Geometric/Chevron Wall - Before and After

This week I have been working on Resonate Church's offices. We have a Design Team in place and I have ADORED working with these gals, all of whom are studying Design at UofI. I want to go into business with them and be BFFs with them and, and... We have dreamed up some pretty great ideas for this much larger office space. And now we are beginning to administer them. Starting with a small grimy storage room we turned into a modern, clean-lined Conference Room.

Here was our inspiration for the walls:

These images are from one of the Fritz Hansen furniture galleries. Love the chevron inspired geometric wall! It has a mid-century modern vibe too. We want all of this up in here.

This wall is actually a mosaic of different colored wooden parallelograms. But for our wall we used 5 different colors of paint and A LOT of time and tape.  

The colors were inspired by Resonate Church's logo:

Here's how we did it:

Step 1: Choose colors. We chose 2 grays, 2 greens, and 1 white that all worked well together. All Valspar paint.

Step 2: Sketch it out on paper. Doing this on a small scale will help you execute the large wall so much faster. You won't have to second guess the pattern. (Although if you're like me and accidentally paint a shape the wrong color, you may have to make another sketch!)

Step 3: Measure & mark the wall.  Using a measuring tape, level & pencil, carefully (& lightly) draw the shapes on the wall.

Step 4: Mark each piece. To save time, put a dab of each color in their respective places on the wall. This way you won't have to constantly refer back to your graph each time. (The pic below was mid-project, but you can see "dab marks" for the deeper green.)

 

Step 5: Tape and Paint by Number. Repeat. This takes some time! Put on some good music and tune into the perfectionist in you. Work with one color at a time, taping the outside of that color's shapes. Each color takes 2-3 coats. Remove the tape carefully. If needed, score along the tape edge with an exacto knife to keep the edges clean. Wait until each color is dry before gently taping over it for the neighboring color! This process took a few hours for an 8'6" x 8' wall. But once you get going, you can touch up paint other areas while the current color is drying.

Step 6: Touch up. With this much painting, there will inevitably be touch ups needed. The better you clean up your lines and corners, the sharper your pattern will look. (Below you can see a white gap that needed touching up.)

And here is the final result of the wall in our small 8 1/2 foot wide conference room:

We love this fresh geometric take on the chevron. So graphic!

Lessons from A to Z ~ I Have Not Come for the Well

Last month we geared up for another fancy Easter at our house. I got out our best china and laid out the kids’ fancy Easter clothes. All to celebrate what Christ came for…NOT the fancy. Not the people that “have it all together”. But for the sick, the lost, the people that have it all falling apart.  This has caused me to seriously re-think my approach.

So this Easter had special meaning when we got the opportunity to spread love and the Easter Message to the kids at Syringa—the low-income trailer park that Resonate has adopted. Here's how it happened this Easter:

I was out of town, speaking to women (about this very topic), when I received an email from one of our Syringa team members: “We had the wrong dates for the Easter Party at Syringa. It is TOMORROW and they need 30 baskets and an egg hunt!” It was too short of notice to do much, and I couldn’t start making calls in the middle of a conference. I said a quick prayer for helpers to rise up, and left it in God’s hands.

The next day, Chad texted me the following pictures. (No, I hadn't called him about this.)

 

Xavier & Zander help deliver baskets.

He had seen my email and took action! That morning he called people to sponsor baskets. Then he, the kids & the team met at Walmart and bought everything for 30 baskets. Then they went to Syringa, filled the baskets, had a party and played with our little friends there. I was so proud of my family! (And of Chad for knowing my heart for this! 1000 extra bonus husband points for Chad!)

30 baskets filled and ready for kids!

A close-up of each basket, filled with goodies and Easter info.

Egg Hunt on the lawn of newly re-opened community center.

We are learning as we go, folks. But this became the highlight of our Easter week by far! Easter is too good of news to keep it as a fancy church affair. It is news worth sharing, worth taking a basket to a child, a ham to a neighbor, or an egg hunt to a slum. It is worth taking the message of Christ to his prime audience: those who are not well yet.

Some of the team, our kids and Syringa kids.

And Jesus answered them, 

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 

I have not come to call the righteous but the sinners to repentance.”

~ Luke 5:31-32 ~

Lessons from A to Z ~ Putting on the Full Armor

Chad has recently introduced Xaiver and Zander to his favorite childhood superhero cartoons. Specifically, “Spiderman and His Amazing Friends”, after he discovered the original episodes were on Netflix. Ah the memories! The boys love it (and Chad still does too)!

What I love most though, is that the boys can’t watch a full episode without running in to their room and “suiting up” into full superhero gear. They put on a Spiderman or Superman costume, or put together their own “armor” with capes, masks and bright red rain boots. Only then are they ready to watch Spidey “save the day” as they call it. 

One episode and a costume is usually plenty of fuel for their imaginations. Then the TV goes off and they boys boldly fly around the house, armed with foam swords or light sabers, fighting enemies and saving an unsuspecting sister, cat or stuffed animal from the invisible perils that we were previously unaware of.

The boys are a wonderful reminder to me of the armor God has asked me to put on. I sometimes forget about the invisible perils all around me. But we have a real spiritual enemy that comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).  And he often attacks when we are being most effective in taking “enemy ground”.

With all the victories going on in our family and our ministry at Resonate Church, Chad and I have felt a spiritual battle raging. (Thankfully we are on the winning side!) We want to stand strong against the devil's schemes, put on the full armor of God and be victorious in Christ. We invite you to read and pray through the following verse with us:
  

Ephesians 6:10-19 ~

^"10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
¹⁸ And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. ¹⁹ Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel..."