Good morning everyone. The morning is sunny, but we’ve a chilly wind and a temp of -16C, so it’s a good day to stay inside and admire the sculptured snow banks.

I see we have a GENEROUS supply of writing prompts, a real BONANZA of words and scenes to choose from. The Crimson’s Creative Challenge has been posted, though I’m not sure where this will get us. Looks like a dead end street. 🙂 Rochelle has posted the Friday Fictioneers prompt and the stories are rolling in. (Pardon the pun. 😉 )

I don’t know if I’ll get any responses done, though; I’ve planned a “tidy and mend” day. I was going to announce our success when we finally completed our extremely difficult Flutterbies jigsaw puzzle. We actually finished it Sunday afternoon — didn’t take us until spring after all.

Now on to my next project. I’ve told you that I’ve gotten enthused about acrylic painting, so last week I bought some brushes and got a few tubes of good quality paint when we were in the city on Monday. Yesterday I dug out a canvas from my “someday bin.” Someday has arrived! My evening reading time will be replaced with my new “splotch and dab” hobby. (Impressionist pictures really appeal to me, and they are very splotch-and-dab.)

Last night via internet I watched a tutorial from Ian Harris in Australia showing how to paint a simple sea and sky scene, with “woives and “sproiy” in the water and “claouds” in the sky. (It was worth listening to just to hear his Aussie accent!) He says he has a foicebook poige where he sells his demo paintings, if anyone’s interested.

Anyway, attempting to follow his EXAMPLE on my own canvas last night, I discovered that painting decent-looking clouds and frothy waves is not as easy to execute as he makes it seem. 😦 He’s an encouraging instructor, though, reminding his listeners that we’re learning and won’t do it perfectly at first. So I’ll keep practicing my fleecy clouds. Actually, the finished product didn’t look bad at all from across the room.

After my painting efforts were done, I had to do a small load of wash, as I’d forgotten about an artist’s smock and painted a nice turquoise blue splotch on the front of my dress, and decorated the cuffs of my fleecy grey sweater. Lesson 1A. The tablecloth is plastic, so can be chucked once I get past the beginner stage. 🙂

Early this morning we had a wonderful “good news” text: our grandson, age 18, had a visit with our pastors and will be sharing his “new birth experience” — his conversion, or experience of accepting Jesus as Lord — with the congregation Sunday morning. Family members will be invited to hear it in person; the rest of the congregation via streaming.

A note of explanation:
Our church doesn’t accept as members everyone who pops in and wants to be one. There has to be evidence that they are truly walking in the way Jesus and the apostles taught. Anyone who wishes to join the church must share with the congregation how God called them and how they repented of their sins and committed themselves to his ways.

The congregation considers the evidence — the changes they see and the person’s faithfulness so far — and ask whatever questions they may have about this person’s Christian life to date. Then every member is asked to vote: do they believe this person has made a genuine commitment to Christ? If the evidence is accepted, the person is baptized.

And that’s the news from our house today. I hope you’re all having a good day. One blogger calls Wednesday “Hump day” because it’s in the middle of the week. To the settlers here on the prairie winter seemed really long, but we find it incredible just how fast these days are flying by — isolated or not.