He makes all things beautiful

I always talk about Lorabelle being my crown of beauty, and I often marvel at how perfectly God put the pieces in place. God knows each of us so very intimately and, knowing me to be hard-headed the way He does, I think He made the path to my crown of beauty very literal. He tied it up all in a nice neat package with a giant gift tag that read : FROM GOD. 

Christ makes ALL things beautiful in his time.

But what if your crown of beauty looks less like this......

And a little more like this.......

Christ makes ALL things beautiful in his time.

What if yours looks more like a pile of pieces, that you just can't seem to make match up?

Or, there is a huge chunk of it missing.... you just can't seem to find it?

The pieces you have may be shiny and pretty.... but they would just look so much better all put together in the right way.

Whatever trial you may be going through-

you lost your job and you can't find a new one....

Your marriage is terribly hard right now.....

You are having trouble getting along with others.....

You have lost someone so dear to you and your heart is broken......

You are sick and tired of struggling financially.....

You are unhappy with your body......

You lost a baby, and are unable to get pregnant with that next baby, the one you were counting on to be your crown of beauty......

You are sad, or lonely, and don't know how you will get through the holidays....

You are struggling to see God's plan for your life.....

God uses ALL things for His Glory. 

He makes ALL things beautiful in His time.

The beauty in life is that we don't all wear the same crown. Though some may be sparkly and shiny and look brand new, others may be cracked, rusty, weathered, a little lopsided from a long, hard ride on one crazy bull..... 

your crown can be whole again.

And it can be made absolutely, crazy beautiful on the path to wholeness again.

If you are struggling to see the beauty in your broken, busted up crown, I would be honored to pray for you.

The holidays are hard when you are struggling, particularly so if you have lost a loved one. I had many people pray me through my first holidays without Hank, and I will need many prayers this holiday season without him too. So, if I can pray for you this holiday season, no matter the need, send me a message, email me, or leave a comment, I would truly be honored to pray for you.

Lorabelle's One Month Pictures

About 2 weeks ago, we had Lorabelle's one month pictures taken by Lindsey Cotton of Cotton Photography . I love them. Who am I kidding.... I love ANY picture of my girl. But they are really, really pretty pictures. 

She looks so much like Hank in this one...

I love this smile!

Ugh, that neck.... I just love it!

Here she is with Hank Bear

I love every picture so I put them all on here. I don't know how I will ever decide what to hang on my wall!

Lorabelle's Nursery

Lorabelle's nursery was something we started working on very soon after Hank passed away. In fact I think it was just a week or two after that Nathan, Nancy, and I painted the walls. It was a color we picked out when I was in the hospital and Hank was in the NICU. We hadn't prepared his nursery for him, and I guess as his mom I felt like he deserved to have a place ready for him. And we knew we wanted him to have brothers and sisters. So we painted it. And I sat in the floor in the middle of that room with my paintbrush and cried so many times, aching for my baby. 
As soon as I found out that I was pregnant, I began doing something that something had kept me from doing with my son, I began preparing for my baby to come home. 

We picked out a cowhide rug and bought the bed we picked out for Hank.

And when we found out she was a girl, we began preparing everything else for the nursery. We bought this dresser at Kid's Village. It had a chalk board on one side and a dry erase board on the other. It was a bright, shiny, smooth white...... and my husband spent several days sanding the whole thing down to the wood. He even sanded the chalkboard and dry erase board so that the paint would stick to it. We decided we didn't want to teach our daughter to write on her furniture.

Then we painted it with many many coats of turquoise and added these rustic flower door pulls from Relics. 

 

I ordered this fabric from Calico Corners and sewed the curtains for her windows. I added an already made ruffle from Hobby Lobby to make them a little more frilly.

I made bows out of tulle for the tie backs

I painted several metal stars in pinks, turquoise and cow print. My friend Kailey made her L on burlap and rustic wood.

I knew that I wanted some major ruffles for her crib skirt. But all of tiered ruffled crib skirts that I looked at were around $400.... and I just didn't want to spend that much. So, I used this tutorial from Positively Splendid and fabric from the Joel Dewberry Heirloom collection to make her crib skirt. This was my first time to sew ruffles and I was very intimidated by it. But it turned out to be pretty easy..... just very time consuming. My friend Nancy Harper did all of the surging in hot pink for me!

It was well worth all of the work. I'm going to have to figure out some way to make it work when she has a big girl bed though!

Here is the thumb print tree, from our gender reveal party, all framed up. So glad my sister had this idea for the party!

Our friend Ashley gave us this dresser.

My husband painted it an off white color that I picked out

And we had another Ashleigh pain cow spots on it for us. Then we added pink drawer knobs.

I'm in Love with this dresser!! It is too bad that it has to live in her closet right now. One day we will be in a hose big enough to have it out in her room!

My dad made Lorabelle this cute little bookshelf

Which I painted to match her dresser. My cow spots weren't quite as good as hers.

This little horse was a bookshelf given to us at one of our baby showers. Since I already had a bookshelf, Nathan replaced the shelves with dowel rods to make a quilt rack to display all of her beautiful blankets that people have made her.

This is the changing table that my dad made about 12 or so years ago for my cousin Jake. We painted it turquoise to match her dresser.

Nathan added a drawer to the middle shelf so that I can easily pull it out and get to the things that I need easily.

The giant bear is the bear that my Papaw got my sister and I when we were born. It is sitting in Nathan's rocking chair from when he was little. Nathan made the little pink table so we would have something to put things on beside our glider. The little bear is Hank bear which I will tell you about later.

This is the glider that I took forever to decide on. It is also a recliner, but it glides instead of rocking. It is not the first one I bought, however. We ordered one from JCPenny.com and I waited and waited for it to get to the house. When it finally did, though, it didn't look like it had online. I didn't like the color or the fabric. So I sent it back. They were pretty great about exchanging it though, they refunded the purchase price and shipping which was a ridiculous 130 or 150 dollars. After much deliberation, I finally decided on this one from Kid's Village. It was hard to pick out a color and type of fabric from those little swatches. I had a hard time picturing them on a whole chair.But, I'm very happy with the choice we made... I love it! I spent many many days sitting in this chair in her room, praying and waiting for her to get here. It was such a special moment when I finally sat in it with her!

Nathan loved this cow painting and had to have it for her room. We originally found it on Fine Art America's website but it was quite expensive for the size we wanted, but we ended up finding a much cheaper version on Amazon. It is called cold hands and is of a surprised milking cow. We love her! Lorabelle just stares at her many times when I'm changing her.

This little sheep is from Aunt Nancy and is for her to lay on when she plays in the floor. The rustic bin with cowhide is Lorabelle's laundry basket, and she of course has a hot pink diaper pail!

You can't see it because of the glare, but the frame beside the lamp is a picture of big brother Hank's cute little foot.

I'm still waiting on Hank and Lorabelle's name frames from Emily to hang beside the thumbprint tree.

Nathan put his record player and some of his records in her room so that he could listen to music with her.

Everything in her room had a lot of thought, a lot of, work, and a lot of love put into it. Making and painting everything for her room kept us busy while we were waiting for her to get here. Her little nursery is just perfect for her and I'm so happy to have her in it!