I forgot to mention...

...one of the things I'm doing with my spare time is spending a few minutes here and there tweaking the layout of the blog.  So, don't be freaked out if it looks completely different every time you're here.  It'll be stable one day :)

It came from within...

Has anyone else read this book by Andy Stanley?  In the book, he suggests that there are 4 conditions that can wreak havoc on one's heart and attitude: guilt, anger, greed and jealousy.  These four "monsters", according to Stanley, can destroy your attitude and relationships if left unchecked.

Each of these "monsters" results in a debt-to-debtor dynamic.  At the beginning of one of his chapters, Stanley breaks down the dynamics of guilt and anger:

Guilt says, "I owe you."  Anger, on the other hand, says, "You owe me."  We get angry when we don't get what we want.  That's a pretty important idea, and one you may not agree with right off the bat, so I'll say it again:  Anger is the result of not getting something we want.  What we want may include what we deserve.  Because, after all, who doesn't want what they think they deserve?

He moves on to the 3rd monster, greed.  Greed says, "I owe me".

Bottom line, the greedy people believe they deserve every good thing that comes their way.  Not only that, but they believe they deserve every good thing that could possibly come their way.  Their mantra is, What's mine is mine because I've earned it--and I've got a lot more coming.  

The last monster--the green-eyed monster, actually--is jealousy.  Jealousy says, "God owes me."

We assume that our problem is with the person who possesses what we lack.  But let's face it.  God could have fixed all of that for us.  Whatever he gave your neighbor, he could have given you too.  And besides, you don't really want your neighbor's car, you want one like it.  You don't mind the fact that God provided him with one.  The problem is that, while passing out new cars, God skipped you!

Without going into all of Stanley's thoughts on the subject(s), he suggests that you fight guilt with confession, anger with forgiveness, greed with giving and jealousy with celebration.  In other words, you are "forgiving" the debt.  Forgiving the person/situation who has "made" you angry, confess the thing that causes you guilt, give when you don't feel like you can (or want to) and celebrate whatever it is you covet from someone else's life.

Now, why did I feel the need to bore you with all of this?  Well, I'm still not entirely sure.  :)  Being unemployed and spending my days applying for jobs, researching jobs, updating my resume, cleaning, doing laundry, running errands......well, it's just me!  Me and my thoughts.  Me and my prayers.  Me and my God.  I have been struggling a lot with one of those monsters--well, all of them in some ways, but one in particular is really eating away at my heart.  The debt is unpaid.  I am OWED!  Except not really.  I know God has a wonderful plan for my life, both short- and long-term, but I am having trouble trusting Him.  And with as much time as I have to myself these days, He's taken to showing me those pesky little things he wants me to work on.  I've been a bit lazy with that lately, but He's really been on my case these past few days.  Guess it's time to buck up and settle the debt.

Finding a church...week 5

Week 5!  Last Sunday in August.  And somehow, we've managed to miss communion at every church!  A little disappointing, I must say.  Maybe we'll hit it next week.  :)

Anyways, we went to church today with some friends of mine from college and their adorable daughter.  The contemporary service for this church is at 9am (at least until the flip-flop in another 2 weeks) so it was definitely an early morning for us.  But, the promise of breakfast afterwards and a nap was all it took to get Jeremy on board with the plan.

The church itself has definitely got the contemporary look to it....pews, stained glass, etc, but they really did a good job with contemporary music.  I could tell that they've been doing it for a little while.  We recognized all but one song (which is a beautiful song, by the way) so that definitely helped.

I have to admit that I halfway expected things to be kinda "stuffy", but it was quite the opposite.  Even though most of the people were dressed up quite a bit more than Jeremy and I, all of those we encountered were extremely nice.  (And people actually raised their hands in praise--didn't expect that :))

Now for my attempt at comedy.  I truly believe that God gives Baptist preachers louder voices than any other people on earth!  I tell you what, that guy spoke powerfully!  Pretty good sermon on the 9th commandment (bearing false witness) and a realization that lies ABOUND in this world......not always blatant un-truths...but people putting a "spin" on things, saying things to lead you to an assumption about someone/something....etc.


Don't know that this will be our new church home, but it was definitely good to go with friends :)

This week in pictures

Since I haven't updated anything since last Sunday (not that you're missing it, but I think I am :)), here's some of the fun things that went on this past week:

 

I made cookies from scratch (they were so-so)

We had our first On the Border experience

Got some of Jeremy's artwork hung up in the "dining room"

Made strombolis from scratch (yummmmmm)

Watched Irene's effects on Charlotte

And sent Jeremy off to his first day of seminary (or as one of our friends calls it, "Jesus School").

Hope you guys had a good week, too!

finding a new church--week 4

I honestly can't believe that we've been down here for 4 weekends.  Yesterday marked 1 month since we moved...it's been a difficult journey to say the least.  To say Jeremy and I are social butterflies would be inaccurate, but we are definitely missing time with our AVL friends.  Thankfully our friends in the CLT area have treated us well!  Just can't wait to start meeting people!  I'm still jobless (prayer request!!!!) and Jeremy's working like a dog at O'Charley's.  (If you're in the area, he's at the O'Charley's in Monroe, and works lunches.  He'll take right good care of ya! :))

OK.  So we visited another church this week.  I let Jeremy pick since none of the ones that I have chosen up until this point turned out to be "good fits".  So, Jeremy used some of his best reasoning skills--which one has the latest service time?  Just kidding....well, it *did* end up being the one with the latest start time, but he chose it for other reasons.  This one is fairly close to where we live, so it only took us 10-12 minutes to get there, which was nice.

It was a little confusing when we got there, because the church's name wasn't prominently displayed on the building, but we found the entrance (only because there were people standing in it :)) and went in.  The front lobby area was pretty small, but the sanctuary was rather large.  We went in to find seats and no one really talked to us, but, then again, we've gotten kinda used to that. Once the music started, we knew we at least recognized the first song!  (I must say that I think 3 of the 4 churches we've visited have all done "Our God"...popular song!)  Turns out we knew every song they did!  What a welcomed change from the other churches we've attended!  I did have to pop out to use the restroom during the 3rd song ("How He Loves", one of Jeremy's favorites--or "How He Loves" if you want to hear the original artist singing it).  It was then that I figured out where the rest of the church "space" is....it appears that the church shares space with a gymnastics studio.  Seemed like a very good place to have children's activities!  But the restrooms were so far away that by the time I got back, I was VERY confused, as the band was playing this little ditty.  Apparently I had missed the prayer for the offering and this was their fun way of taking it up.  While playing some late '70s rock (ish?).  I can definitely see some way(s) you could use that song in a religious setting, but it was definitely a surprise after leaving when I did.


Moving on.  The sermon was really good.  Jeremy and I both said afterward that it was something we needed to hear this morning.  The pastor was relatable and funny, and a very good speaker.  As I have alluded to, the band was really good as well.  All men (I always have to think if I could "fit in" since music is my thing) and all kinda rocker-looking (several of them with shaved heads).  Lead singer had an awesome voice, and the band was spot-on.  


So.....this one is a possibility.  Jeremy and I both noticed that there wasn't a "greet your neighbor" time, which we both like, and again...no altar or "altar-like" location.  I know there are some things we'll have to compromise, and I'd rather compromise that than anything related to beliefs or scripture :)


All-in-all it was a good service, and I can see us visiting again down the road!


Now I've got to convince Jeremy to pick next week, too, since he seems to be having better luck :)

extreme couponing....glorified hoarders?

We didn't have cable for the last 6-7 months we were in Asheville.  It was a decision we had made both for financial reasons and other reasons.  We were spending way too much time watching TV, so we figured that while saving money, we'd find more productive ways to use our time.  (Of course, we had a digital antenna so we could still get ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX & PBS, so it's not like we unplugged the TV altogether...)

So now, we have free cable included with our apartment.  Ohhh, it's like opening pandora's box!  Well, not *that* bad, but it's still been quite the time-suck for us.  We've discovered new shows, new-to-us shows, and crap-shows-that-are-entertaining-to-us.  One of the new-to-us shows is Extreme Couponing.

Now, we didn't live under a rock.  We knew this show existed, and had caught an episode or two when we would dog-sit for friends who had cable/satellite.  But, yesterday was our first real opportunity to watch several episodes of this show.  And oh my GOODNESS, some of these people are over the top!  (Most of these people are over the top)  They have tens of thousands of dollars of groceries in their basements, pantries, closets and, in some cases, under beds.  Some people even have hundreds of dollars of products that they don't have the need for--diapers when they don't have kids, pet food when they don't have pets--just because it was free.  Now, there are some people who will get those freebies they don't need and donate them to charities.  I would LOVE to be able to do that!  To get 100 bottles of ketchup, keep 3 or 4 for us, and donate the rest.  That would be amazing, and hopefully I can work towards that :)

When I first saw the show several months ago, I decided I'd look into couponing.  I knew there had to be a "catch" with the "crazy" deals these people were getting, but I also knew that there had to be some truth to it as well.  So, I've read up on it some, and tried my hand at it a little, usually unsuccessfully.  But today, I really feel like I got a few good deals.

I used a coupon for a free body wash at CVS and, well, got a free body wash!  Full sized....no tricks.  Just free!  If you want one, too, you can "like" the CVS Minue Clinic on facebook and then print off the coupon.  Tah-dah!

My other "deals" were on trash bags and worcestershire sauce.  A month or two ago, I signed up for a free sample of Glad trash bags with Febreeze freshness.  They sent me a free trash bag, and several coupons.  One was $1 off any of the Glad/Febreeze trash bags.  Knowing that Harris Teeter is doubling coupons up to $1.98 face value this week, I decided to see if I could get a good deal.  I found a box of 34 trash bags, regularly priced at $8.99.  They were on sale for $5.99 if you have a VIC card, and then my $1 coupon was doubled, so I got the bags for $3.99.  That's a 44% savings!

For the worcestershire sauce, I knew last night I'd need to buy some for tonight's dinner, so I did a search and found a $1 off coupon I could print.  So, the bottle originally cost $3.45 and the $1 off coupon was doubled, so I got it for $1.45, which is a savings of 42%!

Like I said, it's a very small "haul" (as the extreme couponers call it) but still.  I felt slightly accomplished.  I have gotten a lot of my good information by reading the Money Saving Mom blog.  Very informative, and that's where I've gotten a lot of my freebies (like a coupon for a free pantene shampoo that I redeemed last week).
 

Time to go make room under the bed for my "stockpile"!!  ;-)

ETA: If you do decide to sign up for any freebies, etc, I recommend creating a separate email address for all of those.  We have one that's specifically for coupons, email grocery fliers, etc.  Not surprisingly, it gets a TON of spam, but at least it's not my primary email, so I don't have to deal with it constantly :)

finding a new church--week 3

So, week 3!  (Which means that we've been here almost a month, and that tomorrow marks 1 month of not having a job....but that's not what I'm here to talk about!)

We decided this morning to make a 2nd attempt at the church we got lost trying to find last week.  (After eating dinner with some wonderful friends last night who were in town for a concert, we scouted out the church location so that we could for SURE get there this morning :))

The area where the church holds their services reminds me a lot of the Biltmore Park area in Asheville--living, shopping, eating, movies.  Very interesting little area, though it didn't look very busy when we were there.  Anyways.  The church right now meets in the movie theater (though we found out today that they're moving to a new location in the next month or two).  It's one of 3 campuses, so we had another "pastor on the screen" experience.  When we walked in, we must have looked lost because one of the pastors came to talk to us and let us know about the church, etc. 

We walked into the actual theater, the music was just getting started, which was startling because there were SO MANY PEOPLE still in the lobby of the theater.  The music was recognizable (soooo important to us) and the band was kinda small and cute, and actually quite talented.  Felt the closest to Covenant that we've found so far.  What wasn't good was the fact that people were walking in during the entire time of worship music.  (In fact, and I promise I'm not exaggerating, the last people who walked in late were 40 minutes late for a service that lasted around an hour.  Talk about rude, and almost pointless.

After 2 songs, it was sermon-on-the-screen time.  I'm honestly not sure if this sermon was broadcast live or if it was pre-recorded, but we both found it harder to get into it at this church than last week at the other church.  The head pastor was apparently out of town this week, so another pastor preached, and while he did a good job and had a good message, it just didn't convey as well as we would have wanted it to.

After the sermon, there were some announcements and they had the offering, during a slow reflective song (which was a little odd).  This time, pretty much as soon as the singing started, some people started leaving.  And again it was quite disruptive.  But, the music was good again.  As far as being recognizable and not being over-the-top, I think this week's music was the best of the 3.

At any rate.  It was an alright experience.  We said we might want to try them again once they get into their new location and when the head pastor is back (I read somewhere that he's an awesome speaker).  But, back to the drawing board again.  It's not gotten TOO frustrating yet, but I can see how it might if we're still doing this in October.

I'm letting Jeremy pick next week :)  We've both said we would like to try a church that isn't part of a "campus" system, so we might actually have a "live" pastor experience!!  :)

This week in review

Nothing horribly exciting this week....other than the fact that Jeremy got a job!!  After getting the run-around from the first O'Charley's he talked to, he decided to try another one, and it just so happened they were looking for lunch servers, which is the shift he wanted.  So, he'll start on Monday.  It's about a 20-35 minute drive, depending on lights and traffic, so it's considerably farther than he had to drive in Asheville.  We're hoping the tips will be fantastic.  (Wishful thinking!!)

We started off the week (well, Tuesday.  I guess nothing really happened on Monday) eating at our favorite pizza place in town, Angela's.  VERY tasty, and I happened to win a free glass of wine from them on facebook!

Jeremy is a bit of a pizza "snob" (in a good way) so when we find a pizza place he likes, we stick with it!

 

We also made some lemon chicken, using this marinade.  The first day, it had only marinated for about 6 hours.  Day 2 (not pictured) had a much better flavor to it.  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

We stayed up pretty late last night playing games.  This was one particularly long game of connect 4....it ended with no winner!

And in the final excitement so far, I've talked to an old friend who is doing photography, and she's agreed to take pictures of some of my stuff!  I'm going to send her some crochet items to use as photo props on precious babies!  She was interested in possibly having a pom-pom hat (they're really popular these days in photography) so I decided to try making one.  Please ignore the abrupt color change (I was just using scrap yarn to see if I could actually make one).  I think it turned out rather well!

And that's about it!  I reckon I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with another good church story to tell :)

crazy morning (aka finding a new church--week 2)

What started out as a disaster ended up being pretty alright.  We had picked out a church to try this week, I had the general idea on how to get there, and we were ready to roll!  I decided to double-check that I knew where I was going, and turn on the GPS to get it ready in case we made a wrong turn....and the GPS didn't have the road listed.  Great.  So I just wrote down the directions from Google Maps (I tried MapQuest, but it didn't recognize the address either) and we went about our merry little way.

We followed the directions....and I tell you, that church was NO WHERE to be found.  We drove up and down the road, looked for signs, nothing.  (Once we were back home, I looked up the directions again, and it looked like we followed them, but that the church is in one of the shopping center areas that we passed.  But there weren't any signs. Maybe next week...)

At this point, we were already 5 minutes late for this church, so we decided to try heading back towards home.  We knew there was a church near home, and hoped that they had a service around the time we'd get there (11:00ish).  Sure enough, we saw a ton of people walking around in the parking lot, so we decided to give it a shot.

There was a sign as we were driving in asking first time visitors to turn on their flashers.  We debated over whether we should or not--we're not ones to deliberately draw attention to ourselves--but I decided to give it a shot.  The fella directing traffic stopped us, came to the window and let us know to drive towards the front and someone would get us parked close to the entrance.  (Then Jeremy heard him say "We have VIPs coming to the front"--that's what they call first time guests--so he started joking around saying things like, "Yep, let's grab 'em and bag 'em".  So cynical.)  We got parked, and someone actually came over to us to give us information, walk us inside, show us around and tell us about the church.  There were people greeting us EVERYWHERE...very different than the church last week.  (Jeremy said "It was a little scary at first...." lol)

We got in, and we were in for a ride!  I could go on and on and on about all sorts of things, but here's the summary:

• The music was good, but VERY loud.  
• They did some original songs (like last week's church) but there were 2 main differences: a) they put a mainstream, familiar song towards the beginning and b) I thought their original songs were really good quality and easy to follow
• The pastor was VERY engaging (even though we were watching him on a screen--he was live at another campus) and used some very contemporary examples--comparing the way that some people follow Jesus to pressing the "follow" button for someone on Twitter...and that we need to be more than that.
• They had a huge baptism event today, and the pastor really did a good job of explaining what baptism is, and how you don't need classes or an appointment to be baptized.  They had thought of EVERY excuse that someone would have to not get baptized spontaneously, and had: t-shirts, shorts, boxers, women's underwear, towels, hair products, feminine hygiene products, etc so that no one could say "well, I would get baptized IF..."
• It was a pretty large church, and we're not sure if that part will be a fit for us
• I feel there's NO WAY I'd ever fit in with the music team, and that's something that's important to me, as I'd really love to get back into worship leading once we can find the right church

Overall, a MUCH better experience than last week, and I reckon God meant for us to go to this church on this day.  It's a possibility, but we're not sure.  More Sundays, more churches to visit :)

chicken pot pie!!

Sad though it may be, I'm dedicating this post to food.  Chicken pot pie, to be exact. The recipe can be found here (and I'll tell you what I do differently).

• We don't like onions much, so I usually don't put onion in the pie.  So instead of sauteing the onions, I just melt the butter and get it nice and warm, and then start adding the flour, etc
• I usually don't get fresh carrots, I just get a frozen veggie mix with them in there.
• I never use the full 2 sticks of butter.  Tonight, for example, I used 1 full stick and about 1/4 stick that was sitting in the fridge (just remember that the butter is getting spread out over 2 pies and you might not feel so bad!)
• Jeremy's not a fan of thyme so this time around I left out the thyme completely and added about 1/4 - 1/3 tsp of sage.  (Jeremy says I can add some more sage next time :))

Here's what it looked like before filling the pie pans:

(In case you can't tell, we like FULL pies!)

The pie crusts, before the invasion of the filling...

...and after!

Busting at the seams!

 After 35 minutes of baking

(the crusts got a little too dark, but not quite as dark as it appears in this picture.  Need to cover the edges SOONER than I did :))


This is the one we decided to eat tonight:

I didn't quite cut through the bottom crust when I was cutting the first piece, which left it a little messy but still VERY yummy!

The best signs to let me know it was a success:

Today's Project

Today's project was to get some stuff hung up in my "space" in the spare bedroom.  Jeremy's taken the study as his space, so the spare bedroom is, thus, mine :)

Got the dry erase board/organizer from Target and the bulletin board is just a cheapy from Ikea, and I painted it black today so that it matches the organizer :)

I put everything together and painted the board, and Jeremy hung it all.  That's one of the perks to being married to an artist--he definitely knows how to hang artwork, etc on the walls!

 

Our GPS leads us to roads that don't exist......but we finally got to Ikea!

I'm not lying.  Perhaps it's time we update the maps or something (though that's expensive!), because our GPS keeps leading us to roads that dead end or don't exist.  Luckily, Ikea has lots of flags, signs, etc because we did finally get there!

Now, we went last week (our first time ever) and spent a couple of hours wandering the place.  If they hadn't closed when they did, I'm sure we could have wandered another hour or two.  They have a ton of room set-ups, and we were just amazed at all of the decor, furniture...everything.  We didn't buy anything (hard to do there) but I definitely made notes of things I wanted.  And then promptly scratched off the $5000 kitchen that I wanted.  :)

We went back today with a budget, and didn't even spend all of it!  (We did spend about 4/5, but still....)

It's hard to see (please ignore the empty boxes behind our stash), but we got:

• A bulletin board
• 2 storage boxes
• 2 sets of glasses (6 in each set)
• 3 floating shelves
• 2 flexible cutting boards
• 4 wall hooks
• 1 small floating shelf/key hook
• 3 trivets
• 4 kitchen/dish towels
• wok

All for under $100 :)

We also dropped by Bed Bath and Beyond (because we were looking for placemats and didn't like any of the ones at Ikea) and found these little beauties.  Except ours are black.  Quite the productive day!  (Especially considering we ran other errands as well :))