Friday Adventures

This Friday was a bit different since In Their Shoes started tonight, our version of Disciple Now (DNOW). Kyle has been super busy all week making sure everything will be ready and that all the students have a place to stay and a leader. Friday was mostly getting our house ready for the group coming to our house.

I took Buddy for a walk in the morning. He's a pretty spoiled dog and is having a sleepover at my parents' house for the weekend.

Buddy decided to thank me for taking a walk by digging a huge hole in my garden. I was pretty upset, but thankful he didn't dig up any of my plants. The garden is actually looking pretty good.

I picked some flowers to make bouquets to put around the house for the girls weekend--I love having so many beautiful flowers in our yard!

We took a cute little family picture before Kyle headed out for the weekend--he's staying at the high school guys host home. Mostly because he does not want to stay in a house with 12 girls haha.

Buddy was clearly not up for cooperating with us, he is such a diva dog.

My dad came to pick up Buddy and we went out to lunch together. We went to the Taco Spot in Lake Worth and I had some carnitas street tacos. They were quite delicious, I took off most of the cilantro because I'm not a huge cilantro fan.

In Their Shoes has been going great, we have an awesome group of girls at our house this weekend. I'm excited to see God at work in their lives!

Since this is a short post I'll leave you with pictures of two cuties that I got to meet this week--

This is Henrietta "Etta", she is my adorable new niece!!

And this is Amos, our worship pastor's baby boy--his cheeks are too much to handle!

Hope your Friday was great!
M

Good Friday

In lieu of Friday Adventures this post about Good Friday...

"But the fact is, it was our pains he carried--our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore, and crushed him--our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost. We've all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong, on him, on him. He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn't say a word. Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence. Justice miscarried, and he was led off--and did anyone really know what was happening? He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people. They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a grave with a rich man, even though he'd never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn't true. Still, it's what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he'd see life come from it--life, life, and more life. And God's plan will deeply prosper through him. Out of that terrible travail of soul, he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it. Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant, will make many "righteous ones," as he himself carries the burden of their sins. Therefore I'll reward him extravagantly--the best of everything, the highest honors--because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch, because he embraced the company of the lowest. He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many, he took up the cause of all the black sheep."    -Isaiah 53 (MSG)

Bridal Shower

We had a bridal shower this past Sunday for my sweet friend Aarika. Aarika and Tyler are getting married in June, and we couldn't be more excited for them! I was honored to get to help put on the shower and everything turned out beautiful! We decided to go with a salad bar since it was an afternoon shower, and of course we had plenty of desserts!

The invitations were adorable and we based most of the decorations off of them. Lots of burlap, mason jars, and a little bit of lace.

The shower was at my mom's house and her pantry door is a chalkboard, which is awesome! So we taped some of their engagement pictures on the door and added a little bit of decoration around them.

The mantle turned out really cute--the cross brought a little bit of sparkle and the flowers a little bit of pink.

We printed a bunch of their engagement pictures and put them in mason jars to display them, have to give Pinterest the credit for this idea!

One big picture on the wall, took a lot of tape to get it to stay up! I love this frame, not sure where it's from my guess would be Hobby Lobby.

We put butcher paper down on the table and then labeled each of the salad bar items. It worked out really well--people knew what each thing was and clean up was super easy! We ended up having lots of toppings: Boiled Eggs, Ham, Mushrooms, Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Carrots, Water Chestnuts, Cheese, Almonds, Craisins, Chick Peas, and Croutons.

Other side of the table--Dressing, Bread, Chicken Salad, and Quinoa Salad

Here's the dessert table-- Fruit, Carrot Cake Balls, Vanilla Cake Balls, Chocolate Crunch Cake Balls, Brownie Bites, and Sugar Cookies

I found a mason jar cookie cutter on ebay and my original plan was to make these for the favors, but it was too big of a job so they just ended up on the dessert table!

The favors ended up super cute, a lady that my mom works with made these delicious melt away cookies with some cream cheese frosting. Yummy!

Guest of honor's chair and place to open all of her sweet presents! (The light on the door was still upside down at this moment, Kelli saved us and fixed it before the shower started)

We played a "He Said She Said" game that we saw on Pinterest and gets played often at bridal showers. Kyle designed the paper for us and picked the answers, and he did an AWESOME job! (Had to brag on my hubby for a second)

It was such a fun shower! I am so thankful for both of these girls and all the ways they have each impacted my life over the past six and half years! (Wow that makes me feel old!) We are so excited to be part of Aarika's special day!

Special shout out to my mom and Kelli for all they did to make the shower wonderful-we couldn't have done it without them!

Friday Adventures

Week three of Friday adventures! Our Friday adventures started on a night early, so that we could have a date night. It was such a nice day yesterday that I got to wear shorts to dinner! 

Major sock tan going on...

I have no pictures of dinner because we were kind of hungry. We went to Mexican Inn, one of my new favorites! I had the chicken and rice plate and took half of it home, it's so good! So are the chips and tortillas!

Then we went over to Target to walk around, and ended up buying quite a few things. Mostly gifts though so it's all okay! Kyle loves to walk through the Lego aisle and pick out all the things that he wants buy. 

Kyle looked a lot like the lego guy on the box

Selfie in the lego aisle

Anyways, Friday adventures started out good I woke up early, probably cause I went to bed super early. I spent some time reading and Buddy decided to lay on my lap instead of behind me.

"You can read while I'm laying here right?"

The rest of our morning was just hanging out, Kyle mowed the lawn, I frosted cookies, and Buddy slept. Then we went for a walk around the park to enjoy the nice weather. 

Kyle had some work to get done at the church so we headed up there and I helped him. He sent out some emails while I folded bulletins and cut out game sheets for the shower tomorrow.

We worked really hard and deserved some fast food, or at least that's what we convinced ourselves so we stopped by Taco Bell and picked up some greasy, super not healthy, grilled stuffed burritos.

Yum

Kyle went to hang out with friends tonight, and I am supposed to be writing a paper. But instead I made a batch of cake balls and have been binge watching Veronica Mars. Let's just say senioritis is a real thing. I have four more weeks to go and I'm having a hard time staying focused. As evident by this blog instead of my paper.

See you next week!

M

Friday Adventures

Here goes week two of our Friday adventures....

Started the day off with some reading again

Buddy was again sitting behind my head but I didn't get a picture this time.

Last year in the townhouse we started a garden and it was pretty fun to watch it grow and we ended up with lots of jalapeños and several tomatoes. Towards the end of summer we realized we were going to be moving and had to let the garden die in order to pull everything out--plus our cherry tomato plants got way out of control. Anyways, we were super excited when the house we moved into already had a raised garden bed in the backyard! Yesterday we decided to go to Lowe's and get our garden started for this year.

Cart full of soil and plants! We also went to Walmart, but let's face it there are no good pictures that happen at Walmart. I'm still slightly bitter that Saginaw/Lake Worth area does not have a Kroger, because I can't stand Walmart. But that's off topic...

Here is the before and after picture of the garden. Well actually like middle and after picture, we had already done a lot of work by the time I remembered to take a picture. Ignore the fact that my outfit is ridiculous, it's my gardening clothes ;)

Last year our garden was probably half the size of this one and we planted way more than we did this year. And everything started growing on top of each other, so this year we kept it pretty small. Plus, not all of the garden gets sun because of the trees so we had to plant strategically. We decided to go with tomatoes (not cherry learned our lesson there!), jalapeños, red bell peppers, cilantro, and strawberries! I'm super excited about the strawberries just because it's something fun and different from the other things we have grown.

I mentioned the trees that are shading some areas of the garden. They are actually peach trees, and have hundreds of buds on them. There is a very good chance that we could be exploding with peaches soon. I've already started a Pinterest board with peach recipes!

This is just part of one branch, and you can see all of the little green buds that will eventually turn into peaches. I'm so excited!

We worked outside for a long time, pulling weeds and cutting branches on the rose bushes in the backyard. I think we both have battle wounds from those rose bushes, man those thorns hurt! We decided to take a walk around the park even though we were tired. Kyle and Bud took a little nap when we got home and I attempted to make cut out sugar cookies for the bridal shower next weekend. I have never been good at cut out cookies but I found this super cute cookie cutter and wanted to try it. Let's just say my batch made 12 usable cookies, so I was slightly frustrated when that was done.

We had decided on trying out a new recipe for dinner Spicy Hawaiian Chicken Burgers! They turned out delicious, we followed the recipe pretty closely, except only used one pound of ground chicken since we didn't need six burgers.

I was a few bites in before I remembered to take a picture. There's pepper jack cheese and grilled pineapple on top. It was delicious!

The rest of the night involved coating another batch of cake balls, finishing Star Trek Into Darkness, and watching the Tonight Show.

See you next week!
-M

Friday Adventures

Kyle has Fridays off work so we try to take advantage of this day by going on adventures and just spending time together. I'm going to try and start a new series of posts of our Friday Adventures, so here is week one!

Kyle had to go get some shots in the morning. I started my morning with some quiet time and coffee while Bud made sure we were safe and sat basically on my shoulder to look out the window. He's a strange one...

We went on a long walk around the park close by our house. This was our attempt to take a picture of the three of us--Buddy was clearly distracted by a bird, or a squirrel, or a leaf.

Then we went to Best Buy to look at laptops (ended up buying one later in the day) and then headed downtown for some lunch. We decided to try out Swiss Pastry Shop which ended up being a great idea!

Everything sounded so good I was having a very hard time deciding what to get but ended up going with the Big Tex--a smoked brisket sandwich with cheese and BBQ sauce. Kyle got a burger, no surprise there! According to him it was one of the best he's had, which says a lot! They also had three displays worth of pies and desserts, we ended up ordering a slice of Black Forest Macaroon Cake to share.

The texture is really different, kind of crumbly because it's made from egg whites and almond flour and then has layers of whipped cream. It was quite delicious and not too heavy. I did get one big bite of all whipped cream which was a little overwhelming but that was my fault for not realizing what I had picked up. Overall it was a fun little place to have lunch, the food was awesome and the prices were great! Give it a try if you can!

We stopped at Walmart on the way home cause I wanted to start making cake balls for the bridal shower I have in a few weeks. The great thing about cake balls is they last for several weeks in the freezer and taste just as good as the day you made them. Love recipes you can make ahead of time!

I made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and a vanilla with vanilla frosting. Maybe my next post will be directions about cake balls but for now I'll just show you the final product. I only finished the vanilla ones, and I had just enough cake left over to make a mini cake ball which I thought was adorable and might make a whole batch this tiny next time.

Those were our Friday Adventures for the week, it was a pretty busy day as you can tell from my Fit Bit app (my determination to get at least 10,000 steps a day is a post for another day)

Hope your Friday was full of adventures, or full of rest! See you next week!
-M

Season of Showers

It's been a long time but, let's just pick up here. It's been a season of showers, meaning house warming showers, throwing baby showers, and soon throwing a bridal shower. I've attended lots of showers, but never really thrown one until recently, now I'm a pro--not really!

House Warming Shower

We recently moved over to the Saginaw area in order to be closer to our church community. The ladies from church welcomed us with a very sweet house warming shower. We we blessed by many rolls of paper towels, toilet paper and some pantry staples. It's been a good adjustment moving over here, we love being able to have students over and host a lifegroup on Sunday evenings. Plus, the neighborhood is great and we are right across the street from a great park so we go on lots of walks, which Buddy loves!

The very cute decorations at our house warming shower

My favorite part of the house--our coffee hutch

Baby Shower x2

Kyle's oldest brother and his wife are expecting their first baby next month! So last month my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, and I threw them a baby shower at our new house. The shower was about a month after we moved into our house and definitely gave us an incentive to get everything unpacked and put away! The shower turned out great, it was so nice to have everyone over to celebrate with them. The decorations and food turned out great--we did a taco bar with shredded chicken and beef as well as lots of different toppings so everyone could make their own tacos. Then we did a dessert bar with lots of different bite sized treats--cake balls, rice krispies, candy, and pretzel sticks. It was such a fun night and we can't wait to meet our niece in a few weeks!

Decorations from the shower

We also threw a baby shower at church for our worship leader and his wife who are expecting their first baby, a boy, very soon! The wives of staff members and ladies on staff helped throw the party and it turned out really cute. I can't take credit for the decorations, the other ladies worked very hard to make sure it looked great. I did do the chalkboards for it and thought they turned out well.

Bridal Shower

My sweet friend Aarika is getting married in June and we are throwing her a bridal shower in a few weeks. I will have to post pictures after we throw it, I'm sure it's going to be a pretty shower!