Friday Favorites

Happy Friday, friends!  I'm linking up with Andrea  from Momfessionals, and her friends Erika and Narci, for this blog post. 

This week FLEW BY.  We had our new windows installed this week, and they're my favorite thing ever.  You should see our house, though...the outside of it looks terrible, because he threw the shutters away and took down the awnings that were covering the front and back porches.  I like to turn on my porch light every afternoon, late in the day, but I haven't been because I don't want to draw attention to how terrible it looks.  I'm trying to remind myself that it's only temporary...and that at least they're done with being inside the house now, so I can clean and we can start painting.  I'm going to buy paint samples tomorrow.  Praise hands!

Here is what I walked into Monday afternoon, after working for a little while at the church, then having lunch with my friend at her house and catching up.

But then, look what it was like the next morning.

I love them.  They're so clean and beautiful, and they're easy to open.  They're the kind that open from the bottom AND the top, for easy cleaning, and the screens are our favorite part.  We've been enjoying open windows at night and in the mornings.  We haven't been able to do that in sixteen years!  All the old windows were painted shut. 

In doing home renovations, and then painting a portion of our inside walls, it's making me want to change things up on the walls, and last Friday night, I redid the wall above our couch in the living room.  I had a collage of pictures above it, but all of a sudden, I no longer liked the way it looked, so I took it all down.  I am not getting rid of any of the pictures, though, because when we paint the halls that connect all the rooms in the house, the stairwell is getting redone and I am taking down all the crosses people have given me over the years.  (This started with one, and escalated into a whole wall of them.)  I'm keeping them and I might hang my favorite ones in a couple of areas around the house, but my plan is to do a picture collage on the stairwell when we're done painting it.  Something kinda like this.

The stairs are one of my favorite parts of my house.  They're painted black, and there is a runner nailed down on top of the middle part of them.  I have a picture hallway in the upstairs part of the house, and I'm taking all of those, along with what I just took down from the living room collage wall, and will put them in a way similar to this.  I want them to be pretty cohesive in color, so I'm thinking of making them all either white or black.  I'm not sure yet.  We have the letters to spell out the word HOME, and I want to incorporate those as well.  I can't wait to see how it all turns out.  Pinterest has been my favorite pastime this week. 

You can go and look for me on there: jenlloydgoodwin is my username. 

As for that wall above the couch, I don't like what I did last week and I'm changing it again, but using a couple of the old windows they were going to throw away from this install.  Toddley cleaned them up for me, and I'm going to hang those on either side of a new canvas we bought last week...but I may not keep that canvas above the couch.  I may put it somewhere else.  I'm still thinking on this.  I've gotten inspired from binge watching Home Town on HGTV all this week.  Anyone else kinda over everything farmhouse and love this show and her eclectic design style?  Just me?  Mmmk. 

It's fun, changing things up, and I've loved getting a little creative. 

Aside from house stuff, this past Sunday night, the choir and orchestra from my church went to another church to lead their worship at a rally type event they had.  Anytime we get to go outside the walls of my church and lead worship like that is my favorite thing.  It was phenomenal.  I only almost hyperventilated one time, when I became aware of how trapped I was and how hot it was in that moment.  I got past it, though, no worries.

All those people whose backs of the heads you see were in front of me.  I was in the top row, and I seriously thought I was going to have a panic attack for a few moments.  I am extremely claustrophobic, so I had to just stop singing and sip on my water to calm down.  And I prayed.  I really didn't want to faint in front of all those people.  Shout out to my hubby who was part of the awesome tech team that set up all this for us.  He, Jeremy, Tom, and Ryan spent all day Sunday here preparing for this event, and they made us sound really really good.  I'm always amazed by their talent. 

Another favorite moment of mine is from yesterday.  I had to go in to our church to do some work on a big event the women's ministry has coming up soon, and I was in this room talking with some sweet ladies who are in there with me every week when I go in and do this.  One of them was telling me how she did something on a website and made something else look pretty, like an email that will be sent to all the ladies in our church, and she told me that when she does that, she prays first and then she always finds almost exactly what she's looking for.  I love that so much, that when I got to my car, I started thanking God for allowing me to be surrounded by such people.  That is so encouraging to hear someone say that, and each week when I go into this room for this meeting of sorts, I always leave with a huge smile on my face.  I have grown to know and love these women I work with and I couldn't be more thankful. 

I always leave so encouraged.  These Thursdays are designed for training on the platform we use at the church for events and any kind of request, like for a promotional thing or to reserve a room for a meeting.  It's intensive training, and I watched several hours of videos, but Thursdays are set aside for two hours each week, with the two ladies who do all the training.  I have come to love these days, though, and it's fun getting to learn something new and make my brain useful again for something work related.  Because it's been a hot minute.  And believe it or not, writing on this blog for years has made me have some knowledge of techy things.  When she was talking about html codes, I knew what she was talking about, because I've changed that on this blog before, when I used to use different fonts.  Who knew that a blog would help me all these years later?! 

It's been a good week.  I am looking forward to tomorrow, when we go pick out paint samples.  I'm not looking forward to the painting process, but hopefully it'll happen quickly.  That's about all we have planned for this weekend, me at least.  I'm not sure what everyone else is up to. 

Thanks for reading!  Love to all.