I Have the Best Church Family EVER

We are very blessed with the little church we've found here, Bible Christian Fellowship in South Butler. Its a small church plant, filled with people who love the Lord. Namely, people who love the Lord and love to have large families. Many families in our church have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 kiddos! That was a huge pull for us when we were choosing a church, as we want to have a large family and want to learn how to raise them to love the Lord. Many of the families homeschool, which we might want to do. AND, the best part for me right now, is that many of them love gardening, canning, eating healthy and cooking with whole foods.

Amazing.

It is amazing how the Lord puts us in strategic places for just the right season in our lives. Perfect. Just when I need to learn how to cook with whole, healthy foods, the Lord puts me smack dab in the middle of ladies who know how to do that. (!!!) I am so blessed.

So, all of that leads up to what I really wanted to say. Two ladies from my church, Sally and Heather, bought me birthday gifts for my birthday two weeks ago. I told them both that they didn't need to do that, but they both did anyway! Sally bought me an amazing cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, and gave me all the her gluten-free flours/recipes that she didn't need anymore. LOTS of them. Heather put together a little cookbook of whole-food recipes and gave me a big bag full of the ingredients from Trader Joe's to make them! Made me feel really loved.

 

Here is my table full of all the flours, food and spices Sally and Heather gave me! I feel really blessed. Seriously, I could cry. This is amazing!

I am especially excited about the three ingredients above. Almonds, natural peanut butter and cous cous! YUM!

And lastly, the amazing Nourishing Traditions cookbook. If you look really hard, you can see all my cute little bean/pea sprouts growing and getting more leaves! Yay, grow little sprouts, grow. My tomatoes on the other hand, are so not worth photographing. In fact, I might I have killed some. I tried to revive some today, so we will see.

I miss my Bethy.

Mental Note.

Kidnap Bethany.

As soon as possible.

themostwonderfulthing

So, I have been conspicously less....twitter-y these last few days.

It's all his fault.

<----

We have spent some amazing (much needed) time together these past few days. It's pretty much been wonderful. I missed him SO much!! I'm really thankful he didn't decide Thailand was more exciting than here. lol.

I'm actually just really thankful for him.

Between the Lord and Justin, I don't know how I could be more blessed. Praise the Lord. :)

A Quarter of a Century

I turned a quarter of a century yesterday.
I love being 25 (finally).
I'm one of those odd people who LOVE birthdays.
I've earned these years, lol.

I had an odd but almost perfect day yesterday.

I had a best hot chocolate in the cutest French Crepe Cafe in Pittsburgh.

And it's true. I wore the red shoes.

Did I mention I was there with my mom for lunch?
She's amazing.

That evening I met up with a few wonderful girls
I am blessed to be friends with at the Cheesecake Factory
My Dad, Stepmom and brother came as well.
It was a beautiful little family affair.
(And yes, above? We did run through the fountain. whoo!)

Then of course we went to a very expensive boutique and tried on dresses.
None are pictured here...but we found some winners. :)

Here's the funny one. :)

I am blessed.

Girl Time

For all of you wondering what girl time looks like, here are some pictures.
Hope you have fun. We most certainly did! (!!!)

Kids, Eggplants and Broken Eggs plus Chicken

Today I got to see one of my friend's baby girl!
[she was playing with my camera case that I made.]

She did not know what the heck to make of the camera
I kept setting in front of her, trying to get a good picture.
[I love this face.]

And here, I am just overwhelmed by her cuteness.
[for real]

Then I went grocery shopping, where I found these CUTE baby eggplants!
[who even knew these existed?!?]

Just look at how cute they are!
[yes, I did buy one to bring home, just because of it's cuteness.]

And then I managed to break an egg trying to pick it up out of the carton.
[yes, I was already at home and have never had this happen to me before!]

Then I made some Chicken Cordon Bleu....and it was good.
[I went overboard on the mushrooms and onions. I like them!]

The End
[said a very sleepy Kristen]

Some Finished Christmas Presents!!

WHOO!!
I finally finished all my Christmas presents!

I thought you might like to see them, so I took pictures.

:)

of course. lol.

Here they are....if you are a lucky person, they might be coming to your door soon!



<----- Tote bag numero uno! (spanish for you)

<--- Tote bag nombre deux (french for you)

















<---- Tote bag zahl drei (german for you)



















<---- Nice warm scarf for a special someone in NC.


(.....love you Chels!)













<--- Yup....very warm, my nose confirms it!


















<--- Me so very stinkin' happy that Christmas presents are DONE!








P.S....well, except for one, but Kinko's will take care of that one.

:)

I went Kayaking!

We had so much fun.

So, Pittsburgh has this thing called RADical Days and lots of stuff in and around Pittsburgh is free that day. Today there was free kayaking through Venture Outdoors. We drove up to North Park today and they gave us a life jacket, kayak and paddles all for free and let us go out on North Park Lake. (!!!)

It was amazing. So much fun....although our arms hurt now. :)

Anyway, more pictures are up to your right. Enjoy! ----->

Did not....

I did not stay up until 4:30am yesterday night knitting and re-knitting my first sock, just so it could be done.

I totally did not enlist my (ever so loyal) friends to paint a room in my house for the 10th time. That would signify a decorating disorder. Really.

I did not skip Spinning Class at the YMCA on Saturday morning just to have a girl's night sleep over with my bestest friend on Friday night.

I absolutely did not wake up for 11am church service this morning at precisely 11am, notice the time, roll over and pull the covers over my head.

I really did not eat 4 of the large sugar cookies I made yesterday for my friends.

I did not become distracted by the MOUNDS of yummy, beautiful, soft, fluffy, colorful at Bloomin' Yarns last week. AND while I was there, I most definitely did not go out of budget and buy lots of nice soft yarn so I could knit my first sweater.

::big sweet smile::

I did not just look at my at my YMCA's exercise schedule and decide that Cardio Sculpt is just not worth going to bed early for.

I totally did not just decide that I could stay up and work on my new sock for a little bit longer even though it already is 1am.

I did not get out of bed today at 3pm.

I did not push a wobbly, stiff, annoying shopping cart around Giant Eagle today because I was too lazy to go up front and get a new one.

I did not eat only pretzels, cream cheese, salsa, pink lemonade, and cereal with soy milk today.

I did not spend time surfing all the blogs I follow, instead of folding the clean laundry sitting next to me.

I absolutely did not spend a good amount of time cutting out coupons and writing a specific sale-based grocery list only to forget to use my coupon for my most expensive item today.


This post brought to you courtesy of MckMama.

Why?

This Monday officially marks the start of "Not Me! Monday's".



MckMama has a great list over at her blog of things she "did not" do during her week. You should go check it out and read everyone else's list. It's pretty funny.

Basically you post a list of things that you did do, but would like to pretend (for the sake of the list) that you "did not" do them.

Be brutally honest with yourself once in a while. And be funny.
If you want to post a list of your own, go check out the rules on her page.

Moments

Yummy brown eggs.

so sleepy.

Steven and Dean painting my spare bedroom
a "happy-ier" color than nasty tan-brown.
thanks guys!

beautiful Christine.

Christine and I.
Oh yeah, we took this picture ourselves.
We did good.

Steven being odd.

Mike cracking up at our ineptitude at acting.
(he was filming a short video with us in it.)
Sorry, Mike. lol.

a normal looking sock! :P

the end.

Hey Ya'll

Today I set foot on Texas (red) soil for the first time in four years.

I'd forgotten how steamy it is and how big the sky is. Oh my gosh! I forgot there were that many stars. Pray that it thunderstorms while I am here. I miss the big dramatic Texas light shows when it thunders and rains here.

I am staying with the lovely Skyla Bradley and hooking up with a bunch of our friends that are still in the area for breakfast tomorrow at The Dinner Bell. It was our main breakfast spot when we were interns. Very cowboy-ish. :)

I am officially on vacation.

Eleven

Bethany and I went out to a fancy dinner tonight. We were celebrating. We ate at this place called Eleven in Pittsburgh's Strip District. It was fabulous and delicious!


I had Shrimp Bisque, Tuna Steak and we shared Lemon Blueberry Creme Brulee. Oh my goodness. It was so good. We had no problems cleaning our plates.

All in all, it was a glorious night, weather, food and friends.

And yes, all these photos are from my new camera. They aren't great because I haven't figured out all of the settings yet....I've only had it for 2 days! :)