Georgia Archives - Spoonful of Imagination

Georgia on My Mind and on My Pillow

August 4, 2014 By Erica Deuel 3 Comments

Sometimes in life we have time to process and prepare for change. There are other moments in life where we don’t, and we can feel robbed or cheated. I am continually thankful that we had time to process, prepare, cry and cherish our last days with our sweet foster son. We are still largely processing all that we experienced and what God wants for us, but one thing I am continually so grateful for is God’s faithfulness.

One of my outlets for processing change and all that life throws my way is crafting. This past weekend, with a million things on my to-do list, I snuck away to my sewing machine for an hour and created this embellished pillow. What can I say, it’s like therapy. While I process life, all that’s going on, and all the things ahead I’m thinking a lot about my roots, where I’m from, and all those special people who have invested in me along the way. So naturally being a good Southern girl, I have Georgia on my mind, and now I have it on my pillow too!

Follow along and you too can make a state pride piece for your home.

I started with a plain dark grey, simple pillow case. I have had this one for sometime, but it didn’t look right in my home without a little jazz. So I decided to add my state outline to it. It is no secret that embellishing an already existing item can make a very easy craft. It can often times make your project cheaper. Just like my felt heart pillow, this state pillow will turn a dull boring pillow into a fun statement piece.

I Googled “GA outline” and printed my favorite one, pinned it to my fabric, and cut the paper and fabric at the same time to give me a Georgia fabric silhouette. You could repeat this process with any state or country that is special to you.

I then pinned that fabric silhouette to a piece of burlap and cut about 1/4″ off the fabric silhouette to give the state a burlap border.

I then used some scrap felt to cut out a heart. I placed this where our capital would be on a map. We live in a northern suburb of Atlanta, so it only seemed appropriate to make sure it is represented on the state. I embroidered the heart in place and then sewed the whole piece onto my existing pillowcase.

I love how it turned out! It added a punch of personality and fun to a rather boring pillow.

You could use this idea for any state, shape, or symbol! My bench is like a rotating canvas to hold my pillow obsession.

Are you an inward processor too? What activity helps you process?? I’m always up for new things. I wish I could journal, but then again maybe this is my journal.

I hope you all are having a good week! Find a way to use your imagination and dream big dreams with me!

The Story of What’s Next

February 18, 2013 By Erica Deuel 35 Comments

Have you ever had a feeling about something deep in your heart but didn’t quite know what to do with it?

There has been something stirring in me for almost 10 years. Even before Matt and I got married, there was a tug on my heart. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Especially when I got married and we started having kids a few years later, life just took off. We were busy finding our rhythm. Adjusting to being young marrieds. Then learning to become new parents. Parents of two kids created new challenges. When our third came along, we were absolutely leveled. Life was full. How could we take on any more?

Yet, this dream continued to churn in me. I’d bring it up to Matt and he’d say, “You’re crazy! How in the world could we handle that? Maybe when the kids are older we can consider it.”

At the beginning of the year, I shared that my word for the year is change. Last year led us down a path that prepared us and opened us up to this idea of change. On Thursday, I shared about our plan to sell our house, and I said that I would be back today with the reasoning why. So here we go… The story of what’s next!

For over ten years my heart his been burdened with the orphans in our country. As long as I can remember, I’ve had the desire to step into this issue and do something to help make a difference. Adopt. Foster. Visit group homes. (Did you know there’s over a dozen group homes, essentially modern day orphanages, in north Atlanta alone?) I was up for any of it. Growing up in a family with 8 siblings (where all of our needs were met), I just couldn’t understand how so many kids are left waiting and wanting for something as simple as attention. I wasn’t ok with this. I’m still not ok with it.

However, I needed to be faithful with the many blessings and responsibilities God had already entrusted to me. I believe in choosing my marriage first, and Matt was pretty clear that while he wasn’t closed to the idea-now was not the time for us to be involved. As I’ve shared, since Matt’s birthday last March, we started talking and praying about our future. We had a sense that life was shifting and maybe something new was on the horizon. Last time this happened was 5 years ago and it led us to Matt quitting his full time job and starting a non-profit ministry with our friends Andrew and Emily.

Being a girl that likes for things to be steady and somewhat calculated, I was a bit nervous about this returning feeling of change. Where could it all lead? What could God call us towards? Would we be moving? Was Matt going to get a new job? We didn’t know. We just started to pray and ask God for the faith we needed to be ready for whatever it was. For six months nothing changed. Nothing was clear. In fact it was frustrating. We began to feel stuck. Then the amazing happened.

In September, Matt walked into a Starbucks down the street from our house, sat at a table and asked God to bring him some work. In less than five minutes a man named John walked through the door. Matt knew John but hadn’t seen him in 4 or 5 years. He walked right over to Matt and said, “Do you still do videos? I need to talk to you about doing a video for my organization. Let’s talk soon.” He handed Matt his business card and left. Below is the video Matt created for John that was just publicly released last week.

Can you believe it? Out of all the projects God could have dropped in Matt’s lap… a foster care project!? The story doesn’t end there, but now I want to turn it over to Matt so you can hear directly from him.

Matt: The Living 1:27 project certainly came as a surprise and had a “get my attention” sort of quality to it. I literally laughed when I looked down at John’s business card and saw the phrase “Foster Care Ministry” printed under the logo. For brevity’s sake I’ll just say the next several meetings and jobs I took in September, October, and November, it was unescapable. Foster care came up in some way shape or form at almost every single turn. One of my best friends and his family have been fostering the past two years. They have been down a really hard but amazing road as a result. If you sat with my friend, Jimmy, he would tell you he wouldn’t change it for the world. Erica has also mentioned our friends the Stanley’s on the blog before. They uprooted from suburbia to immerse their young family into the needs of children in the inner city. As I have observed the lives of these two families, I have always been incredibly moved and intrigued by their stories. Their choices seemed void of some conventional wisdom and yet I was drawn to the ways they were choosing to live. As I was researching for the Living 1:27 video and talking to our friends, my heart was broken and for the first time I saw what Erica had seen for years. While shooting the 1:27 interviews my assistant looked over at me and said, “Dude, you’re screwed.” He was right. There was no more denying the need and our ability to help. Stick a fork in me, I was done. Toast.

No matter the risk, the obstacles, or the pain that could come as a result, we want our home to be a place that welcomes the orphan. It makes no sense whatsoever but in it there is incredible peace. The truth is, just like Janice says in the video, there will never be a good time to do this. Life is always happening. It’s always busy. There’s always a good excuse not to step into something. But what if this life wasn’t supposed to be totally comfortable? What if some of life’s greatest joys are waiting right behind some of life’s largest struggles? What if we set fear aside and traded in some good things for a chance at great things?

As Erica and I have processed this we’ve realized that some of the scariest moments of our lives, where we chose courage and took a leap of faith, have produced some of the most amazing growth. Memories. Stories. Things worth remembering and living for. We crave more of that. Not for attention or to be “radical.” I’m simply starting to believe it’s the way we are supposed to live.

So, we are going for it. Step one is to sell our home. We live in a 3 bedroom house with five people, two dogs, a DIY crafter, homeschool, and my business. We absolutely love our house and the area we live. However, there is simply no room to grow and step into this change.

For us, it’s about the faithful little steps each day. So, for the next several days we will continue to work our butts off on getting our house ready to sell. (Erica is leading the charge, and I can’t even begin to imagine how many DIY posts this process is going to produce… you all would be so proud of her!) Friday our house will go on the market. We will sit back and trust for the best opportunity and when that happens we will go find a new home. Right now, we are planning on staying in the metro Atlanta area. Despite real estate being all about location, that is the one element that doesn’t mean a whole lot to us. We just need to find a great home better suited to chase this dream.

Once we have an idea on the future of our housing situation we will begin to take the mandatory training classes for foster care. Beyond that, I genuinely have no idea. We’ll know when it’s time to know. The truth is it’s not really our job to know, we’d be God if we did. It’s our job to trust, live today to the fullest, and take the next faithful step forward. So we will continue to do our best at that. The times we fail we’ll get up the next day and try again. Thank you for taking to time to read our story and track with us as we take the next steps. I can’t even begin to tell you how much encouragement so many of you bring to Erica through your kind thoughts and words. And with that, I’ll throw it back to Erica…

Erica: Isn’t he great!? I’m obsessed with him and this video. I will be going to watch it again right now. If you would have asked me a year ago, if this would be the direction I would be headed, I would have said no. Obviously, we have a ways to go, but I am still so excited and can’t believe this dream is starting to take shape. What about you? Have you seen a long term dream come alive? Or do you have a dream that is waiting for you to take the next faithful step?

family pictures

December 10, 2012 By Erica Deuel 2 Comments

My sister-in-law, Christina, has an amazing eye behind the camera. I hate to even acknowledge that Christina (or “stina” as my kids call her) is part of my family because I may sound a little bias. I hope by the end of this post you too can see why I believe so much in this girl and her work! It is gorgeous!

The thing about having a professional photographer in the family is we always have amazing shots from our family functions, just like my birthday pumpkin carving/fire pit/cookout extravaganza.

One thing that I just adore about Christina’s pictures are how real and genuine they are while being completely gorgeous!! I know from our family shoots, we have kids that don’t always want to smile or sit still. Christina can somehow still get awesome pictures with some fidgety subjects all the while capturing their natural joy. I love hugging pictures with huge smiles!!

Christina is the real deal. She works hard and will spend hours and hours researching new shooting locations, going and checking the lighting at these locations to save you time and get you the best pictures possible. She strives for excellence and it shows in her work. Although her work is perfect in my eyes, she spends hours reading other photographers’ blogs, learning, and experimenting. She has a natural gift and is still humble. I love to watch the joy she gets from creating art in taking gorgeous pictures. She comes alive behind a camera and I feel it shows in work.

Christina has done family shoots…

She has a love for capturing life at its fullest and that is how she rolls living it. Life is an adventure. She has captured my guys in the middle of a water balloon fight, wearing five different parts of superhero costumes all at once, and even Reagan’s first painting experience. These pictures are priceless. If you are pregnant, I can’t imagine the incredible pictures Christina could capture! She would do an incredible job at a maternity shoot or even a baby’s first newborn pictures! Capturing those little toes and smiles in their sleep is so sweet.

If you live in the Atlanta, GA area, I highly recommend contacting Christina and seeing how you can set up your own photo shoot with her. I know our family is going to get a shoot with her this Christmas season. It will be the first time that all my siblings will be together in what feels like a really long time, so she is going to capture it with the mix of all different poses with our clan together. Do you have family coming in town where you would like a photo shoot to capture the moment together??

I know I am smiling the whole time I scroll through her work. It is so beautiful and full of heart and joy!

Thank you for stopping by and meeting a side of a girl, Christina, that helps my world go round. Have an awesome day!!

Savannah, Georgia

October 18, 2012 By Erica Deuel 7 Comments

Last weekend I got to get away with three friends and spend the weekend in Savannah, Georgia. It was a complete blast! We went sightseeing, shopping, and did lots of eating. It was the perfect girl’s getaway!

We ate lunch at a Mellow Mushroom right outside Savannah for lunch on our first day. My boys have flipped over two of our lunch dates that were also eating there. All four of us are moms of boys and took lots of pictures of the restaurant’s decor. 🙂

While sightseeing, we lived by the “block system” and the free maps located around Savannah. I wasn’t very good with them, but I was very thankful to be with friends who were more proactive with figuring out the way to go. My tendency is to think “let’s start walking, and we will find it”, which is not ever successful with my mind’s GPS.

They got us to this very cute store, The Paris Market. Inside there were some real eye candy displays.

I absolutely love those glass lights. I have no idea where I would put them, but I dream of having some somewhere someday!

I brought the boys home a bag of those beautiful marbles each. They have been carrying them around like crazy but have had moments like in Hook where they are so upset they have “lost their marbles”.

I left that gorgeous store with those string balls on my to-do list. I HAVE to make a bucket of them. They are so colorful and fun.

This gorgeous drift wood elephant stood inside one store. I have a thing for elephants and this one is perfection!

As we strolled from one store to the next and ate in lots of restaurants, we saw a common thing were these shelled chandeliers. They really grew on me, and I kind of want to try to make one of them too! We fell in love with a lot of the cute stores in Savannah. There was one other store we just loved like The Paris Market, and I can’t remember the name.

We did lots of walking! We walked all over on our own, and we also did two walking tours while we were there. We did a ghost tour one night, and a cinema tour one afternoon. They were both highlights of our trip! Good thing they had one of my favorite stores in this town…

There were some beautiful candy stores along the river. They provided lots of good treats to enjoy while walking around.

The squares around town are filled with Spanish moss trees, and I couldn’t get enough of them!

I had never been to Savannah and the beauty with the trees and architecture/buildings was so fun to take in. The tours really helped us learn more about the city as well. The Cinema tour was fascinating to see the parts of town which have been in movies. We saw the square and restaurant that were used in Forest Gump.

I had never seen Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. If you too have not seen it, it is a true story that took place in Savannah and then was also filmed there. It was fascinating to see clips of the movie while we were looking at the real building. The night after our tour we watched the movie.

This little history part of our trip was fascinating to all four of us, and we are all now reading the book that was written based on the movie’s plot.

I just adore all the features of these old houses. I want to live in an old house with some of these fabulous features! I love the great big front doors, the porches, the metal work, and definitely all the huge windows!

This is the main house in the Midnight of the Garden of Good and Evil. So much history right here!

I love the color used on this house front. So beautiful!

We had a lot of fun talking, laughing, and enjoying long meals with out the worry of a child losing it. It was good to come home to my family though too! It’s amazing how just a little space can be so rejuvenating and strengthening to go home and keep pouring into those cute, yet needy parts of your heart.

If you haven’t been to Savannah, GA, I highly recommend it! Some of my favorite places were The Paris Market, Rocks on the Roof of the Bohemian Hotel, Huey’s, and The Moon River Brewing Company. Oh, and you have to do a tour!! For more gorgeous pictures from this trip please visit my friend Erin’s blog!

I hope you are all having a good week! Check in tomorrow to see what item is in my Friday Project Spotlight! It is something I haven’t made in a while, but I love them!

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