Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Hymn 457 - Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing - Robert Robinson, 1758

Come, thou fount of ev'ry blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above;
praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, mount of God's unchanging love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wand'ring from the fold of God:
he, to rescue me from danger. interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be;
let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wand'ring heart to thee.
Prone to wander - Lord, I feel it - prone to leave the God I love:
here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

Oh, that day when freed from sinning, I shall see thy lovely face,
full arrayed in blood-washed linen, how I'll sing thy sovreign grace.
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry; bring thy promises to pass,
for I know thy pow'r will keep me til I'm home with thee at last.

Raising an Ebenezer - reference to 1 Samuel 4-7 - where Samuel raised a stone which he called Ebenezer, (stone of help) as gratitude to God who had just given the Israelites the victory. A reminder of how God helped them. (thank you, internet - http://www.housetohouse.com/BibleQuestions.aspx?Letter=all&Question=4234)

Creative Mama: Glittery leaves

Art in progress (looks quite ordered in a photo?!) and the finished leaves

This was something I thought of on my own, but acknowledge there is nothing new under the sun. As usual, it didn't turn out how I expected, but we did get a result. We traced actual leaves onto cardboard, making a template. Then we traced around the templates onto paper and decorated with glitter. We will make 'party string' of leaves, for fall decoration!

As usual, I have emerged slightly scarred. Despite my best efforts, there is still glitter on the table, and probably on the children.
Something I did think of - getting tubes of glitter and glue, rather than the little pepper shaker style glitter that you need to use glue with

Lessons learned:

Cover the table with paper before getting out the glitter

Turkey Craft (Thanksgiving...)

Turkeys aren't in Australia, so this is new to me. My friends grew up doing this in elementary school, apparently.

Paper grocery bags

I only ever saw these in the movies before coming here - usually two bags carried by someone who is going to drop the bags and then meet someone/make an important discovery. But, most supermarkets provide sort of big brown paper bags (with handles) for groceries!
I see I have part of our dining table mobile in the photo too - volcano and T-Rex, incase you're wondering.

Notes

When you're feeling harassed and short of time;

When you feel fatigued, not just simple tired, and its getting monotonous;

When you're stuck in the twilight zone (what ever and where ever that is);

When you're feeling a bit like you're doing everything badly...

Your little boy scrawls you a note and smiles and presents it to you. And things don't seem so bad anymore.

Tree Foliage Comparison

21 October 2014                                                               21 October 2015

I didn't get to post the tree comparison I wanted to earlier. Here it is. I think I'm right, the colour, although beautiful, is less vibrant than last year. Could be timing, I haven't taken any later photos, but given that peak colour for most other things was around now, I'm sticking with the theory that it didn't do as well this year.

Pumpkin spiced beer

I didn't try it, but apparently both these brews were quite drinkable. I'm wondering if people see it as their duty to put pumpkin/pumpkin spices into everything they can at this time of year.