April

It's been a full month!

We did a little of this...

Blaze with our sweet friend Lynnette

And a little of that...

Trying out a dandelion crown, as we try to use up all the dandelions in the yard before they go to seed.

And a few other things:

Tasting frozen berries on an almost 90 degree day...they were not a hit!

And of course we've done more than just play outside, although that has been a hit with the crazy almost-one-year-old that hardly naps. We've been working on our garden, and Ryan is creating a bunch of bucket plants that we can use in the backyard. Our actual garden is at church, since our landlady understandably doesn't want us to dig up our lawn.

Good Friday -- Funeral in Preparation for the Most Glorious Day...Ever.


       As Christians, Easter is our most important holiday.

       The Son of God, Jesus, came onto Earth as the son of man, was murdered, conquered death, saved us from our sins and God's wrath, and then rose again. This is how we comprehend Easter.

       Easter is a huge celebration of Jesus having conquered the grave and washed our sins away, "What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus..." A familiar tune to most of us, right? Right.

       So why am I posting on this subject? I got this empty feeling one night as I was going to bed and thought to myself, "Instead of vegging out on Hulu or Netflix, why not watch a sermon?" It was Palm Sunday and I was sure to find something filling at Mars Hill. I did.

       I am compelled to share it with all of you today; it really hit my soul hard and maybe it will hit you, too. Here it is! I hope you gain from this. I was going to say, "enjoy" but this sermon doesn't really give you something entertaining to enjoy but rather something worth understanding and pondering.

       Dante warns his readers not to pass a certain point in his Divine Comedy unless they are reverent and truly pondering the worth and meaning of his words. He explains that entering through the gates of Hell in a lighthearted manner and looking for amusement will ultimately lead to destruction and death. Dante knew that people could find amusement in his Inferno.

        Hell is real. Sin is real. Evil is real. It isn't to be taken lightly. I'd like to give the same warning; I would encourage you to NOT watch this video if you are looking for amusement in listening to a Mark Driscoll rant. Granted, they are amazingly wonderful and Biblically correct and sometimes very funny -- not this time.

        I imagine some could find amusement in the most horrific of murders. After-all, don't we entertain ourselves when reading a murder mystery or listening intently to details of the latest murder on the news? Yes, yes, I'm pulling from Neil Postman -- appropriately.

        Ironically, and because of this murder, I hope you all have a wonderful Easter, filled with joy, laughter, and God's blessings.


         Much Love,
                Kait


P.S. I know the video is an hour long but it is worth listening to. :-)  

Made Something from Pinterest!

Gingerbread "Larabar" Balls -- from here (she made hers into gingerbread men, but I made mine into little balls. :)). I found them on Pinterest, and they are definitely tasty.

Sorry for the blurry! My camera is being rotten.

I made the gingerbread ones, but the girl had recipes for lots of flavors. Most of them were girlscout cookie flavors, which I don't really like. But these gingerbread ones were SO yummy! I think I added some extra spices, but I left the other proportions as is. Oh, and I soaked & roasted the almonds to make them more digestible. I am definitely going to make these again! Next time I might try switching out some of the dates for a tarter dried fruit, because Ryan thought they were a little sweet. But I was really impressed that they didn't taste very much like dates!

Anyway, if you like Larabars, you should try these... :)

Love,
Courtney

Snack Fix

I get a pretty decent case of the munchies between meals but I seem to have a hard time resisting the bad-for-you stuff. However, after watching a video about the crazy stuff that's in processed foods yesterday I was feeling inspired so I made (drum roll, please!) Kale chips! And they weren't half bad. Haha, I mean if I was able to munch down a baking tray of them they really must have been pretty good! Although I attribute most of their eatability to the garlic. Also they shrink up a lot so what started out as a single layer of leaves filling a baking sheet cooked down to a teenie-tiny amount. (Note: To watch the video you sign in with your name and email but I haven't gotten a bunch of junk mail from them, also, the video is only up for another day or so... eh heh)

Here is the recipe I used:

Ingredients:
1 bunch curly kale
1 TBSP cold pressed olive oil
1 clove garlic
(Optional: Sea salt, paprika, cayenne pepper, or chili flakes in you want some extra zip.)

Instructions:
1. Preheat your oven to 175. (or 200 if that's as low as your oven will go, mine goes to 160 surprisingly)
2.Cut out the woody inner cores of the leaves and discard.
3.Tear or cut remaining leaves into bite-sized pieces. In a large bowl combine kale, olive oil, and garlic. Make sure all the leaves are coated. (Because the leaves are curly I used my fingers to spread the olive oil into the nooks and crannies.)
4. Arrange kale in a single layer (no overlapping) on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake until crisp, approximately 2 hours.

(Notes in italics are mine.)

Happy Snacking!
~Noble

Will Cook For Food

   I really enjoy cooking. I do. It's just that lately it seems like it takes *all* *day* to get dinner on the table on time which kind of sucks the fun out of it. I'm usually more of a "start dinner at five be ready to eat at six" kinda gal, and I've been cornered into starting prep work at two or three in the afternoon! (One time I chopped stuff up at noon. Ugh.) But! None of that complaining changes the fact that I still like tasty food! So here are some new and some not-so-new meals I made recently! (I promise, we do eat more vegetables, I just never manage to photograph them.)

Spicy Sausage Shepherds Pie

This one is new! I found the recipe in one of the R.R. magazines that I cut up and put into my recipe binder (a project I finished, btw! whoo!). Ours was not spicy though, since ground turkey was on sale that week and regular sausage was not. I tried to pep it up by myself but I'm afraid I erred on the safe side of spicy. All in all it was fairly easy and pretty yummy! Funny story though. *ALWAYS* go by weight of potatoes as opposed to body count. I ended up with twice as much mashed potatoes as I needed, but thankfully I was able to reuse them in another meal. (I'll eat mashed potatoes twice in a week if you twist my arm hard enough. ;-P) 

Mom's chicken gravy over mashed-potato-biscuits. 

This recipe is not so new, but it is still delicious! I was very proud of myself for thinking to shape the leftover mashed potatoes from the previous dinner into biscuit shapes and then broil them until they were nice and golden on top. (The crisped part tastes just like french fries. Yum!)

                                                                             

                                         Fried Egg Sandwich

Also not new, but we do love a good homemade fried egg sandwich. I like to put Dijon mustard, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and lettuce on mine in addition to the egg and what ever breakfast meat we have floating around in the fridge. (We adore regular bacon, but the Canadian kind will do in a pinch!)

                                     Biscuit Cinnamon Rolls

Now this isn't a meal per-say but it was a quick weekend treat I whipped up on a Saturday morning. I love JoyTheBaker, I follow her blog and listen to her podcast, she is *awesome*. I really enjoy her style of writing. I'm not quite sure if I did these quite right though, as they weren't as cinnamon-y as I was hoping. But who knows, maybe I'll have better luck next time!

 I will try to do a better job of taking photos of our meals  next time so that y'all don't think we exist solely on white flour and mashed potatoes. Because we don't. I promise. 

Happy Meal Time!
~Noble

My List

It's the Courtney edition of Reading:Listening:Watching. :)

(Here is a picture of what I spend most of my time listening to and watching. ;))

Reading:
--Total Church by Tim Chester. This book is presenting a "new" (Biblical, so not exactly new ;)) view of church community, and presents some practical stories about how that is working out in this guy's church in England. We're working through this in a book study with some of our friends and it is really good so far! Very challenging and thought-provoking as we try to figure out which of the book's principles we agree with, and what to do with them once we agree with them.

-- A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan. This book is described by the author as "a Christian existential horror novel," which I wish I'd known before reading it, haha. I probably still would have read it, since it was for a book club, but I would have been more prepared. Yikes! The book was SO well written, and very gripping...but very horrible. I don't think I'll read it again, and I don't exactly recommend it unless you're up for cannibalism, necrophilia, and general craziness. But I will definitely read other books by this guy, cause they're not all horror, and he's a good writer.

-- The Warden by Anthony Trollope (free for kindle or e-reader!). I just started this last night, even though Kaitie has been telling me about Trollope for a long time! So far I *love* it. I guess it's a dual commentary on hot-headed young reformers (like us ;)) and stodgy traditionalists. We'll see how it turns out!

Listening:
-- Matt Maher, at my brother's suggestion. Very fun!

-- Sermons from Mars Hill, particularly the Real Marriage sermon series. Too funny, Noble, that you've been reading the book! I haven't read it yet, but I've been loving the sermons. They're encouraging and challenging at the same time.

Watching:
-- Frasier. This is a 90s tv show that a friend of mine talked about on Facebook the other day, and now I'm hooked. It cracks me up, it cracks Ryan up, and it's set in Seattle. Definitely not from a Christian worldview, but still so funny. (Another plus, it's available on Netflix InstantPlay!)

-- Miss Marple. 4 new episodes just made it onto Netflix InstantPlay, and I just can't resist a good mystery show. :) I was telling Ryan the other day that I've probably learned most of my modern history through mystery shows...I realized I can name a mystery show set in pretty much every decade in the 1900s.

The List

You know, *the* List. The list of all the fascinating educational stuff I've been reading. And listening to. And watching.

  Dear Reader:
Give Them Grace by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson - This was a very interesting half-read; it was due back to the library before I could finish and someone else had a hold on it so I couldn't renew mine so I'll have to wait to review it. Not sure I totally agreed with the part I read though so it should be interesting to go back and see how it turns out.

 Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll - I know there was a big hub-bub over a bit of the Q&A section of this book but the rest of the book was*excellent*. Noel and I both really enjoyed it and it gave us some good stuff to talk about.

Management In The Home by Lillian Gilbreth - This book was really fun to read since I *love* the Gilbreths' story. And (of course) there were some really good ideas about organizing your home and your time to accomplish things more efficiently. (I would love to have a "baking station" in my kitchen someday.)

Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott -  Seriously, this comic makes me laugh till I cry. Every strip is excruciatingly and hilariously accurate. The best.

How To Be Free From Bitterness by Jim Wilson - The ladies' book group is reading this right now. It's so good and so convicting!

   Music To My Ears:

 Walking With The Wise by Sovereign Grace Music - I stumbled across this really cool CD for kids while listening to one of SGM's other albums on Spotify. I really like it, the songs are fun and not weird!

 Risen by Sovereign Grace Music - This is the other SGM album I was listening to. I really like the first song, "Alive".  (Momma, I've been practicing the harmony part!)

It Will Rain by Bruno Mars - Somehow this song keeps making an appearance. So does Adele's Set Fire To The Rain. What is is with these songs? I have no idea but they're kinda stuck in my head.


   Visions of Splendor:

Pysch - I have to say I was a little skeptical of this show when I first started watching it but four seasons and five episodes later I am totally into it! This is my go-to show when I have to bounce Addie to sleep. (Which is several times a day.)

The King's Speech - A super fascinating movie about George the VI and his speech impediment. (Disclaimer: There's one scene with an abundance of bad words but other than that it's pretty clean!)

The Young Visiters - Hilarious! And it was fun to see a younger Hugh Laurie.

And there you have it! As you can see I'm  a very easily entertained busy lady and I would love to hear your recommendations for, well, anything! Books, music, and movies, I'm all ears!

Can I get a "Lol!"?