As I was eatting my cream of wheat and reading Sunny's blog, Sunshine on a cloudy day, I happened to notice that her link to my blog said that I had a posting named "Fonts". How odd!

I once created a post named fonts. It was only for a brief moment. After seeing on Talia's blog, Millers Moments, the cool font that she was using. I was envious. Yes, I know that it is wrong to envy. I must work on that.

So anyway, I was playing with the fonts that it lists on my blog maker thingy. I made a mock blog to test them out. Turns out that no matter what they name the font, they all look the same. Just a boring typerwriter type. *sigh*

Now I am making this new explanatory blog to delete the "fonts" blog link and....well really for no other reason.

Well, back to my cold cream of wheat.

Last night at church I learned something new. Worry is a sin.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let

your requests be made known unto God.

Phillippians 4:6

Let's face it, if they were handing out crowns for worry, mine would be really BIG.

Last night I wanted to go to the alter and ask God for forgiveness for my sin. Since I must plan out everything in my mind ahead of time, (rolling my eyes at myself), I went over a prayer in my head. Knowing that it will be quite a challenge to overcome my obsessive worrying, I decided that I was going to need to ask God for help.

Then I worried about what kind of help that would be. Would it be a difficult and painful lesson to learn. I didn't go to the alter to pray last night.

No worries! I decided to put my faith in God. I spent some time in prayer with Him this morning.

"Back in the Day" people knew how to live of the land, for real. They would wake up with the sun and start their day. Seldom would one hear those dreadful words, "I'm bored" that have become such a common utterance in our world today. Between too many episodes of "Little House on the Prairie", the ever increasing worries about the economy, growing concerns about the ingredients in the products available at the local grocery store, the increased use of pharmaceuticals, and my own boredom, my mind has set off on a rabbit trail...


So, today I clarified bacon fat for soap. It is the first step in my process of learning how to make soap. I want to learn how to make it with ingredients that I would not have to purchase. After all, If I could go to the store to buy the ingredients, then why wouldn't I just buy a bar of soap. The idea here is to live off the land.

Well anyway, looks like the drippings from one pound of bacon produce enough clarified fat for about one bar of soap. I put the drippings in a plastic container in the fridge where it hardened into a nice clean BACON smelling chunk of fat. I am a little worried that my soap will smell like bacon.

I have done some reading and have been lead to believe that handcrafted soap is better for our skin. My son has eczema and this would be very nice for him. However, just because it is written, does not make it so. I will have to maintain my wait and see attitude.

There is much to learn about making soap from scratch. Not only is there Clarifying fat, but apparently I should try Rendering fat. Then there is the scarey process of making Lye or Sodium/Potassium Hydroxide or even NaOH if you prefer. It's all the same stuff and it is supposedly required in all soap. Mix a little fat together with some lye, throw in some rain water and there you go...soap.

Without adding some sort of fragrance, I do wonder what this soap will smell like. I want my soap to smell like...soap. I wonder if they have essential oil that smells like soap or does the lye take away the bacon smell and turn it into that classic soap smell. I was looking on the internet for different recipes and I ran across a picture of some soap shaped and colored like bacon. I didn't feel very encouraged about my soap losing that bacon smell after that.

Well that's all I have to say about soap for now.

I was recently reflecting about the past year. There has been many trials and tribulations that we have had to endure, but God has seen us through them and even blessed us along the way.

Blessings:

* Started going to Heritage Baptist Church again. God broke down the walls that I had put up, opening the door for us to return to HBC. There we learn so much from the bible and can feel ourselves growing closer to God.

*Made new friends. We have met so many wonderful people at HBC and beyond, it is not enough to call them friends. They are family!

* Refinanced our house making it possible for us to continue making our house payment in spite of our financial losses.

* New, free clothing. My mother-in-law sent me some new shirts. She didn't even know that I was in need of them.

I know this year will bring it's own set of trials and they will try to bring me down, succeeding for a time. But in the end, it won't matter because I am his and He is mine.

Thank you God for sending your only begotten son down to this earth to endure much suffering and to die upon the cross, only to rise again 3 days later, so that I may be forgiven and enter into heaven to spend eternity with you.