We're back!

Did you know we were gone? (I hope it wasn't that obvious!) I used the new "post it at a later date" option to line up all my posts for last week while we were away at revival.

We had a good revival, and it was a good experience to be on the other end of a revival. Usually I'm the pastor's wife entertaining the evangelist. Last week, I was the evangelist's wife (and "co-song evangelist").

We stayed in the home of our new friends, and I discovered that she is full of excellent hospitality ideas! Let's see if I can remember some of the little details she thought of ...

• a welcome basket that included scrapbook goodies for me, a book for my husband and treats for the kids (including coloring books and crayons) - among other things
• a few extra treats for the kids throughout the week - bubbles one day and a cute notepad and pen another day
• a basket of Little Debbie treats set prominently on the counter that the kids (or any of us) could snack on if they (or we) got hungry between meals
• satin sheets on the guest bed
• a selection of carefully-chosen books to go in the bookcase in the guest room (she knew our interests and pulled a bunch of books out of their regular bookcases so we could browse them whenever we wanted), including a bunch of children's books

I was also inspired by their many bookcases. Yes, we have befriended fellow booklovers! My husband was so inspired he's talking about making a wall of built-in-style bookshelves in his study.

As for me, I got great ideas from how they arranged books on the shelves. Many series were placed on their sides in a stack, thus taking up much less room than the traditional side-by-side arrangement (but still looking nice and orderly).

Their house is so bright and cheery! I enjoyed soaking up new decorating ideas, too.

They are fellow thrift store shoppers, so we enjoyed trading stories of our best finds. We even took a morning and went to their local thrift shops!

Can you tell we had a really great time? :) On top of that, the revival services were wonderful as well. Oh, and lest I forget, their church paid us a whole lot more than we ever expected ... It was a week full of blessings!