pinterest isn’t the only place I’m getting inspired.

This statement is almost a lie. Almost. I am Pinterest obsessed as of late and I would like to thank my dear beautiful friend, I think, for inviting me I am not proud of the obsession. I am just shamelessly addicted to the pinning/repinning/perusing for hours satisfaction that it provides me. I justify it to myself and my husband with the fact that I am ‘so over’ facebook… Ha! For now.

So it is actually quite funny that this, the first thing I have spotted and followed through with, didn’t come from Pinterest.

The other day I ran across this ‘grocery list’ displayed in Anthropologie and fell in love! I snapped this pic on my phone and one week later…

This version is living in our kitchen! Though it might eventually end up with a few grocery needs and wants on it, for now we are going to use it to count our ‘gifts’.

To boldly share our gifts is bonding.

It is fun to see what my family is praising God for.

It is sweet to see my girls practice seeing life through the beauty of His grace.

It is so encouraging in those ‘I’m about to freak out’ moments, to take 5 and get some perspective.

It is necessary to read a gift from the past week or day or hour and remember that it really is all grace.

Yep, all of it. It is helping me work up to embracing those ‘ugly beautiful’ gifts too. The ones that aren’t right away apparent, that seem like missteps, annoyances, fails…

To document our gifts and see how beautiful our life is, to realize how amazingly loved and desired and cared for we are, to know beyond anything that, God is right, God is always good, God is grace, will grow our faith in huge ways. It will help us to trust that when the ‘ugly’ crops up, it is perfect grace too.

“Because eucharisteo is how Jesus, at the last supper, showed us to transfigure all things- take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness… to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty. The hard discipline to give thanks for all things at all times because HE is all good. ”

–Ann Voskanp, One Thousand Gifts