Book Review: The 4 Dimensions of Extraordinary Leadership by Jenni Catron

Jenni Catron's The 4 Dimensions of Extraordinary Leadership was a pretty good read. Catron examines the big idea of Leadership through the lens of the Great Commandment (Mark 12:30). Jesus tells his disciples - and by extension us - that we are to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

As part of the Introduction to the book, Catron briefly breaks down what each dimension of the Great Commandment looks like when applied to leadership. In further chapters she then goes on to flesh out what it means to lead with your hear, soul, mind, and strength using real-life illustrations of good leadership, bad leadership, and then extraordinary leadership.

The last part of the book is the practical application section- for me that's always the best part. The author goes through a series of statements geared to help you become an extraordinary leader and maintain those skills (Pass it On, Readily Teach, Relentlessly Realign, Never Give Up, etc.).

Initially I chose this book not because I have any professional leadership roles, but because of my personal leadership roles. As a mom, as a small group leader in a weekly Bible study, and also as part of the larger leadership team for the same Bible study, my roles are varied. And while the particulars of each role are different, the essentials of leadership are the same. And, truthfully, the four aspects of loving God (heart, soul, mind, strength) are how we should view all of our lives - whether in positions of leadership or not. It is loving God in such a way that gives us the ability love others the way he wants us to.

DIY Coffee Table Makeover

This coffee table was actually a hand-me-down when I first moved out of my house in 1996. Pretty sure it was old at that point, but it didn't look nearly as bad then as it did this past summer when I decided to try my hand at restoring it. (It has glass panels, but I had already taken them out before I took this photo.)

I am currently in the process of taking down old wallpaper and getting ready to repaint the walls (and most likely some other stuff). I fell in love with the Coastal Cool color collection from Sherwin Williams - not a paid endorsement, just telling you the colors I like - and decided I wanted to try doing a combination of paint and stain to complete this project.

The first thing I did was sand it all down. The finish was in terrible shape so it didn't take a whole lot of effort on the top, but the legs took a little longer. Once it was ready to go I stained the top using Rust-Oleum's Driftwood oil-based stain. I wasn't sure how it would look over the reddish wood, but I think it came out pretty nice!

I painted the legs using Sherwin Williams' Comfort Gray from the Coastal Cool collection. I don't actually live near the ocean, but I love the relaxed, comfortable colors of a beach house.

Once the paint and stain were dry I used a clear, semi-gloss polyurethane top coat on the whole table. I gave the legs two coats, but ended up putting three on the table top, figuring it would get a lot of use in my living room.

The legs are a little washed out from my flash, but the table ended up looking so nice - certainly better than the way it was at the beginning of the summer. :)

The List

I have been a homeschooling mom for the past 9 years. My eldest went to school in 7th grade. So now it's just my youngest, who would like to try going to school next year. Though somewhat bittersweet (I LOVE homeschooling) I think I'm ready for the change. He will still be home with me for the rest of this school year, but that hasn't stopped my mind from making "The List" - all the wallpaper that needs to come down, the kitchen cabinets that need new hinges , the rooms that need to be redone from floor to ceiling, and so on... You know, The List.

Every time I walk into a different room in my house The List gets bigger and bigger. So as a way to keep some semblance of sanity I intend to start out with a plan. One plan for each room. And me being me, it will all be in one 3-ring binder. As I go, I hope to blog through the experience.... so stay tuned!

(I also started putting up some of my already completed DIY projects...)

DIY Kitchen Table Refinish

We bought a little kitchen table years ago from a neighbor's moving sale. It started out stained with a light stain. Thinking it would look better a little darker we tried staining it darker. Clearly we did not prep the surface very well because it didn't look better - it looked awful! :)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE going to the "oops table" in the paint department of the home improvement stores. I found a can of off white paint for $2 and immediately knew I needed to buy it to repaint my kitchen table!  I was in such a rush to get this thing refinished that I completely forgot to take a "before" photo until it was already disassembled on the back deck!

It's just a basic table: square top with 4 legs, one at each corner, attached with nuts and bolts. Easy to disassemble and easy to reassemble when it was all done.

I tried using an orbital sander, but found that I preferred to sand by hand. Not sure why, but there was something about it that I just enjoyed - especially on such an easy, flat surface like the table top. I sanded the legs the same way.

I got it all sanded down using a 60 grit sandpaper. Then I gave it a quick sand with a 120 grit sandpaper. Because I wasn't going to re-stain it I wasn't super picky about how smooth the surface was.

Once it was ready, I primed it all using a water based primer. I don't know if it was entirely necessary, but because it would get a ton of use I decided to use it. Once that was done and dry it was time for the paint!

Because of the primer I only ended up putting on one coat of paint. Again, because this is a table that will get a ton of use I finished with a water based polyurethane. I gave the legs one coat of polyurethane, but gave the table top three coats. Because of the weather I had to move the table back inside for the finishing coats - too much wind!

All in all, I think it was a pretty decent first attempt at a DIY project.

Book Review: The Carols of Christmas by Andrew Gant

Leading up to Christmas I chose to read The Carols of Christmas: A Celebration of the Surprising Stories Behind Your Favorite Christmas Songs by Andrew Gant. As a lover of all things Christmas, especially the music (I put on the Christmas radio stations before Thanksgiving) I thought this would be a fun book to read as a way to add some historical background to the songs I love so much. 

Gant takes us from Advent through Epiphany with historical background on 21 different carols. Everything from O Come, O Come Emmanuel to Jingle Bells with lots of others in between, including my all-time favorite O Come, All Ye Faithful. Each carol gets its own chapter where the author gives a very detailed history of how it came to be, the variation in lyrics from one place to another, original language and translations (where applicable), and then the words and music of the most common version being used today.

All in all this is a very good book. But I do think it's probably not for everybody. Maybe the title is a little bit of a misnomer. Though it's subtitled "A Celebration of the Surprising Stories Behind Your Favorite Holiday Songs,"  perhaps a more accurate title would have been "the Surprising History..." because most of these read more like history than flat-out stories. Not a bad thing, but probably not something I would have picked up as a light read in the busy weeks before Christmas.

This book also assumes a knowledge of musical history that some readers may not readily have. More than once I had to go look something up in order to understand what I was reading. Again, not a bad thing; I love to learn when I read. But I probably would have waited for a less busy season to read this one.

Giving Thanks for Grandparents

In honor of losing my last grandparent this year, I thought Thanksgiving would be a nice time to reflect on the huge blessing that all of my grandparents have been to me.

I'm not going to lie. When it comes to grandparents, I hit the proverbial jackpot. Neither set of grandparents had much in the way of money or anything like that, but what they did have were the biggest hearts on planet earth! And time. I think that's what I treasure most about my childhood with them was the time we spent together. They were all so much fun to be with!

My Grandma T was my dad's mom. She was clever and witty and could be very very funny. She was also the person who started my love of all things crafty. When I would spend time at her house in Vermont she always had some sort of craft project for me to do. Or she would put out random supplies and let me create whatever came out of my little girl brain. She used to let me help her cook. And one of my favorite things (my husband will laugh at this) was washing dishes after dinner was over. I never liked doing dishes at home, but something about Gam's house made it fun. (Yes, we called her "Gam." When my brother and I asked her one time what she would prefer to be called by us, she told us, "You can call me whatever you want to call me... Just not Granny. That just makes me sound too OLD!")

My Grandma M was my mom's mom. She was the huggiest person I ever knew - until my son was born. She was little and round and soft, and hugging her was just the best. Even when I grew taller than her and had to lean over to do so. Somehow that just made it sweeter. Grandma was just a fun person to be around. She had a laugh like no other. Really it was a giggle that was completely contagious. And if she had a glass of wine (truthfully it was more like a half a glass) she would turn red in the face and giggle at any and every little thing. From her I inherited my love of hot black tea... and hugs.

 My Pop was my dad's dad. Growing up I thought of my Pop as someone who could literally do anything. He could fix anything, make anything, grow anything, open every jar that I couldn't (which was a big deal when I was little!) Pop was sort of a jack of all trades. In his career he was an electrician on the Long Island Railroad. But in his life he was an amazing woodworker, mechanic, gardener, and was also a pretty good cook (when he did cook). I was able to do things when I was with Pop that I never was able to do elsewhere. It's like he knew that I was capable even if I was young. I used to help him garden, and mow the grass on a riding lawnmower. The one and only time I ever swung an ax to split firewood was with my Pop. From him I developed a love of working with my hands and the love of the smell of sawdust and gasoline.

My Dziadek (Polish for grandfather) was my mom's dad, and the Last of my Mohicans. He was only month shy of his 94th birthday when he passed away this past summer. My Dziadek had a wicked sense of humor. He made me laugh so often that just thinking of him makes me smile. And he could tell great stories. About 8 or 9 years ago I developed an interest in genealogy. Unfortunately all of my other grandparents had already passed, but I took advantage of Dziadek's memory and sent him a bunch of pages of questions about his family and his childhood and all kinds of stuff. Not only did he reply to my questions, he hand wrote 85 pages of stories about his life and sent them to me in a big envelope. I took that document and transcribed it into a book and gave copies to mom, my brother, and my aunts and uncle. The older I get the more I appreciate what his impact on me has been. My love of family stories, my love of a good joke, how to kill someone with a newspaper (that's a story for a different day... LOL) and how to share your life and home with generosity.

"Every good and perfect gift is from above..." Thank you, God, for your gift of grandparents.

Book Review: 52 Little Lessons from A Christmas Carol by Bob Welch

A Christmas Carol is my all-time favorite Christmas story. I love the book. I love the movies - all of them - from the 1938 version with Reginald Owen, to the 1999 TNT version with Patrick Stewart, to the 2009 animated version with Jim Carey. I even love the 1992 Muppet Christmas Carol.

I watch these movies any and every time they are on. It's a story of regret, redemption, and grace that never gets old to me. When Scrooge realizes that it's not too late to change and that he still has the power to affect the world around him for good, I cry. Every time. (Much to the amusement of my kids!)

Naturally then, Bob Welch's 52 Little Lessons from A Christmas Carol seemed like a "must read" to me. I was not disappointed. It's a small book, but I enjoyed it all the way through.

The title tells you exactly what you're getting with this book. Coming in just under 175 pages, it is basically 52 short essays on various lessons to be learned through the story A Christmas Carol. Welch basically walks us through the story and pulls out things that we can take away from it - things like "Everyone has value," "Showing trumps telling," and " Grace changes everything" - using the characters from the story to illustrate his points.

Each (mostly) stand-alone essay is only a couple of pages long and the book can easily be read in small doses. I carried it with me when I was waiting for appointments, waiting to pick my kid up from school, and while others in the house were watching TV.

There really was a decent amount of thought-provoking material in the book - more than I thought there would be. And every time I thought I found my favorite lesson, I would read another to take its place. It is not an in-depth treatment of any one point, but it's not supposed to be. Overall this is a really good book that I definitely recommend.