Three Things Thursday [Vol.9]

These three picture frames were inspired by my readings on the internet about how to honour special memories while decluttering. The frame on the left displays memorabilia from our honeymoon, while the two frames on the right display program covers and tickets from shows Matt and I saw on special dates as well as a picture of us during intermission from the first show. I love this idea because instead of having to choose between keeping sentimental clutter or throwing out memories, we can enjoy and share our memories of these special times on the walls of our home! The only question now is where to hang them?

Three Things Thursday [Vol.8]

Three pictures that make me laugh.

I took them all in real life.
You may call me immature, but that doesn't make them any less hilarious.

Three Things Thursday [Vol.7]

Three ways running relates to life in Christ:

1. You can always go further than you think.
This is the biggest hurdle that kept (keeps) me from running - I get tired after about 20 seconds and want to go back home. BUT if I cut myself the slack to start slow and take breaks when I need to, eventually my heart and lungs catch up, and it's not so bad! Then it becomes a case of pushing my limits, trying to make it running to the next driveway or bus stop before my next breather because...

2. The hard parts can be the best parts.
Not to push a cliche, because sometimes the hard parts plain suck - you're wheezing and dizzy and red in the face and possibly crying a little bit. Sucky.

But there is something magical about the best part of a hard run, when your legs are burning and your heart is pounding, and it feels like your lungs could breathe in whole mountains, they are filling up down to your hip bones, and the running is hard, but all you have to do is keep going; you are unstoppable. Everything you need is working already, and you are doing what to cold muscles and calm heart seems impossible. It is thrilling and satisfying and great.

3. There is only one prize. Paul compares life in Christ to a race and exhorts his readers to "Run in such a way to get the prize." Unfortunately, I think this verse is often read as if there is only one winner.* Christianity becomes a competition, and if you're not the best you're a loser. But Paul isn't saying we should size each other up, throw elbows and try to beat each other out whatever it takes - he is telling his readers to keep their focus. This life is all we get, and if we are not running our best (which won't look the same every day, but the best that we have at each moment), we are wasting time. We must not be distracted by the races other people are running, becoming envious or going off track to try and copy them. In the parable of the talents, the first two servants receive the same prize from their master although they accomplished different things. The prize is to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!" Those are the words I hope to hear on judgment day, not, "Nice work, Davis, your Christmas play totally out-classed those Pentecostals. In fact, I'm not even gonna let them in!"

Yes, God still calls me by my maiden name.

Bonus thoughts on running (by the way, I had a great run yesterday):

• Running is not like life in Christ because we don't know the length or terrain of our life's course. We have to follow Jesus step by step and season by season, and recognize that we may have 50 years or two weeks left to live. The best way to pace ourselves is to trust and follow him, since he knows the course inside and out.

• His banner over us is Love. Love is why and how we run this life with Jesus. It is how we know we're on the right track and what we look forward to at the finish line. (God loves you and I love you and that's the way it should be... That song is about banqueting not running, I know, but don't you think we'll all be down for a huge banquet when the life-race is over? I do.)

*Turns out 1 Corinthians 9:24 says only one winner. Awkward. I guess that's where the analogy breaks down.

Three Things Thursday [Vol.6]

This week I would like to share 3 awkward moments I have experienced on the TTC:

1. Wondering if the person across from you is INSANE or just speaking a foreign language with a covert bluetooth. Especially when they are staring you in the face and speaking so intensely!
   
   
2. Hoping you fit in the empty seat between two big people and failing to actually hit the seat. THEN needing to squeeze loose and find another seat. Sigh. Fortunately, this just happened for the first time last week; usually I'm a pretty good judge of hip-width.
   
   
3. People who fight/break up over the phone on the bus. I remember one time an entire bus fell silent as a guy broke down into tears and yelled at his girlfriend for cheating on him even more than she had already admitted. Less embarrassing but still ridiculous was a woman who was fighting with her boyfriend and kept hanging up on him only to immediately call back and continue the fight.
   

Three Things Thursday [Vol.5]

I am planning to keep Lent this year - I think it's the first time ever. I have been attending an Anglican church since the new year began and am developing such an appreciation for the church calendar. I have often thought about doing something for Lent, but it usually doesn't occur to me until a few weeks into the season, and then I give up. Having had time to research and reflect on some ideas, today I will share three ways I am marking the season of Lent in 2012.

1. Pancake dinner!
Matt and I are going to the pancake dinner at the Anglican church on Shrove Tuesday. This is the first "thing" I'm doing there other than attending the service. I'm expecting the all-you-can-eat-pancakes factor will make me crave breakfast sausage! Alas.

2. Keep Fridays - no meat, fast on Good Friday
Not eating meat on Fridays during Lent is an old practice that I am interested to experience. It seems like a very simple thing and is only once a week, but I don't believe spiritual disciplines need to be an outrageous challenge in order to be effective.
I am also planning to fast on Good Friday, eating one full meal that does not include meat (per wikipedia). My only previous experience with this was fasting from English on Good Friday 2009, and that was great in so many ways.

3. Read the entire Bible
I wasn't sure about this last one, and to be honest I'm still not 100% convinced it will happen, but I'm gonna give it a shot! A group at church is doing this, and I have never read the entire Bible cover to cover, so I printed off a reading plan (there's two options) and am going to do my best. A number of times in my youth I attempted year-long plans to read through the Bible but never made it through. For this reason, I chose the balanced plan (reading from different sections of the Bible daily instead of straight through). This will help me avoid reading the psalms all in a stretch - I would have a harder time with that than Leviticus I think! I am hoping that the short time-frame will help me push through when I don't feel like it, and I am hoping that doing this for Lent will create space in my days that I can continue to spend with God after Lent, but in prayer or other disciplines rather than in intensive reading. I also chose to do it because it is a daily practice, and I wanted something to mark the season on a daily basis.

So wish me luck! Slash pray for me, since that is much more helpful :P

And I would love to hear your thoughts as always!

Three Things Thursday [Vol.4]

Things that save me so much time and stress:

1. Not watching TV.

Oh man do I not miss cable - even when we had it for free! There was always something on, and I'd watch it whether I was actually interested or not. Then I would suddenly realize three hours had passed, I was hungry, and I was on my last pair of clean socks. Matt and I still watch movies and TV episodes on Netflix, but we don't lose hours of our lives to it. Tuesday I was on the verge of a crisis over washing dishes, and what do you know but after watching an episode of Lie to Me with Matt to chill out, I found the emotional strength to do it! The thing with TV though is, it's always SO easy to just turn it on, whether you want to or need to or not. The Xbox, for me, not so easy. So I only watch when I really want to.

2. Making a meal plan.

I don't do this every week, but when I do it makes such a difference. It saves me time (and money) grocery shopping, less food gets wasted, and I know when I need to prep something the day before or right when I get home from work. I also avoid that ominous feeling of forgetting something that leaves me wandering around the house distracted and not accomplishing anything. I set up a spreadsheet in google docs so I can start keeping my meal plans in different tabs instead of wiping them out each week and starting fresh. I'm hoping that after a few months I will have accumulated enough successful menus that I can just choose one each week and shop for it. Bam!

3. Getting clothes and food ready the night before.

It is so much easier to make decisions at 10pm than 6am. It is also so much easier to scoop left over chicken sweet potato curry into a tupperware container. Growing up, when I graduated to the make-my-own-lunch phase, my mom always told me how much easier it would be to pack the night before, but did I listen? No. And did I eat a lonely Nutri-grain bar for lunch on many, many days? Yes, yes I did. But now I've finally learned :)

Three Things Thursday [Vol.3]

This week's theme is: things to enjoy on their own terms!

Being on this diet has brought Matt and I to try to replicate some of the things we love but aren't allowed to eat right now. We have been very pleasantly surprised by the results of our experiments, but we also agree that these are not substitutions you could slip by an unsuspecting guest. However, on their own terms, we love them! And we will continue to consume them, diet or no diet :)

1) Hot chocolate. We have a can of carnation hot chocolate mix sitting in our cupboard. It is sometimes tempting, telling us how rich and creamy it is, but we kept it out in case we have hot-chocolate-craving company, which in youth ministry is not rare at all (I don't think I mentioned this - we put our shelf-stable forbidden foods in bags in our storage closet. Out of sight, out of mind.) However, the first three ingredients are: sugar, corn syrup solids, and hydrogenated vegetable oil. Cocoa is nestled in the list right between modified milk ingredients and cellulose gum. To be honest, I don't see myself going back.

Our substitute has only four ingredients, and here is the recipe!
1 can coconut milk
1/2 can water
2-3 tbsp cocoa (can adjust to taste)
1-2 tbsp honey (again, adjust to taste)

This is a rich drink that is not meant to be as sweet as our carnation mix - thank goodness! It is full of good fats and has a slight nutty taste from the coconut milk, and the cocoa is relatively high in iron. Healthy, filling, and delicious on its own terms!

2) Spaghetti and meat sauce. Matt says this might be his favourite meal of life, but there is no pasta in the Maker's Diet (because God chose the Israelites, not the Italians!), so I tried to think of some alternative. I had heard of gluten-free families substituting spaghetti squash for real spaghetti, so I bought me a squash and baked it in the oven while I browned some beef to add to our Ragu.

[Here is an aside about Ragu - I was able to price match it for 99 cents a jar, and it only has one objectionable ingredient (soybean oil, listed third). I would consider making my own pasta sauce as many people on the internet love to do, but I tried it before and it was a disaster. I couldn't eat it because it tasted SO bad. I am not saying I will never make my own pasta sauce, but I certainly don't have the time to gamble on it right now. There are limits even to my DIY ambitions.]

When it came time to scoop the squash out of its rind (rind? husk? shell? I looked it up, it's rind), I second guessed myself for wanting to put meat sauce on a vegetable. Totally weird. So I put it on the side. Matt and I both ended up mixing them on our forks, taking a scoop of squash and dipping it in the sauce, AND it was so tasty! The squash was so light and sweet under the rich taste of the sauce, and it was delightful. There was plenty of meat in the sauce, so it filled us up, and I plan to buy another squash for next week. This diet has reminded me how much I LOVE squash.

3. Corn chips. Okay, really what we love is all kinds of chips! But we have found a very easy and frugal alternative to buying illegal bags of Tostitos! We buy a pack of corn tortillas, cut some up with a pizza cutter, and lay them out on a baking sheet in the oven at 350-400F. They magically turn into chips in a few minutes (I stay close because of the fine line between crispy and burnt). I love this alternative because we can make only as many chips as we want to eat, and the tortillas keep forever in the fridge. A big difference between this and commercial chips is saltiness, but you could salt your tortillas before baking if that mattered a lot to you. We find that dipping these plain corn chips in salsa and/or homemade bean dip more than makes up for the flavour that's missing, and they are just as crunchy and satisfying!

We actually tried this substitution before starting the diet, and since corn was listed as a food to avoid for phase 1, our tortillas have been abandoned at the back of the fridge. However, now that corn, beans, and cheese are allowed, I think it won't be long before we finish this pack right off!

Whew! That was a long post for just three things! Would you consider trying any of them? Do you have any suggestions for saving a little time, money, or nutrition on your own terms? I would love to hear it :)

Three Things Thursday [Vol.2]

Number one - I started reading Anna Karenina on my Christmas eReader, and it is way easier to get into than I expected! I downloaded it free from Kobo because it's a classic, and I like to be classy with free books ;) I don't want to speak too soon, but a couple chapters into it I'm very interested to see just what happens and how things all turn out.

The cutest thing on today's list is that Nimoy made a friend! There are no pictures yet, but his buddy looks close enough to this dog. He is a puppy, and about Nimoy's size at this point, and he was tooootally freaked out when we first showed up, but they were running around in the yard together and trying to wrestle a bit by the time we had to go. I think Nimoy knows he's a puppy because he was so... NICE! Like when ten year olds have to play tag with four year olds, but they let themselves get caught sometimes. I have the best dog :)

Last thing is that I have been reading tons this week about how grains might be super bad for you. I'm not completely sold, but I will definitely continue to think about it and read more. If you're curious, check out this post How Grains Are Killing You Slowly, and also read an interview about the harmful effects of wheat with the author of Wheat Belly.

If you take the time to read either article, I'd love to hear what you think!

Three Things Thursday! [Vol.1]

First off, I am still LOVING December. Still can't explain it, but I am soaking up all the happiness and serenity and joy that just keeps bubbling up in my heart this month!

Next, the apartment is decorated! It's not anything crazy, but it is very nice in the evenings (especially since the sun goes down so early these days) to have such a cozy, Christmassy home :) However, my phone has stopped taking pictures, and that was the easiest way I had to get pics on this blog SO picture evidence will be delayed until I find some batteries for my real life camera.

Last, I just had my day made by this website. Apparently OB tampon company needs to apologize to everybody. Why? I don't know. BUT if you are a lady, go ahead and type your name in to the little box that pops up, then give it a couple minutes and enjoy! Gentlemen, somehow none of the male names I tried worked out, but you probably wouldn't love this as much as I did? Pass it on to a lady friend (NOT a new girlfriend).