Keepin' It On The Reals

This has been a hard week.

I feel fat. The kids are being whiney and disobedient. Me and the Mr. have been short tempered with each other. My hair is flat as a board. I can't get motivated to shave my legs. I try to pray in the afternoon when the boys go down and immediately my mind is filled with a million thoughts. The house smells funny from dinner last night. I should switch the laundry. I need to call so and so back. You name it, I'm thinking about it.

I think I might know what is going on. Sunday I accepted a position in our Women's Ministry at church. It is called The Heart Whisperer and it is the Prayer Ministry. About two weeks ago Shane and I were talking about my ministry at the church. My main ministry is to serve him so he can be effective with our youth. Apart from that I told him my heart would be to serve with the Women's Ministry.

I kid you not, the very next morning someone approached me at church and asked if I might start coming to some Women's things at the church. Then, about two days later, the head hancho herself emailed me asking to pray about filling this position. It get's better. About 2 or 3 weeks ago we had a big church yard sale. I was up at the church and the baby got fussy so I was wheeling him around in his stroller. We strolled into our library and a book "just happened to catch my eye".

The book was about the Brooklyn Tabernacle and how their church changed as a direct result of starting to pray and ask God for change. Prayer for spiritual awakening has always been important to me. It's hard to gauge where people are just by looking around. But, sometimes I just wander when I look around where we are as a whole. Do the words complacency, comfort, routine, and schedule define where we are? Or do the words surrendered, passionate, fiery, zeal, purpose, and vision define where we are?

What was I talking about? Oh yes, the book. It fueled the fire for my desire to see change in our church. I say our church because that is where I'm plugged in. My sphere of influence to pray over. So, when I was approached to plug into the Prayer Ministry it was a perfect fit that God has been preparing me for. It is already my heart and I just finished that book with real live stories of changed lives as a direct result of prayer.

What does this have to do with un-Texas hair that won't poof to save my life? Maybe I've been under a little fire from the enemy. Who knows. Maybe it is just a couple of bad days. The timing of it all just seems to line up though.

Today I was reading about the opaque veil of the self-life that keeps us from experiencing God in the fullness of all he has to offer us. He rendered the veil torn and yet we have our own veils that keep us at arms length. Year by year we sit contentedly in the outer courts as we grow tired and old. If you want the self made veil ripped it has to be crucified on the cross and that means death. There are two good things about death. At some point the surrender is over and after that the joy comes.

On a different note, I have a surprise for you tommorow I can't wait to tell you about! Enjoy the free car wash today (a.k.a. Rain).

Buh-Bye Yesterday & Jon & Kate

I'll let the pictures tell you what kind of yesterday turned out to be. It was one of those where you wish you could click the little red box in the right corner and X out and be done for the day. Sigh. Well, come on in and have a look around. Let's kick off with the unmade bed, the root of all evil.
Since clutter attracts clutter, here are yesterday's clothes tossed on the floor.

I opened the door so you could see inside the laundry room, but before I took the picture the door was closed and that pile you see outside the door is from the last two days where my sweet peeps I live with tossed them at the end of the day.

This is the inside of my oven. I did not know what to cook last night. Aw man, I need to clean that sucker, that is gross. Do you have a self-cleaning oven? If you do we are happy for you and your clean oven self.

Awww yes, my shiny sink! It is shiny because...

We've eaten out the last three meals. We discovered the $1.00 Chicken Strip sandwiches and oh man, they are good. We have them hold the mayo though-sick!

I have food to cook.

So there ya have it folks. The chaos of my last two days. My fridge pics always make me laugh. There is always the token healthy thing hanging out inside that I only notice when the photo is taken. Today's token healthy thing is that Au La Natural Peanut Butter that we're all too scared to try.

We got to watch a little TV last night. We never watch TV shows until Biggest Looser comes on. Jon Gosselin was on last night and we were so excited to check it out. He seemed more outspoken last night than I've ever seen him. It will be interesting to see how Kate responds to that interview. And if anyone is curious what I think-I see both sides to their frustrations.

It appears from what has been shown on TV that their marriage has been all about the kids. If that truly has been the main focus-then no wander their marriage is in the dumps. I pray for Jon & Kate on the 8's (7:08, 8:28, etc) when I think about it. Should we make a Facebook group called Jon and Kate on the 8's? :) It would be awesome if they would reconcile, not for the kids, but to honor their marriage vows they made to each other.

This & That

Here is a picture for El Meredith's Loco! I know, I had to look in my friend Leslie's fridge to see for myself too. There are two stages to this good feeling. The first is, "Oh my word, look at that top shelf and pantry! It is so full!" The second stage is, "Oh my word, look at that top shelf and pantry, it is so empty!" I like both stages because using stuff up is a great feeling. In case you are wandering, this top shelf is entirely filled with milk all the way back. You are looking at 5 1/2 gallons here.

You need to sit down for this next thing I'm about to share with you because seriously, it is going to be good. So, a few months ago the lady at the Clinique counter shared a tip with me and I love her for it. If you use any type of squeeze type bottle for make-up products then you know the drill when you are running low. You beat the life out of that little puppy so you can get out every last drop towards the end. Your hand hurts and your counter is dented.

WELL, DID YOU KNOW that when you are running low and it starts getting hard to squeeze out, you can cut the tube in half with a pair of scissors and keep it stored in a Ziplock sandwich bag? I have gotten 4 EXTRA weeks out of this tube of make-up remover. 4 WEEKS. That is huge! The sealed Ziplock keeps it fresh.

This post was brought to you by Bugs & Sunshine. Changing life as you know it one post at a time.

Shopping For The Month

So today was month two of me trying to grocery shop for the month. My good friend inspired me to try this. Here are my thoughts so far:

• It is saving money because I'm only going twice a month (trying anyway!). One huge trip on the first Saturday of the month. Another trip on week three to stock up on more milk, bread, fresh fruits/veggies and any misc. stuff I forgot.

• When I'm planning my menu for the month I use the recipes that call for the fresh stuff first. Stuff like stir fry and fajitas that use veggies I can freeze are saved for later in the week.

• It is hard work! I am worn out from my 3 hour shopping trip today. I go to 2 stores. Kroger for my meat/produce/milk. Then Wal-Mart for the rest.

• Today I wore my walking shoes and yoga pants to be comfy, I remembered how tiring it was last month. Not my best fashion statement, but hey!

• Shopping once a month has caused me to get organized and it feels great because I am not naturally organized. Clean yes. Organized with paper-no.

• We are eating out a lot less and sticking to our monthly budget a lot better. Most days we have left overs for lunch.

• Friday nights have turned into Coffee and Dessert nights. If we have a free Friday night, we'll call a family and see if they can join us for Coffee and Dessert. We've only got to do this a couple of times, but what a fun way to spend a Friday night. Friday nights are also Family Fun Night and the kids get to sleep with us. (like they don't sneak in every other night anyway, but Friday's they start out with us.)

• Right now I have 6 gallons of milk in my fridge, 6 bags of cheese, 5 bags of frozen chicken in the freezer, 5 pounds of ground chuck, and 1 lb of flank steak. I have a bag of frozen stir fry, frozen brocolli, frozen peas/carrots, frozen blackberries. Canned mandarin oranges (kids love them), we use lots of canned diced tomatoes/Rotel. I do not like canned veggies though, only corn. So for veggies I use fresh or frozen. Then the fresh fruit/veggies are lettuce, bananas, apples, strawberries, grapes, tomato, potato, onion.

Today I went $6.65 over my budget and had to write a check for that part. I bought a little food processer for $10.00 to blend stuff like Rotel, Chopped Green Chilies, onion, basically anything healthy so my la familia will not know it is there. I am excited to see how it works. Oh, and here are a few things I'm making for dinner the next couple weeks.

• Pancakes, Bacon, Fresh Fruit, Orange Spritzers
• Chicken con Queso/Salsa (thanks leslie!)
• Bandito Chili Dogs
• Nacho Salad
• Flank Steak Fajitas (thanks heather!)
• Spaghetti, Bread
• Chicken Chili, topped with Tortilla chips and Cheddar
• Chicken Pot Pie
• Chicken Fried Rice
• Steakhouse Shepherd's Pie (Rachel Ray)
• Sloppy Joes/Garlic Fries (Ellie Krieger)

5+0=12

Really Wal-Mart chicken people?

Is that so?

You can imagine my surprise when I opened up my bag of boneless, skinless chicken to find 5 pieces in the bag.

The serving size said 12.

I think we should rename the label.

Serving size 12 IF you are making a casserole that your family will be in a puddle of tears and revolt over OR IF you are making a big pot of soup in which case the same reaction can be expected.

I bet...

I bet if you were to step on a Rubik's Cube and it hurt really bad and you threw it against the wall and it shattered into a million pieces this might be what it would look like.

1,000 Miles

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step."

Do you ever procrastinate? You have things you want to accomplish but they remain undone because it feels too overwhelming?

Here are some pictures of a project I began tackling last week. MY RECIPE DRAWER. If you are like me you have a million pieces of loose paper thrown in "your recipe drawer." When you are really wanting that great recipe handwritten on that little post it note it takes forever to locate.

A few weeks ago I was browsing through a high end kitchen store. They have adorable recipe notebook holder's for $20. The size was 5x7 and you could purchase cute little special cards to transfer all your recipes on to. In the end you have made your own cookbook with your favorite recipes. With all the affordable school supplies on sale right now I decided to make my own.

The first thing I did was gather all my loose recipes and enter them into my computer.

Next I put them in page protectors and put them in a notebook. I used the cheap index tabs and made 5 divisions (Bread/Sides, Breakfast, Dessert, Main Course, Appetizers). You can get really cute packages of paper at the Dollar Tree for. One dollar. This is a picture of my nice, neat recipe drawer.

This was it BEFORE I took control.

This is the recipes I entered into my computer, printed and put nice and neat in my notebook. This stuff is in the trash now. Buh-Bye, see ya later.

It was kind of sad to throw it away for some dumb reason, but I like the neatness of the new system.

Another great thing about this system is when you find great recipes on blogs, Food Network.com, etc you can print them off right away and put them into your recipe notebook.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step."

Maybe you don't care about recipes, but is there something else you could begin working on today?