Seven Quick Takes on Reading a Book, Getting Chores Done, Cleaning my Camera Lens, and MORE!

:: 1 ::

We start school back up next week, but I haven’t finished my Christmastide book. Not that I’m surprised. I mean, Island of the World is amazing and beautiful and all of that, but at over 800 pages … it’s long!

I’ll be writing about it a bit later on this month, and I intend to keep reading it. I’m about halfway through, and I have a feeling that the second half is going to take me much longer to complete than the first half.

:: 2 ::

We don’t give our kids an allowance. I’m not going to go into why, because that’s just context for my story. On Monday, there were some things I wanted/needed to get done — little new yearish things mostly — that I didn’t have the energy for because I had a bad cold. No matter. What I did have was a wallet full of $1 bills. So I walked into the play nook and said, “Who wants to earn $2?” That was how it started.

The silverware drawer got cleaned out after all {just not by me}. A few other jobs were also done. Boxes on my list were checked, and I didn’t have to try to do it all while under the weather. It was great.

Of course, my wallet is a little lighter. But overall, totally worth it.

 

:: 3 ::

This week’s links collection:

• Why the British Tell Better Children’s Stories from The Atlantic.
  • Better? Or just different? Either way, it’s fascinating.
• The Fall of Pacific Grove — A Primer on Vested Rights from UnionWatch.
  • Long and mostly boring, but instructive.
• The Map of Human Character from The Imaginative Conservative.
  • History as studied in the average classroom is bunk, says the author, but not history the magical pageant. Loved this!

 

:: 4 ::

This month last year:

Probably the most helpful exercise in my parenting thus far.

 

:: 5 ::

A child touched the lens of one of our cameras — but it was the old, mostly broken one, so I didn’t worry about it. But then a child touched the lens of my new camera. Totally irritating, of course. There I was, getting ready to take “good” Christmas photos, and someone had smudged my lens. I googled around, and discovered a totally awesome lens cleaning tool called the Lenspen. People!! I now swear by this thing. It feels like magic!

This little video shows how it works:

If you’re trying to clean off a fingerprint, always use the dusting brush first, and I recommend breathing on the lens — it just works better that way.

 

:: 6 ::

If you haven’t yet entered the 10th Blogoversary Giveaway Extravaganza, you’re not too late! Plus, the Twitter entries can be done daily, if you tweet stuff. Which I know some of you do. Next week, if all goes as planned, I’ll announce the prize winners in my Seven Quick Takes post. It’s been fun to see all the entries — it’s felt a bit like a party all week.

 

:: 7 ::

Answering Your Questions:

• Question: Can you recommend a tried and true Bible study for mamas?
  • Answer: I will be honest and say that, for the most part, I prefer to just read my Bible. I got to a place a number of years ago where I felt like all the study notes and devotional stuff was just becoming noise — that it was distracting me from the purity of reading the Word itself. So, I bought a Bible that was very plain except for a few cross references, and I started reading a chapter or two a day, maintaining access to my Greek interlinear if I needed it, and using my commonplace, my goal being to enter at least one verse in my commonplace each time I read.A year or so ago, I discovered Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening and fell in love. Simple, timeless truths twice each day? This, I can do. And if I miss a day {or a week!}, I just skip to the correct date.

    Reading the Bible itself is tried and true. Spurgeon? Also tried and true, I think.

    But recently, I felt like starting off this year with something different, and so I’m trying out something — not tried and true, but I think it has potential 🙂 — the free study from Stone Soup for Five {it’s called Journal and Doodle through Ephesians and it’s free when you subscribe to the blog}. At first, I wasn’t sure what I would think, but, doodling or no doodling, this gal takes her Bible study very seriously, which is what made me decide to try it.

    By the way, in addition to all of this, I think it’s important to read things that are old — and by things, I mean theology books — and by old, I mean really old. I’ve been reading {reaaallllly slowly} through Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, for example, and I highly recommend it.