It's the Weekly Recap!

* Last Sunday I had lunch with my parents after church. And I took pictures of these very pretty flowers - which Dad bought for Mom.
When I got home, I found the movie Dante's Peak was on TV...haven't seen that for years, so I curled up in the fat chair to watch it/nap and when I got up, I went on a cooking spree! I made the entire VAT of chicken tortilla soup you saw a couple of days ago and a batch of quick bread. My dishwasher got a WORKOUT.

* Monday was of course, President's Day, and in honor of that...I worked. I've never had a job that had this (and various similar holidays) off work, so I attend and mourn the lack of mail delivery. :) But I'm telling you what...this was NOT the day to miss work in the land of radio. Check out what showed up in our break room! (And NO, the missing pieces were not mine.)
* Tuesday evening, I went over to visit my friend Ronda and to take her some get-better-soon food. Hard to believe this time last year we were just about to take off for our Florida vacation!! Ahhh Florida...how I miss thee. :) Also on Tuesday, I got my nails done for the first time in two months! I have SO MISSED my nail lady! She spent almost two months visiting her kids and I learned I truly am incapable of taking care of my own nails. Ick! So now she's back and I am all fixed. (It's black with sparkles....they didn't show up too well in the picture.)
* Wednesday was the first day of Lent, and I was excited to survive day one of being dessertless. (MAMA.) Thankfully I didn't give up SUGAR and a little caramel latte on my trip home kept me from falling over completely. I had a GREAT surprise that evening when Angel from my old office came by my house to see me. I hadn't seen her since last fall and I've missed laughing with her. (She has THE best laugh in the world.)

* Thursday, Lynne and I took the afternoon to cook for Friday's show...and to catch up on other random work details. Here is one of our dishes. (No, I didn't cheat on Lent in the name of work to try it.)Can I just say one more time how much I adore spending time with Lynne? Hours just fly by...she's so much fun. I may or may not have stopped by the Hobby Lobby (again) on my way home.

* Friday evening I actually had plans! I was so excited! After work, I went to see my friends the Crandalls...and Julie and I went to see Jonathan (as in her husband) in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace. I'd never seen (or even known anything about) the play before, but it was FUNNY! Jonathan did a great job!
While we were at the play, slick roads descended upon Indiana, so it was a little bit of a wheel-gripper drive home. I was just glad that I was not ON I-69...when I drove under it, the traffic was at a standstill. Jackknifed semi.


* Saturday morning, I got a text at 7:30 telling me the sunrise was pretty. My first thought was "Did I oversleep on a work day?" LOL! I couldn't figure out why anyone would text me about a Saturday sunrise! But I got up and checked it out - and indeed: GORGEOUS!! And then I went back to bed. My friend Kristin stopped by to see me for a little bit, too, and I loved that. I also loved the way she asked if it would be okay to stop by. She texted me on Friday and said "I thought about stopping by around lunch time on Saturday...will you be up?" LOL!!! Does this girl know me or what!?! (I was up...just not out of my jammies yet.)

One Thousand Gifts: Do you know how hard it is to pick just one gift every week? Here's one I chose at random. I did a new workout this week and it um...nearly killed me. I awakened the second morning to muscles that said ATTENTION: PLEASE DO NOT MOVE. WE NO LONGER LOVE YOU. :) But even so, I was grateful to have muscles that do move...I know people who can't move and wish they could. So even though my body hated me for a bit, it was a gift to have the strength to do that crazy workout.

Organization Confessions: Confession...I have not organized one thing this entire month! I think this plan may not be working. (You think?)

Pinterest Inspired Project: You will be seeing more of this project over the next couple of days, but here is the Pinterest version:

Source: virginiaandcharlie.blogspot.com via Rebekah on Pinterest

And here is my version:
Stay tuned for more on this one!

Leaping into Lent

I'm not sure why Lent seems to sneak up on me like it does.

Two years ago I was driving to church on Ash Wednesday when God whispered that I needed to turn off the music and leave it off until Easter. I thought silent drives would kill me, but I learned to cherish that prayer time...and I had NO CLUE how much I'd need it, because I didn't know a desert lurked around the corner.

Last year I was in Florida riding to the beach when Marie texted me to ask if I was giving anything up for Lent...because it began the next day. Uhhhh...let me think about that! And that was the day God urged me to embrace the lyrics of FFH's song Undone and work on giving up my tight-fisted control on my life. I had no clue I was about to uproot my whole life and career and change directions.

So you can imagine my consternation this year when He said "You're getting awfully attached to dessert. I think you need to lay off the dessert for a season."

It's true. Dessert and I have long had a love/hate relationship. I love it. It loves me...in all the wrong places. I end up hating myself...and so the cycle goes. I'd done well with limiting my intake...until recently when I found myself cutting down on dinner so I had even more room for dessert. Bad, bad plan.

Do not mistake this...I'm not giving up dessert for Lent so I can lose a few pounds (though I would ever so happily welcome that side effect!). I'm giving up dessert for Lent because I was becoming dependent on it and I need to refocus. I need to remember that my greatest joy is not found in a brownie. My greatest joy is not encased in a warm cookie as it emerges from the oven. (Yes, my mouth is watering just writing about it.) My greatest joy is found in the Lord. And He has given me the willpower, should I choose to use it, to say no to dessert.

(I can see why sacrifice induces prayer.)

I leave you with this quote, which I read on Will Davis Jr.'s website. I thought it summed up Lenten sacrifice pretty well...and this is my own hope: "The Lenten season is a call to release things, to let let go of things and to set aside things that might interfere with our relationship with God so we can know him better. It’s not about setting aside cokes and snacks so we can lose weight. It’s about denying yourself things so you can gain God. And, it’s a great concept.
God is rarely found in the world of surplus...So the Bible calls us to seasons of fasting, prayer and self-denial so we can keep things and God in proper perspective."

Care Packages

I need to begin this blog post by saying these might be my WORST pictures ever. I had grand visions...and then I hurried through it, and if ever you needed proof that "haste makes waste," as my mother used to say, look at the pictures!!

Occasionally, in years gone by, I've been called upon at church to take a meal to a family who just had a baby...or perhaps someone had surgery. I never knew quite what to take, because sometimes I didn't know them all that well and I wasn't sure about their food preferences. And other times I knew they had lots of food coming in, and I wasn't sure if they had room for more!

So this week I took a little care package over to my friend Ronda, and I wanted to show you what I took in case you want to steal the idea. (Or adapt it to your own needs.)

First things first: balloons. Balloons are just cheery, so I picked up a few of those. (And of course, I picked THE windiest night of the week to make my delivery. Good grief.)
Then...the food!

Remember the chicken tortilla soup recipe I shared yesterday? The VAT of chicken tortilla soup? Once it had simmered and cooled, I dipped some into quart size Ziploc bags. (Before the dipping...I wrote on the bags in permanent marker "chicken tortilla soup.") There is enough soup in each bag for one REALLY GOOD sized serving or two small servings.
I stuck the bags on top of each other just like this and tucked them in the freezer so they froze in a flattened state. Little space saving trick I learned from Lynne.

I wanted to take her some quick bread, so I made snickerdoodle bread. We'll talk more about that another time. I like to take quick bread to people because it can easily be frozen if they don't need it right then, and when it is eaten, it works well as dessert or breakfast food. Versatile!

I also dipped some of the soup into a regular serving container so she could eat some of it right away. I sent some mozzarella cheese with it because, of course, soup tastes better with cheese in it!

And right before I went over, I pulled the soup packets out of the freezer and added little individual cheese bags to that, too. She can freeze them together and after everyone goes home and she gets hungry but doesn't feel like cooking...she can defrost and eat!

I also bought a bag of lime chips to go with it - and would you believe I COMPLETELY forgot those at home?? WOOPS!!

So that's my care package menu: chicken tortilla soup, mozzarella cheese, (the forgotten) lime chips, and quick bread! Easily frozen for later or gobbled up right away!

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Lynne Ford is many things. Among them - a fantastic cook. Several times, either when I've stayed at her house or when we've shared a whole day together in the office, she's served me a treat of her chicken tortilla soup. SO YUMMY.

My best memory of her soup was the night when I had to make a last minute decision to stay in Fort Wayne because of weather. The roads were SO slick and it took me an hour to get to her house (wayyyyyy longer than it should have). By the time I got there, I was tired, cold, shaking and scared. I put on my jammies, sat on her couch, and she brought me a fuzzy blanket. Then she brought a tray with a giant glass of iced tea, a HUGE bowl of chicken tortilla soup, and a plate of jalapeno flavored tortilla chips. She gave me the remote and told me to relax. Now THAT'S a hostess.

So I asked if she shared her recipe, and she said a hearty absolutely!!!!

The Recipe

2 cans of black beans, rinsed and drained
2 cans of garbanzo beans, drained
2 cans of corn, drained
1 onion (red or yellow), diced
1 rotisserie chicken (or package of chicken breasts/tenderloins)
32 ounce can of crushed tomatoes
2 ginormous (that was Lynne's term - I think she meant 64 ounce) cans of chicken broth
1 packet each of taco seasoning and ranch dip mix

In a VERY LARGE pot or Dutch oven, cook onion until it is translucent (add salt and pepper). Add beans and corn and a little more salt and pepper. Add crushed tomatoes and chicken broth. Dice the chicken and add o the soup. Stir in 2 tablespoons of taco seasoning and ranch dip mix. Bring soup to a boil, reduce heat and simmer with lid half-on for 45 minutes or more. The longer you cook it, the better. If you have fresh parsley on hand, add 2 or 3 Tablespoons of chopped parsley to the pot before you serve it.

I could not ind a 32 ounce can of crushed tomatoes, so I bought the closest I could find, which was 28 ounces. I also had a package of chicken tenderloins in the freezer, so I chose to use those instead of buying a rotisserie chicken. And in a rare Bekah-move, I did buy a real onion rather than using the dried onion like I always do.

If you use fresh chicken, put the raw chicken in a pot of water and boil until cooked through.

While the water boiled and the chicken cooked...I chopped the onion. Many tears later, I was done.

The first time I boiled chicken, it freaked me out when it got all frothy looking on top but it turns out that's normal.

Check the chicken to make sure it is cooked ALL the way through - no pink middles! - and then pull out of the boiling water.

Put the onion in the bottom of the pot...it will look SO little down there! Trust me. You will use the rest of the pot. Keep stirring - don't let it burn!

Cook until the onion is translucent....or if you're Bekah, cook until it looks "soft enough" and proceed to the next step. I have NO patience.

The grossest part of the whole recipe for me was draining and rinsing the black beans. They are awfully syrupy. Kind of freaked me out.

It's really colorful once you add both kinds of beans and the corn to the onion!

Add the crushed tomatoes....more color!

Then add the broth. There might be a little fat on top and you can just skim that off. (Tip: onion will also float to the top and look like fat. It's not. Don't skim it all out. That makes the chopping from the previous step NULL AND VOID.)

Shred/dice the chicken in a bowl.

Add the ranch seasoning....

...and the taco seasoning.

....soup done! Oh it is good. Add a little sour cream and cheese..mmmmmmmm.

This freezes well! Just FYI!!!!!!

Livin' Lists

You've heard of Bucket Lists, right? I've never actually seen the movie The Bucket List which made the things so popular in everyday life, but I've heard of them. Angela had one. She made a good dent in it before she died in December, but she didn't mark off each item. Angela so fully engulfed life, though, that I have a feeling she could have lived to be 120 and never finished her bucket list. She'd have just kept adding to it...

I was talking to a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and we got into a discussion on embracing life. "Don't think; just live" was his advice. (He's not nearly as list-loving as I am...can you tell?) I'm not sure I can scrap thinking entirely, but I did like his philosophy in don't overthink. Skip the tendency to analyze everything to death and just live.

Kari and I talked about it the next day and we discussed whether or not we had bucket lists. (We don't.) Then she told me of a similar list she'd heard of, called a "leap list." It was more focused on things you want to do before you exit the next stage of life. (Before you get married...before you have kids...before your kids are in high school...before your kids graduate from high school...you get the idea, right?) She shared with me some of her leap list thoughts.

Well good gravy, I could be single forever, so I'm not sure about any sort of leaping. SO...I have decided to make mine a livin' list. Things I want to do...in the time frame of "the near future"...to live. To so appreciate the time and energy and abilities and resources God has given me that I want to stop overthinking it and just live.

This is new for me, so it's still a fledgling list. Maybe I'll post more things as I think of them. But for now, here is the start of my Livin' List thoughts:

1. Finish Volumes Two and Three of the Bible study I'm writing. Back in the fall of 2010, Julie Crandall's church (well, the ladies' Bible study) did volume one of this study I'd written. A few weeks ago they asked for volume two. It's not done yet. So I'm working on it and then I want to plow right on to volume three. A longer term goal would be to publish these, but for now I just want to finish writing them so the group can use them! 2. Seven Pillars Photo Shoot. One of my friends' moms is a really good photographer and as I perused her pictures on Facebook one day, I found this photo shoot she'd done with her daughter and the scenery was amazing. She said the pictures were taken at a place called Seven Pillars - which is just a county or two over from where I live. Are you kidding me? This place has been right here the whole time and I've never heard of it? This isn't her picture, but to give you an idea: *picture from wanderingsol.comule.com*
So....my livin' list idea is to pack up the car with my camera and Rachel Ashley (who appreciates these sorts of things as much as I do...) and head that way to do a photo shoot. Furthermore, I would like to go one time each season to get four seasonal pictures of this place and blow them up into ginormous prints to hang in my house and swap out with each season. (Okay, spring buds. Hurry up so I can start!)


3. Take a ride in the Conner Prairie Hot Air Balloon. Believe it or not...when I was five years old, I took a ride in a hot air balloon. Like a for real ride. In an honest-to-goodness non-tethered hot air balloon. That may have been the last time I jumped into adventure before I wised up to the knowledge that adventure can be scary. Lo, these many years later, I'm pondering adventure again.

If you're not from Indiana, you might not know about Conner Prairie. It's about an hour south of me and while I haven't been there since the fourth grade field trip, I remember it as a pretty cool place to visit. And now...they have a hot air balloon:*picture from aroundindy.wordpress.com*


This one is tethered and holds a lot more people (up to 20) than the wicker basket of the one I rode back in the day. But I think it would be so fun to go up in it and check out the view (which of course, translates to taking pictures) and return to earth in a more civilized fashion than skidding across a cornfield. (Yep. That was the landing site last time.)

So there you go. Uno, dos, and tres from my list. What's on your livin' list?

Confessions of the Television Kind

I don't really like to talk about TV on my blog because, my goodness, people are opinionated about TV. So let me begin this post by saying that I'm sure you'll disagree with some of my TV choices, and that's okay. But I'm always curious what other people watch...so here are some of my faves/must-have/can't-stand-but-watch-anyway choices.

* 19 Kids and Counting. I've been watching the Duggars since the days when they were just the occasional TLC special, living in the 3 bedroom ranch house with a dozen (plus) kids. Do I want 19 kids? Not on your life! (Probably mathematically impossible for me now anyway.) But even though such a life would make me ever so tired, I think they do a great job with their kids and I appreciate their firm stand to their convictions, even if I don't agree with all their convictions.

* picture from the Duggar's family site *

* Sister Wives. Okay so maybe I watch this one for the polar opposite reasons! Actually I mostly watch this because Kody looks like David Phelps. SERIOUSLY! Look them up. Could be twins. I don't (of course) agree with the polygamist lifestyle, but the show fascinates the hooey out of me and I can't help but watch.

* picture from TLC site *
* House Hunters. I'm driven by the need to guess which house they'll pick. Not only do I have to pick it, I have to pick why they'll choose it. I love it when I'm right on both counts. And I'm just a house-nosey kind of person so I love peeking into all the homes. I was that way even before I became a house hunter. This show has also taught me what NOT to say as I'm walking through homes, though I'm not being followed by a camera crew, so it really doesn't matter.

* The Voice. Why do I watch that? Blake Shelton, of course! I watched most of it last year just because I liked the concept. This year someone I've actually heard of is auditioning (his audition aired last night) so I'm really excited to see how far he makes it!

*picture from thatgrapejuice.net *
* My Fair Wedding. I love David Tutera and if I ever get married, my secret wish would be for him to be my wedding coordinator. I'm always fascinated at what he can manage to do with the ideas the brides have. (Some of which are good and some are total train wrecks. And yet he makes both turn out amazingly well!)

* picture from cincinnati.com*
* Dharma and Greg. A golden oldie that airs here on the TV Guide channel, so I catch it when I can. I love those two! It's one of the few sitcoms I could watch over and over and over...quoting right alongside them...and never get tired of it.

* picture from sharetv.com *
* Friends. Ditto above. I watch this every single night as I'm falling asleep.

* Picture from friends.wikia.com *
* When I'm NOT going to be falling asleep, I like to catch reruns of Law and Order, SVU (love the team on that one more than the other Law and Order shows)...

* photo from epguides.com *

...or Criminal Minds (which is Greg of Dharma and Greg reincarnated from lawyer to crime-solver). I cannot watch them before I go to sleep or I WILL have nightmares. * photo from epguides.com *
* New shows I like to catch when I can are Price this Place, which is a "game show" on HGTV where people can win money for accurately guessing things they SHOULD know from being a House Hunters addict...and My 600 Pound Life. Fascinating.

I do feel the need to say that other than Friends, I do not just sit and watch any of these shows. I watch while doing other activities. I'm not a couch potato, you know. Though I do like couches. And potatoes.

Do we have any of the same faves?

A God Day

I've had people ask me how I hear God. How I know it's His Voice. I know they ask because they want to know how to be certain they're hearing it too, so I always feel bad when my answer is I just know.

It's a hard thing to explain because it's something my heart has learned through experience.

I do like to tell this story, though, when people ask that question. During the desert, there was a morning when I awakened after a less-than-desirable night of sleep, and as I drifted in and out, I prayed about the ache of my heart, and God said to me I am sovereign. I told Mom about it later and she asked me how I knew it was God. Without hesitating, I replied, "I never would have thought of the word sovereign on my own before 7 in the morning - especially without coffee." I think that's one of the reasons I always hear God best as I either first awaken or am about to drift off to sleep. My own thoughts are silent and His Voice can be the loudest - even if He's whispering.

This past Saturday, I didn't have any concrete plans except my weekly phone Bible study with Olivia, and that was in the afternoon, so I was free to take it easy. I skipped the alarm entirely and slept until I stretched awake (with some help from the house under Saturday morning construction across the street...) and much to my delight, I saw sunlight crowding through the cracks in the blinds.

I scooted around in bed and began to pull forth the words to my morning prayer: What do You want from me today? How can I love You today? How can I live to the fullest today?

The answer? Spend the day with Me.

I peeked one eye open. What?

Spend the day with me. Get up...get your coffee...have your devotions...go to the bank (yes, you have to get up and go to the bank), get ready, talk with Olivia, and then write. Research. Be here with me. Go to the grocery store, cook some dinner...scrapbook if you want...but just spend the day with Me.

Can I tell you the absolute joy of being invited to spend the day with God? To know that while there were chores to do...laundry and dishes and grocery shopping and such...they could be done as part of a day spent with the Lord?

When I was in my first relationship, years ago, we didn't really do a lot of things. We rarely planned events to attend. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of "dates" we had. But we spent hundreds of hours together at home. Now granted, in some ways that relationship was its own brand of not-quite-right and we should have done more to cultivate it, but I learned from it that I really loved just spending life-time with someone. It was okay if we were home cleaning and changing the oil (okay that part was all him, but I sat on the curb while he did it!) and putting together furniture and watching TV and cooking dinner. I liked just being together even if we didn't have an agenda.

And that was my Saturday. Lazy by some standards. Nothing "special." Nothing grand. But a day spent alone living life with Abba. And that was beautiful.

It's the Weekly Recap!

* Last Sunday I was forced to do the last minute cleaning before the house showing on Monday. (There comes a point when you run out of time to even procrastinate!) The house looks amazing, but I hope I find all my hiding places for paperwork and other nonsense I didn't have time to properly deal with! I won't tell you what I hid - or where; you'll think less of me.

* Monday morning I drove to work IN DAYLIGHT!! Seriously when did that happen? Last week it wasn't light until I was almost to work! I was panicked that I was late, but no - it was really just brilliant outside!

After work, I went to the Y again to try to get the membership thing figured out. I did...and halfway through my walk/run I heard my name being paged! Talk about being freaked out! Turns out they'd typed my name in the system incorrectly and needed my card to fix it. LOL!!

* Tuesday was, of course, Valentine's Day, and I have to say, in the grand scale of Valentine's Days gone by, this was one of my least cried-over. That day always hurts (because I have never once been in a relationship on Valentine's Day, so it has always been lost to me) but God was very gracious. I tried to soak up the joy of sharing with others, and my dear, wonderful Lynne brought me flowers. (I had been bracing myself for days leading up to this to NOT have flowers and to make myself be okay with that, and then...surprise!!!)
* Wednesday night I went to the gym, and then...oh, be still my beating heart: Hobby Lobby. I needed to pick up a few things...and I thought, you know, as long as I was there...I should probably just wander (every) aisle to make sure everything was in order. It was. Then I made my St. Joseph Statue purchase...but you already read about that.
* Thursday evening, Bekah's B&B was open for business! The lovely Julie Crandall came for dinner (where she willingly agreed to be my guinea pig for my first ever Parmesan chicken attempt) and then we sat around catching up on life and eating almost caramel surprise brownies. With whipped cream. :) And since she's having a baby in a few weeks, I figured it wasn't nice to make her sleep on the air mattress, so I gave her my bed and I got to do one of my favorite things: living room slumber party!!!

* Friday morning I posted on Twitter "Lesson learned today: adding product doesn't fix bad hair. It only makes me a bigger fire hazard with bad hair." And so my day began. LOL. The day wasn't a total loss - especially when at the end of it, I got to run outside and it was GORGEOUS. And surely wearing 14 shirts to keep warm adds enough weight to count as weight training...right???

* Saturday I had a beautiful day at home. Got an entire scrapbook done! Granted it's an itty bitty one, but it's still DONE!!! Did some reading...some journaling...some napping...some grocery shopping. Loved it.

One Thousand Gifts. There were so many this week but most of my favorites had to do with weather. We had everything this week. Fog, rain, snow, ice, sun, warmth. WELCOME TO INDIANA. This was one of my favorite pictures that made it into the 1000 Gifts list: raindrops clinging to branches:
Organization confessions: FAIL FAIL FAIL on the calendar. But I did a good job (for the most part) of keeping the house clean post-showing!

Pinterest Inspiration: This week it came in the form of my Valentines! I saw this on Pinterest:

Source: familyfun.go.com via Rebekah on Pinterest

...And I altered it slightly to make my own version!

Pretty happy with it! :)

Wild Intimacy

Yeah I thought that title would get your attention!

I wasn't sure what to write about today, and God sort of nudged me and said, Seriously? You've written something like 458 pages in your journal during this 30 day journey and you have NOTHING TO SAY ON YOUR BLOG???

Duly noted.

Perhaps I should share something I've learned?

As I pray each day, one of my prayers is how can I embrace life to the fullest today? And He rarely answers that question the same way twice. One day the answer was write. One day it was enjoy the evening with your friends. One day it was rest. And sometimes, in the middle of something I didn't even know was going to happen, He whispers, Drink this up, Baby Girl. This is from me. Love it.

I read a couple of quotes this week that resonated with me where this full living is concerned.

The first one I read over on Courtney Walsh's blog: "What kind of cardboard characters would any of us be if we didn't have challenges, struggles, things to fight for?" The easy life feels appealing but oh goodness, where is the actual fun in that? Would I want to read a novel with NO suspense? NO conflict? Nothing but perfectly scripted Pleasantville sorts of days? No way! Those are the things that draw me in and keep me turning pages and cheering for characters...

...and so it is with my life.

Then this quote, which I read in Steven James (amazing, in my opinion) book Flirting With the Forbidden: "Christianity is wild. It's intimate. It's heartbreaking and soul-mending. It's the wings to rise above the everyday and the hope of a honeymoon with the God who has loved you forever."

It so is.
These days with the Lord are pure adventure. I have no idea what's coming next. I have no concept of how He'll redeem what's been broken. I don't know how He'll answer the deepest longings. I don't know the surprises He'll throw in because He loves the look of utter delight on my face. I don't know the gut-wrenching setbacks that will hurl me into His lap where He will hold me and cry with me.

It is wild intimacy.

That, in turn, reminded me of this little comedy sketch Mark Lowry did back when he was more like my age. I watched it for the first time in years and discovered I can, in fact, still quote it.

Life...more abundant.

Adventures with St. Joseph

I almost didn't write this post because I feared (even one) lecture-filled email about this adventure. So I'll start by saying please don't write me a lecture-filled email. Please understand that this was just an escapade. I PROMISE.

And if you don't believe me, hear this: I told my mother about it. If it was mom-story-worthy, you can know it really was meant all in good measure.

In this quest to sell my house, I've had several (yes, SEVERAL!) people ask me if I've buried a statue of St. Joseph in my yard. The first few who asked received blank stares. So finally, I googled the thing. Here's the full story, but the bottom line is that if you bury a statue of St. Joseph in your yard, your house is supposed to sell.

My own mother has asked me several times if I've purchased Mr. St. Joseph (are you allowed to double title?) and I always roll my eyes and offer my exasperated Mommmmmmmmmm.

This week I made a little trip over to the (sigh of joy) Hobby Lobby in Fort Wayne, to pick up some supplies for an upcoming Pinterest project, and guess what just happens to be a few doors down? A huge Christian bookstore. So I scootchy-scooed over there and found my way to the gift section to see if they had a spare Joseph for sale. They did. They had about 15 of him, actually. Must be a lotta people trying to sell houses in the greater Fort Wayne area.

So I made my way to checkout, inwardly begging the cashier not to ask if I was going to have a burial party when I got home. (She didn't.)

Here he is:

Kinda scary looking, isn't he?

Anyway. So I got out the instructions and wrapped him in a baggie so he'd be all nice and clean. I headed to the garage for the garden trowel, and y'all - I can't find it. It's buried somewhere in all the boxes I have for someday-packing.

So I grabbed the huge spade, took my Joe-in-plastic into the yard (where it was both dark and raining) and started digging.

Oh my word. Am I on the set of Desperate Housewives? Just in case, I cast some furtive glances over my shoulder.

I dutifully buried him upside down, facing the house, covered the evidence and returned the spade to its rightful place.

Then I came inside and just laughed at myself. (I skipped the prayer. Jesus has heard my house prayers and I'll leave those with Him.)

For the record, here are my two favorite parts of the instructions: "For those with no yard space, use a large flowerpot." LOL - good to know provision is made.

And this: "If you are praying to Saint Joseph for matters not related to real estate, you may find another prayer better suited." - That was found under "tips and warnings." I am duly warned.

This concludes tales from Desperate Bekahland. (Insert ominous music here.)

Combining the Passions

I love to send cards.

Back in high school, when I fell in love with stamping, I started making my own cards - for everything. Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, sympathy, thinking-of-you...all of it.

Thanks for fixing my flat tire. Thanks for giving me a loan for my car. (And don't you think for one minute I'm kidding about either one of those. I'm not.)

This past summer, shortly after putting my house on the market, I began to pack. It was a short-lived adventure: all of one weekend. I packed up my craft closet, mostly so I could clean it out, get rid of things I no longer want or use, and put all that stuff in my yard sale.

Check.

And now the craft closet sits, packed so neatly, and the house is still on the market. And you know the crazy thing? People go right on having birthdays even though I don't have the means to send them a handmade card anymore!

It's been very strange to start shopping in the card aisle again, but I do it.

And then while making my Valentine cards on Shutterfly...I discovered this!

3x5 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

My stamps may be packed, but my camera is not. And you know how I love to take pictures of pretty stuff.


This is a picture I took of the ocean when I visited Lynnette and Mark out in Virginia Beach a couple of summers ago. While I was sitting on the beach that day, I pondered the words of the hymn The Love of God. This one particular verse hit me:


Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.


I added those words to the picture and had a 16x20 print made, which now hangs over my bed.


And since all that work was already done, I just uploaded it to Shutterfly and now I have a set of notecards that are still totally Bekah. Not stamped, but still mine!


I sense more photo cards in my future...

The Thing About Mailboxes

I cannot believe I'm actually making an entire blog post about this. Good grief.

For me, part of the house hunting adventure brings out THE most random ideas and dreams. I'll think about something for a while and then think, well that was an hour of my life I'll never get back!

But I figure I could be doing worse things with my time, so why worry about that?

So today, I tell you about the mailboxes.

When I was a kid, I lived in the country. My parents have a couple of acres and our mailbox sat across the road from our driveway.

You may or may not know that my dad has had a radio program for the last 45 years. (Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?) Back in those days (and WOW is this going to make me feel old), he sent out the program on reel to reel tapes. Do you even know what those look like?

He mailed them out to the radio stations that carried his program, and after they aired them, they'd mail them back. Each mailer contained 2 reels and the boxes were about 8 inches square and 2 inches thick.

As you might imagine, we needed a BIG mailbox.

Getting the mail often fell under the jurisdiction of my chores, so I'd walk alllllllll the way down the driveway (not as long as it sounds, but remember, I was a fat kid) and pile as many of those boxes into my arms as I could. Sometimes they piled so high, I could barely peer over the top to get them back in the house. (And we lived on a fairly busy highway, so that was fun.)

And on the days it rained, I was at the mercy of one of these:I would rest it on top of my head so I could still use both hands to carry tapes - and I could still see out. Brilliant.


Needless to say, when I moved out on my own, one of my favorite things about my house was the presence of one of THESE bad boys:
I could get my mail in my bathrobe if I wanted, because the only thing involved was opening the front door and peering out about two inches. I didn't have to put on boots in the winter. I didn't have to shovel a path. I didn't have to find an umbrella in the rain. Open door, retrieve mail.

I was in love.

So imagine my surprise when, the other day, I scoured the birds-eye-view map of a property I think I might love, and I noticed the mailbox was a good old-fashioned, by-the-road mailbox. And rather than a flood of memories of shoveling to get to the box...retrieving mail in the rain...getting dressed just to pick up the bills...I was actually excited.

Are you kidding me?

The thing is...mailboxes have come a long way since the days when the fat kid wore an umbrella on her head to pick up a pile of boxes.

They are now pieces of art waiting to happen: I can plant flowers at my mailbox!

Never mind that I have NO green thumb and flowers normally perish (painfully, I might add) under my not-so-watchful eye.

I can plant flowers at my mailbox!

So that's my new house ponderment for today. Please don't tell me I need a life. I know.