“Treasures of the North” by Tracie Peterson

Set in the 1890s in the early stages of the Alaskan gold rush, Treasures of the North begins by following the life of Grace Hawkins, the daughter of a wealthy family with a high social status. When Grace’s father sets her up with an arranged marriage to an abusive, controlling man in order to pay off a great debt, Grace’s governess, Karen Pierce, makes plans for Grace to accompany her and her aunt Doris to Alaska to meet up with Karen’s father. While problem after problem presents itself, their faith in God protects them and provides for them beyond their wildest dreams on the barely civilized Alaskan shores. As their lives move forward in their new home, one thought continues to nag Karen – Paxton is a very powerful, determined man. Would he ever stop looking for Grace? What had happened to the Hawkins family? Could he find her here? And what would they do if he did?

I’m not going to spoil the book because I definitely want you to read it, but I loved this book. Though their lives and stories are so very different, Grace and Peter had the most effect on my reading experience. As her relationship with God grows and shines a light brighter than Karen had ever imagined, Grace finds herself falling for Peter, a man who believes God exists and yet would rather trust in himself to see to his and his family’s needs. Troubled by how much pride Peter takes in his family’s trust and how heavily he relies on being their guide, Grace admits her fear for Peter to him in their conversations and leaves Peter troubled and bothered by all that she says.

The following excerpt is what I believe to be the most important exchange in the entire book and will therefore end my review with words far better than I could write. This conversation is absolutely what I needed to read at this point in my life and it has shown me so many things that God has been trying to do. I really hope you take the time to get this book off the shelf and read through it – there is so much more wisdom than what I’ve been able to portray in this review. Without further ado, the closing excerpt:

“People do fail,” Peter said, nodding, “but we must listen to the counsel of those who are wiser. Surely even your Bible would support this.”
Grace nodded. “The Bible indeed tells us to seek wisdom, but God’s wisdom—not people’s. God’s job is His own.”
“Meaning what?”
She blushed and looked away. “Meaning that you should not attempt to take that position in the life of your family. Otherwise, what happens when you fail them?”
“I won’t fail them,” he replied indignantly.
“Everyone fails,” Grace replied without a hint of apology. “God I the only one who never fails. You have put yourself in the position to be a god to your family. You ask them to seek you for their counsel and direction. You would preorder their steps, but God has already seen to that task. I fear you family might suffer far more than they would ever need to suffer if you continue to fight God for first place in their lives.”
“This is a ridiculous conversation,” he said, taking a long drink of coffee…there was such a peaceful, purposeful manner about Grave. She wasn’t ranting and raving at him like a lunatic. She was simply and calmly explaining her beliefs. Her calm only served to unnerve him all the more.
“I don’t see this as a ridiculous conversation,” Grace finally said. “One of these days, I fear something will happen. Your family will seek you for help—for salvation—and you will fail them. When that happens, I can’t help but wonder what will happen to their vision of God. Or, for that matter, their elevated vision of you.”

–Treasures of the North by Tracie Peterson, pp. 232-233.

Introducing “The Book Shelf”

This is just a quick little post to let you guys know about a new section to my blog – The Book Shelf.

Thanks to my friend Jess, I’m starting a list of books I want to read this summer and I’m challenging myself to finish whatever I end up adding onto that list and to review each book after I finish it. If you have any suggestions, please let me know – I would love to add them.

Updates to the reading list will always be posted on The Book Shelf page, so check back there to see what I’ve added, etc. I’m considering posting the reviews as I write them as a blog post on here and then after that you can just refer to The Book Shelf. What do you think?

What it Do, What it Be

First things first. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my first Alternative News Update (so… that’s a little lame. I’ll come up with something else – any ideas?)

The Wrecking has had one of their songs selected as a contender for the new movie in the Twilight Series, New Moon. In order to be selected, The Wrecking’s song “Our Feet Don’t Touch The Ground” must receive about 1,000 votes by the end of the month. I’ve listened to the song and read along with the lyrics and I have to say – it’s very fitting. To hear the song for yourself or to place your vote, head on over to TheTwilightSong.Com.

Moving on a bit, I’ve updated my blog theme in case you couldn’t tell. I decided to take a spin around WordPress and found this new awesome layout that would allow me to do everything I wanted to do so simply – it even incorporates Twitter simply and easily. This new layout will definitely work to my benefit for all that I hope to do with my blog as time goes on.

So, now that I’m almost completely settled into life in North Andover and at the office, I’ve gotten a few complaints from people wondering exactly what I do in the office as the Assistant Director of Artist and Public Relations. Bare with me as I try to explain this without it being too long-winded. My job is to promote the festival and the artists attending the festival by sending out press releases, coordinating interviews, promotional deals, etc. before the festival and to schedule artist signing, press, and meet & greet times to take place at the festival. In addition to this, I’m the SoulFest Merch Manager, meaning I design the layout of the SoulFest Merch tent and locations at the festival, work with a team of SoulFest volunteers who will manage the tent and locations, and make sure everything runs smoothly there. I also tend to do whatever else is needed, including checking in on sponsor and ministry partner agreements to make sure that both parties are in compliance, sending out social networking updates, taking orders and requests over the phone, and so many more random things. I’m a huge fan of my job and there’s never nothing to do – I always have my hands full, which definitely makes time fly. I had a few friends ask me if my title was an “empty title”, meaning that I had this spiffy name but didn’t really do all that much work. The answer is no. I definitely have a lot of responsibility and work to do in my job and I work hard for it. Working for Newsound and SoulFest is giving me great experience, connections, friendships, opportunities, and not to mention the fact that it’s summer income I wouldn’t have had otherwise while I kept searching for a year-round position. Yep. I love my job.

Oh, did I mention I turned 22 this past week? My birthday was Thursday and while I did have to work (noon-9pm, actually), two fantastic guys who I’ve come to call my brothers, Chris McQ and Kenny S, met me after work and bought me food and ice cream at Friendly’s to celebrate and chat. I met these guys at SoulFest last year – found out after the festival that Kenny had been living 5 minutes down the road (he moved about a week after we figured this out) and then got to know Chris better at the SoulFest Volunteer hike in September. Since then, we’ve kept in touch and have definitely become like family. Love those guys.

I got Friday off of work, which was awesome because Andrew had made his way north to spend some time with me. He totally surprised me with a Canon Rebel XT to help with all the photography stuff I’ve been being asked to do. <3 He’s the best. After lunch in Quincy, we came back to Lawrence to see Terminator: The Resistance (loved this movie, FYI) before meeting my family here at the house in North Andover. My parents had never met Pattie, Pete, or CMoney, the owners of the house I’m in for the summer, so we met up at the house and did all the introductions and the quick tour and all that. After dinner at Bertucci’s and opening presents from the fam, we all kinda headed our separate ways for the night.

Saturday Andrew and I headed to Salisbury beach to soak up what little bit of sun we could find and then came back for a dinner birthday party with Jon, Allie and Magon at Fresh City (such a huge variety to choose from and their smoothies are delicious). We came back to the house and played a little croquet in the back yard (Jon totally called it “crochet” – see videos on Facebook) with CMoney. Quite the interesting games, let me tell you. After a full day of fun, everyone headed back home and Andrew made his way to his brother’s house in Hartford for the night.

So, now, here I am after going in on a Monday I apparently was supposed to have off because I felt like I was falling behind and had soo much to catch up on (thank goodness we do overtime pay by the day). I should probably get myself to bed before it gets too late – I really seem to soak up every minute of sleep I can get and it never seems like enough. Hope you all enjoyed the update both in posting and in the layout! Goodnight!

The New “Digs”

Well. I have successfully moved into the house in North Andover and have started my job at Newsound. I’ve been keeping pretty busy with my work schedule, so pardon the belated posting from when I had originally planned (after my very first day). So, where to start…

Well, here’s a quick shot of my deskspace from the first day. The office is a renovated barn and it’s all open-air. All of the desks and workspaces are separated by beaded curtains like the ones behind my computer – my boss, Roger, is on the other side of the curtains/mini-wall (which you can’t exactly see). I really enjoy the setup – very laid back and calming, which is definitely good considering all that has to get done and all the stress that seems to make its way into the office. I’ll have to take some more pictures to post at a later date. My work schedule (now that it’s set) will be MTWF from 9-6 and Th from 12-9. I will work every other Saturday from 9-6 and will get a weekday off of that week in return. I got my actual title and job description yesterday, too – I’m the Assistant Director of Artist and Public Relations. I’m really excited about what I’m doing and what I’m going to be doing, not to mention all the doors this will open up now that I can add it to my resume.

As for the housing arrangements, I love it here. Pete, Pattie and Chris are great and funny and fun to talk to. Right now, Pattie is in Germany on a business trip, so it’s just me and the guys, but that’s fine. I’ve finally found the time (today) to reorganize the furniture in the room – Pattie kept encouraging me to do it to make this feel more like home. Here are some updated pictures of how I rearranged the room.

It’s hard to fit the room into pictures, so I have a few. This picture was taken with my back to the door. I mostly just moved the bed, chair, nightstand and chest a little bit. However, now that I’m sitting in the chair in the corner, I feel so much more at home since I rearranged things.

Standing with my back to the closet. The shelving unit is a little disorganized with my jewelry and stuff spread out everywhere, but I’ll get there.

Leaning back as far as I can in the chair. There’s a little nightstand with a lamp to my right and then all my books are on the shelving unit on my left, so any reading or work I want to do I can easily reach it from here.s

Doing my best to squish myself into the corner on my bed. I made a makeshift headboard by piling some of the larger decorative pillows against the back of the futon frame and the wall. Works pretty nicely and gives me a good setup for watching TV from bed.

Well then. That’s a quick little update of where I am and what’s going on. I’m trying to find time to plan out my birthday party amidst all this – hoping to go rollerskating which I haven’t done in years. I’m still trying to get in a regular routine. Right now it’s pretty much wake up to my alarm, roll around a bit not believing it’s already time to get up, shower and get ready, eat cereal and make lunch, leave for work by 8:30, get back from work around 6:30, read and relax til dinner around 7, do a little job searching and friend chatting and I almost always find myself exhausted by 10. I’ve been in bed by 10:30 the past few nights and then I wake up and do it all over again. I need to add physical therapy and some exercise in there, and I would love to add in some fun time some nights like seeing friends or going out or something. I’ll get there. I’ve never done this full-time work thing, so it’s taking a lot to get used to.

Anyway, I’m getting a little tired and since I don’t have to go to work til noon tomorrow, I’m hoping to get to Kohl’s to return a belt that doesn’t work and do some other things around town. Goodnight, everyone! I hope you are all well!

Breathe In The World

It’s amazing what you find when you go through boxes, clean out and repack… I’m heading to North Andover tomorrow, so I’ve been going through all of these boxes in my room from high school, middle school and beyond that are mixed with other stuff that I might actually want with me. While going through, there was this really small piece of paper. I don’t exactly know why I decided to unfold it and look at it – there wasn’t anything else in the box I looked at since it was full of photos from elementary school. But, I opened it and what I read made me so happy.

“I hear in colors
And I see in heavenly songs
I speak in rainbows and angels
And I feel in rights changing wrongs
I laugh in the starlight
And I sleep in the sunrise
I smile in dreams and moonbeams
And I live in a surprise.
I’m different than any other girl
Because I breathe in the world.“

Those days disappeared from me for a while, but I feel like they’re returning. I loved being that girl and I’m slowly starting to become her again. I have page after page of poetry that I wrote years ago that I’m absolutely in love with and I’m finally starting to feel the inspiration to write again. This summer is bringing so much change towards me and it hasn’t even started yet. : )

The next time I post, I will have started work and will be in North Andover. Yahoo! Later gators!

Shipping off to Boston (kinda)

Tomorrow is my last day of packing before I move to North Andover, MA for the summer. Apparently I skipped the update, so here’s a quick recap. I’m working for Newsound Concerts for the summer while I continue to look for a more permanent job in Virginia. I had been searching for a place to stay and God just sent all the right messengers my way to where I found the perfect fit. I will be living with a family in North Andover with a beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood that is just 20 minutes max from where I will be working. Here’s a quick shot I took of the house after I met the family for the first time.

I’m pretty excited to move in on Thursday and to see them all again. Once I unpack my things, I’ll head back here for the night and make sure I didn’t forget anything. On Friday, I’ll be heading to New York for Andrew’s family’s huge celebration – Andrew’s a college graduate, his sister Rachel is a high school graduate and his brother Colin will be getting married this summer. On my way to New York, I will stop by and drop off anything I forgot and make sure I’m all settled. After the celebration Sunday afternoon, I’ll make the drive back to North Andover at a decent hour so that I get enough sleep for my first day of work on Monday, June 1st (woo!).

Now, that update aside, I’ve had a bit of a stall in packing for the move. My allergies have been really getting to me, I haven’t been sleeping well, I’m pretty achey, headaches every day, not eating well or just plain not hungry… I sort of sat on my butt the last two days drinking tea, working on my web portfolio, taking medicine, applying for jobs and watching tv. I applied for about… 40+ jobs today and updated my job profiles on all the job board websites as well as updated my resume and cover letter. Hopefully I hear something back from some of them. I really like knowing what’s happening next, so it would be great to know what I’m doing after the beginning of August before August gets here.

Well, I’m finally starting to get hungry which I haven’t been since about 11am this morning, so I’m going to go grab some grub and then I’m going to get to bed. I’m planning on waking up before 11 tomorrow morning so that I can get packing out of the way. Plus, Katie just informed me that since her bronchitis is gone and her throat is back to normal, she will be up early practicing again. And by practicing I mean she’ll be practicing classical voice before Alex comes over. High Es and Fs in the morning. Nothing like it.

: ) Goodnight and God bless, all!

My World is Changing – I’m Rearranging

Trying to fit all of your stuff from a single dorm room in college into your bedroom back home (we don’t have a whole lot of “storage” space) isn’t the easiest task. I love the size and shape of my room at home, but trying to fit all the current furniture plus the college furniture isn’t the easiest. I still have a little ways to go to get it “just right” and there are still a few things on the floor, but as I was cleaning and putting things together, I snapped a few shots on my phone to show you all my progress.

This is the top of my extra dresser which I moved next to my window. It was previously covered in a bunch of ceramics that I painted and a few other random bits of nonsense. I dusted it off and reset it with some of my old fashioned glass soda bottles from Blowing Rock, NC <3 and the Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, a painting that my younger sister painted of the three of us girls from an old photo and a few other collected and loved trinkets. Oh, and hey look! My parents ordered me a plaque for being a Who’s Who nominee!

Tadah! Here’s the top of the antique desk that was so lovingly stuffed into my room when we first moved in to get it out of the way. It’s made its way around the majority of my room and now has a home to the right of my door. My old glass soda bottles used to be up here along with my Superman lamp and more random stuff. I moved the bottles and lamp and ditched said random stuff, replacing them with my two antique car models, my high school diploma, my college degree and my plaque for being selected as the Outstanding Communication Arts Senior in Media. I ended up putting an antique plate from my Aunt Mary behind one of my antique cars after I took this photo.

This futon has quite the story… which I won’t waste your time or my text to tell at this current moment, but nevertheless, it has had quite the journey to the comfortable thing it is today. Once it made it into my room, it was immediately covered with stuff – it was an extension of shelving space while I reorganized and unpacked. Now, with a lack of storage space, it is set up on the left side of my room and is covered in all of the blankets that get used in my room but have no real home. The most interesting part? All of the blankets (minus the green one) were handmade by friends or family members and were given as gifts. : )

And here it is, folks – the infamous “college stuff corner”. Everything that I don’t currently need either while I’m home for the two weeks before moving to North Andover for the summer or things I won’t need until I get my own place after the summer. You can’t see it, but my fridge and microwave are also in that pile. And that really is where all my extra stuff has gone. Pretty nifty how compact I got it, right? … Well, I thought so.

Once I’ve cleaned up some more, I’ll take some pictures of my sick “bedroom” setup that I’ve got going on as well as my *cough* entertainment center. I’m pretty happy with the latest set up to my room – I’ve rearranged this space a lot of time and have had a lot of furniture pieces come and go, but this is one set up I have never had and love a ton. I just have to finish cleaning it up before Andrew gets here tomorrow… and clean the whole house…

I think I can… I think I can…

Truth, Lies and the Internet

Well, home has been pretty good. I’ve been rearranging my room, so the unpacking process has kinda reached a standstill until now (I’ll definitely have photos when I finish). My dad has started building the new deck in our backyard which is super exciting – it will be nice to see something back there again. This Sunday is my graduation party which I am pretty excited about. A good bunch of people are going to make their way over here to my house to enjoy some good food and some good fun.

So, now for the frustrated part of this post. I’ve been working on an online portfolio of my design and photography work (a few of the jobs I’m interested in require these). I had found a CSS layout that I really enjoyed from OSWD and had started the tedious prospect of altering the CSS to meet exactly what I wanted… No matter how you go about making a portfolio in strict CSS or HTML, it will take a little work with each new update.

As I was going through this and launched a test site (after realizing that Geocities is being shut down, I resorted to Bravenet) I remembered *duh… custom WordPress themes would make this soooo much easier*. I looked into the cost of upgrading to a premium WordPress account to use my own CSS and it wasn’t much at all, found a custom theme that I liked from an outside website, everything seemed to match up so I bought the upgrade. Surprise! The custom CSS wasn’t exactly what I needed, but because of how the custom theme was set up, I didn’t know this until I tried to install it. So, silly me, I looked through the read me for the theme that mentioned needing the domain name for the site. Well, I had already planned on buying a domain through WordPress since they were only $15/year, so I went ahead and purchased it. I had just gotten all this grad money, so it all seemed fine in my brain – if I didn’t like it or use it, I just wouldn’t renew next year. Surprise! The custom domain wasn’t exactly what I needed either, but again I didnt know this until I tried to install the custom theme.

Now, some of this is definitely my fault for not looking around a little harder, but at the same time, the author and creator of the new custom theme I found (not from OSWD) created a terrible process and instruction sheet. There wasn’t even a “requirements” section on the page, which I think would be a definite positive for those who are new at using custom themes on a premium WordPress account.

Another small portion of my frustration goes to WordPress, whom I love for the free blogging service and layouts I get, but from whom I expected way more out of when receiving a premium upgrade. The upgrades page is a little deceiving and I think there should definitely be somethign on the CSS Upgrade info section about the fact that FTP themes and custom made themes will not work with a CSS upgrade – or any WordPress upgrade for that matter.

I sent two support messages to WordPress – they have no email address or phone number listed, only a submissions form (which is very well laid out, by the way). It says there’s 24/7 support and I wanted to make sure mine wasn’t overlooked at all, so I sent the two… and still haven’t even received a “message received” generic email, which would definitely be appreciated in this situation.

There is a way to do what I want to do, but it is through WordPress.Org + an outside hosting site (generally costing a good 40% more than what I paid) which is different from WordPress.Com. WordPress.Com is the hosting site and blog site in one. WordPress.Org allows you to download the WordPress client and customize it however you want for your outside hosting website and you can use FTP sites and completely custom themes made by outside artists and authors. WordPress.Com only allows manipulation of the CSS for the layouts they provide – and only premium members who have selected the CSS Upgrade can modify the CSS. Yeah. So exciting, I know.

I’m sure there are a lot of you who have absolutely no idea what I was talking about through a good 75% of this post (CSS and FTP… what?) but for those of you who do, argh, I say! I’ll stick with my free WordPress account and my more-time-to-create-but-better-looking portfolio website until I can either afford the easier way or WordPress creates an amazing portfolio template available for free (hint hint, WordPress). Hopefully I’ll get a response from the support team to deactivate the domain and cancel the upgrades I purchased.

Anyway, I’m going to head back to my portfolio work and getting my room ready for the weekend. You all have a great evening and, if there’s anything positive to take away from this, it’s to always be a skeptic when things seem too good to be true. Or is it some times you have to learn the hard way? Oh, whatever… : P

To the Class of 2009

I graduated from college on Saturday and saw my last days of living on the ENC campus with the same wonderful people I have shared many memories with. It hasn’t exactly hit me that I’m not going to see all those beautiful faces and precious souls so often (and some, possibly never again), but I was going through pictures on facebook today with iTunes on shuffle and something super awesome happened. As I got to a group photo of a bunch of us before graduation, the song “Peace and Love” by Blessid Union of Souls came on. Now, I usually write pretty decent poetry and have been told I’m pretty good with words, but quite frankly nothing I can come up with says what I truly want for you all more than the lyrics of this song. So, without further ado, I leave you with the song lyrics. <3

Dear ENC Class of 2009:

“May every star you wish upon
And every hope you’re hanging on come true
Out of everybody in the world
There’s no one who deserves it more than you
I hope you find everything you’ve been dreaming of
Only good things, no in-betweens, just
Peace and love

These words did not come easily
Still you know I had to write them down
You must know what you mean to me
I wish that you could always be around
I hope you find everything you are worthy of
I’m gonna miss you, but I only wish you
Peace and love

Peace and love, tears of joy
Kindness of strangers
All of your roads paved in gold
By guardian angels
Wherever you may be in this world
My salutation says it all
May you always have enough
Peace and love.”

Graduwhat?

Yeah… so I will be graduating from college in less than two days. INSANE. I’ve been having a FANTASTIC time these past few weeks though – I’m definitely doing my best to make the most of things. My dad will be getting here at about 10am on Saturday to pack my life from the past four years into his truck and my car. Thus far, I’m already ahead of where I was last year with packing, haha.

Sadly, I only have one more big cardboard box like the two Golden Pacific boxes that I can put things in. Right now, it is full of textbooks which I am either selling back to the school store or throwing out. I do still have a ways to go, but I was pretty proud of myself for having this much done. : )

I’ll post more after I GRADUATE! Haha!