Go Spartans!

There used to be a skit on Saturday Night Live which featured Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri as wanna be cheerleaders.  Their team was the Spartans.  Now, they didn't make the actual cheerleading team, so they formed one of their own. They decided to cheer for the school teams that the regular cheerleading squad didn't cheer for, like the chess team and the swim team.  And, they were always on a quest to come up with the perfect cheer. I don't always like the SNL skits, but the Spartan skits had me rolling on the floor.  At the time I worked for DU and some of us would wait for others to be on the phone, then go and do a Spartans cheerleader pose in their doorway to see if we could get them to laugh.  Still makes me giggle just thinking about it.  I saw this quote the other day and it sounded like something the "Spartans Cheerleaders"  would say.

"Surround yourself with cheerleaders, not fear leaders."

I know it is probably supposed to be a serious quote , but it struck me as funny (reference my August 23 post about my odd sense of humor).

You know what else I love about the SNL Spartans?  I love that they cheered on those teams who had no one else cheering for them (even if the teams couldn't hear them-- i.e. the swim team couldn't hear them underwater).  Now, is it just me or does anyone else think that maybe we could use a few more cheerleaders in the world.

It is interesting to watch T.V.  Countless programs spend hours critiquing what someone wears, what they say or have said in the past, how heavy or thin a person is, how they live, where they live, how they spend their money and on and on and on.  And do not get me started on the utter and sheer delight they take in reporting how far down someone falls when they fail or screw up.  Now, it's not just T.V., the media, the press who do this.  Believe me, we as viewers/readers/consumers have created the market for all this trash.  If we didn't buy it/watch it/read it, it wouldn't be as prevalent in our society.  And I'm totally pointing a finger at myself as well.

We carry this over into our daily lives as well.  We judge how other people spend their money, how they raise their children, their decisions on whether or not to have children, on how many children they have, what they drink, what they eat, where they live, what they drive, how they vacation, how often they go to church, how they give, what they give, their talent (or lack thereof), their kids talent (or lack thereof), how they dress, how they dress their children, how they do their jobs, how they earn their money, how much they have (you have too much, you have too little), how they vote, who they vote for, who their friends are, who they talk to/don't talk to, what they say, how they say it, what they do with their free time, on and on and on.  It does nothing but breed discontent, competition, jealousy, and feelings of superiority over others. Again, I'm pointing the finger at myself as well.

1 Thessalonians 5:11 says "So speak encouraging words to one another.  Build up hope so you'll be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind."  the Message.

I found another quote that says this, "Life in Christ's Kingdom is not a competition.  It's a co-op."

So the challenge is this.  Be excited for others when they are blessed.  Celebrate with them. Encourage each other.  Realize that no one makes perfect decisions all the time (including yourself) and pray for them instead of judging them.  Realize that just because they made a different decision than you doesn't mean that their decision is wrong. Smile at people instead of frowning.  Look for at least one nice thing to say about others.  Practice the art of giving grace and mercy to others.  A couple more quotes to remember:

"One of the beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement.  When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed."

"Correction does much, but encouragement does more."

"A single sentence spoken at the right time could change someones life forever.  A little encouragement can go a long way."

So, I challenge you, and myself, to change our way of thinking.  To become an encourager and supporter of others.  Look for ways to share kind words with those you come into contact with.  Go out and be a Spartan!

I have feelings for my food...

I have feelings for my food. I have often told people that the only reason I have a treadmill is because I like food.  That's mostly true.

There's a verse in the Bible that states, "Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do."  Ecclesiastes 9:7  I enjoy my food.  I know that God created us so that we need food in order to live.  But, He also gave us taste buds.  Think about it.  We could solve the problem of fueling our bodies without having the pleasure of tasting our food.  However, we have taste buds, which in a small way, help us enjoy the process of fueling our bodies.  Hmmm.. I'm not going to go all theological here, because frankly, it's not one of my strengths, and the simple explanation of God creating for us a built in way to enjoy food is good enough for my simple mind.

But, my love for food goes deeper than just enjoying the taste of good food.  I enjoy the moment when my family sits down together, face to face, to have dinner and talk about our day. This quote says it best:

"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to dining."

I enjoy hearing the stories of our day.  Sharing the funny stuff that happened.  Listening to my son relate a story about what happened in one of his classes.  What he learned that day.  Watching my husbands face light up as he talks about how he was able to solve a big problem at work.  Taking time to just be together.  It is a beautiful gift, this thing called dinner.  It is extra special on the evenings when we can linger, not rushing through the food or the stories.

I also love the friendships that are formed with others while dining together.  There's a quote that says:

"If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with them.  The people who give you their food, give you their heart."

Our best friends in life are the people we dine with.  You slow down.  You relax.  You can't help but share stories of your life.  You learn about each other and from each other.  You can sit down to dinner with people you have nothing in common with, and find common ground in food.  We have met some of the most interesting people when we are traveling around the dinner table.  I have had some of the most amazing, moving, life altering, discussions while at the dinner table with others. I notice that in the Bible Jesus seemed to "dine with people" a lot! I think there's something to this eating together thing.

So, you want to change your family dynamics?   You want to know what is going on in your child's life?   You want to grow closer to your spouse?  You want to make friends?  Try getting together for dinner on a regular basis.  I'm not saying dinner is a fix all for every problem.  Really it's the time together that helps in these areas.  But, having good food doesn't hurt.  One last quote,

"Life should always be like lingering over a good meal."

Where are the photos you say?  Well, I wouldn't forget to put a few photos in.  Here's a few photos of some of the very good meals we had at our house this week (at least, the ones where I remembered to take photos).

Hmmm.. dinner with some good friends this week.  It included seared Tuna, Teriyaki Chicken with mango, pineapple and rice,  with edamame, and fresh Ceasar salad.

Jeff had a work event one evening so my son and I enjoyed a simple meal of whole wheat macaroni with feta cheese, tomato sauce, and fresh basil.

Halibut in Chardonnay sauce, spinach salad, Caprese salad with homegrown tomatoes, basil, Mozzerella, basalmic vinegar glaze topped with the truffle Olive Oil we brought back from Italy.

I had some cherries I needed to use so I made a fresh cherry cobbler one night.  It was so popular with my husband that he requested I make another one to take with us to dinner at a friends house this weekend.

Have a great, flavorful weekend!

My sense of humor earns me countless uneasy stares.

"A cheerful heart brings a smile to your face."  Proverbs 15:13.  This is one of my favorite verses from the Bible.   I love to laugh and have fun!  I love to be around people who like to laugh and have fun!  It's uplifting.  That being said,  I often feel like this quote-

"My sense of humor earns me countless uneasy stares."

I also relate to this quote-

"It's just a matter of time before they add the word 'syndrome' after my last name."

Life is funny.  I have to sit back and laugh at my self all the time.  Now, I understand that there are things in life that aren't funny.  There are times to be serious.  There's a lot of bad stuff happening all over the world.  Bad things happen in my life also.  It's life.  But have you ever met someone who spends their whole time living in the "bad stuff"?  Or, have you watched a news channel for  a whole day?  Ugh!  It's depressing.

I used to feel that everything I did, said, was part of,  had to have a seriousness about it.  And I felt that some of the stuff that I truly enjoy doing (like scrapbooking, photography, decorating, crafting, reading, cooking) was somehow not as significant, or had less value.  The seriousness of the world overwhelmed me.  And, unfortunately,  I often found humor in situations that people viewed as solemn or sacred.  With me being a preachers daughter, you can probably foresee the problems that caused.

I'm going to just tell one story here about that.  Please do not be offended.  And I have to say I loved this dear lady with all of my heart and soul.  She was wonderful and I cried like a baby when I sung at her funeral.  Louise was an amazing lady who, in her later years, had a great move of God in her life.  She was so excited about what God was doing, and she was so thankful about all God had done.

One Sunday, my dad asked the congregation if anyone had a testimony they wished to share with everyone.  Louise stood right up, and with all seriousness said, "Pastor, I'm so grateful today.  God has really changed my heart towards people.  In fact, God's helped me so much that this week the only person I told to go to hell was the devil."  And she sat down.  I held it together pretty well until I looked at my dad's face.  The combination of his face, and what was just said was too much for me.  I snickered..  LOUDLY.  Needless to say, I'm so grateful that Louise also had a great sense of humor and never let my "out loud" snicker offend her.  Others were plenty offended for her, and believe me I heard about it.  And I'm sorry, but I still remember this story with humor and fondness for a dear lady I once knew.

What I have discovered in life is that I need balance.  The fun loving creative side of me is an important part of me.  I need to give it as much time as the "serious, business" side of me.  I'm much more fun to be around when I am balancing both seriousness and laughter in my life. So, don't be afraid to have fun!


I saw this quote today and loved it.  It said, "Some days I just want to drink coffee, create stuff, and sleep."

In honor of this quote (and yes, here is the part that involves pictures.  Truthfully, I probably would have skipped the first part and just scrolled down to the photos).

I dearly love my morning coffee:

And here is my epic mom and photographer failure of this week:

Seriously?  I love to take photographs.  My son is very handsome.  

And THIS is the photo I managed to capture.   

 However, I somehow managed to get a good photo of our cat,

Our neighbors cat

and a flower from the garden

I'm sorry son, I have failed you.

And now to the create side of things.  I was gone most of the summer and my poor little porch looked sad.  So I revamped it a little by cleaning up the Lanterns and putting Vinyl Initials on them.  Oh, and I watered my poor plants.

My other failure-- I didn't blog yesterday.  Now I could lie and say that with the first day of school and everything my plate was too full.  No, I went shopping.  I went down to the Capital Market and bought fantastic cheese and produce.  I stopped at Joe's Fish Market and bought amazing, yummy fish for our meals this weekend.  And I bought this:

A cute little butter holder since our other butter holder had such a weird handle no one could lift it.

I also redid Keagan's Bathroom counter 

before

after

And last but not least, I'm putting new valances in the kitchen and breakfast room

before

after

Breakfast nook

before

and we are still deciding on what will be the after.  It will be one of these 3

Now, if you've stayed with me thus far, bless your little heart.  If anyone wants the valances I just took down let me know and I'll get them too you.  There's nothing wrong with them, I was just ready for something new.

Thanks!  Have a great day!  And remember to laugh.

Don't believe Everything You Hear

I have this distinct memory of a night from my childhood.  What I heard that night made a HUGE impact on me.  And... I can't understand how I believed what was said.  We were up visiting with family at my Grandmother's house in Oak Creek, CO (near Steamboat).   I'm not sure if it was a family reunion or what, but there were a lot of us there.  Now, my grandmother's house was very small, which was why I was sleeping on a pallet on the floor in the little dining area, right next to the little living room.

Anyway, the adults were watching some kind of news program on T.V.  I, of course, was listening to the show as I lay there instead of sleeping.    Adult T.V. was much more interesting than anything I got to watch.  The announcement was made that after the quick commercial break, they would be back with a story of great importance that everyone should hear.  So of course, my little ears perked up.  It seemed like the commercials took forever.... someone squeezed the Charmin (which was apparently a big no-no), Mikey ate the cereal, and some group of people sang about buying the world a Coke.  Whatever.  I just wanted them to get to the story before I fell asleep.

Finally, the show came back on and the big story was about these new KILLER BEES that were going to take over the world (or at least my part of North America).  They talked about how people had already died in South America and that the bees would soon be marching their way up throughout the entire U.S.  O.K.  Now I was entirely freaked out and couldn't sleep if I wanted too.  I'm sure that I drove my family crazy with endless questions and statements about Killer Bees, like  "What do they look like?", "Is that a Killer Bee?",   "I'm sure that's a Killer Bee.",  "I just got stung by a Killer Bee,  I'm sure of it.", "The Killer Bees are going to be here any day now, they said so on T.V."  etc....

Hmmm... Bear with me as I'm going to jump to another story before I tie all this together (at least this story has pictures, yeah!)

This summer I had an opportunity to travel to Turkey with my husband and my 15 year old son.  Fantastic!  I was so excited!  I researched and planned.   The week before we were scheduled to visit Turkey, protests started in Istanbul and then in Izmir, the two places we were visiting.  I began to watch CNN, BBC (my news programs of choice.  Dear Hubby tends more towards FOX.  Somehow we make it work).  They were showing all kinds of things like people being sprayed with fire hoses.  Tear Gas being fired.  Businesses being looted.  It looked like a total riot had broken out across Turkey.  I'm concerned.  Almost cancelled our tours.

We decided we would go.  If at any time we felt uncomfortable, we would just head back to the ship.  No problem.  Our first stop in Turkey was Istanbul, where the protests had started and were the strongest.  Not knowing what to expect, we cautiously went off on our tour.  Guess what we saw, found, heard?

This:

A perfectly beautiful, peaceful, amazing place to visit.  You see, what the news media failed to mention was that Istanbul is a city of 15 million people spread out over 100 miles.  The protests were conducted by about 10,000 people in one square of the city.  Now, I'm not going to get into all the politics of the protests other than to say that I found that the Turkish people I spoke to split on how they felt about what was happening. 

We enjoyed our day.  Touring the Blue Mosque:

The Aya Sofya, which started out as a Byzantine church, then became a Mosque, and is now a museum:

We spent time at the Topkapi Palace

We ferried down the Bosphorus and had an amazing Turkish lunch!

And we ended it at the Grand Bazaar where we drank Turkish Apple Tea (which my son fell in love with), bought some spices, bought some Turkish tile, bought a chess set,bargained with the locals, and generally enjoyed our day!

Ok, so what about the Killer Bees?  Well, they have made it to some of the lower  southern states.  And, they do cause some problems, sometimes.  However, it seems these "Killer Bees" don't do well with the cold.  Hmmmm... seems to me that little factoid was left out of the news program.  It also seems that their progress is moving much slower than anticipated.  Imagine that.

The whole point of this long post is that you shouldn't just believe something just because you hear it on T.V., the internet, the newspaper, the neighbor, etc... I don't care what program you watch, what you read, who you listen to, there is some bias in there.  We spread a lot of fear around because we don't look into the details of something before we repeat it.  

These Bible verses communicate what I'm trying to say much more eloquently:

"Dear friend, guard clear thinking and common sense with your life;  don't for a minute lose sight of them.  They'll keep your soul alive and well,  they'll keep you fit and attractive.  You'll travel safely, you'll neither tire nor trip.  You'll take afternoon naps without a worry,  you'll enjoy a good nights sleep.  No need to panic over alarms or surprises, or predictions that doomsday's just around the corner, Because God will be right there with you; he'll keep you safe and sound."  Proverbs 3:21-26  the Message

My Secret Desire.....

Ok,  I admit it.... I have a secret desire to be Italian.  Now, I know I have an Italian last name.  I married into an Italian family.  But that's not what I am talking about. I want to be a real Italian.  As in, I want to live in Italy.  My most favorite thing about being Italian is the lovely Italian language.  It rolls off the tongue.  Everything sounds pretty when said in Italian.

That being said,  I have sayings in Italian placed around my house.

These two are in  my kitchen.  La Dolce Vita....The Good Life.

Nella Mia Casa Nessuno va Affamato....In my house, no one goes hungry.

Notice that I have to put the Italian words in Italics.... it's like some kind of unwritten rule for me.  Like maybe it makes the words look as amazing as they sound when said out loud by someone who speaks Italian fluently (that would not be me, BTW).  

I love the Italian language so much that this summer, when visiting Italy, I bought this plaque in Capri.

Now, I had no clue what this plaque said when I bought it.  And the little old Italian lady I bought it from didn't speak any English.  However, since it was written in Italian, I figured it had to be good.  Probably some amazing local saying!

So the plaque came home and I promptly hung it up by the front door.  My husband walked by and said, "Did you get that in Capri?  What does it mean?"  

Hmmmm.  Time to get that saying translated.  Are you ready for it?  The big translation into some amazing Italian saying?

Here it is:  Say hello when you enter, when you leave go get your roosters.  

Or another translation said- Health when you enter, when you leave go get your roosters.

Or, and this is the best, - Say hello when you enter, and mind your own ***** business.

What???? And it actually uses another word for roosters that I just can't bring myself to type or say out loud.

  Hmmm. Nice.  So, while my guests are entering and leaving my home, I'm silently cursing them out in Italian.  I probably should have pushed for a translation when purchasing said plaque.  And I am now wondering if that sweet little old Italian lady really didn't speak English.

So, now what am I going to do?  I mean, I spent 25 Euros on this stupid, insulting plaque.  I could leave it alone, and hope no one understands what it says.  But, I know.  So, I am on a mission to refurbish said plaque.  I will post photos of the refurbishment once I am done.

The moral of this story?  Make sure you don't get so caught up in the prettiness of something that you don't take time to properly understand the underlying meaning of it.  Sigh....