Um, I am not exaggerating nor am I obsessed with blogging about the weather. BUT we are in ANOTHER blizzard warning- roads closed and on and on. I hate this winter, literally I cannot even count the days I have been cooped up in this house with nothing to do. So today I decided to compile some lists so here they are:) one word: boredom.


List of movies I have yet to see that are on my list of must sees:
#1 'It Might Get Loud'
#2 'The Lovely Bones'
#3 'The Road'
#4 'Alice in Wonderland'
#5 'The Blindside'

Anyone have any movie suggestions? I would love to hear them.

Watched a documentary on Woodstock last night, it was intriguing. If I had a genie offering me 3 wishes, one would be to take me back in time to Woodstock. The other 2 would be a lot more weighty and for the benefit of humanity, I am not that selfish:)


A few of my favorite covers:





I played my guitar last night for hours. NEED my fingers to be callused so they aren't so sore. Nonetheless, so glad to be playing and learning and singing and dreaming and writing. It really does feel wonderful.

Let me just say this now, I have the BEST friends in the world. I am not sure that anyone could top how truly inspiring, lovely, strong, world changing, peaceful and beautiful my friends are. Truly absolutely blessed to have them in my life. Thank you, ORU.

Peace.

Been awhile. Had a bout with a very sore and wrapped right wrist which made typing and most all other things impossible beings that I am right handed. On my way to recovery.

My mood has changed so much from yesterday to today-

Yesterday- frustrated at religion, such an ugly thing isn't it. love the true gospel, the depiction of Christ, grace, love, humility, servant heart, the hands and feet of Christ. I would venture to say that religion and its religious leaders, whatever specific religion that might be, have made the hands and feet of Christ look like a pair of judgmental, glaring eyes. This is an observation long in the making, began with my first interaction with "Christians", it has surely strengthened by now. THIS is why I LOVE my generation. We are fierce and want change and truth and love and Christ to drive us in all of humanitarian efforts, our everyday lives, our every interaction with every person (except for RUDE customer service people- just being honest- I have a hard time being nice to them.) We want Jesus to be seen as the life and person he truly is- loving, grace filled, loving arms, smiling eyes, beauty, peace, restoration. That is the God I know, if anyone tries to tell you he is something different, they're lying.

Now with that said:
Today: It was the dang novel I stayed up reading until the wee hours of the morning. A knight in shining armor, a countess, an evil prince and princess, an army- love, betrayal, restoration. I AM such a girl. This was not a kids novel, it was 450 hundred pages. NOW after reading this, I always kick myself, I am daydreaming of love and castles and literally giddy with laughter. Oh heavens, need to stop reading fairy tales- back to reality. BUT I'm not gonna lie I believe in fairy tales with all my heart :) I am cheesy and a romantic through and through. Love stories intrigue and capture me every time.


Haiti, you are still on my heart. Believing, crying, praying for you. You are a beautiful people and nation.

Most random blog ever, I'd say.

Still shook to the core about Haiti. What a horrible, horrible thing. I have been watching footage and getting updates on CNN for the last couple days. I find myself in tears repeatedly just reading, looking at photos, praying, overwhelmed by this natural disaster. As I was watching rescue efforts, I heard the words coming out of my mouth "someone please just help them" This link has a photo, number 7. These bodies are not just piles of bodies. They are individuals who had dreams, families, hopes, lives. I do believe that heaven just ushered in a mass of beautiful people.

So much recently, we have witnessed a whole lot of news and information convincing us how awful and dark people/humanity has become. I am convinced otherwise, watching the world, most all countries uniting to bring aid and supplies to a devastated nation has truly been a beautiful thing to witness. I am literally blown away and astounded. To see Haitian people digging with their hands to free people under collapsed buildings brings tears to my eyes. I pray that we never forget this uniting of nations, political parties, enemies and cultures, let us all put down our offenses within communities and countries and political stances and just continue to fight death, poverty, trafficking, injustice together as one world.

Heart, thoughts, prayers so with Haiti today. How incredibly devastating. You know you try to proceed with life as normal, doing the mundane tasks of the day, but how can you, knowing that much devastation, loss and grief just struck a country full of beautiful people. Someone lost their mother, father, family, home or life yesterday. How incredibly blessed yet broken I feel today.

Find some way to aid in relief efforts. Donate. Pray. Donate. Donate. They need us. This is what the hands and feet of Christ look like. Let's rise up and bring hope, restoration, love in whatever way that we can.

Tell your family you love them. It really puts things in perspective, I was battling some things in my heart today, but they seem so insignificant when you look at this situation. We have life and family today while an entire country's world was just shattered.

Let love always be our motivation in everything.

So I heard Alice Cooper's 'School's Out' just the other day and literally jumped up and down inside. I am so glad to be done with school. I can read what I want, write what I want and keep my own agenda- no homework ever. I love it. I mean I loved school but life without homework is really, truly the best.

I finally have time to read what I want. Jane Austen, Emily and Charolette Bronte, Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis (whom I love). The Classics- I received several series of books last Christmas and am slowly but surely reading through them. It really is freeing to be able to just sit down with hot tea and a good book and not worry about any sort of deadline. I do enjoy.

Do you ever just take the time to listen to people in the hustle and bustle of life? I just recently did that in the middle of work- asked about the family, the wife, life. People's eyes light up when you really genuinely want to know about their life- so beautiful. Take time out of your busy day and really listen to people, I mean really listen. People have great stories and lovely updates to tell. You learn so much about people when you're quiet.

So the prison system is rolling with the times- my dad emailed me. haha. They just got email. He is officially the worst typer in the world, but I am proud of him for trying! He is like excited about this email thing, computers weren't at the center of our functioning lives when he went in, so this is all new to him. It really is precious:)

So in honor of my dad getting email, here are few of his favorite songs/bands: for your listening pleasure. Enjoy.





Happy Sunday.

xx

Yes, this is a Taylor Swift song, i absolutely adore her.



I have heard this song multiple times and I don't believe that it ever impacted me the way it did last night. I heard it in the car on the way home from work, driving the same roads I did back in high school many many nights with my friends. Whether it was trying to find the party location or just driving to meet up with your BC friends. That road is SO familiar. As I was driving it, I was reminiscing as this song played. Tears welled up in my eyes on this line "When all you wanted was to be wanted, wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now." No regrets, just a whole lot of things in my life that needed to worked out stemming from high school (worked out-done). Isn't it funny that when a boy tells you in high school that he loves you, you seriously believe him even though your parents are trying to tell you "baby, don't fall for this" but you fall and it crushes you. It seems like an eternity ago, all the days of hoping to see this boy or trying to have the best outfit, in hopes to fit in and be the coolest or the prettiest or the hottest, in high school lingo. huh, what an interesting time in life when you are living your life completely for the acceptance of other people, or at least I did.

I see high school girls now and I just want to take their face in my hands and say "baby don't fall for it" or "this isn't the end of the world it's just high school" or "you'll do greater things than dating the boy on the football team" haha. i do remember those words coming out of my mom's mouth and I just didn't listen. I remember how every little thing would crush you. If someone said something about you, if someone didn't like you, if you got in fight with your best friend, if the boys didn't think you were the prettiest, it seemed as though life was over. I happened to be a insecure and broken little girl in high school so that may just be me. But it really got me thinking.

I do have some of the very lovely memories from high school, others I would rather them just be erased from my memory. BUT those make us who we are right? or is that just an excuse because some things really didn't make you stronger they absolutely shattered you to pieces. hmm, not quite sure.

This song I think will forever hold a place in my heart, I think it is some of the best advice to the lovely little ladies out there. Take it, I promise it's true.

love. xx

Reading this morning about Abraham, I always love reading about him. So much promise.

Snowed in again today. My mom is making help her "clean the house from top to bottom," this meaning going through all the tubs of clothes and papers and sorting through them. I snuck off to my room as she reminisced over the tub filled every project we have ever made, since we were 2. She will be there for awhile, when i left she was crying over a letter I wrote her when I was 8.

So for the last year and a half or so, me and my mom have become for the most part intensely healthy eaters. I mean we go out to eat sometimes and splurge on Chinese but for the most part we try and eat all natural things. Veggies, fruit, granola, soy milk and on and on. The funny thing is I use to eat frozen pizzas and SO much processed food. Now, I can taste if anything is processed and it literally makes me sick to my stomach. To think that I was putting all that stuff in my body without a second thought is a little scary. YUCK.

I am so excited to someday have an amazing loft/apartment to decorate. I mean you should see my room/space in the basement where I store things. I pick up little things here and there (thrift stores, home stores, GW) that I want to put in my apartment. Now, I just feel a little cluttered and a bit claustrophobic with all the things I have bought for my future living space. It's a mess of things- I look at photos on BHG or HGTV and my heart literally does flip flops at the thought of getting to decorate my little abode.

I WILL have a wall of old records that will look something like this with a few more records on the wall:




Well my mom is calling. dang, she finally saw I was missing. Off to clean.

Happy day to you friends.

Staying in on this unbearably cold snowy evening. Miserable outside. Drinking many cups of hot tea to stay warm.

I really really just love my mom. She truly is such an incredible human being. Sometimes I cannot even believe she did this all on her own. I took care of a baby for 3 days and was literally so exhausted, I rested the whole day after he left. My momma did it all by herself with all three of us with hardly any money ever. She worked night and day just to give us necessities. I really cannot even fathom how she did it. I am so so blessed to have a mom who loved us enough to sacrifice everything and I do mean everything. I have watched so many parents walk away from their duties because it is just too much of a burden, she never did once.

The point of all of that being, she is now going to start foster parenting, what lucky kiddos! I can't wait, I hope I am still around to meet the little bubbas. (I hope they are girls, I want to take them shopping and do their hair.) Regardless of gender, I will love any child that walks through that door. Can't even begin to imagine the atrocities that these children have been pulled out of. Just let me love them. I do believe with all my heart that love never fails.

On a less serious note, I think I am beginning to master the art of cooking. Well master may not be the appropriate word but I am well on my way. This season of my life in which boredom has induced frequent cooking parties, by myself might I add, will make some man very happy someday;) I can officially follow a recipe and have it turn out fairly well, it just takes some time and THAT I have a lot of.

I received 2 phone calls today about freelance work- logos, newspaper ads and such. I am a bit nervous because I really haven't done a lot with it since I graduated. I just need to put my business/creative cap back on and do it. Just buy the MacBook I have been looking at for like 2 years with the programs I need. Turn my penny pinching mind off and think of it as an investment into my career. Right?

Well i do believe that I have officially dumped all things in my mind into this lovely blog for the day.


show of the moment- the office
song of the moment- Trent Dabbs and Ashley Monroe- "I'm coming over"

As if we didn't have enough snow already. They are calling for more snow tomorrow. I am so stir crazy- need to get out of this house. I have so been dreaming about tropical islands lately where my fingers do not stick to door handles due to sub degree weather:) I just want to jump on a plane and go somewhere. I do, I do.

I love that my friends are all across the Earth at this very moment. South Africa, Paris, Korea, Texas, New York City and on and on. What a lovely thing. Answering the call. I am so proud to have world changing friends- we are all in this together. United in love, justice and worship. Exciting, huh?

My playlist is consumed with Faith+Hope+Love album. Something so inspiring and uplifting about this album.

That being said, I have decided as I am learning to play this here guitar the first songs I am going to learn to -that is a whole lot of Creedence Clearwater Revival just because I love them. Brooke Fraser, Jesse Baylin, worship and then every other piece of music I can get my hands on. I am excited for this season of music- I really am.

“Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love that. So true.



Peace.

My heart feels a bit under the weather, needing to sit and be still. I do love grace, the full embodiment of it. Even when we mess it all up or fall short, it covers. I have so been meditating and relishing in the idea of freedom, total and complete freedom. I think this is why my mind constantly daydreams about running off into the unknown- another country, a castle, an underground movement, playing my guitar in run down old bars with just a few stragglers coming in and out. Complete freedom, no limits ever, just peace and freedom.

Galatians 5:1
We have freedom now, because Christ made us free. So stand strong. Do not change and go back into the slavery of the law.

Powerful, indeed.



This was freedom's price. Thankful heart.

2010, you are here and I'm loving you. My NYE was rung in working until 11:30 and coming home to a house full of sleeping toddlers and a sleeping momma. So I crept up to my room and sat for a moment taking in the last year of my life while anticipating the next year of my life. I don't think that I have ever felt so excited for a new year. I am ready to see where this one leads, it is going to be good.

You know I never thought that I would be saying this, but I do love being home. There is something so safe and comforting about home. Not to say that my heart isn't ready or preparing to be somewhere else when the time is right, home just makes me happy. My family has a large part to do with that. I love how resolution and restoring works, it really is such a beautiful thing.

Things I love about home:
Waking up to my mom brewing coffee and drinking a nice cup with her.
Working beside my mom with her business, it really is

I have really been missing some of my heart friends lately. You know the ones that you just pour your heart out to and they seem to finish your sentence. I am SO blessed to have these people in my life. Whenever I think of these friends, my heart is immediately overtaken by love. Learning that heart connections and relationships are to be treasured and they are treasured indeed. They should be reminded genuinely, not flattery or the cliche, i love and miss you. I hate that.

Am thinking again about packing up my life and moving somewhere all by myself. Italy or the East Coast would be ideal. It seems so mysterious and adventurous. Like the scene out of Almost Famous when Penny Lane gets on a plane to Morocco with her big sunglasses and black Audrey Hepburn hat. One day that will be me. I just know it.


Love to you blog world.