.  If you liked this book, I would like to shake your hand.  If you love this book, we need to talk because you need to tell me what you see in it.  Sorrow, depression, death, wasted lives, more death.  What's not to love, right?

 

• "The Twelve Dancing Princesses"~The Grimm Brothers.  Um...interesting concept.  In a nutshell, *spoiler alert* king hires old (broke) soldier to follow his twelve rebellious daughters around at night to a magical dancing land that they disappear to.  They don't know they're being followed, he tattletales on them to their father, instead of punishing the naughty princesses, the king let's the old (broke) soldier to marry whichever daughter he chooses as a reward, he marries the eldest because "she's closest in age" (ever though I'm pretty sure he liked the youngest one best), The End!  How'd I do?

• "The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck" (my favorite), and "The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin", both Beatrix Potter.  We know those are always good, though!

•  "Weddings In the Family"~Dale Fife.  A sweet story told from the perspective of a little girl about each of her quirky Alsatian relatives' weddings and the hilarity often surrounding each of these events.

• "Lay Siege to Heaven"~Louis de Wohl.  The semi-fictional account of the life of the great Saint Catherine of Siena.

 

• "Number the Stars"~Lois Lowry.  A moving fictional story about a girl living in Denmark during the Nazi invasion of that country and how she helps to save Jewish refugee families escape capture.

• "The Great Gatsby"~F. Scott Fitzgerald.  This.  Book.  Is.  Wonderful.  If you haven't read it, you must do so.  If you have read it, tell me what you thought!

• "The Hundred Dresses"~Eleanor Estes.  I liked this book slightly less than her others, (The Moffats, Pinky-Pie ) but overall it was an enjoyable story.

• "'The Awakening of Miss Prim"~Natalia Sanmartin Fenolerra.  I enjoyed this book more than I expected to initially.  (What can I say, I judge books by their covers.)  If you love "Pride and Prejudice", "Little Woman", and constant intellectual Latin quotations, you will probably love it, too.

• "No Plot, No Problem", Chris Baty's wonderful accompany to doing NaNoWriMo, sooo worth the read!  I actually bought my own copy of the updated version so I'd have it next time around, it was that helpful.

•   "Saint Patrick and the Peddler"Margaret Hodges.  Confession: this was a picture book.  But it was a really good, Catholic picture book!  I read it to a bunch of kindergartners and kind of fell in love with it, the pictures are gorgeous!!  (And it was Ireland, so I mean, there was no way I wasn't going to read it ;) )

• "Black Heels and Tractor Wheels"~Ree Drummond.  (Not as edgy as it sounds, I promise.)  Anybody know Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman?  She's a cook, author, cooking show host, and really funny blogger.  This was a (sort of) dramatic biography of how she, a city girl through and through, met, fell in love, and married her cowboy-husband and all the crazy stories she tells surrounding those events.

And finally...

• "Rifles for Watie"~Harold Keith.  This is my brother's favorite book, he actually read it out loud to me!  I promised him I'd write a special post about it and about the new holiday we invented in honor of it, the NFRD or, "National Rifles for Watie Day".  More on that soon :)

Stats:

In conclusion, (if you stuck around this long) I read,

 23 books in 2017,

4,583 pages,

the longest book I read was "Christ And the Americas"~Anne Carroll, at 440 pages.

And my favorite book was "The Great Gatsby".

So I didn't win my family's reading challenge in any category last year, but I've got dibs for this year!  I'm going to try, at least!

What books did you read in 2017?  Did you have a favorite(s), least favorite(s)?


Always,
~Emma

Love Saves Lives.

     I can't remember exactly how old I was when I first learned what the word abortion meant, it just seems like something I've always been conscious of.  That's not to say my mother told her young daughter every horrible, frightening detail of what that word stood for, of course not.  But I knew from a young age that it meant killing little babies who were still growing inside their mommy's bellies, just like my baby brother.  I didn't understand the reason for it, but I didn't need to.  I knew it was wrong not just because my mum told me it was, but because I knew it was a sin to kill a person.  

And that's exactly what an unborn fetus is: a person.

      When I was about ten I remember watching EWTN one afternoon and during a break between programs a little girl around my age came on screen and said a prayer I'd never heard before.  This was the prayer:

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I love you very much. I beg you to spare the life of the unborn baby whom I have spiritually adopted who is in danger of abortion. Amen."

     The girl went on to share a website* where you could spiritually adopt an unborn baby by pledging to say the above prayer everyday for nine consecutive months.  Your baby had a birth date and there was even a place where you could give a name to the baby (or babies, twins) you were praying for to make it seem more personal.  That year each of my siblings and I, along with our mum, adopted a baby to pray for.  And coincidentally (although nothing is a coincidence for God) a close friend of ours found out she was expecting around that time and delivered her healthy little girl around the close of our nine month novena!

      Saying that little prayer really left an impression upon me and I continued praying it continuously for years, understanding exactly the purpose in mind: saving babies!  Why shouldn't children, who's prayers to Our Lord are the most innocently uttered, be told of this great tragedy taking place daily so that their prayers might help to end it?

    

     Unfortunately, as people, we all make mistakes in life, but we should be the one's who pay the consequences for our own mistakes.  It is terribly, terribly wrong to make other's take that blame, especially an innocent child who didn't ask to exist, but was given existence just like the rest of us.  The solution is never to kill the child, regardless of how they came to be, because abortion kills not once, but twice.  First the baby, then the mother.

 

     Have you ever stopped and thought about the fact that you might never have been given the chance to live?  It's kind of a strange feeling, isn't it?  What about if someone you love had been aborted, never existed to you in your life at all?

      One of my dearest friends was adopted when she was just a new born, adopted, not aborted.

      One of my cousins found herself in an unplanned pregnancy and was informed her baby had a serious birth defect.  When faced with a decision she chose to keep her little girl and although she lived only a couple months, brought much joy while she was here on earth.

     Whenever I see an unmarried expectant mother I always admire her for her courage.  She could easily have disposed of the "problem", but instead chose life for her and her baby.

     Now as I've gotten older I have gradually learned just how evil the horror of abortion is, how tragic and despicable the act of murdering a baby in the womb.  Why would a woman murder her own child?  How could people claim that the developing infant in the womb wasn't even human?  Did people really believe that lie to be the truth?

     As a direct result of our depraved world that has shunned God, yes, tragically many people do believe it.  Both men as well as women believe that human lives are worthless and disposable simply because they cannot do for themselves, speak for themselves, defend themselves.

 

     That is why it is up to us to speak for the innocent victims.  We must not be afraid to speak out boldly in defense of the unborn, in our governments and to those in power, in our cities and towns, our work places, even in our own families.  We must defend the defenseless so that they too may live!  We are the pro-life generation, and we know that...

Love

Saves

Lives. 

 

Always,

~Emma 

*This is not the original website I found the prayer for unborn babies on years ago, I don't believe that one exists any longer, but here is the link to a similar website:  http://spiritualadoption.org/index.html   

Please feel free to share your own thoughts and incites on this topic in the comments below, just make sure you keep them charitable towards others :)

Year In Review '17

 

I was feeling a bit blog-ish tonight (yes, I believe I invented that word), so I thought to myself, "Why not strike while the iron's hot?"  A positively smashing idea on my part, undoubtedly ;)

Truth be told I was scrolling through my reading list on my blogger dashboard, feeling somewhat wistful and dreamy, and I happened upon Abby's post in regards to hopes for the coming year, I felt compelled to follow suit in my own little way.

These are some of the questions that she included.

What did you do in 2017 that you'd never done before?

 Rode a Ferris Wheel!  

 Did you keep your New Year's Resolutions and will you make new ones?

I've never really been one for making resolutions, or at least not the usual kind people seem to expect.  I'm not saying those kind are bad, not at all, but I guess I just prefer to look at them as goals or opportunities for betterment. With that in mind, I want to make my focus this year more or less the same as last: To live every moment of my life as the gift that it truly is, to remind myself of this in moments when I forget, and to help others see life as a great treasure, too.

 Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes, my favorite sister had a baby in the spring, making me a proud auntie! 

My little Hummingbird in her new Christmas bonnet ♥

 Did anyone close to you die?

A great-uncle.

 Which countries/states did you visit?

 Let's see, no international borders were crossed, unfortunately.  Sorry to disappoint!

As for states, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and for the first time ever, New Hampshire!  I would love to add Maine to my 2018 list but I can't really see that becoming a reality.

♥ Home sweet home ♥

 What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?

My very own lighthouse.   Maybe a slightly clearer future?  On second thought, I'll just look for another lighthouse.

Portland Head Light, Portland, Maine.

I think I'd like to write a story about this place.  Thoughts?

 What date from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory?

 Ooh, January 22nd!  But I'm not telling why...

 Did you move anywhere?

If living with my favorite sister and wonderful brother-in-law in NY for two months counts, then yes.

 What was the best month?

 Hard to say... March? April? October?

 What was your biggest failure?

Not making prayer my first and strongest refuge.

 Did you suffer any illness or injury?

 A few more colds than usual but I'm still breathing.

 What was the best thing you bought?

 Probably my laptop since it's come in handy for schoolwork, writing, and this very blogpost you're (hopefully) enjoying :)  

 Whose behavior merited celebration?

 Mulan's, she saved China ;)

 Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

 Those who think being an American means throwing mass temper tantrums in the streets is a show of patriotism when they don't get what they think they want from a government they don't begin understand.

 Where did most of your money go?

I don't think I spent very much in the past year, it was probably equally dispersed between book sales, thrifting, and yarn.

 What did you get really, really excited about?

My trip to New York and my eventual return home.

 

 Compared to last year, are you:
happier or sadder? I'd like to think I'm happier :)
thinner or fatter? More or less the same.
richer or poorer? Richer in love, poorer in fears.

What do you wish you'd done more of? 

Reading and blogging, but we shall change that this year!

What do you wish you'd done less of? 

Asking "what if?", procrastinating, doubting.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

 Spotify.  Where was this incredibly helpful convenience when I was planning a wedding two years ago?!?

 How did you spend Christmas?

 As stated above, with my family.

 How are you spending New Year's?

 Same as Christmas :)

 Who did you spend the most time on your phone with?

 My most special friend!

 

 What was the best book you read?

 Hmm...probably The Great Gatsby.  I'll tell you what my least favorite was and about all the books I read last year in my next post.

 Did you fall in love in 2017?

 Oh, wouldn't you like to know?

 

 What was your favorite TV show?

 I don't really watch a lot of TV shows, especially not current stuff, but as an enduring favorite I'd have to say JAG. (Which I got all ten seasons of for Christmas, eeek!)

 

 What were your favorite films of the year?

 That would be I am David,  A Walk to Remember, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and The Zookeeper's Wife.  I think the latter is my top favorite, plus it's also the only one that was "new" as of 2017.

 

 What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

 I turned 17 and my wonderful brother-in-law got me a pinata!

 How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017?

 

  And some days, not even that was achieved!

What kept you sane?

 Journaling everything.  Thoughts, joys, the things I did, and what made me sad or especially happy.

 Which celebrity/public figure did you admire most?

 

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a British politician who speaks the truth unabashed and defends it with dignity.

 Who did you miss?

 My family and friends at home while I was in NY, and my family in NY when I was home again.

 Who was the best person you met?

 Two new friends-one older than I,  the other younger-but both very dear.

 Tell a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017. 

"It could always be worse; this too shall pass." ;)

Five personally significant events of 2017:

• Becoming an Auntie.
• Learning to drive.
• Participating in NaNoWriMo.
• Entering my Senior Year.
• Developing my skills.

 Five things I want to do in 2018:

•  Continue developing my skills and gain new ones.
• Go on more adventures!
• Turn 18!
• Graduate!
• Embrace all that life is and has the potential to become.

 People I'd like to know better in 2018:

My grandfather.

 

Thank you again, Abby, for the inspiration and very good questions!  Be sure to pay a visit to her beautiful blog, Lavendar Spring.  

And of course, I fully intend to blog more frequently in 2018 (distant laughter), so you shall be hearing from me yet again before too long.  

Until then, tallyho, my dearies!

Always,

~Emma