Etsy store

Hey everyone!

I know I have not really been blogging at all, truth be told I don’t have anything real interesting to blog about! But now I have this, a new store on etsy!!

I have been wanting to get a store for a while now and the only thing holding me back was my fear of the unknown. I got over my fear and went ahead and did it! My awesome husband made the graphics on my etsy store and it all just looks amazing.

Anyways, you should go check it out for yourself.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/treeoflifejewelry

It was great talking to you all again and maybe there will be more posts up soon!!

Filed under: Uncategorized , etsy, http://www.etsy.com/shop/treeoflifejewelry, Jewelry

Purim

Purim is this weekend and I couldn’t be more excited about it!

Out of all the feasts I feel like Purim is the best example of the pure joy of being a believer. It is completely a feast of thanksgiving and praise for the deliverance that Yahweh gives us on a daily basis. It’s an equalizing feast, everyone from the least to the greatest has something to celebrate.

So here is a little back story for you. Purim is about the story of Esther also known as Hadassah. If you have not read the story I highly suggest that you do, it’s only 10 chapters long and you can usually read it all in one sitting. The celebration of Purim comes from Esther 9:20-32 in verse 22 it says that “…He (Mordecai) wrote them to observe the days as days of feasting and joy and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor.” Purim in modern days has taken on a few traditions in addition to feasting, giving food, and gifts to the poor. Purim is a costume party, we like to dress up as different people from the bible but some people just dress up as anything. During services we read the whole book of Esther and cheer for Mordecai, boo for Haman, and aww for Esther. Traditionally people will eat these Haman’s ear pastries which I need to learn how to make.

With all those great traditions and festivities it is no wonder why I like Purim so much. Who doesn’t like dressing up and feasting? But all of those great things are not why I like Purim, they are pluses for sure but they are just extra. The meat and soul of Purim for me is the freedom we have in Yahweh. We can trust that He has placed us where we are every day to bring His freedom to everyone. We may not see His name on it (we don’t see His name at all in the book of Esther) but why should He when we know His name is on everything. He uses the lowly orphan in Esther to pour out His justice and mercy on all of Israel and he uses all of us lowly people to pour out His perfect justice and mercy on everyone because we all are Israel.

Doesn’t that fire you up to know that Yahweh’s justice flows through you! What greater joy is there than His freedom!

So let’s read our history in Esther, let’s dress up like our very great grandparents, and let’s feast because we have been redeemed!

Filed under: Uncategorized , Costume, Esther, Feast, Hadassah, Haman, Justice, Mercy, Mordecai, party, Purim

Valentimes day

Valentimes day, shmalentimes day!

Why just declare your love on one day?

Anyways, I am doing an overhaul on all my jewelry and will be streamlining my designs. I have too many and I really need to simplify.

My simplification is due in part to some of the changes I am going to make to my tiny little business. For those of you who don’t know Shane and I have been living without internet for the past few months which is why I only blog once in a blue moon and is also why I don’t have an online store. Hopefully that will all change soon.

So happy meaningless pagan holiday to you all! Make sure to tell the ones you love that you love them every other day of the year too, you should never stop loving!

Filed under: Uncategorized , internet, love, pagan, valentines day

Not just for the new year.

I know this is back to back posting for me but I really felt the need to post this before the new year started.

I am posting here and now my new year challenge.

Read the Bible.

Just read the Bible, not a book about the Bible, just the Bible.

Don’t start in the middle, do you start any other book in the middle? Start at the start.

Don’t get opinions on scriptures from theologists or wanna be theologists, just read the text.

My plan is to avoid reading what other people have to say about the Bible but what the Bible actually says for itself.

I am not making plans on finishing all of the Bible in one year and I don’t think you should either unless you need a goal for yourself  to actually do it. Just start at the beginning and take your time, that’s my plan.

All of this is spurred on by the lack of information about the Bible that the public has. We spurt off our random christian babble that we heard someone else say which doesn’t make any sense. I would never not check the facts on anything else that people say, why not check the facts about Scripture. I know this may be a foreign concept but sometimes people are wrong in what they say, how do we know unless we actually study the document they speak over?

If you haven’t done so already go check out Bill Maher’s “Documentary” Religulous. I am sure they didn’t put any interviews in the film with someone who actually knows what they are talking about but it will still open your eyes to how many people don’t even know about their own faith.

So let’s open our eyes, open our hearts, and open the Word and see what IT really says.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Bill Maher, New Year, Religulous, Scripture, The Bible, The Word

My wedding ring.

Monday was our first anniversary, we celebrated by buying a wedding ring. It is a little unconventional to receive your wedding ring a year into your marriage but any of you who know Shane and I and the circumstances around our wedding know that we are not conventional people.

Here is a recap the events surrounding our marriage  for those of you who were not there. Shane and I met online in May of 2008, we talked for several months over the phone and in August Shane drew a line in the sand. He didn’t think we should continue our talking relationship unless we were actually serious about being together and getting married. Both of us spent time in prayer and I knew he was the one the Father had sent for me, he was everything I had ever prayed for. Shane wasn’t convened with my confirmation and needed one of his own. One night we were talking and I quoted that line in Ruth to him “where you go I will go. where you stay I will stay. your people will be my people and your God my God.” He went silent. He had prayed a few nights earlier that if I was the one for him I would quote that line to him. So the next month I actually met Shane in person, yes, I knew he was my husband before I ever saw him, and things progressed from there. We were planning on getting married in May of the next year but in November we figured why wait. A few weeks before our wedding we decided to get married. The M.I.A. Hanukkah conference was going on in Nashville so we got married at the conference in one of the conference rooms on the last night of Hanukkah. It was kind of fitting because we got engaged during the feast of tabernacles a few months before.

So, about the ring. We ordered rings online that had our Ruth verse in Hebrew around the bands and used them in the ceremony. I thought that the ring I got was WAY too masculine and made my finger look fat so I have just been wearing my 1930′s engagement ring that Shane got off a guy on Craig’s list. I had been thinking about the ring I wanted and just figured it would be too much for us to afford right now, boy was I wrong.

Monday afternoon Shane tells me to go look for a wedding band. I had made plans to go grocery shopping so I was going to be out anyways. He said if I found something I liked for under $50 I could buy it, I laughed (Sarah’s seem to be in the habit of that). So I go to Walmart and take a peek in the jewelry cases to see if there is anything I actually like there and see my band. It’s slender, white gold, plain, just what I wanted. I ask the attendant if I can look at it. She takes it out and tells me the size, it’s my size. I put it on my finger and she tells me it looks perfect there. She tells me that she just put it out that morning, apparently someone had ordered it and had not picked it up and she felt the need to put it in the display case. I take off the ring and look at the price tag. It’s a yellow sticker with a black $28 on it. I smiled at her and said it was a good price, she smiled back and said it was indeed a good price. “Someone else’s loss is your gain.” she told me as we walked over to the register.

I paid $30 after taxes. Who’s laughing now?

Filed under: Uncategorized , anniversary, Feast of Tabernacles, Hanukkah, M.I.A., ring, wedding

A Woman how fears Yahweh is to be praised.

I am blessed to have many women in my life who are very praise worthy, but there is one in particular who I am going to publicly praise right now.

And the special woman is…….. Lisa Rubel!

Those of you who don’t know Lisa need to know Lisa. She has been my mentor, friend, colleague, sister, patroness, and support staff for just the fast few months I have known her. She has encouraged me so much to keep making jewelry, keep crafting, and to start up this here blog.

Lisa is a Photographer here in the Wilson county area (you can check out her amazing photos if you click on her link on the right side of my website), she is the leader of the dance circle at Lamb Fellowship and an amazing dancer, and to top all that off she is a wife and mother to two equally awesome teenage girls.

While we were celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles this year she took some absolutely amazing photos of a few of the girls at lamb (including her awesome daughters) modeling my jewelry. If I do say so myself, the models I had for my Jewelry were works of art all by themselves, they all out shined any necklace they wore.  She spent just a few weeks editing them and gave them all to me this past Saturday, I was actually shocked at how quick she got them back to me considering she had other photos to edit. I have put all the pictures in their appropriate places in the different galleries and I really do hope you go take a look at them all.  Here are a few that I liked the best.

 

 

When you look throughout culture and history you always see that artists and creative thinkers just flock together. Fanny Mendelssohn, sister to the more famous Felix Mendelssohn but still a great composer in her own right (actually many of “Felix’s” pieces were written by her but published under his name because composing is not something an upper class woman would do at the time), would host these Sunday afternoon concerts where many of the musicians in Berlin would come and all socialize together. The Mendelssohns were friends with the Schumanns who were friends with Chopin and  Brahms. All these amazing composers of the Romantic era were all good friends and they helped each other with their craft. I get really excited thinking about the conversations they must have had back then talking about music, art, God, poetry, nature and how I have these same conversations with equally amazing artists, Lisa Rubel being among them.

Lisa was the photographer at my wedding. She took aside time during a very busy Messianic Israel Alliance conference to come take pictures and on only about 2 week’s notice. She caught things and moments at my wedding that I had no idea were there or took place. (you can actually see a few of those photo’s on her blog too) And when I see the pictures she takes of people I know I see a whole different side to them in her work.

Creativity in any form leads us back to the Ultimate Creator. In Lisa’s photography I see nothing but praise. In Lisa’s lifestyle I see nothing but praise. I am truly blessed to know her and to be able to call her a friend.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Art, crafting, creativity, God, Jewelry, Lisa Rubel, M.I.A., models, Music, Photography, Tabernacles, wedding

Making the move.

We got our keys today for our new condo in Clarksville. We took at load over there and put a few things up in the kitchen. It is basically a town home with two bedrooms  and a bath upstairs and a living room, kitchen, and half bath downstairs. It is bigger than the apartment we have been living in and it has a washer and dryer and dishwasher and we will be paying about the same.

It is a bit sad that we are leaving Lebanon but we are only going to be an hour and a half away. The distance is one funny thing about Tennesseans; in Texas an hour and a half is nothing, many people make commutes to school or work every day that are an hour and a half, but here we might as well be moving to Africa. I have assured people time and again that we aren’t going to stop coming to fellowship or fall off the face of the earth or something, we are just going to have to leave our house earlier. I have a theory that we will actually spend more time at fellowship because after driving to get there we will make sure to stay as long as we can.

I have learned today that moving is very expensive. We have been putting deposits down left and right and we haven’t even finished with them! It’s funny how in life you have these couple of weeks every now and then where you don’t know how everything is going to get paid. If you spend an extra buck at the grocery store you can find yourself paying a pretty penny for overdraft charges at the bank and bouncing checks and having to pay fees to the people you wrote the checks to.

Luckily all that has not happened to us, but I shouldn’t speak too soon, you never know what may happen. We are walking that very thin financial line so if you could keep us in your prayers that would be good. I know that Yahweh will provide for us I just don’t know when or how.

I am hoping after the move to make some more changes to the site and hopefully start back to making more jewelry so keep checking back.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Clarksville, Jewelry, money, moving

Optional Genocide

A few weeks ago Shane and I watched “The business of being born” done by Ricki Lake. It was done extremely well and I suggest that you go watch it if you haven’t done so already. After watching it I started thinking about how as a culture American women have such a false idea about giving birth that  they will do such odd things to get around the “pain” of the birthing process. (I could go more into that but it would be best for you to just watch the documentary) All that lead me to start thinking about abortion and the false ideas women have about it.

I am going to state now that I have never been pregnant, I have never given birth and I have never had an abortion. Which both gives me no opinion and a unbiased opinion.

I started thinking I would write this blog addressing how real liberated women are those who take responsibility and raise amazing children, even if they have to do that by themselves. Children are our only opportunity  to change the world and getting rid of them means that you really don’t want to change the world. But after doing some research on abortion another issue that I was unaware of really took a hold of me.

The highest amount of women who have abortions are African-American.

Statistically African-American women have abortions 3 times more than white women.

When you think that only 12.3% of Americans are African-American and 62.6% of Americans are white if really doesn’t add up.

Or does it?

“By last count, Planned Parenthood (a tax-exempt organization!) has $951 million in total assets.” -Abort73.com

The abortion industry makes $831 Million just on abortion services and, on top of that, Planned Parenthood receives $337 million (or more) from government grants and contracts. (all that info came from abort73.com if you want to check that) Plus, Planned Parenthood receives donations from various people.

So you have this company, who doesn’t pay taxes, making most of it’s money off of minority groups. Doesn’t it seem a bit more like the industry is interested in just taking money that the lives of the women it services? And I fully understand why so many people support abortion, they are supporting their pocketbooks at the price of 1.21 million less lives each year.

I actually came across this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiFOFUGIhFE which was very disturbing. The man on the phone is giving a donation to Planned Parenthood wanting that money to go towards aborting a African-American baby with a racist, genocidal intent. Planned parenthood happily takes the money.

I did a quick Wikipedia lookup of genocide. “Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

So, how is Planned Parenthood not inflicting a mass genocide? Because it’s an option. You don’t have to be a part of the Genocide. Which is just odd to think about. Why would you want to inflict genocide upon your race, not even just your race but your family.

I think it is plain out brainwashing. I don’t feel anyone would willingly inflict this genocide upon themselves, unless they are told they don’t have any other option. Maybe it isn’t said as plain as that but it’s said. Abortion is made out the be this amazing, pain free, cure all and when you are in a time of need it looks appealing. But I think if major corporations made money off suicide they would try to sell that to you in the same manner. Suicide looks like an amazing, pain free, cure all when you are in a state of crisis and can be very appealing at that time.

The easy way out is never the easy way out.

It saddens me to the point of sickness that people are making money off of destroying families and communities and manipulating people to do it.

This is where I take my stand. I firmly believe that we are all children of Yahweh. I do not want to see my sisters being brainwashed into genocide. It’s sick and it’s wrong and the only way to get rid of it is extreme love. Believers need to love and take care of women who have made mistakes. We have all made mistakes and that’s why Yahweh but us all together. He wants us to share our burdens with Him and He provides us with a whole system of people to help us. Yeshua (Jesus) has freed us from being slaves to a corporation, from being slaves to men who want to make some money off of a challenging time. We need to accept and extent that freedom to everyone and truly be liberated women.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Abortion, birth, Genocide, money, Racisim

Shabbat Shalom!

It may be a few days early but I thought now would be a good time to talk about the blessing of Shabbat.

Shabbat is a day of rest. Shabbat, Sabbath, Saturday, all the same day. I call it Shabbat, as well as pretty much everyone I know who celebrates it. Usually it is followed with the word Shalom, meaning peace, as a greeting or farewell. The weekly Shabbat starts Friday at sundown and ends Saturday at sundown. There are 7 different days of Shabbat during the year during different feasts, they are called high holy days and vary from year to year.

Everyone has a slightly different way of celebrating Shabbat but I thought I would share the way we celebrate.

Friday night my husband and I get together with the rest of his family for the blessings, a meal, and fellowship. All the food is prepared before sundown and usually slightly before (or sometimes right at) sundown the Shabbat candles are lit by my mother-in- law as she says the blessings for the candles. I always understood that light is always brought in by women because women bear children into this life and that a woman brought in our Messiah to the world. My Father-in-law will then do the blessings for the bread (challa) and then the wine (If you are from a christian background the blessings of the bread and wine are pretty much just like communion). The bread represents the broken body of Yeshua and the wine represents his blood.  Sometimes we will do blessings over the husbands and wives and blessings over the children.

The rest of the night we feast (it is always a feast because my mother-in-law’s cooking can’t be beat) and we enjoy our time of rest with each other. It is just a small glimpse of what it will be like when Messiah comes back and we will all rest with him. Sometimes we will watch a movie in the living room or play a board game or play with sweet babies or we will just sit and talk.

Saturday morning is our day to sleep in. Sometimes my Husband and I will make a special breakfast to enjoy together after we wake up. A lot of people do not cook on Shabbat and use friday as a day of preparation to get the house clean and get all the meals together. We do a lot of the same but we feel that if you don’t think it’s work then it is not work. I get dishes all done before hand because doing dishes is work to me. Sometimes I will put food in a crockpot the night before so I don’t have to worry about food on Shabbat. But cooking is not really work to me, I actually enjoy cooking with my husband. And if it was some sort of life or death situation then doing work to help someone is fine.

After our breakfast (which happens at lunch time) we will either get ready to go to fellowship (if we are on for worship that week) or relax at home till fellowship starts. Fellowship starts at 3 for Torah study and 4 for the actual service. Service will go till 6:30 or 7 then we all eat together potluck style.

I could go into more detail about pretty much everything on here but I just wanted to give a general idea of what we do every week and extend an invitation. There is some strange idea that has been circulating in the christian culture that the Laws of the Torah are burdensome. There is nothing at all burdensome about resting in the Lord, in fact it is liberating to completely trust that God will take care of you. There is a risk in celebrating Shabbat, when you stop working you are not in control of your life. Shabbat is a whole day when you physically let go and leave it up for God to take care of you. But He takes so much better care of you then you ever could.

Rest is good, don’t let anyone tell you it is bad. God himself rested. When we go without resting we are acting like we are better than God, like we can do more than him.

So just stop. Rest.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Blessings, Fellowship, Food, Sabbath, Saturday, Shabbat

Home again!

We got back last week from Orlando but things have still been busy. Shane was in charge of CD duplication during the weekend so our living room in now full with duplicators, cases, CDs, printers, you name it! It will be going back to its home at the M.I.A office today and we will hopefully get our living room back.

The conference was great! Shane and I maybe got a few hours of sleep the whole weekend which is always fun. I was hoping to sell a bit more than I did but I know that what I did sell went to good homes with people who will use them to share the love of Yeshua.

The whole reason I started making Jewelry was the sentimental element that jewelry provides. I remember where I got almost all of my Jewelry from and I feel so much pride wearing jewelry that makes a statement about who I am. I am proud to be a part of Israel, it was given to me at such a high cost; how could I not be proud? I don’t know what tribe I am really from but I identify with all of them, they are all cousins! Not just cousins, they are brothers and sisters! When you read about the tribes in Genesis 49 and learn about who they were from scripture and history you can see everyone you know in a different tribe. There is a place for everyone in Israel!

Which leads me to the “Forgotten people” film I watched last Thursday. It was very eye opening to say the least. If you can go order a copy and see it for yourself. www.pjtn.org It was not until this last week that I realized the hatred for Israel and the Jewish people that is still in churches today. Society has been brainwashing the church from the beginning and this is just one of many areas that the church is off on. Judah is our brother. When and why did we stop caring for them? When and why did we stop caring for the land? Israel is our land. If you claim Messiah as your savior you are a part of Israel. We have left Judah all alone to defend the land given to all of the children of Israel. Many believers are actually fighting against Judah! Believers desperately need to pray and search scripture to find out who Yahweh has called you to be. Once believers find out who they are we need to be seeing some good fruit. So many people sit brainwashed and entertained, it’s time to live our walk to the fullest Yahweh has planned for us!

Filed under: Uncategorized , Christians, Israel, Jewelry, MIA, PJTN