What I Wore Wednesday

I have wanted to do one of these post for a few weeks now, but I was nervous to. I wore a cute outfit to church last Sunday and I had my husband take a picture of me just in case I wanted to do a post about it. The problem is that most of the what I wore posts that I see, the girls look like models with a professional photographer who took their photo. So you can see how it would be intimidating. So I am going to overcome my fear and post my one photo I have from my point and shoot camera, with red eyes and all. :) Also please excuse the painting supplies you see in the bottom left corner, that is just how it is when you are trying to redo your 200 year old house and live in it at the same time!

Shirt (Inc Macy's-I have to confess that it must be 7 years old, but I still love it and feel good in it)

Skirt (Gap) Tights (Gap) 

Shoes (Steve Madden)

Earrings (NY & Company)

God I am Thankful for...............

This weekend I was at a women's conference at a local church led by Kathy Troccoli. She had  2 other guest speakers come and speak and something one of them said really resonated with me. She talked about a young woman named Kara, only 32, who had cancer and only had a short time to live. She had gone through the chemo, radiation and all forms of treatment, but the cancer had spread throughout her whole body and she wasn't going to make it. She was married, had 2 young boys and had a beautiful heart for Jesus even in the midst of her suffering.  Kara said she was THANKFUL FOR THE CANCER! She was thankful because of how close it had brought her to God. She was thankful because her family members were becoming saved by watching her joy and love for God in such a difficult time. Even her funeral was a witness and brought family members to God.

This really resonated with my because I often say that I am THANKFUL FOR THE LYME DISEASE! Now my suffering is nothing compared to Kara and her suffering, but I do believe it is a part of God's plan to mold me into who he needs me to be. I don't think that the life I had planned out for myself years ago was really meant for me. God's plan is better, but its not always easier. It is hard to be chronically sick and for people not to understand, to not work like everyone else and to kinda feel like you are on the sidelines in life watching everyone else run about. I have struggled with this lately because I was expecting God to have a big revelation for me after going through this. A special job for me or a special assignment in life, but so far I am still waiting. It is so hard to wait and to be content with the right now. But in all reality I do have a great life, with a great man who loves me very much. He is never disappointed in me for not working, and his only real requirement for me is to be happy and have a smile on my face when he comes in the door. :) I think God is trying to teach me to be still and find contentment in Him and not compare myself to what the world's standards for contentment are. So even though it is hard to be sick, it has brought me closer to God, closer to my family and a simpler life where I am spared a lot of stress from the world.

So what are you THANKFUL for? Do you have a hardship in life that you are blessed to have gone through?

Date Night (Postponed)

Last night my hubby and I were supposed to have a date night, but he had to work late. I was so looking forward to it, but he is so incredibly busy at work right now. He actually came home from work last Thursday and asked if I would like to go out to dinner with him that night. Well I had just gone to a late lunch with my Dad and was absolutely stuffed. Now I am a real good little eater, so if I had to say no to my hubby asking me out on a date,  then I was indeed completely stuffed. I haven't been feeling super great overall, and it was just the pick me up I needed, so I made him promise that we would go this week. Well he has been traveling 1.5 hours to work and then back again all week and he is going to be working late again tonight. So this week is not gonna work. I just have to laugh, because I read several blog this morning about other ladies who had date nights with their hubbies this week!

I am so thankful for my hard working hubby! It was sweet of him to offer to take me out when he has been working so much and has been so tired! However, I am still gonna hold him to that date!! :)

Love you Honey!!

Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Bars

I made this awesome dessert the other day for a wedding reception. The women's ministry of our church always offers a cookies and punch reception for the bride and groom immediately following the ceremony. I remember the ladies of the church putting this nice reception on for us, and now I get to be one of those ladies. :) I thought about taking pictures as I went, but I was making it for a wedding and I felt a little more stressed than normal to make sure everything was just right.

I originally found this recipe on Pinterest:

It was originally featured on:









These bars are so good! There were a lot of cookies left over from the wedding and people enjoyed them after the church service today. I had several people asking for the recipe. If you go to the blog above, the recipe is listed under desserts. It is from a while back so you just have to scroll back a page or two. She has so many wonderful recipes on her blog to look through. I love the chicken pot pie recipe she posted today!

Ok so I have never linked to someone's page before, so I am completely sure I made some mistakes. Just figuring out how to put these 2 buttons on my post has most definitely given me a headache.  If you have any advice to share with the newbie, please do! :)

Spiced Oatmeal Cookies

Tonight I made some cookies for my brother who lives in Arizona. They live about 5-6,000 feet above sea level, so things don't bake the same as here, and he asked if I would send him some. I make these cookies for church a lot and people really seem to like them. They are thin, crispy on the outside, and chewy in the middle. That's the perfect cookie in my book! :) I got the recipe from a book called "Old-Fashioned Cookies:Favorite Cookie recipes that Bring Back Warm Memories of Childhood." A woman from church bought this for me when I got married and it really has some great recipes. I also should add that I LOVE cookies they are my biggest weakness and a whole book devoted to them is awesome!

Here is a photo of the book (Sorry that there is some glare!)

Here is a sample of the ingredients needed.

                                                   Spiced Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs (not sure why I put one egg in the photo, you definitely need 2)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 cups oats
1 cup chopped pecans (I use raisins instead)

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2.) In mixing bowl, cream both sugars sugars, shortening and eggs and beat well. Add remaining ingredients and mix. 

3.) Roll dough in 1 inch balls and place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes.

This time I used parchment paper and rotated the pans halfway through cooking, which seemed to work well. I just did a thin chocolate chip recipe last week that required you to cook them this way and so I tried it with this recipe.

I usually let them cool on cooling racks for quite a while. I should also add that I tend to under cook them slighty, so that they stay chewy.

Waiting to be sent off to AZ! (Don't worry that's not all of them) It makes 3 dozen.

Well this isn't a blog about working on our house, but I actually have a kitchen and I am enjoying it! :)










 

Our Kitchen (Still in Progress)

This is a view of our kitchen looking in from the dining room.

View from our future mud room looking into the dining room.

This is the beautiful place where I get to cook now. Goodbye coleman stove!!

My gorgeous farmhouse sink that I have always wanted! I mean you must have a farmhouse sink in a farmhouse! :)

This is our dining room. Eventually there will be roman shades on all of the windows and a chandelier over the table.

Here are some decorative accents that I have added, but that I am still tweaking! :)

 
This is an old tool box with milk bottles in it, that I found at my parents store. They just happen to own an antique/next to new shop. :)

Shelves over top our breakfast bar, again decorated with many items from a certain store.

I love using clear canisters, but they are always running low with all the baking I am doing now. I think I may look for some larger ones.

Well that's how far we have come so far. We still have some finish work, more lighting and a pantry to complete. I'll keep you posted! 

What A Difference A Year Makes

Well I just realized that I have not posted anything on here since last October. Last year was a hard year and I didn't always want to talk about what was happening to our home. Reading back over this blog I feel like such a different person than I was back then. Things are so much better now and its hard to relate to some of the feelings I was having then. It was really difficult to live like that, but God is replacing those memories with the enjoyment of being a "homemaker" with an actual home to make.   I have a kitchen that I can bake and cook in. Its fun to be excited about these things again and trying new recipes all the time. Hubby likes this too! :)

I feel like I have grown so much since last year and all that we went through. Honestly, living in a 200 year old house that needs a lot of work teaches you a lot in itself. Add in being sick for as long as I have and you end up feeling like your about 87 years old. :) I feel like such a different person than I was in college, not that that's a bad thing at all, but God sure knows how to keep me on my toes! I have become accustomed to this adventure we are living over here and knowing that my ducks are going to be nowhere near their rows. I mean if anyone's house is going to explode its totally going to be ours. If someone is going to have natural gas coming out their well and dead skunks under their floor, definitely going to happening over here. If anyone plans that camping trip that they have desperately been looking forward to for one of the rainiest weekends of the summer, and then proceeds to get lost on an 8 mile hike in the rain for 3 hours while finding the whole situation hysterical, that would be Dan and Susan. These same people may or may not have gone back to this same spot the next day to climb the mountain trail they had missed, just so that the Adirondack's would know they did not defeat them. :) So I'm not really expecting anything to go as planned, if it did, now that might scare me!

All of this to say we are alive and well over here! We have a beautiful new kitchen, we are happy, and we most certainly are never bored! I will do a post just about the kitchen with pics soon!