Yikes

So, while it's true that I've been plenty busy the last few days (I head to bed around midnight thinking, damn, I didn't post again), it's more true that my brain has been consumed with thoughts other than shoes.  I know!  I can't believe it either.  Well, I can.  So here's the thing:  I need to get a job.  I haven't worked since February last year.  I've never gone this long without a job of some kind, even if it's just part time.  The hubby and I are doing better, but we could use the extra income just to get us all the way back healthy financially.  When I was in MT I had a phone conversation with the bishop and I was totally ready to go back into the call process and find a new church.  Then I got back home and my confidence got shot all to hell.  Then my brain starts swirling around: if I don't go back to the parish, what will I do?  What CAN I do?  My brain swirls are not helpful.  They are very responsible for shooting my confidence all to hell.  I've had about 10 people tell me lately that I should think about being a teacher.  As a kid that's the career I was convinced I would have, but now I'm not sure of that either.  Blah.  Does anyone have a job they would like me to do?  Babysit your kids?  Sit on your couch and read?  Help you pick out some awesome shoes?  

To ensure that this post isn't just depressing whining, here is a cute pair of shoes:

Thanks again to the PF for always finding me cute shoes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go figure out if I can't get my brain to stand still for awhile.

Shoe Tree

So, it turns out, that in addition to the 6 ornaments I got a couple of weeks ago, I had 6 in the box of ornaments at home (all but 2 from church people).  A tree shoe was definitely in order.  I was at Target yesterday and found a cute little 2 foot tree that was on sale, and here is the result:

 

I tried to get all of the ornaments.  If you're having trouble seeing them, just click on the picture to make it bigger.  I think it's adorable, but it's less full than I expected.  It's a teeny tree with rather large ornaments, but it's by no means full.  It still needs a tree topper, though.  Who wants to find, and buy, me a tree topper??

 

Oh, this is also in my office.  Wasn't sure where to put it at home, then I realized that my parishioners would get a total kick out of it.

 

Oh, oh...I also know that I need to rearrange some of the branches. It's a little funky-shaped at the moment.

 

Third OH:  all but 2 of these are from parishioners (as you already know if you read the first paragraph).  The 2 that aren't are the white and blue appliqued felt ones.  My fabulous mama made those a few years ago!

Conference

I am spending most of the week in Monterey at a synod conference.  Our hotel is right on the beach, and our room is on the ocean side, so the view is amazing.  Between the conference, spotty internet connection, and being sick (again), I haven't had much energy to post.  There have been some cute shoes here, but I haven't taken any pictures.  There have also been some seriously ugly shoes, but I haven't taken any pictures of those, either.  Instead, I will give you pictures of the ocean.  Hope you enjoy them.   I am going to bed.  I had 2 naps today, but I'm already exhausted.  Stupid post-camp cold.  On a happier note, I am rooming with the BSF, so between that and being on the beach, life can't be too bad, can it?

 

 

PS--just to give you an idea of the weird internet situation, it took me over a half an hour just to do this teeny post, and earlier I got an e-mail that said it was sent on December 31, 1969.  Woohoo!  Time traveling e-mails!

 

 

Tiiiiiiired

Today was the first day of Sports Camp.  It's a small camp, comparatively speaking.  "Only" 42 kids registered.  Most churches would be thrilled with a number like that, but when you compare it to the almost 200 we had at VBS, its definitely on the small side.  Which I am OK with.  It's a good group of kiddos, but today was not without its stress.  For Sports Camp we rent the fields of the elementary school across the street from the church, but for some reason no one unlocked the gate today.  We tried to contact someone, but no luck.  So I had to quickly come up with alternatives to 3 of my 6 rotations, finding space for them, and figuring out what to do in the space available.  It all worked out, but it definitely stressed me out.  Now I am tired.  Camps always wear me out, especially the first day, because I run so much.  I feel like I don't sit down much.  I always say I should get a pedometer just to see how far I walk during one of these days.  Anyway, I was running so much today that I didn't even take pictures of shoes or come up with anything creative for this post.  Thankfully I have awesome friends who send me stuff!

 

 

A friend on Pinterest sent me these and I like them, even though I feel like I shouldn't.  The shape is adorable, but those colors should not go together.  They don't go together, and yet, I still like these.  Maybe I really am tired.  Thoughts?

 

Advent in October

We hosted a synod Advent workshop at the church today.  There was worship, a keynote speaker, and various workshops designed to get pastors, staff, and lay people thinking about and planning for Advent worships.  I can't believe it didn't occur to me to wear one of my pair of blue shoes.  Whatever was I thinking?  Instead I wore shoes that I think are cute, but are pretty boring in the grand scheme of things:

 

 

Practical, yes, but not up to my usual church standards.  The BSF, on the other hand, totally rocked the shoe department, as per usual.

 

 

Adorable sandals!

 

And they're wedges!  She was one of the people who helped set up and organize the event, and she did a great job like always.  Go, BSF!

 

Our worship and music director was also wearing her cute sandals today.

 

 

She wears these a lot, and I always think they're cute, but I never remember to take a picture of them.  I actually took this during worship.  Shhhh...don't tell anyone.

 

There were several other cute pairs of shoes that I noticed throughout the day, but I was good and didn't freak people out by asking to take pictures of their feet.  I also didn't do any ninja photography moves to sneakily get their shoes.  See?  I can occasionally be well-behaved.

 

 

 

Hormones?

I kind of fell down a shoe rabbit hole today.  After my mom commented on yesterday's rain boot post I started looking for other boots, which somehow led me to Yellow Submarine boots, which led me here (it was much more circuitous than that):

 

 

Yellow Submarine baby booties!  I seriously need to find/create a pattern for these.  And then convince the BFF to have another baby so I can make them.  These booties led to these shoes:

 

 

Which are made out of the same material I used to make a Beatles baby blanket for the BFF's first baby.  These led me here:

 

 

Yoda kind of looks like he has a mustache, but the idea of these makes me giggle like a total Star Wars nerd.

 

 

You've already seen this picture here but it popped as I was looking, and I couldn't resist featuring it again in this post.

 

I swear I'm not pregnant.  Maybe it's hormones, but probably just that I baptized the sweetest, most adorable baby this morning.  He just gazed happily at me as I poured the water on his head.  He wasn't so fond of the chrism, but we had a nice snuggle as I introduced him to the congregation.  But come on, babies and Beatles?  Mom always says I get the same look on my face when looking at pictures of either one of them, so this post was probably inevitable anyway.

 

 

 

 

Holy Tuesday, Batman!

I am super tired as it was a long day.  It was one of those days where I got up and went non-stop.  I had a ton of stuff to do before I left the house, then errands to run before I even got to church.  At church I had 3 meetings, church related errands an outside appointment, and 2 phone appointments.  Oh, and preschool chapel, but that's almost always fun.  In between everything, I tried to accomplish as much as possible on my to-do list.  I had more errands after work, then home for a very brief time to hang with the hubby and now a very short post so I can go to bed. I'm tired, y'all.  So here is a rainbow of shoes for you to ponder until I have more energy to post more:

 

Source

Good night.  Sleep tight.   Don't let the zipperumpazoos bite. (Source)

 

God's Work, Our Hands

Today was God's Work, Our Hands Sunday, the day we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the merger that created the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  I won't bore you with a bunch of Lutheran history, but there were 2 groups of Lutheran churches that decided to merge into one national body.  I was in 7th grade at the time and didn't realize anything had even happened...  Anyway, as part of the celebration churches all across the country went out into their communities to do service projects as a way of sharing God's love with our neighbors.  We all got to wear these shirts:

 

Every picture I've seen shows the shirt as a different hue of yellow.  I'm not sure what it would actually be called.  Goldenrod, maybe?  They've got more orange in them then it looks like in these pictures.  So I wore my t-shirt for church as well as service projects, which meant I needed to find shoes to go with it (I wore flats for the actual service, I'm not entirely crazy).  It was no easy task.  I could have just gone with black, but where's the fun/challenge in that?

 

 

My first thought was gold.  They don't look too bad, here, but in reality they didn't go at all.

 

 

I didn't think these would be right, and I was correct in that assumption.  Totally wrong yellow.

 

 

Out of desperation I even tried coral.  You can imagine how that went.

 

 

Finally I pulled these out and surprisingly, we had a winner!  The yellow in the shoes is a fairly close match to the shirts, and from a distance I thought it looked pretty good.  I'm guessing no one else in the ELCA had quite such fabulous shoes...



 

 

 

 

Stickers and Scissors and Suckers, Oh My

One of the weird/fun parts of ministry is that I'm never quite sure what my day will entail.  I can make plans, but a big part of ministry is interruptions.  Another part of ministry is that sometimes I find myself doing silly or funny things.  That was today.  This coming Sunday is Rally Day for Sunday School.  That is the day we celebrate the kick-off of the Sunday School year with fun games, activities, snacks, prizes, a bounce house, etc.  Today the stuff I ordered for Sunday's goody bags arrived. So there I was, cutting stickers apart and creating owl suckers.  What are owl suckers, you ask?  Well, let me show you:

 

 

Start with a Tootsie Pop (it doesn't have to be blurry)

 

 

Add an adorable owl cover.

 

 

Voila!  Owl sucker!  Sometimes when I'm doing stuff like this I think, "sheesh...I have a master's degree for crying out loud."  But other times I just enjoy the heck out of doing something silly and easy and a little bit mindless.  It's also nice to have a task that I can actually finish.  So many things in ministry are constant works in progress that it's nice to be able to finish something sometimes.

 

OK...we clearly now need owl shoes.

 

 

 

 

 

The Dragons Go To Church

We had a blessing of the animals at church today.  Apparently they have done it at St. Someone's before, but this was my first experience.  There were about 10 dogs that came to church.  And the dragons.  The hubby and I have bearded dragons that are almost 2.  I am allergic to just about everything, so they work out nicely as pets.  The hubby used to have iguanas but as they get about 4 feet bigger than bearded dragons, I'm very happy he agreed to the smaller reptile.  Here are the dragons hanging out in my office before church:

 

When I told the hubby I wanted to take the dragons to church today we started talking about carriers.  We went to a pet store to look, but they are all really expensive.  We went to Ross, but the one we went to didn't have a very big pet selection.  So the hubby decided to make one.  We bought a decorative box and off he went:

 

 

He cut squares out of each end and put mesh into the openings.  Then he took one of the handles he had removed from an end and put it on the top so it could be carried.  Boom!  $11 pet carrier!  (In case you were wondering, the towel in there is wrapped around a jar of hot water to add heat as the dragons are cold blooded)

 

 

My Easter shoes and the carrier.

 

I brought the dragons out during children's time, and I was a little worried that some of the kids would be freaked out by them, but they loved them.  We could have just canceled church right then and had a Q&A about them.  A bunch of them wanted to hold them after church, and their parents took pictures.  Fun!

 

One last picture:

 

 

One of the teens had these on at church (I can't tell if the whole picture is blurry or if the carpet is blurry and making the whole thing wonky).  They remind me of 80s shoes but they are wedges.  I think they are pretty much awful, and I would never wear them, but I love them on her.  She was totally pulling them off with her skinny jeans.

 

 

 

Yes, I am a Slacker

It was a busy weekend.  I wore shoes.  I didn't write about them.  There, I said it.  I haven't been keeping up the last few days.  Hopefully the internet has provided you with many many many more things to read.  Today was church, of course, although church with ice cream and a face painter after, so that was fun and different.  I even got my face painted, but I didn't have anyone take a picture of it.  The hubby and I were invited over to our neighbor's house tonight for hors d'oeuvres, which was lovely, and we got to  meet another neighbor (well, I met her, the hubby had already met her, but doesn't know her well).  So it was a good day.  I'm tired now, though...lots of extrovert time this weekend, which always makes me want to hibernate for awhile.  That is much harder to do now that I have a flaming extrovert for a husband.  No matter how sturdy I build the pillow fort, he always manages to find me...

 

Since it's Sunday I decided to do an image shoes for church shoes and mostly what came up were shoes for men.  I have nothing against men's shoes, but what, women don't wear church shoes?  So then I typed in church shoes women and a lot of the pictures still looked like men's shoes.  What the heck?  I also noticed that a lot of the so-called church shoes are of the spectator shoe variety.

 

 

Hmmmm....Maybe I'm doing it wrong?  Nah...clearly my church shoes are the best.