So Refreshing

       This weekend was wonderfully refreshing! I stayed in Conway Friday after staff meeting to have a sleepover with Allie!! Friday afternoon I just hung out at the Riners' while Allie had appointments with some students. That afternoon was very refreshing for me. I sat on the Riners' back porch which is one of my fave places ever. It's so peaceful and has a beautiful view. I spent time with God while being in the middle of His creation. It was glorious. I chose Search for Significance for my next book. The copy I have has a workbook in the back with some great thought-provoking questions for each chapter. Friday afternoon, I started this book and I think I'm really going to like it!
      Friday night, Allie and I went to MarketPlace with Kelsey :) love both of these girls! Dinner at MarketPlace was delish. After dinner we just laid around the house, watched TV, and Allie and I went to bed early so we could get lots of sleep. Saturday morning we went to breakfast together and then came back to the Riners'. We made some coffee and went to the back porch to spend some time with God. Another great period of time with God in His creation!! After that, we got ready and went tailgating at UCA Homecoming. After tailgating, watching the crowning, and hanging out, we went back to the Riners' to hang out and watch the rest of the game on TV. Saturday night, we went over to Adam and Merritt Hambrick's to play board games with a bunch of people. Let's just say I'm not that great at Battle of the Sexes or Trivial Pursuit but I definitely have fun with them! :)
      This weekend was one of the best I've had recently. I got to relax, hang out with some incredible people, be in a different place, and spend some wonderful time with my Maker. I love times like these. I hope that your weekend was also wonderful! If you don't go outside very often to spend time with God, I encourage you to try it. There is something about being in His creation while spending time with Him that makes that time extra sweet.

                                                Tailgating!

New Face

As you can tell, I have a new face to my blog!! This is much more me, from the print to the colors! I hope you like it, because I LOVE it :) Giraffe print is my favorite. Enjoy the new background and keep in touch.

The God You Can Know

I haven't had the chance to cook in a few days. Mom and I have been super busy lately. I've had quite a few night support appts and other plans so cooking has gone out the window. However, I wanted to update my blog so I'm going in a different direction today. I said in my "about me" section that I wanted to become more disciplined this year as well. So, I am going to be doing some blog posts about my attempt at discipline by including books I read for personal and spiritual development, exercises I try out (these will probably be few and far between but I'm trying!), and other steps I take towards discipline.

Yesterday, I finished the book The God You Can Know by Dan Dehaan. It was a great book! It's an easy read but it has some great points about God that I needed to read again. The last few chapters had incredible facts in them that hit me at the perfect time and were perfectly relatable to stuff going on in my life right now. One chapter talked a lot about God as our Father. For me, God as my Father has always been an attribute I cling to and I have truly always thought of Him as my Father. Reading that chapter again was just so great. The fact that God chose me to be His child and proclaim His name continues to blow me away. The author suggested reading John and noticing every time that Christ mentions God as Father. So, now I am reading John in my personal times with God and I am loving paying attention to that one word: Father. I still can't believe He chose me!

This week, I am starting Disciplines of a Godly Woman by Barbara Hughes. I LOVE this book! I read it at Kaleo in 2009 but I am reading it again. One of my great friends, Alison Chapman, is living in India for a year and we are going to read this together and discuss it weekly on Skype. (sidenote-Skype is the best thing ever! It makes it easier for some of my best friends to live in India because I can still see their face when we talk!) I'm excited to read this book again at a different stage of life and learn new things from it.

I have quite a few other "to-reads" on my shelf. I haven't decided which one I am going to start next. The books in the debate are Discipline Yourself for Godliness by John Barnett (incredible man of God, writer, speaker, etc), Search for Significance by Robert McGee, and He Loves Me! by Wayne Jacobsen. If you have read any of these and would suggest it be the next book I read, let me know!

I'm excited to include this topic on my blog as well. I would love to hear back from you on areas you are disciplined in and how you became more disciplined. I truly am excited to grow this year in this area!

Cheesecake, Meatballs, and Pizza

My first 3 attempted food items have been a success!! This is so fun :) 

The Mocha Chocolate Cheesecake isn't the best cheesecake I've ever had, but it's good for my first one! The recipe is on www.allrecipes.com if you want to try it out. I made coffee and used it instead of the coffee liqueur that the recipe calls for. If you do this also, you will need to put in more coffee than it calls for or you won't be able to taste the coffee flavor. I also think I should have left it in the oven a little longer than an hour for it to settle a little more because it "fell" a lot when I let it cool. Overall, it looks pretty and it tastes pretty delicious :)

Dinner on Thursday was a dish I saw on FoodNetwork on the Rachael Ray show. It's Mozzarella Stuffed Sausage Balls, Tomato-Basil Sauce, Cacio e Pepe Potatoes and Roasted Broccolini. (www.foodnetwork.com for the recipe). This meal is so easy to cook! Rachael Ray did it on her 30 minute meals show but I was hesitant to think I could do it that quickly because I'm just not as good as her. Haha. However, I started cooking and had the meal on my plate in 35 minutes! And it looked just like hers did on the show! It tasted great too! Well, our ordinary Kroger didn't have broccolini so I just went with broccoli. It was still good! I like it baked much better than steamed. I substituted the bocconcini mozzarella for Mozzarella Veggie Slices. Because of my allergy to milk, I use as many soy products as possible. They taste just the same! I cut the recipe in half and still had plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day. This is a well-balanced meal and it's so easy to make!

Today while watching the Hogs game (we're doing so much better today!) my stomach was growling. I was going to go to the kitchen and just heat up leftovers. But, "football" food sounded so much better! I looked through my fridge and pantry to see what I could put together. I decided to make a Pesto Pizza! I had some pesto leftover from Thursday's dinner (it was in the tomato-basil sauce) so I spread that on a whole-grain tortilla. I spread a little bit of olive oil on top of that. Then I added some veggies I had in the fridge - mushrooms and bell peppers. I ran out of shredded Mozzarella so I just cut my veggie slices into slivers and laid those on top. I cooked it for about 9 minutes on 350* and it turned out so good! It was a healthy, delicious alternative to normally greasy pizza you order for football games. Loved it!

I am loving this creative new food venture I'm going on :) Tonight I'm cooking an Indian dish - Tandoori Chicken. I will let you know how that one turns out too. If you have any recipes you love, I'd love to hear about them and try them out! If you have any questions about these recipes, feel free to ask! 

Enjoy your Saturday! I'm going to watch the rest of the Hogs game! We better not blow it in the second half like we have ALL of our other games.

Idea behind this blog

I'm excited to start this blog! As I venture out into life in the real world (a real job, a budget, cooking, etc), I think it will be fun to record my journey. My goal during this year is to learn how to cook, become more disciplined, be hospitable, decorate my place, and learn how to live as an adult. In this blog I will probably post successes and failures of this process. I'll post recipes I tried, pictures of decorations and maybe meals that turned out pretty, and other events of life in the real world.

I actually just got home from the grocery store with items for this week's menu. Let me just say it took me way too long at the store. First of all, the new Kroger Marketplace is ridiculously huge. Secondly, I don't go to the store often so it took me a while to find some things. However, I am successfully home and excited about my meals this week! 

I'm heading to the kitchen to start my first recipe: Mocha Chocolate Cheesecake. Yum! I'll let you know how it turns out!