Amen!  Are you following Him?  To follow Him is to have Life Eternal!!!

Notice the title change?  Um, yeah, it’s because I haven’t done a whole lot of cooking, for obvious reasons.  However, we’re not starving!  Sweet people have brought in some delicious meals for us to warm up when we get home from the hospital each day.

Not picking favorites, but I have to give an honest blue ribbon to this wonderful Potato Soup, brought to us by one of the incredible young moms.  Though she has three young girls, a full-time job, and many responsibilities each day, she somehow managed to get a meal together for us.  Wow, it’s hard to accept the graciousness of someone you know is so busy, but it was so helpful to us, and I won’t steal her blessing of serving.  I like potato soup, but I LOVED this recipe.  The hash browns are why I love it so much.  It’s just little pieces of potatoes, oh yeah, mixed in with the cream cheese  and chicken broth.  What’s not to love?!

Here’s her recipe that comes from Paula Deen:

I know I mention outfits often, but hey, we all have to dress, right?  Why not make it as enjoyable and creative as we can?! If you have a husband, remember that he is visual.  A smart wife will play that to her advantage and dress in a way that is becoming, modest (in public), and attractive to him!

 I find myself stumped sometimes  to put my clothes together in a different way – not always wearing that sweater with that blouse, or that jacket with that skirt.  I found a neat site that helps me be creative with clothes I already have in my closet.  This site is Polyvore, a place where people can mix and match items from clothes on their site to create a whole outfit.

                                
 If you go here, you’ll see the outfit pictured above that someone created from J.Crew.  I don’t own anything J.Crew, but I did have some similar items in my closet and was able to get a good idea of pieces to put together. 

It’s really fun to scroll through the pages of outfits and see what you can put together that is similar.  Though I haven’t done it yet, you can also put outfits of your own together on their site.  You just select pieces from each category, add accessories and there you go! 

We don’t have to go shopping, necessarily, to have an outfit we enjoy wearing and feel good in.  That cute ensemble might just be hanging in your closet just waiting to be put together!  Refresh your wardrobe and give Polyvore a look!

Be refreshed,

We had a super fun ladies activity at church this week.  We had Pinterest party! We have many creative women at church and one of those young moms, Christina, took upon herself the planning and preparing of this fun event. Everyone was asked to bring $5 and a snack.  We enjoyed recipes that had been found or pinned onto Pinterest, but we spent most of the evening creating crafts that were found there.  We had a great time and came home with adorable fruits from our labors!

This was probably my favorite:

The instructions can be found here.

This is the recipe I took for our snack.  I can’t say I made it because my sweet daughter, Alli, made it for me.  It was a big hit! This is a White Pizza Dip. 

I took a little taste with a tortilla chip (I had to make sure it was good!) and that’s a great dipper.  But when I took it to church, I toasted French bread slices and that was really good with the dip!  A cracker would be good too. 

If you need an appetizer for a Christmas event, this will be a hit!  You might want to make two bowls, though, because you’ll want more than just a taste for yourself!  It’s easy and super good!

From my parsonage windows,

The Christmas cards are almost all made, but need signatures and address.  The laundry is washed and dried, but now sits cold and crumpled in the dryer.  Forty-seven Emails are waiting to be read. It seems that completing a task is impossible right now.  Have you ever been there?  It happens in a variety of settings – a new baby enters the house, you move into a new home and aren’t settled yet, or a crisis comes.  The “normal” routine is replaced with dysfunction.  The plans carefully written out on the planner are now only fleeting thoughts, never written anywhere. 

This is exactly where I found myself yesterday.  I felt like I was moving aimlessly from one little task to another, yet never really completing anything.  While I was folding the laundry on the unmade guest bed, I whispered in the empty house, “Lord, what am I supposed to do now? Please help me.”  I finished the task at hand, then moved on to cleaning the hardwood floor.  Once I was down on my knees, a song came to my mind,