The little birds...

If you watch little birds you will see they are busy and happy! Using whatever they can find they create the most gorgeous little nest.
I would be the little bird with some glittery thread in her nest!
We can be like this. Happily working away with the things that are available to us to create a beautiful and happy home.
All the while with a little song in our heart.

Banner by Free Pretty Things for You.

Sunday 23 March 2014

Laines Letters.

Over the weekend I got a start on my card making. I have about sixty blank cards. I bought them in packs of six for $2 in lovely soft pink and natural. Also a few pale lilac. Obviously I have done this a few times and added them to my stash and now have this many! So I am making sixty!

I have heaps of ribbons and laces, broken jewellery etc and I grouped things into themes and colours yesterday, as you saw.

My first group is birds and naturals...



And my second group is pink, lace and roses...


I have eight done anyway! Now though it is great fun creating combinations. The pictures are up cycled gift tags. As I go I will post more pictures. It is as always very relaxing crafting away. When you get so absorbed in what you are doing.... this is a beautiful feeling and so relaxing and such a happy time. 

Years ago when the girls were little and I was then a single Mum I used to read online Laines Letters. She was a Christian wife and Mum and wrote beautiful letters of encouragement, recipes, budgeting and so on. I LOVED her. Now I look back I know she had a massive influence on me and her letters were an amazing ministry. 

When I "met" Helen on the 50c thread we became friends very quickly. So much in common. And her boys are a little younger than my girls. It turned out Helen had read Laines Letters too and loved them as I did. I was so excited she knew what I was talking about! 

Regularly since then I have gone back to Laines archive to read. She hasn't posted letters in a long time and I have always hoped she would. Now the archive is gone. There is a one post blog about adopting from China and another with a couple of posts. The archive site had a window... you could click on and go to letters, recipes etc. I could cry it's gone.

I have wanted to write to her and the email contact does not work. 

I am hoping perhaps she might release the letters in a book. That would be a gorgeous thing! 

If anyone knows anything about Laine, has copies of her letters, contact details or even a vague idea of where she lives would you let me know? I want to write to her and ask her to publish these letters and at least let her know how much they meant to me.

Recently I made a new friend and she also read Laines Letters and loved them. I cannot imagine then how many women in the world were encouraged by Laine. Her husbands name was Art, I think he was originally from Mexico? 

It all goes to prove that when we speak words of love and encouragement we really don't know who might be reading and who might be encouraged. Her beautiful words and attitude have stayed with me and I felt like I knew her and her family as she described them all and their daily lives. I was very lucky to have found her and blessed by her writing.

I think it is a reminder to speak encouraging words to each other. Laine told me not to let anyone ever discourage me from the importance of raising the girls and keeping the home. And I didn't although the world tried. She told me it was the most important worthwhile task and it was. If I met her now I would kiss her and thank her!

We need more Laines in the world, their work is beyond words.

(Adding... this post resulted in finding a link to Laines letters listed in a web archive. One of them is in my next post and here is another....
Alphabetical listing of Laine's Letters I hope this helps those searching for her.)

32 comments:

  1. I am hoping someone out there knows something about where to find these lovely letters again as well. It is many years since I have read them, and I would love to revisit some of them again too.

    I love what you have made Annabel. Just gorgeous! xo

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  2. My attempt to subscribe to Laine's Letters failed. My E-mail was returned to me, failed. :o(

    Hugs,
    Kelley~

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    1. Kelley, yes... it is all closed down. As you have probably read I loved these letters for years when I was raising my girls. Up until a year or two they were still online but not updated. Laine took a sabbatical and appeared a couple of times elsewhere.... then the whole site went away! Hence my search and where we are looking now to read them is in a web archive. I live in hope she will blog again. She and her husband adopted from China a little girl, that is the last I heard. I would love to write to her. But meantime the more ladies that read these letters the better, they are wonderful. Im so glad you found them. xx

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  3. I too loved Laine's Letters and am greatly saddened that her lovley site is not available anymore. But, I was searching for more of her letter when I found your blog. I am happy to say that I found some of the letters on the WayBack Machine! Hurray! I am planning on saving them to my computer so I can at least have these ones!

    http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://lainesletters.com/inmyhome/*

    I was on her email list and received one of her updates a long time ago. I will look up and see if I can ask her about a book.

    Blessings in Christ,

    Lauren

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    1. Im so glad you found them Lauren. I think its a good idea to print them to keep. I posted the link to the whole index from the Wayback machine on the next couple of my blog posts. I am so happy its lead new people to discover Laine. If you ever find how to contact her I would love it if you let me know as I would love to write to her! The linked email addresses don't work... From the full list of letters only a few are unavailable so thats pretty good, I am printing too! Thank you for writing.xx

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  5. I was just looking for Laine's blog. I loved getting her e-mails! She was so inspiring. When I couldn't find it I just did a search and see I'm not the only one looking for her! If I needed a recipe with a certain ingredient, she was one of the places I would look. I miss her already and I just found out her blog is down. I'm glad that I do have some of her recipes printed but I also love her writings about her experiences and her family. She ministered to so many of us! I learned sooooo much from her and also would love to contact her to let her know of the huge impact she has had on my life. May God continue to bless her and her family in an extraordinary way!

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    1. Judy you feel just as I do! I would love to write to her and let her know what an impact she had on me. I am wondering how many of us there are that loved her! In my next blog post there is a link that I was given through this search to most of Laines Letters stored in a wed archive. It is so good to have them again. xx

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  7. I was just looking for Laine's blog. I loved getting her e-mails! She was so inspiring. When I couldn't find it I just did a search and see I'm not the only one looking for her! If I needed a recipe with a certain ingredient, she was one of the places I would look. I miss her already and I just found out her blog is down. I'm glad that I do have some of her recipes printed but I also love her writings about her experiences and her family. She ministered to so many of us! I learned sooooo much from her and also would love to contact her to let her know of the huge impact she has had on my life. May God continue to bless her and her family in an extraordinary way!

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  8. I was just looking for Laine's blog. I loved getting her e-mails! She was so inspiring. When I couldn't find it I just did a search and see I'm not the only one looking for her! If I needed a recipe with a certain ingredient, she was one of the places I would look. I miss her already and I just found out her blog is down. I'm glad that I do have some of her recipes printed but I also love her writings about her experiences and her family. She ministered to so many of us! I learned sooooo much from her and also would love to contact her to let her know of the huge impact she has had on my life. May God continue to bless her and her family in an extraordinary way!

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    1. Judy I just have heard from Laine and there is good news! Im posting about it this week so I thought I would let you know as you sound you love her like me!
      Anyway good news is coming. Love Annabel.xx

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  9. I started reading Laine's Letters when I was in high school, back in, oh, 1999 or so. Laine was incredibly influential in shaping my ideas about God, marriage, motherhood, and homeschooling. I am so grateful for her heart for the Lord and for her sweet way of sharing very practical, frugal homemaking tips.

    Back in high school, I printed out everything she had written that was available at the time, and it's all in a binder. The last letter I printed out was the one she wrote after September 11, 2001.

    I believe that most (all?) of that content is available through the Wayback Machine link you posted. If anyone has a specific request for something from 2001 or before that you can't find online, I can probably find it in my binder and type it up.

    After that, I was busy with college for a few years, and I guess I lost track of Laine's Letters. Then I got on her E-mail list again, so I also have everything she posted from July 2006 to her last letter (that I'm aware of) from June 2011. I am not sure if these years of letters are available anywhere online. I would be willing to try to put them up somewhere if that would be useful.

    There are a few pictures (from 2010) of Laine, Art, and the little girl they adopted from China, Lucy, on this site: http://www.artandlaine.blogspot.com/

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    1. Thank you Melissa! My friends and I are just in the process of printing every letter we can from the wayback machine and when we are done I may well contact you to see if you might be able to fill in a couple of gaps. I am sure many others would find it helpful if you could put up any the wayback machine hasn't saved. Im about to start checking what is there against what you have... Im pretty sure I dont have anything from as recent as 2011. I will be in touch. Thank you for this kind offer. It is beautiful to "meet" someone else touched an influenced by Laines Letters.xxx

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  10. I can't bring up Laine's letters through the wayback link. Any idea of how to get to them? I loved Laine's letters and I so hate that they're gone. :( She has no idea how influential she was/is on me!

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    1. Hi, This link isnt working for me tonight either and nor is the one on my next post. I panicked the other day when this happened but then the next day they were working again. So lets check them both over the next couple of days. If all else fails my friend has been making a printed copy of all of them so dont worry we will sort something out. I understand! xx

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  11. I was just reading an old "50 ways we paid off our house" email of Laine's that I had printed out way back when. While meal planning today, I decided to look something up on her site to see that it was gone! To my delight, I found that you are here searching for it too ;)
    The links are not working for me either. I know I have some of the really old stuff printed out somewhere in an article file I have. Would be glad to scan. I will see what I still have if the link continues to fail.
    Thanks for doing the research.
    Andrea

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    1. Thank you Andrea. The last time this link stopped working it came back the next day, quite mysteriously! Im hoping it does again. I will message you back if it doesnt. I would love to get in touch with Laine, even to tell her how much she influenced me and helped me. There must have been so many of us who felt this way! Thank you.

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  12. The link of Laine's letters is not working and am so panicked. It says something about robots.

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    1. Im sorry Shiku I know, it stopped working and has not returned. My friend and I have saved over 100 Laines Letters on a memory stick and I am planning to start sharing some. I wish they were available for everyone and dont understand why they have been removed. It is very sad. Luckily we have saved some, thanks to my two friends we have copies. I am just trying to find out if I can republish them without breaching any copyrights etc. Then hopefully I can include them here. xx

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  13. https://web.archive.org/web/20130721005103/http:/lainesletters.com/letters.html

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    1. Thanks Peg this link is above in the post. At one stage it didnt work for a few months but happily it works now.
      I will pst a new link when Laines new website is up. Cant wait for that! xx

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    2. Oh, thank you so much for this link. I have been looking for Laine for a long time. I used to have this link but lost it. I loved her! She just made me feel so good about everything. She is such a beautiful person and I miss her. I am so glad to have her letters back again. Thank you so much for sharing!

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    3. Youre welcome Linda I know just how you feel! xxx

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  14. Annabel, Do you know if Laine's new site is up? Do you have all of her old letters saved? The wayback only has some of them saved. I have always wanted to print them all out and hand them to my daughters as a bible study and general encouragement....and for myself, ahem. If you have them can you e-mail them to me?

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  15. Dear Katie, We made our books up from all the posts on the Wayback machine and also returned all the posts to Laine as she had lost them. There are so many letters! When printed the books are heavy and like phone books so we had to divide them into editions as they were too heavy to pick up! I am not aware of any other letters. I would print them out as the Wayback machine link stopped working for quite some time but luckily works again. All the links are working for me at this time.
    They are a wonderful resource and would be a great gift! I use mine as a BIble study and each time I read them they are fresh and new!
    Laine does not have a new site up at this time. I would love it but not so far...
    I hope that helps. Love Annabel.xx

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    1. That's good to know. I'll be printing today!

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  16. Annabel, have you heard anything else from Laine? Is she still planning to start another website?

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    1. Dear Katie,
      No I do not see a website coming now... Laine has some health issues. If you would pray for her that would be really wonderful.
      If things change and a website comes I will be sure to let you know. I keep reading the old letters and they still do me good! With love Annabel.xxx

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  17. I loved reading her letters and have a few saved from my tough early motherhood years, too. Please send her my thanks and tell her we would love to hear from her.

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  18. I was looking for her letters as well. She does have a Facebook page.
    https://www.facebook.com/LainesLetters/

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  19. Thank you for letting me know about this. All her letters are available through the web archives but the facebook page is not her. Someone has used an image from my blog here and made a page. I emailed Laine and its not here. She doesnt seem to mind as it directs people to her letters and they are welcome to do that but it is not her posting. Many thanks.xxx

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I really appreciate your comments thank you! The aim of my blog is the be a place of encouragement and happiness. Very rarely is anyone rude. Actually only twice so far! If you post a rude or aggressive comment I will read it but not publish it, thanks for understanding.xxx

Spam is never published... if you are advertising a product or selling website your comment wont be published. I am inundated with stuff about drugs, horses and weird things! I am not going to publish this stuff! Thank you.