What I Learned in May

PODCAST TUESDAY!!!

I know this is the most random conglomeration of stories ever, but I promise it's worth it!!

Listen here

 Yes, I know it is not the last day of the month, but two things caused me to post my "What I learned" a day early. First, I don't plan on learning anything today, so I should be safe. (TOTALLY KIDDING!) Secondly, yesterday was a super busy day, and I didn't get a chance to write  a post just for this day. So without further ado, here are the things I learned in May!

1. My body rebels against a detox/cleanse.

And don't we all, I'm sure, in some way? Isn't that kind of the point of a cleanse or detox? To shock your system back to health and life? But seriously, I learned that my body freaks out in unhealthy ways. Not sleeping at all and feeling like I'm hallucinating? Not worth it to me. I think I'll just be more conscious in my eating choices. It works better for me.

2. Ryan and I still hate being apart.

We were told the longer we were married, the more we would "get over" the need to be together all the time. Hasn't. Happened. Yet. Ryan was gone all day for the Saturday and Sunday of one weekend, and the following weekend, we were apart all evening Friday and most of Sunday afternoon. We decided that's too much. We love being together, and we don't apologize for it!

3. In busy seasons, we rely on color-coded itineraries.

We had a couple of stretches this month that were too busy. TOO busy. The kind of busy where you have to schedule in bathroom breaks if you really want them. So I resorted to creating color coded documents that outlined our every waking hour and told us what we needed to accomplish and who was in charge of it. We couldn't live like that every day, but when we have to, we must have organization.  

4. I love, love, love, having our garage finished for entertaining.

Truly one of the best decisions we made (even though it nearly cost us our sanity when it was in process) was to finish off the garage so it could be used as an additional living space. Hosting Mommapalooza 4.0 out there was so freeing!  Everyone felt a lot more comfortable with the extra space!

5. The Ninja has revolutionized our coffee grinding experience.

Ryan gave me a Ninja system for my birthday, which was THE most perfect gift. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it yet (hello, busy May!) but we used it to grind our coffee right after we opened the box, and my GOODNESS. What used to take 15 minutes to complete took about a minute and a half. No. Way.

6. Ryan and I make a great team at events.

I love being in a partnership with Ryan, and I love having him accompany me to events. It makes me so happy! But my visit to IWU was the first time he stood up front and helped me with a presentation. It went seamlessly. We had rehearsed several times, but I was so excited to see how well it went in real time. I am thankful beyond words for a husband who doesn't just support the work I'm called to do, but he crawls into it with me and takes an active role.

7. I love writing curriculum.

Back in the day, I wanted to be a teacher, but I elected not to pursue it once I saw how the education field was changing (even 20 years ago). This month I wrote some curriculum for a workshop I'm leading this summer, and I adored every moment of that work. Ryan would come home to find me in the same spot I'd been in when he left for work, and I was a TERRIBLE wife on those days, but it fed my soul in amazing ways to write for teaching purposes!

And that's been May in a nutshell! Here's to learning even more in June! 

What I Learned in April

WOW. So April ends on Sunday. WHAT? I realized about two days ago that a new month is looming RIGHT NOW and I need to hurry to make sure I have my goals made, my birthday cards ordered, and my schedule set, because May is fixin' to be one cuh-ra-zay busy month in Shafferland. So while I anticipate that what I'll learn next month is to hang onto my hat, here's a peek at what I learned in April!

1. I am so glad we did a tiny destination wedding.

Ryan's sister is getting married this year and is in the throes of heavy wedding planning. This month, I was invited to a few of the meetings with a bunch of the family girls, and while it was fun (because hello! Wedding!), I realized I'm so glad we had a tiny little wedding that was far, far away. I know we hurt and disappointed a lot of people who wanted to attend our wedding and couldn't, because it was too far, but for my anxious personality, that itty bitty wedding was so perfect, and I'm glad we did it that way. I don't think I realized just how much until I was reminded of the enormity of traditional wedding planning!

2. Cozy mysteries are an actual genre.

I probably shouldn't be admitting out loud that I did not know that, because it probably reveals a giant flaw in my literature-loving understanding. But when I interviewed Ann Gabhart earlier this month about her Hidden Springs Mystery series, we talked about how they had such a lightheartedness about them, compared to the dark, heavy suspense of other crime novels I've read. And that's where I learned about cozy mysteries. In these books, the violence is written in a much more toned-down manner to allow the reader a more comfortable experience, while still getting to participate in a mystery.

3. You can purchase riced cauliflower.

Am I the only one who didn't know about this? I found a recipe to try this month that made "breadsticks" out of cauliflower. The instructions said to grind up the cauliflower in a blender until it was the size of pieces of rice. Someone had commented and asked if she could just use frozen riced cauliflower. What? You can buy it already processed? For a girl who has the worst blender ever made, this was very exciting news! Save time and headache? OKAY!!!!!

4. I drink water better if it's cold.

I'm not a bad water-drinker. I'm thankful for that because I hated water when I was a kid and pretty much refused to drink it. But as an adult, I started enjoying it and it's all we have here at home, really. We don't keep pop in the house and I don't even make tea all that often. But I had noticed that even though I'm pretty good at drinking water, I wasn't getting in as much as I wanted. And that's when I discovered that I drink it much better if it's cold. How did I not know this about myself until just now? 

5.  Lawn rollers can be filled with water.

When I was a kid, I remember every spring, my dad would hire a guy from town to come out to their property with his big heavy roller. I'd be instructed to stay far away while the man drove his tractor slowly through the massive yard, leveling the ground so Dad could proceed with the first mowing of the season. This year, Ryan borrowed a roller from a friend of his, with the intent of rolling our yard and one of his co-worker's yards. When I asked how he planned to heft that thing into his truck and drive it to her house, he just stared at me funny and said, "Just empty it?" Empty it? That's when I found out that these modern, newfangled rollers are plastic and hollow, and you just fill them up with water to create the weight. When you're done, you empty it out and you could lift the whole thing one-handed. Who knew? 

6. My husband can rock a flamingo suit like you wouldn't believe.

 This absolutely falls under "sentences I never expected to type" and also is entirely self-explanatory.

7. Traction isn't as scary as I thought.

I tried it for the first time this month. I have a lot of tightness and discomfort (we'll stop short of calling it pain, because it's really not pain) in my neck, which I'm sure comes from a combination of carrying all my stress there and sitting in front of a computer for pretty much every waking hour of my life. I always thought traction was like some horrible immobilizing thing you were stuck in for life if you broke your back or something. But I found this very relaxing and helpful in stretching out my poor strained neck!

So that's what I learned. What about you? Any April revelations?

What I Learned in March

Last day of March, people! While I have not hated this month at all, I'm kind of happy to see it come to a close, because I'm looking forward to April and May! Lots of fun things planned in those two months, so I'm ready to get started! Meanwhile, March was not lost. I learned much, and so did Ryan! (He makes an appearance on this list this time!) Check out what the Shaffers learned over the last month! :)


1. Trying to navigate the waters of simple health care is not for the faint of heart.

It's not a problem for me to (try to) help my parents with all the steps and decisions that have come along after Mom's hip replacement. So please don't take point number one as a complaint that I "have to help." It's not that at all. It's that the whole world of health care is like a foreign language, and apparently you can only learn it by jumping in and starting to speak. Simple things (like trying to get a walker through insurance) take far too much time, effort, hoop jumping, and rejection. I mean, for real. It is just. a. walker. It. should. not. be. this. hard. What do people do when they don't have family to help? I am very sure I have no idea, but I have had a sad and heavy heart more than once this month witnessing the confused faces of older people trying to go it alone.

2. "Dressing up" to work each day helps!

Perhaps a more accurate way to state that would be "getting dressed" to work each day helps! In the last year, I got into quite a routine of working in shorts/yoga pants/t-shirts (according to the weather). I loved it because it was the first time in my life I could dress down every day, because I'm my own boss and I have no dress code. But in March, I worked my way through the creation of my spring capsule wardrobe, which required actually getting dressed in real outfits each day. (And since I was taking pictures to chronicle the adventure, it also required doing my hear, and wearing makeup and jewelry.) It was interesting to me to see how those efforts actually increased my productivity. I will still have dress-down days in my future, but this has been an interesting discovery!


3. Open shelving is not a good fit for me.

Before Ryan and I bought this house, one of the properties we fell in love with was a downtown loft-style condo with not one single upper cabinet to be found in the entire kitchen. I wasn't sure how I felt about that whole open-shelving style of cabinets, but the exposed brick wall trumped the missing cabinets (for me). Well, this month, as we refinished our kitchen cabinets, we took down the cabinet doors for a while, and it didn't take me long to realize I am not an open shelving kind of girl. Some looked okay, but most just looked cluttered and the whole thing made me nervous. It's pretty if you have the right pieces for the shelves. But we don't. Back to cabinets we go.

4. Inductive Bible study fascinates me.

The short-term ladies Bible study I joined this month is using the inductive study method (probably most well-known in Kay Arthur studies, which is what we're doing. There are some other similar inductive methods that are a bit different from hers, too. Saw them on Pinterest. (Of course.) But I enjoy the color coding and the way this method pushes me to look for themes in Scripture that I'd otherwise gloss over. I've decided I need to do some more studying on this form of study (did you follow that??) and implement it more in my personal devo time!

5. The IWU Chorale singing A Mighty Fortress still makes me cry.

They went on their spring break tour to Florida earlier this month, and a bunch of concert snippets were posted to Facebook. I watched A Mighty Fortress and cried all the way through it. It's been doing that to me for 20 years now.

6. Joanna Gaines and I are almost exactly the same age.

I've been helping a friend this month by watching her five kids a couple of hours each week. The two oldest (7 and 5) love watching Fixer Upper, so we always watch the most recent episode when they come over. The other day they asked me when Joanna's birthday was, and I had no idea, so I looked it up. Turns out she was born about three weeks before I was! 

7. (This one is Ryan's.) Sometimes people speak at bridal showers.

Next month, I'm speaking at a bridal shower for a friend, and when the invitation to the shower arrived in the mail, Ryan looked at it and then asked me whose idea it was to have me speak at this shower, because he'd never heard of such a thing. I told him when I was a kid, there were devo speakers at all the baby and bridal showers our church had. His response? "Huh! Never heard of it. What I learned in March!" So I figured I better document that. I actually haven't heard anyone speak at a shower for many years, but I'm looking forward to trying my hand at it!  

What I Learned in February

It's podcast Tuesday! This week we pay tribute to some of the HILARIOUS things my mom said pre and post op. She's so funny! And a shout out to Ryan's fifth grade love..

Listen here!

Now...on to today's blog!

It may have been a short month, but it was not short on new insights! Here is at least some of what I learned in the month of February! I'd like to think there were more insights along the way, but this is a good list!

1. You really can sneak cauliflower into a soup in place of potatoes.

I didn't sneak them in to be sneaky to Ryan. I did it to see if it was true that you really can't taste the difference. My friend Allison gave me a cheeseburger soup recipe and told me she swapped out the potatoes called for in the recipe with a head of cauliflower {chopped, of course}. She said she mashed it up into smaller pieces as it cooked and her kids didn't realize she had replaced potatoes with a healthier veggie. So when I made the soup, I did the same, and Ryan didn't catch it either. I was surprised, too, as I ate the soup, that I couldn't taste cooked cauliflower. {It's admittedly not my favorite vegetable in its cooked state. I don't mind it raw.} Sneaky veggies for the win! I'll be sharing my modification of this one soon!

2. Social media has become such a happy place for me since I employed rapid use of the "hide post" button.

I love social media. And one of the things I love about it is that it serves a million different purposes. Everyone wants what they want out of it, and that's great! Know what I want out of it? Baby pictures and cute puppies and Bible verses and those sorts of things. So this month I made the executive decision that I would hide all political posts on Facebook. I would hide them whether I agreed or disagreed. Whether they made me happy or mad. Political? Gone. I don't unfollow the people. I just hide the posts. And oh my goodness! What a difference it has made. I'm able to go and just smile when I see Facebook now, and that makes me happy. I can still read the news articles in other forums, and I do. But on that one space, I just want to find real life info about real people that I know and their cute puppies and babies!

3. Weighted blankets just might be a little miracle.

I have a friend who has started making weighted blankets as a side job. She made one for her son to help with some of his issues {I have no idea what they are} and then people started asking her to make them for sale, so she did. I'd read various articles that talked about how the weight helps with restlessness and anxiety and such things, and I'm sure those of you parenting kids with any of those issues could speak much more articulately than I on the matter. Well! When I went to the dentist this month, I was due for x-rays, so the assistant put the weighted vest on me for that, and immediately I felt calm and relaxed. (And that's good because the x-ray plates get into my gag reflex zone and cause a good amount of anxiety for me.) I relaxed so much that I contemplated asking her if she could just leave it on me when the x-rays were done. But I didn't. However, I have to say, I can see how the miracle of the weighted blanket isn't just all talk. It's real!

4. You can buy wood wicks for candles.

My sister introduced me to WoodWick candles several years ago, and they are my favorites. Have you ever had one? The wicks are wooden and crackle like a fireplace, making the whole candle-burning experience extra delightful. But the candles are definitely pricey, making the much more of a treat than an everyday experience. But I learned (via the magic of Pinterest, of course) that you can actually buy wood wicks and use them to make your own candles! I've never been a candle maker but this absolutely intrigues me!

5. I don't like almond milk.

In a rather embarrassing turn of events at Starbucks this month, I accidentally grabbed someone else's drink by mistake. I didn't realize anyone was ahead of me in line and when my chosen drink was declared - except made with almond milk - I thought the barista just messed up the milk choice. I hated to waste the drink and have her redo it, so I grabbed it and started sampling. I. did. not. like. it. at. all. And right about the time I was insisting I would power through anyway, she called out MY drink. The same one, made with skim milk. THAT'S when I realized a lady over in the corner had just not claimed her drink and I'd grabbed it. The lady whose drink I stole by mistake was ever so gracious about it. The barista? Not so much. I had a very red face, but in the process, I learned I don't like almond milk!

6. Making freezer meals is a fun, yet exhausting activity.

If you missed the post last week, I'll fill you in by telling you I made freezer meals for my parents to have on hand following my mom's recent hip replacement. I wanted to make meals that were done and ready to eat, so all they had to do was defrost and heat them. No additional prep required. It took me an entire Saturday from morning to night, but I prepared and individually portioned out thirty whole meals and two kinds of cookies. It was a lot of fun to do, but my feet were killing me by evening.


7. If you need answers to your tax questions, check the scrapbooks.

Ryan's been working tirelessly on our taxes over the last few weeks, and he comes up with occasional questions of when we did certain things so he knows where to look for receipts or whatever. On more than one occasion, my too-detailed-for-most-people scrapbooks have provided the necessary answers. Scrapbooking for the win in a brand new way!

What I Learned in January

How in THE WORLD is it the end of January???? When I did my week planning on Sunday, I flipped over to February's tab in my planner, and it was just so weird. But weird or not, the end of January has arrived, and I am prepared to carry on with my monthly tradition of sharing the things I've learned in the last 30 days. Hope you enjoy!!


Before I share my list, it is Tuesday, which of course means there's a new podcast! You'll get to hear a little more about our "A" date (see yesterday's blog for photos of that) and also Ryan's big dream fulfilled this weekend. (And I didn't even know it was a dream!)

Listen here.

Okay...NOW on to the lessons learned in the not-super-wintry month of January! 

1. The materials used on floats in the Rose Parade have to be all-natural. 

Maybe I'm the last person on earth to know this, but I sure did not have a clue until this year! Ryan isn't a big parade lover anyway, but he knows I like them, so we watched a bit of the Rose parade and I kept hearing all the talk of ground rice and coffee beans and such things being used on floats, so I had to look it up. True story! All natural items are required. Impressive to see what they came up with and how authentic it all looked!

2. I like reading old books.

Like ACTUAL old books. Old copies of old books. Not reprints of old books. Mom gave me her copy of The Secret Garden, which was given to her in 1947, and it was extra fun to read this American classic from pages that were equally classic. 

3. Writing Scripture is a helpful practice.

One of the new things I'm trying this year is writing out a few verses each day. I'm following the plan from here, and I'm learning that pausing to focus on verses long enough to write them out with my own hand is a good thing for me. It makes me ponder and retain the topics, and I'm looking forward to learning much through this practice this year!

4. We {as in the Shaffers} were not created to live on chicken alone.

Ryan's gallbladder issues this month forced us to eat a very bland, all chicken based diet for a while. Now, we love chicken as much as anyone else, but we sorely missed variety in our diet! Thankful that Ryan was able to have surgery so quickly to remove the offending gallbladder, and we have enjoyed reintroducing variety and flavor to our diet! 

5. Potty training a ten-year-old cat is definitely classified as an adventure.

If you've somehow missed the posts this month, well, I'm sorry, first of all, but the news is that Ryan has decided he's so over cleaning out litter boxes, so Braeya has been on a toilet training adventure. Because when the folks on Shark Tank say you can train a cat to use a toilet, he took them seriously. Somehow I think it has to be easier to train a tiny human than an old cat, though she has done better than I expected. I'll give her that! {And yes, in this photo, she has curled up in the litter to rest. Sigh.}

6. Ryan, coming out of surgery, is HILARIOUS.

I am just straight up sorry all of you had to miss having a front row seat to watching Ryan come out from under the anesthesia after surgery. He was absolutely hysterical. I wanted to film the whole thing, but alas, I was afraid the nurses would yell at me for it. (Even though I knew he would want me to be filming and has completely enjoyed the short clip I did get. I knew what I was doing.) So funny. I don't want him to require surgery ever again in his lifetime, but if ever he does, we know we're in for a treat on the flip side!

7. Out of eight new recipes I tried this month, six were good enough to make again.

Between getting back to a stricter version of clean eating (after a very UNCLEAN! December) and Ryan's diet needs during the gallbladder days, I tried a lot of new dishes this month. My two failures were, ironically, the first two things I made, and it made me a bit nervous for the future of the month! I tried a slow cooker spinach quiche that we ruled out because it wasn't flavorful enough, and a skinny Baja chicken taco recipe that had a clean Chipotle sauce on it, and I'm pretty sure that contributed to Ryan's worst gallbladder attack. OUT with that recipe! But you can look forward to seeing (at some point) recipes for chicken taco soup, a spinach chicken salad with oranges, cranberries and almonds, chicken nuggets, Blizzard cookies, chicken noodle soup, and chicken Parmesan strips! My goal was to try one new recipe a week, and while there were a couple of weeks when I did not, the number I tried averaged out to double the goal!

So that's what I've learned in the merry month of January! :) How about you? Any new things?  

Linking up with Tamar!

What I Learned in December

Tomorrow is the last day of 2016 {WHAT?!?!?!!?} and I'll be Saturday Sixing, so I thought I'd tell you today all the things I learned this fine month! So, without further ado, I present to you...

1. Christmas trees {at least around here} are much more affordable from a grocery store lot than a tree lot.

This is the first year of our marriage that Ryan and I did not go to a Christmas tree lot to cut down our own live tree. We had planned to, but weather changed our plans and we had to come up with an alternative at that point, because of time constraints. We went to the grocery store, where all the trees in the lot were the same price and ended up getting the biggest, nicest tree we've ever had...for the least amount of money we've ever spent!

2. You can buy cream cheese in big box bricks - like Velveeta cheese!

Did you know that?? Ryan and I were meandering through the Sam's Club samples earlier this month, and one of the ladies was in the middle of assembling this croissant/prosciutto/cream cheese thing, and I have no idea what sales pitch she gave, because all I could see was this GIANT brick of cream cheese. I spent the next five minutes hunting the refrigerated section for it. If you're making a bunch of frosted cookies, it is way more cost-effective than buying a bunch of little boxes at the regular store.  

3. I. Am. So. Over. The. Endless. Colds.

I got sick in September. Then, over six weeks later, I got well. Then I got sick again on Thanksgiving. Then I got well. Then Ryan got it. Then he gave it back to me. We're tired of being sick. {And yes, we're eating well, drinking lots of water, washing our hands, getting rest, taking vitamins, swimming in oils, and doing all the stuff. It's just a rough germ year.} I do think we are officially on the mend now. And fortunately, I don't think we managed to RE-get it at any of the Christmases where others had it!

4. Ryan wishes the yule log channel played year round.

Do you guys watch this channel at Christmas? The yule log and the music? Ryan LOVES it and if it played all year - even if it played CHRISTMAS music all year, I think - he would watch it! I fear for the day it goes away and he has to resume watching regular programming!

5. I am terrified of sledding.

Even if sledding is done on ice down a short driveway. This photo proves why. I'm sorry, Ryan, that the toboggan run is never happening.

6. The cookie scoop has revolutionized my baking experience.

I've developed a fond affinity for cookie baking, and I mentioned in passing that I would really love to have a cookie scoop to make it go faster. My award winning husband showed up later that same day with said scoop and gifted it to me. First of all: swoon. Second of all: cookie scoop FOR THE WIN!!!!! {He also got me that spatula that removes cookies from the pan four at a time. BONUS!}

7. When at a loss for a gift idea for your husband, check Twitter.

 I needed one good gift to kick Ryan's stocking gifts out of lame and into cool, and I was STUMPED. To take a break, I scrolled through Twitter and found that Beth Moore was having a similar issue finding a gift for her husband. She asked Twitter what she should get, so I popped right in and read every answer. And that's where I found the idea for a drone. I have seriously never seen Ryan so excited about a gift in his whole life. Thanks, Twitterverse!

8. Creatures with eyes should not be on buffets.

 No. Just no. 

9. I should just accept help on building websites.

Last month I reported that website building was not for the faint of heart or the technology challenged, and I'm both. Well, one of my friends happens to have gifts and skills in that area, and after she learned I was struggling, she reached out and offered to help me. I drove a couple of hours to her house and spent the entire day with her, accepting her help and trying to learn a bit of the trade. Made. All. The. Difference. In. The. World. Julie, you are a rock star!!!

That's it! I'm as smart as I"m going to get for 2016! We'll see what kinds of things I can learn next year! :)