7 Quick Takes Friday Volume 10

Visit Jennifer over at Conversion Diary for more quick takes!

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Many of you asked, after seeing a post with only pictures (link below). Well, this mess explains......this mess! ---2---

Yesterday I drove over to eastern Iowa, where my dad works, to enjoy a birthday lunch with him. We went to a restaurant called The Sanctuary and had a great lunch! Dad had asparagus quiche with a salad and I had a delicious Reuben sandwich with kettle chips. We had dessert, too. Thanks for a great afternoon, Dad!---3---

On the way home from Iowa, I imagined what everything would look like a month from now when spring has brought GREEN to the landscape. The Loess Hills of Western Iowa are beautiful. I'll have to make another post on this, as the way that they were formed is very interesting. Part of the drive snakes through a forest, out of the river valley and up through the beautiful bluffs. I know it looks drab right now, especially to those of you who are used to seeing GREEN year round, but imagine what it will look like in a couple of months! I want to take the drive again just to see it! ---4---

Since I turned thirty-something yesterday, I had a lot of birthday treats for which I am very grateful! One was offered by my sister Brianna who came over yesterday morning (after I'd already left for Iowa) and brought me these beautiful flowers! They were waiting on the kitchen table for me when I came home. Thanks, Brie!---5---

Jeremy was planning on taking the family out to supper last night but we had a sick five year old and a sick toddler so we stayed in and supper arrived at our door. ---6---

Jeremy let me paint the family room! Our living room is dark red, I painted our kitchen a blue/gray/green color which complements the red, and the family room was white. This bothered me because the carpet and furniture are so dark that the room seemed just a little off. I wanted to make the room darker just a bit and so I began a sort of campaign for permission to paint. Jeremy was reluctant at first but gave in to my gentle persuasion and I had it done within 24 hours! Those of you who have been in my home may not notice the difference immediately, so I took pictures of the before and after to illustrate it better. The new color is like coffee with lots of milk in it--actually, now that I've peeked at this published post, I realize that it's almost exactly the center color of the blog. It's enough to keep the room light but reduce the contrast in and it flows nicely with the red of the living room and the blue/green/gray of the kitchen. I love it!

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Thanks to the women in my bible study who were paying attention to events going on in the city, I was able to attend a lecture given by Dale Ahlquist, who is an expert on G.K. Chesterton. I am very interested and am looking forward to the library to look for some of his works. More on Chesterton in another post.