Good Job Hunting...

Happy Thursday!  I hope everyone is having a great day.  I am posting before midnight which tells you that I am home and messing around on the computer!  :)

In my email daily I get a daily devotional and yesterday I was sent this one...

But Jesus said, "You feed them." "But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish," they answered. "Or are you expecting us to go and buy enough food for this whole crowd?" For there were about 5,000 men there.

Luke 9:13-14, NLT

When the disciples expressed concern about where the crowd of thousands would eat, Jesus offered a surprising solution--"You give them something to eat." The disciples protested, focusing their attention on what they didn't have (food and money).

Do you think God would ask you to do something that you and he together couldn't handle? Don't let your lack of resources blind you to seeing God's power.  

This spoke to me because right now I have been going through the job search, looking for teaching jobs in my county and the one next to us, and this week I found myself frustrated and not having as much patience as I have had because I'm beginning to see the bills come up in August that I don't have a lot of money saved for.  But then this was sent to me as my daily devotional for yesterday and it spoke volumes to me. I am asking for prayers from everyone.  

Please pray that I keep having patience and trust what God has planned for me.  I have full faith in that God knows what is best for me and will take care of it, but sometimes you just have to reach out to others to help you in your prayers and that is what I'm doing now.  God will never give us anything that we can't handle and I truly believe that and I'm excited to have that peace of mind.  :)  It is amazing to me how when I need a piece of advice or something of the sort these things present themselves to me.  That is no coincidence.  :) 

One thing I did today was plant my rosemary.  I took a picture to show you my amazing planting skills.  This will be the first plant I have planted from seed and it is an herb, so I guess we will see how well it goes.  :)  I will keep taking pics to update you.  

 The beginning...

 I had some cute company!

 More cute company!

 I think that is all for now!  Going to enjoy lunch and then a dinner date with Ilie and Anna!!  :)  Bye!!

Fabulous Weekend

It is amazing how difficult it is to post since being home!  I need to post more and get some projects going.  Things have been a little crazy because I have been so busy!  This past weekend was such an awesome weekend with Megan's Bachlorette Party at Navarre Beach!

I haven't been to Navarre since high school and I forgot how beautiful it was down there.  We had such a great weekend laughing, sharing stories and catching up, and I can't wait to share more special moments with Megan and Brett in Mobile for their wedding and with all the girls!!  Here are some of my favorite pictures from the weekend.

 Having a blast on the beach!!

 Lovely ladies on the beach!

  Me and the beautiful bachlorette!

 Balcony pic...Ready to go!!

Beautiful setting with beautiful girls!

On Sunday, when all the girls left to go back home, my brother Joseph picked me up and we headed to Ft. Walton to Danielle's baby shower for Aubrey Grace!!  It was such an awesome afternoon meeting Danielle's friends and family and getting ready and excited for Aubrey!!  August 19th is when Danielle is due and we can't wait!!  :)

 

The fam!

I am sad that my exciting weekend is over, but so thankful to have such amazing friends and family and making great memories!!  I hope everyone had a great weekend and I will post again soon!! 

Sharing is Caring!

Three things to share with you today!  Oh by the way Happy Monday!  :) 

1. I hung some new pics above my bed, well Dede did!  :)  I love them and I think they look so much better than what was up there.  I wanted to take a before and after but I didn't...I will get better at that!  :)  Here is the after...

Ok, I may be a little obsessed with...Ohhh I don't know...  :)

2.  I, well Dede, also hung my flat on the wall as well!  This I am obsessed with because I LOVE a hung tv! I still have some things to do with this...like the wires.  I am just excited about some change!  :)

 

3.  I am sharing something with you that one of my besties, Mallory, shared with me...it's called Pinterest!  Go on their website and join...I am addicted!  :)  Here is the link...ENJOY!!

Link for Pinterest

I hope everyone had a great Monday!  Later alligator!!

Two Recipes

Happy Sunday!  I hope everyone is having a relaxing Sunday!  I went to a Sunday School class this morning and loved it!  I hope that I can become a regular with going to Sunday School.  We also got a new pastor this week at our church and he did a wonderful job!  It is such an exciting time at out church right now because of these changes and I look forward to seeing how God uses Pastor Rick in our church. 

I promised you some recipes and I am about to deliver!  The first one I am going to share with you is a pasta dish that Leslie would fix in Panama and it's one of my favorite dishes.  I am a pasta freak and could eat pasta everyday of the week if it wasn't so bad for me!  Now my estimates for ingredients are going to be based on what I like.  The thing I have found out and LOVE about cooking certain dishes is that you can tailor it to what you enjoy!  I love a lot of garlic and basil so I may put a little more than what someone else likes...that's just me!  Please mess around and tailor this dish to what you prefer.  I hope you try to make this and enjoy it!!

Chicken Pasta with Tomatoes, Feta, Basil and Garlic
Serves 2

Ingredients

- 2-3 boneless chicken breasts
- 3-4 medium sized tomatoes
- about 3 cloves of garlic- minced (I used some extra for some garlic bread)
- 6-7 basil leaves (depending on what you like)
- 1 tub of Feta Cheese
- about 4 tablespoons of butter
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 1/2 pack of pasta of your choice (I love fettuccine for this dish)

Directions for Cooking

1. Make sure chicken is thawed.  Place chicken in a skillet like dish with the butter cut into 1/2 inch chunks.  Place butter all around the chicken, put the lid on and cover on low for about 30-40 minutes.  Just watch the chicken and see if you need to turn up the heat, but you don't want the chicken to cook too quickly because it will be tough.  
2. While the chicken is cooking you can prepare all of the other ingredients.  Dice the tomatoes (I leave the seeds because it makes the sauce a little more juicy, but you can de-seed if you would like), mince the garlic, and chop basil.  
3. Once the chicken is cooked, wash that pot and place about two tablespoons (I do about two and a half swirls on the outer part of the pan) of olive oil and the garlic in the pan.  Let that cook for just a few minutes, do not overcook the garlic, and then place in the tomatoes and basil.  Stir and place the top back on while it cooks for about 5 minutes on medium heat.  
4. While the tomatoes and stuff is cooking you can dice the chicky and place that in the pan with the tomato mixture.  Let this cook for about 10 minutes just to let all the flavors meld together and get nice and juicy.  
5. While you are waiting for the chicken mixture to get ready you can cook the pasta.  I did not strain the pasta.  I just used tongs to move the pasta along with some pasta water into the tomato mixture.  I stirred it all together and added the feta cheese, stirred some more to mix everything together.

That's it!  Enjoy!  Here are some pictures of me cooking the stuff.  I will have to get better at that!  :)  Please let me know if you cook this dish and how you like it! 

 

 Yum!!

The next recipe I'm going to share with you is for a banana bread.  I have fixed this twice in the last two weeks, once just to try out (which it turned out amazing) and then again on Thursday for Rick when he got home from traveling all week!  I wanted Mom and Rick to be able to enjoy it over the weekend! :)

Banana Banana Bread

Ingredients
- 2 cups of all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 cup of butter
- 3/4 cups sugar (I used cane sugar)
- 2 eggs, beaten
- about 3-4 ripen (almost black) bananas

Directions for Cooking

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes.  

This is one of the best banana breads I have had.  This recipe does not have nuts in it, but anything can be added.  :)  Below is a pick of an already eaten B bread!

I hope you will enjoy these recipes and I look forward to sharing more with you within the next week!  :)  Have a great rest of the weekend and Monday! We are off to a Monavie meeting! Bye!

Auburn Fieldtrip!!

Happy Hump Day!  :)

I know I told you that I would share two recipes with you today, but I decided to share my fieldtrip from yesterday!  :)

My Mom and I decided to head to Auburn to take a look at the trees, try to get to the athletic museum, and grab some lunch.  I missed Auburn so much while in Panama and miss it even being just an hour away.  I am thankful that I am only an hour away so I can get there often and especially during football season.

As soon as I get off the exit at Auburn I feel like I'm at home.  I'm  not sure if this is a "normal" feeling for other Auburn alum, but I just love the way I feel when I'm there.  We headed to lunch at my all time favorite restaurant in Auburn and one that I miss sooo much, Amsterdams!  YUM!!  I had an amazing Cobb Salad that ended up being one of the best salads I'd ever had!

After lunch, we headed to Toomer's Corner so that I could see what the trees looked like.  They were very sad looking, but it was neat to see that I wasn't the only one out there taking pics.  While I was taking pics of the trees we saw a group of people walking with a tour guide and realized it was a Camp War Eagle group.  My Mom kept reminiscing about when her and Rick brought me to Camp War Eagle and my college years!  I can't believe that it will be four years this year that I have been graduated!  It seems like yesterday that I was in Auburn enjoying friends and having a great time!   

We left Toomer's Corner and headed to the Athletic Department Building to see the Coaches Trophy and check out the Athletic Museum.  My family gives me a hard time for living in the dorms for two years on "The Hill" and never getting to the Athletic Museum (which was like two blocks away).  I just never thought that was important while I was there, and I usually had something else to do...plus you sometimes don't appreciate things until you are away from them!  Anyway, we got there and Coach Troop walked us to the door!  It was neat to see him!!  My Mom was in the bathroom and heard it when she got out how upset I was because I wanted my pic taken with him!  But it was still cool to see him and talk to him for a few minutes!  :)  I found out that the Athletic Museum is no longer in that building, it is at the new Arena and that the Coaches Trophy is there at the Athletic Building.  There were people taking professional pics of the trophy so I couldn't go in the room to see it.  I did see it through the window and it was MAGNIFICENT!!!  I still can't believe we won a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!!  So exciting!!

Here are my pics that I took on my Mom's iPhone.  We had such a great day and how could we not when we were in Auburn!!  :)  WAR EAGLE!

WOO HOO!!

This picture makes me so sad!  

It is going to be crazy to not be able to roll the trees after winning this football season!

This is the big tree at Toomer's...you can see if you split the picture down the middle how sad the right side of the tree looks.  It broke my heart to see them in person!

I was really excited about how these pictures turned out!  I am far from a photographer, but because my Mom's phone is so awesome these pics come out great!  I may be obsessed with the Instagram App!  :)

WAR EAGLE!!

FIELDTRIP #1

Ok my blogging friends...let me explain one of the most amazing things about having summers off...besides being able to go to the pool and enjoy time with family and friends...it's going on fieldtrips around town and GA!!!  :)  Now when I say fieldtrips I am talking about me, my mom, and my grandparents, who I call Mama and Dede (I will refer to them as that from now on...so get used to it!)  :) going on outings to all different places around our hometown and Atlanta.  Over the last few summers we have gone to Stone Mountain (to climb and to watch the laser show), rode on the new rental car transit from the airport to the rental car place (haha!), Zoo Atlanta, Braves games, and probably some other things that I forgot about.

Last Tuesday we went to the Cyclorama, which is next door to Zoo Atlanta, and might have been one of the most AMAZING things I have EVER seen!!  For those of you who aren't familiar with the Cyclorama it is the world's largest oil painting and is a painting depicting a scene from the Civil War.  I have grown up watching Gone with the Wind every Sunday and being taught history about the Civil War and have always had a little bit of a fascination with it...thanks to my Momma. :)  I am not going to share ANY information about the Cyclorama with you because I want you to go see it for yourself!  You will not be disappointed and will have gained some good Southern knowledge while doing so!  :)

Just imagine wearing these WOOL outfits in the middle of July...HOT (literally...haha!!)!!! 

 
After we left the Cyclorama we went to one of mine and my Mom's favorite restaurants, Mary Macs Tea Room.  This is such a great place that I think everyone needs to go try.  They have DELICIOUS Southern food and the BEST pot licker you could ever have!  If you tell them that it is your first time eating there they will give you a sample of their cracklin' corn bread and pot licker!  YUMMY!  :)

We had such a great day gaining Civil War knowledge and eating yummy Southern food!  I hope everyone had a great day!  I am going to post some recipes tomorrow for some Cherry Walnut Muffins and Chicken Tomato and Basil Pasta!  YUM! 

Home Again...Home Again...

Long time no post!  I have been so busy since I landed on June 2nd that I haven't had time to post anything.  It is SO WONDERFUL to be home and I'm so thankful for my experience in Panama and will always be grateful for that chapter in my life, but it is so AWESOME to be home!!

Here are some things that I have been up to since I've been home.

I landed on Thursday and then on Friday I zipped over to Birmingham for Megan and Brett's wedding shower weekend.  It was such a fun weekend catching up with everyone from Auburn and pretty much reliving our college days!!  :)

Such a great weekend!!!

I got back on Sunday, June 5th, and had Vacation Bible School start at my church that evening.  My mom and I did VBS last year and it was so much fun, so I was really excited about this year and it was everything I hoped it would be!!  We had about 180 kids attend and so many great volunteers and people to teach God's word!  It was such a great week and I'm always so thankful to have an open heart to God's word!

The weekend of June 10th was so much fun too!  On Saturday, some Auburn friends and I went to Six Flags to celebrate one of my friends, Katie Hume's, birthday!  It was such an awesome day and nice to act like a big kid!!  :)  We ended up riding everything but the new one for this year, The Dare Devil and the infamous Scream Machine!  It was GREAT!!

 
This past week my Mom and my Grandparents went to the Cyclorama, which is right next to Zoo Atlanta.  I am going to share that with you guys tomorrow and also a some great recipes that I have fixed this past week!  Talk with you guys tomorrow!!

Oh, and HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!  :)