Welcome to the 79th weekly edition of...
Thank you for joining us! If you're new to this carnival and would like to enter your post, please check HERE for the rules and regs.This post is in progress, but below is MckLinky for all of you faithful homemakers who have prepared a post. Thank you!
YOURS:
This portion of Homemaker Monday is still in progress. Thanks for your patience! :)MINE: Sometimes I see a bottle of pretty nail polish, and think, "I should paint my nails." Sometimes I see a woman's hands with french tips on her nails and think, "I remember when I had that done for my wedding and my hands looked so beautiful. I should get that done again." Then reality hits, and I remember how washing dishes for ten people three times a day chips my nail polish within 24 hours, and having acrylic french tips makes it inefficient to do four loads of laundry every day and makes it difficult to change at least 8 diapers a day or to cut vegetables.
Yes, my hands are the hands of a homemaker, and I'm not ashamed. I don't care that when I shake hands with people at church, that they can feel my sweeping callouses in the fleshy part between my thumb and forefinger or on the palms of my hands...
I don't mind that if someone comes over to visit, they might see...
...on my fingers, because I just shoved another load of wood into one of our fireplaces, our home's only source of heat. Frugality is not always the cleanest principle to practice.
I don't mind that I have...
...because, as I said before, my nails would just look worse with chipped, peeling paint as soon as I did a day's worth of dishes, or changed a day's worth of diapers, or picked off something stuck on the kitchen floor that the broom just won't get.
And I don't mind that I have a...
Yes, I miss wearing my wedding ring, but creating a new human being, one I hope will make a world a better place when he grows up, is worth having to go ringless for a few months.
What about you? Do you have homemaker/mother hands? Are you proud of it? Or do you have model hands? If so, how do you do it? Let's talk!
OURS: Okay, what do all of you wonderful homemakers have for us today? I can't wait to see!
17 comments:
God bless you for your hard working hands.
I used to get my nails done often.Just because my nails are so thin and tear easily. But I too found it hard to do certain things with acrylics. So now My hands look like busy mom hands. Luckily I have a daughter in cosmetology school who hooks me up with a mani/pedi sometimes.
You have my hands! All except the baby days are long gone. I have had just the same thoughts, but I am too busy cooking, cleaning, sewing, typing, playing the piano at Church for the children, gardening, milking goats.... Carefully manicured hands would be silly. :)
Ugg! My hands are always dry and crack frequently because of my mommy hands from changing diapers to washing dishes, etc. I gave up on finger-nail polish a long time ago!
p.s. Avon has a wonderful product~ "Silicone Glove" that I use in the garden to keep things at least under control. It is not expensive and really helps a lot. When I am going out for dirty work, I slather a lot on my hands and get it under my fingernails too. Makes them much easier to clean. http://lgoodman5926.avonrepresentative.com/ By the way, I am NOT an Avon representative!!!!
Judy, the best things I've found for the dry and cracking - is chapstick on the cracks and "Bag Balm" for the dry. It is wonderful! http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=bag+balm&x=0&y=0
I totally have homemaker hands. I ran a daycare for ten years before I quit almost a year ago so that did a number on my hands and of, course I have my own family now. Not as large as yours but still I am constantly doing laundry and dishes and diapers, etc. :)
Just like you can tell a lot about a person by their smile, you can by their hands as well.
I have a friend whom always has perfectly manicured (aka: pretty) hands. Anytime she is cleaning bathrooms, or doing dishes, or working in her yard, she wears gloves. Rubber gloves, fabric gloves, leather work gloves, etc., depending on the task at hand. Yes, she even has a pair of cloth type gloves she slips on before adding wood to the fire.
And she is that particular about everything in her life. Great lady - just really particular!!!
Personnally, I have found that most pairs of rubber gloves are just too big on my hands, and if I do find/wear a smaller sized pair, I some how manage to get water down inside the gloves anyways, which totally defeats their whole purpose.
While I probably shouldn't admit this, I'm going to anyways. There have been MANY a time while chopping up veg's, etc. in a kitchen, that I have sliced off a finger nail. Sometimes I can find and retrieve it, other times .... "what they don't know won't hurt them o;-p". I have always chuckled and thanked the Lord that I had happened to have a fingernail to cut off instead of cutting my finger.
Along with our smiles and the tones of our voice, our hands are our ministering tools. Yours show evidance that you minister to the needs of your family. Well done!
About the whole 'what to use on them' thing - Stop. First, I am in no way trying to sell you something here. Yes, if you want some I am willing to do so. I am only sharing this to tell you what I find very effective for me.
Brian and I have been Amway distributors for about 29 years now. No, we have never buit up a huge distributorship or anything. We could, just haven't. Any-ways, we are still in the business because we love their products. Both Brian and son #4 have allergic skin reactions to lots of products. But they never do if we stick to using Amway's products. Their laundry soaps, bath products, deoderants ... . Most likely it is because Amway adds absolutely no additives to their products.
All of that being said, I love their hand lotion!!!! I keep a bottle in the kitchen, and the bathroom, and my bedroom, and it is always on my 'pack to take with me' list. It just works so amazingly well. And it does NOT leave any oily residue. When my hands are really bad (because I havn't taken the time (seconds) to use it regularly) I can put on a really thick layer, and at first it might burn a bit as it's sinking in, but that is because it's healing as it goes, but it just keeps sinking in/being absorbed by my skin. And being absorbed ... until there is no traces what so ever left. NICE!!!Usually with in 30 seconds of putting it on, I can open a bottle of Pepsi (o;->).
(also, it has no heavy perfumie type oders - which, as you know, is very important for me.)
~ ~ ~ ~
How is your "practicing" going? Remember - o/~ YOU are a .... ;->
Cheryl, my "practicing" is still going strong, even with my mom and sister here! Woohoo!
Thank you so much for this! This morning I was lookign at my dry and cracking skin on my hands and feeling very horrible because of it. Your post put it into perspectie for me - something I needed today of all days.
Nancy in Foster City
wow what in depth look at our hands my hubbys grandmother always said that rough hands shows a good days work
Well I assent to but I contemplate the brief should prepare more info then it has.
yep- mine look like yours and I am proud of it!!!! :)
Oh, I feel so much better now! I was sitting in Relief Society yesterday (my week off from Nursery duties) and was noticing all the lovely nails around me. It made me wonder if I was the only one who couldn't keep my nails pretty doing dishes and changing diapers.
This post and taking five minutes to trim and file my nails last night made me feel much more normal. I think homemaking hands are beautiful!
I remember the day I looked at my hands and thought, "These are my mother's hands!" For awhile I felt embarassed by them, but I came to accept that these were one of the badges of motherhood and I like my hands now. There is the scar where I cut my self while cutting the boys' hair. There's another scar from burning myself taking something out of the oven. and the wear and tear of 34 years of mothering, cleaning and cooking. Yep, Mother's Hands. God's hands here on earth.
I agree with luvmy9. Couldn't have said it better. I remember the first time I looked down and saw my mother's hands, too. The creases are in the same places, and I see her hands in some of my gestures.
A woman was shaking hands with me and some friends; everyone had soft palms, except me. She said, "I can tell you're a worker". I earned these hands--from the tip of the finger I chopped of while slicing a lime, to the scar I got from my cub scout while teaching him to melt the ends of a nylon rope.....
I wear my cracked palms and short nails like a badge of honor.
(I do have 3 words, though: "Flexitol Heel Balm", it's the only thing that heals cracked feet and hands. I can only find it at Wal-Mart)
I have to tell you all that my whole family, including my mother, thought that this post was going to be ridiculous and that no one was going to care about my hands. What they didn't understand was that perhaps you don't care about my hands, per say, but it is just nice to share what we do with our hands and how they have indeed become a "badge of honor" in the lives of us as wives and mothers. I have really loved all of your comments so far, and mom, if you're reading this, let's here about YOUR hands! Love you, Mom!
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