His Salvation

"He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth. It will be said on this day, "Behold, this is our God, we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoie in his salvation." -Isaiah 25: 8-9

Let us rejoice in our risen and coming Savior! I rejoiced with friends on saturday hiking next to the Great falls of the Potomac. How did you spend your day rejoicing in His salvation?

In Christ,

Rebecca

Another thrifty find

Hey everyone!

Last week after visiting and helping some friends of my family pack to move into their new place my sister, mother, and I hit the goodwill thrift store. Yes we went to the thrift store again. We do not go often, but when we do we are usually blessed with treasures for great prices. The Lord was good and blessed me with finding a new dress that is winter colors! Black here I come! Also it has grey, fushia, and white in the pattern of the dress. All colors I know are my season. At least now I believe they are. For the past 2 years after reading Color Me Beautiful my family and I were determined I was a summer. Therefore ruling out that I could wear black. But this past month I was talking with another friend who said she was determined that I was a winter. Winter is the only season of colors that includes black and other very bright cool jewel tones. I remembered thinking I was a winter the first time I read the books on color seasons. But I was told no you must be a summer because that is cool tones and brown is a better neutral on you. So I tried a black cami under a bright jewel green top I own and I realized it did not wash me out!

So now all my friends, family, and myself have come to the conclusion that I am a winter. I am quite happy as I never thought brown was the best on me. So now I am on the look out for more black in my wardrobe as well as other winter colors. I also found these nice mary janes above in black when I found the dress as well. Both dress and shoes cost me $11.00.

The dress was $7.00 and the shoes were $4.00. I was suprised when I had been wanting black flats and I said Lord I would really like a pair of black shoes and he blessed me with a pair. I went into the goodwill looking for the shoes and not the dress. But I have been wanting more dresses in my wardrobe. So I feel blessed to have found winter colors again! I have one black cami and a sweater and now a pair of shoes and a dress that are black. But most of my cloths are cool colors thankfully. So no I am not throwing out my whole wardrobe. Just over time as I get tired of or wear things out I will be on the look out for winter colors.

If you want know more about what color season is best for your coloring I would not recommend going with Color Me Beautiful, but with a new book that is the one a friend lent me and said that I was a winter. Its called Color with style by Donna Fujii. You can see the link in the name of the book to amazon who sells it. You may also be able to find it at your library. I will be wanting my own copy of this book sometime. I am borrowing my friends copy right now.

The next thing I am on the look out for in my wardrobe is a good winter/fall coat. Hopefully I can find one for a good deal before it gets cold around here. Everyone enjoy your thursday and be blessed by the Lords provision!

In Christ,

Rebecca

Wool civil war dress progress

Hello everyone!

Suprise! I have been creating a new wool/silk blend puff sleeved dress. Since you all do not know me in real life you all might be suprised to know that I love puff sleeves!!! I even adore the ones Anne Shirley wears to the ball with Diana in the movie. The dress that Matthew bought for her! I love anything that is poofy! The 1830's era is my favorite because of the big puff sleeves. So I wanted something a little frilly for civil war. Bethany my sister helped me draft these puffs based on the CDV below.
The lady on the far right is the one with the sleeves I have been wanting for over a year now. Now its come into existance! Yes my puffs! I am so extatic!!! I am not aware of who owns this photograph, but I did get it off of ebay. If you own this photograph and would want photo credit I can do that. Just comment.

The bodice is darted as typical of wool and silk blend dresses.

You can see the puffs above and below. But these photos do not do them justice. They are a lot better on a person. But here is a sneak peek of what I am wearing to our first civil war event in October. Navy dress with brown plaid.

An upclose of the puff above.

I finished the bodice for this dress about a week ago. But I have had to rip out my pleating the skirt to the bodice once already. I do not like pleating, as I have only done gauging on my other two dresses I have made. But as my sister and a friend says you have to overcome the project before you can do the technique you are frustrated with well. Hopefully I can pick it up again this week and finish it so I can put some photos of it on me on here. I adore the fabric! Its actually mostly silk with some wool in the fibers. It was on sale from fashionfabrics.com. I would recommend getting wool from them. Its usually better prices when its on sale and you have a coupon. But there quality is quite good.

Have a wonderful day and rely on Christ alone for your strength to live each day!

In Christ,

Rebecca

Canning apple sauce and apple butter

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share with you all what my family was up to last week. We were canning up a storm. Here are some photos of what we do. We usually don't use a pressure canning method. We put our clean jars in a grill pan over the stove and get them hot. Then we pour our mixture into the jar as you see below from our crock pot.

Pouring apple sauce in jars below.

Then my sister and I put lids on the jars that are hot as well and put lids as well. Then we cover all of our jars overnight and they seal.

Then you have lovely jars of apple sauce to eat and give away! My mother has always done this method in our household. She says her parents did it the old fashioned way and she wanted an easier method. So this is how we do it with our crock pot, stove for heating jars, and hands to put the lids on.

If you have any questions about canning just comment. God bless!

In Christ,

Rebecca

The star quilt boarder progress

Hello everyone! I started a start quilt last June and posted the progress of the basting of the quilt here.

I started the boarder of my quilt while watching Bleak House with my mother and sister. Its a great movie by the way based off of Dickens novel. I wanted to share what progress I have made. I finished all the middle, which is all the squares with stars being hand quilted in July. But I started saturday quilting the boarder. I made a stencil shaped to the exact dimensions of the stars in the squares of the quilt. I used the stencil as my template for tracing with pencil to quilt the star shape all the way around the boarder. Here is my progress of only three in the corner. But you can see what I have been up to this way. I will post a picture of it finished soon.

The corner above where I have stitching.
You can see one star above done.



All three of the stars in the corner above. It took me a little over half of the whole 5 episodes of the movie to do. I guess about an hour and a half. I love quilting. I used to hate it, but now I enjoy having my hands do something during movies or chatting with friends.

Below my little place to read each evening in bed and quilt as well. I have finished Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss, When You Rise Up by R.C Sproul Jr. (its about homeschooling and why its a great thing to do as Christians), John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God by John Piper( would recommend this one because it tells you about calvins life and about the misunderstanding some have of this theologian.), A City On A Hill by Ryken,

and Persuasion by Jane Austen, as well as starting lots of new books. I read all of these over July and beginnging of August. For me this is a lot of reading. I have recently been reading The Utmost for His Highest and love it! It was a graduation gift from wonderful friends. I have also been reading Set-Apart femininity by Lesley Ludy and it was also a gift for graduation. I also have been reading Already Gone by ken Ham and its really interesting. Its statistics about why young people are leaving the church and ways to stop this from happening in the next generation. I am also still reading my favorite books to read to for fun Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I am also finishing up The reasonableness of Christianity by John Locke. Its quite interesting. I got to see an original copy of this work in its originial form in the Library of Congress two weeks ago. As well as many of other originals such as Jeffersons library, some of his first drafts of the declaration. Some of John Adams journals. It was amazing!

I love reading and I have more time this summer in between things. Hopefully I can still read once school starts mid september. Oh and I am excited as I got my first email from my college plus mentor yesterday! The Lord is bringing it all together for my schooling for this new year. I am scared and excited!

God bless,

Rebecca

As promised....

A glimspe into my life as to what I wore to D.C. last week and to church a few weeks back. I posted about the trip here. I have been wearing this light blue dress at home as well. Its very practical, because if comfortable and still feminine. I love it! And yes as I said in my last post it was only $1.00!!!! The best part!

It has buttons all the way down the front and princess seams.

It has a scalopped edge around the neckline which is a nice detail you can see below. It has little white flowers on top of the blue light denim fabric. This dress did used to have shoulder pads that someone before me had cut out. But I believe its a timeless style and does not scream a particular era. I love it all the same as its my favorite color!

Well I have a few posts that I will be posting through out the week of sewing projects and finished pictures of our apple butter and apple sauce. And showing how we can in our little kitchen with our crock pots instead of over a big pot out of doors. I am so thankful for this new skill my mother has taught my sister and I through the last 5 years.

Have a blessed sunday and I will leave you with these verses I have been pondering as of late. And thanksgiving for the Lords provision in my life.

"I waited patiently for the Lord, He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me out of the pit of descruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud to those who go after a lie. You have multiplied, O Lord my God your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us; none can compar with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told. " -Psalm 40:1-5

I have been so blessed by the Lords provision. After this year of my last year of formal homeschool courses I can not believe how He has blessed my family. He has brought my father, mother, sister, and I together by His Truth alone. He has given us peace through His saving grace through His son Jesus Christ. He has blessed us with provision for Bethany and I to be able to do college courses from home and to be able to sew for our family and friends. To be able to show hospitality through our homes and through reenacting as well as through our church. I thank God alone for His mercy on me a sinner and my family! That He did show me what His vision is for my life and my father the vision for our family. We would not be living day by day in awe of His provision in this life if it was not for His saving grace. Its been a tought road and today in church with other believes around me who are my family I was in awe of what He has done. Day by day we are waiting for His return. May everyone be blessed today being in His presence!

In Christ,

Rebecca

My favorite outfit right now and busyness

Hey everyone!

I promised that I would post about my $1.00 dress, but I changed my mind and decided to post the outfit I wore today. Yes, I am a gal and tend to change my mind! But do not be in despair you shall see the $1.00 dress tomorrow Lord willing as I am going to wear it tomorrow. :)

So without further or do here is my outfit that I wore making apple sauce and apple butter with my mother and sister, mopped and vacumed the house, as well as sewed some more of my wool civil war dress; while I listened to The Hiding Place with my two favorite gals. I also studied John Lockes The reasonableness of Christianity and journaled in my England trip photo album that my mother put together for my sister and I. Its been a full day! My daddy also took us out to eat before he leaves for his uncles funeral tomorrow. I will miss him until he comes back sunday.
My outfit consists of a grey top I bought at the BJ's warehouse! You heard that right I bought this top when we were buying our groceries. They actually have some great tops there. :) It was $10.00.
My yellow layering tank was from kohls a few years ago for probably $5.00 or so. I can't remember, but I do use it almost weekly believe it or not. Its goes with a lot of my tops even though its yellow.
My yellow necklace was a graduation present from my neighbors. They are so sweet and its one of my new favorite peices to wear!

My jean skirt is the same one I posted about here and it was only $8.00 at the thrift store. I wear this one almost all the time. Its a staple in my wardrobe now. Its not too casual and not too fancy. I would wear this to church and still feel dressed up! I love it! So all in all my whole outfit except my Bible sandals was about $23.00 with tax. That sounds expensive, but here in northern VA that is cheap and I bought it all on sale and at the local thrift store.


Now you may be wondering why I said the total of my outfit except for my Bible sandals. Well I believe that they do not count since I wear them with almost every single outfit I own. They were only $23.00 to be exact with grad money from friends. So I say that each day if I count that day for $1.00 and its been more than $23.00 and I have worn them for about 2 months almost every day they were not as expensive as it might seem as I did not have to spend a penny since they were a gift. if you get what I am saying. They were not bought with money from my pocket therefore I am not including it in what I spent for my outfit. So the outfit is about $21.00 dollars. This is one of my more expensive ones, since I don't normally spend $10.00 on a top unless its really pretty such as this one I am wearing above. :)
Tomorrow my dress will be the cheapest outfit I own at only $1.05 from the West Virginia thrift store near my grandparents house. It was a bargain and its so pretty!!!

We have been canning apple sauce and apple butter yesterday and today. I will post pictures of some finished jars soon. We always go to our local orchard every august and get 6 buckets of apples and 5 buckets of peaches to freeze for pie fillings and can to make butters and jams. So its a ritual in our house if you want to call it that. :) I love it and it saves us money, not so much time, but its all worth it. Jar photos coming soon. God bless and have a wonderful happy wednesday tomorrow!

In Christ,

Rebecca

What we have been up to.....

Hello everyone!

Well its been so busy that I have not had time to post until now! For 3 weeks my family has been traveling to friends and having company stay with us. We have had three different sets of families stay with us and visited 2 families. Its been a blessing and so encouraging to hear Christs church edify one another! Praise the Lord! We are leaving wednesday to visit and help some newly married friends move. So its been so busy! But I will try and tell what has been going on while I have time.

3 weeks at the end of July Bethany and I and our parents went to visit our good friends the Needs. They are our adopted grandparents and wonderful examples to our family of the older teaching the younger. Bethany and I stayed for about 10 days after our parents left being with us 3 of the days. We learned a lot of sewing techniques and had a great time! I made a skirt for a friend and some other little girls dresses and Bethany made some little girls dresses and a ladies dress also. Grammie(Mrs Need) helped us and taught us during the week we were there.

Below is a sunset as we sat on the porch swing in front of the Needs home. It was lovely!

Grammie and I cutting away!

Bethany and Grammie having a lovely time!

We went with my parents up to Mount Storm in West VA and saw a beautiful water fall!

The Needs and us

Gods creation is amazing! Isn't it?!

We had fun going on top of a huge rock on our way up to the water fall.
The Needs in front of the falls.
My parents and Bethany and I.

Then the Needs came to visit us last week along with their grandson from Brazil. So of course we had to go up to D.C. and see the sites! The Library of Congress was breath taking! I love the architecture!! As we were walking towards the Captital.

Library of Congress ceiling below.


We were able to see Gershwins piano and lots of his hand written music that were the rough drafts of his musicals and other songs. We also saw Thomas Jeffersons library, which I was not aloud to photograph unfortunately! It was amazing!!! So many books! Since they were so expensive back in the 1770s I was so suprised at his collection, but at the same time I could imagine them all in Monticello where he lived. We went there a few years back. Beautiful! We also saw the Guttenburg Bible, unfortunately I could not photograph that either. But it was amazing! We also went to the National Gallery of Art and it was beautiful as usual.

Gershwins piano above

More beautiful ceilings in the hallway at the Library of congress. We also found out that they give free concerts of all different wonderful styles of music. I had my eye on the one that is duets of cello and piano!!! Oh I would love to hear that! The cello and the harp are two of my favorite instruments besides the piano. If only I could learn to play the cello someday and do duets with Beth! That would be wonderful! someday maybe?! After I finish my voice and piano studies for college. :) If any of you are wondering I will be doing a voice(singing) major through Collegeplus. Go here to see their website. You can get a fully accredited degree without having to redo your high school classes. You can clep out of classes and focus on your major! It sounds lovely. We shall see how it goes. I am supposed to start September 13th Lord willing. Pray for me in that! I am excited, scared, and overwhelmed at the same time.
I will post the dress that I wore on the trip to D.C. that I bought while I was visiting Grammie and Grandpa at their local thrift store called Rio for only $1.00! Its my favorite color to wear ice blue and its a dress I will be copying into my own pattern someday! Until tomorrow!

In Christ,

Rebecca

4th of July living history event

Hello everyone!

Just a note all these photos are the property of Lindsey Weberg photography and may not be ta
ken without my or her permission. Please respect that and do not use they photos anywhere else.

I know I have been absent from the blog world for about a month now! :) But its been a busy time and here is a little of what my life was like at the beginning of July. My family and reenacting group went to Gettysburg Pennsylvania for the annual 4th of July celebration. So we set up our camp thursday and stayed until sunday night. It was until monday, but we were so tired we left early since my dad needed work monday anywho. So here are the adventures of the Stricker family doing living history of the civil war with our friends in Christ.
My sister and our friend above doing hair the first morning on friday.


Breakfast is always the busiest time of the day, since everyone is getting ready for the public to come and see our camp. We have to get rid of all our modern conviences and get the hair up and get breakfast done by 9am. Now you would think that would be an easy task, but that is not so with 20 people in our living history group. :)

My father above is wearing a linen outfit that my sister Bethany made for him and a period hat and pair of boots as well while demonstrating how the telegraph keys work to some specators. I just loved seeing him show how they communitcated between the lines during the war. Lord willing at our next reenactment I will be helping him demonstrate.

My parents above together. :)

Here is my dad up early at 6am getting the breakfast going the next morning on saturday. You can see our open fire cooking area and our period pots and pans.

We get quite a crowd interested in the telegraph demos!

We tend to have a line of ladies in our group demonstrating how the hair styles were done for the period every morning for specatators to see and if they want we even do their hair for a small fee.

Dad in action showing how to use the telegraph with dot code, not morse code.

On saturday we even did our laundry and the public really were interested. We do dishes, cooking, hair demos, sewing, and many other activities that they did daily during the civil war. We try to show how they lived and do it in a way that is hands on in our camp.

All done! It was lovely that day and it was windy, so it all dried in time for sunday so we had clean cloths!

We are washing our chemises and stockings above, I am on the far left.

The whole crew! These are all the teens and young adults that are in our group. We had tons of fun! My sister Bethany is on the far left and I am second from the far right.

Above you can see our wash table where we wash all the dishes at bottom of the photo. You can also see our tents on the left side of the photo that we sleep in. In this photo we are doing a young ladies hair for her for a small fee. It was fun to show people what the hair styles of the period were like by doing it for them.

Here is a young woman in our group demonstrating how to make homemade lemonade. All the
kids who came to see the living history event loved helping! it was cute to let them help and they enjoyed it.

In the above picture I am showing with my civil war doll that I posted about here what the under garments of a lady in the civil war looked like and how they were worn. The lady next to me was from England and was quite interested in our family group. Since all the people in our group are families that homeschool she was very interested. She even interviewed us for a magazine that she is a reporter for. So we may be in a spring issue of an english home magazine in 2011. It was exciting and I was nervous as were the other young ladies and men in our group. But it was a great witness for Christ as I added in parts of my testimony to share.

Above one of the moms in our group is cooking fried chicken over the open fire for dinner on saturday! It was so hot, but she got through it with some other girls in our groups help. It was deliscious!

My mother on the left and her friend on the right.

On sunday our fly that is a shady area for us to sit and to eat was falling down. So we held it up with the help of our wooden spoons! It was funny, but scarey because it bent the metal pin that kept the fly on top of our tent!!!!!! But my dad was able to bend it back and put it back on top of the tent.
Here are my sister and I and some other gals from our group with one of fathers excorting us to one of the big tents to hear about spys and their role during the civil war on friday. It was fun!

Well I will leave you all with one last photo of myself tending to the fire. It was hot, but it was fun doing fried apples and eggs for breakfast. God bless and if you all have any questions please ask. I love learning about history and sharing what I have learned through my blog.

God bless and have a marvelous day leaning on Him!

In Christ,

Rebecca