offering the ordinary

these words, from a friend this week, came to me as a much-needed challenge...

              "so here's what i want you to do, God helping you:  Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering.  embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.  don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.  instead, fix your attention on God.  you'll be changed from the inside out.  readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.  unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you...
because life isn't always sunshine and roses, but it's the times when it's not and we offer it anyway that are beautiful in God's sight."

she's so right, you know?
so often we see our grand acts of service, our "big" sacrifices as our gifts to God.
we see large bonus checks and generous holiday gifts and lucrative promotions as His gifts to us.

we fail to offer our ordinary as gifts to Him.
we fail to recognize our ordinary as gifts from Him.

i want to become more conscious in my daily life...more God-conscious...
recognizing His gifts...all His gifts...
offering my gifts...all my gifts...the magnificent...and the mundane.
because really and truly, it is all for Him...and it is all from Him.

{my friend that i mention above is Joye Dicharry...her challenging words can be found under her IG name @joyefuljourney and on her blog The Joyeful Journey.  the first part of her quote is from The Message.}

i'm hooked!

i love to learn.

i love to learn new things.

i love to read books {mostly historical fiction} set in different time periods, in different countries, in different cultures.  there's much to be learned from recreational reading, even if the story line is primarily fictional.

right now, my favorite "new thing" to learn is various crafts.
although i've had a pinterest account for ages, i had virtually never used it.  it all overwhelmed me and i was convinced that i'd sit for hours pinning ideas, never really implementing them.
toward the very end of last year, my friend turned me on to the true benefits and practical uses of pinterest...
and i've been pinning ever since.
no, i don't spend hours on there daily.  actually, there are often days that i don't even look at a pin.
but if i'm in need of ideas or inspiration or just a bit of know-how on a certain little project, pinterest is pretty much my new go-to.

that was a bit of a rabbit trail, because this post isn't at all about pinterest.
it's about crochet.
i've wanted to learn to crochet for-just-about-ever.
i taught myself {through rudimentary printed-out directions} the most basic of basics of knitting several years ago, but i'd never attempted crochet on my own.
a year ago, i went through a brief stint of trying to learn crochet...begging my best friend to teach me how to make granny squares and hearts and flowers and all sorts of fun things...sitting down with her to crochet, only to tear out my stitches in frustration because my hook kept getting stuck, or the yarn kept splitting, or something just didn't look right, or...or...or...
you get the picture.
it didn't go well.
to say the least.

i'm a very visual learner, a very tactile learner.
i learn facts very quickly from reading, and grasp concepts easily in a classroom setting, but i learn skills best in a one-on-one setting.
and although our crochet "lessons" should have been ideal considering those parameters, my "it must be perfect the first time" outlook, was less than ideal for my yarn-wrangling progress.

last month, my husband insisted on keeping the kids for a long weekend and sent my girlfriend and me away for a few days of rest, relaxation, and kid-free quiet. {insert unabashed hubby praises here...he's a keeper, for shore!}
as soon as we had our weekend planned, i begged her to attempt, once again, to teach me crochet...an over-the-weekend crochet boot camp, of sorts.
she agreed...but with a stipulation.
that she would teach me her way...from the beginning.
not just, "let's jump in and make a granny square"...but let's learn how to chain...now let's learn single crochet...now do five rows of single crochet...now let's learn double crochet...and so on...and so on...

i likened it to this...
if my daughter asked me to teach her to bake, i wouldn't start her out making every kind of pie imaginable.  no.  we'd first learn how to read a recipe...what the ingredients actually are...where they're kept in the pantry...how to preheat the oven...how to grease the pans...
and then we'd bake.  and we'd bake pies and breads and cakes and muffins and cookies and all sorts of goodies. {unless i was on the whole 30 like i am now...because baking all that stuff and not being able to eat it would just be cruel.}
you get the picture, though.
i didn't need to learn how to crochet hearts and granny squares and flowers.  i needed to learn how to crochet.  period.

well, her plan worked.
over the course of the weekend, she taught me several different crochet stitches and how to read/decipher a crochet pattern.  by the end of the weekend, i had finished a washcloth...a "sampler" of sorts of various crochet stitches.  {no pattern, we just winged it.}

i finished the wagon wheel shortly after returning from our weekend away.  {wagon wheel pattern from this book--worth its weight in gold, by the way, and required reading according to my friend...er...teacher} 

i finished the three hearts at the top of this post a week or two ago.
and last week when we did crafternoon together {at my house this time}, i finished this mason jar cozy. 

and what's really making me chuckle {to keep from crying} is that i started this whole long story so i could post the pattern links here...i've had several people on IG asking what pattern i used for the hearts and the cozy...and i thought it'd just be easiest to direct them to this post...

and now i can't find the heart pattern for the life of me!

i took a screen shot of it on my phone {it wasn't on my pinterest} and that's how i've been working off of the pattern.

and now that i want to find the actual site and link up to it, of course i can't even find it!

oh well...i'll do a bit of searching and post it here as soon as i find it.

in the meanwhile, go learn something interesting.  

it might not be crochet, for you...but muster up a bit of courage and try learning something new.

i've a few other little "learning" projects i'm working on right now...even taking an online class for one of them.

an old dog can learn new tricks!

try it and see.

whole 30 update

So...
I didn't fall off the Whole 30 wagon.

Well, not really.
Well, kind of.

But not really.


I started out the year doing the Whole 30...having already made it very clear that I was going to be taking a bit of a "break" for my birthday weekend (which was actually going to be a week or so after my birthday).
As it turns out, one of my close friends also has a January birthday, and invited me out with a group of girlfriends for dinner on 11th.  I'd been doing well on the W30 up until then, but after that dinner out, everything kind of crumbled apart--especially with my knowing that my birthday weekend was just ahead.

Anywhooooo...
last Monday (1/27), my best friend and another close friend (actually the same one that invited me out for dinner in January) started the Whole 30.  So, I started again, all fresh and new, with them.
Let me tell ya, it's an entirely different ball game, doing something like this with friends!  I feel so accountable to them...like if I "cheat," I'm letting down the whole group.

I've been great.  No cheats.  Not even a bite.

Part of what has made this Whole 30 experience so different from the past times that I've done it (an entire W30 last year and the brief W30 bits at the beginning of this year) is that I've been diligent about planning out our meals and doing the appropriate grocery shopping.  
In the past week or two, I've made some of the best W30 meals I've ever tasted...meals that I would eat, that I would crave, even if I wasn't doing the W30.

My all-time favorite (thus far) is this recipe for Comfort Noodles.  After I raved on and on about these on Instagram, someone had the grace to let me know that Melissa Joulwan, who wrote this recipe, also wrote the popular paleo cookbook, Well Fed {{insert smacking forehead}}.  

These "noodles" are to.die.for.
Really and truly.
And they taste just about the furthest thing from a big pile of zucchini that you can imagine.
Make them.  Just make them and taste and see.
Oh.My.Word.
Yes.  They're that good.

Pointers on the noodles:
☛let them "sweat" for a while...she says 20 minutes...I say longer.  I let mine sweat for well over an hour.  The way I figure, the less moisture, the better.  Mine turned out perfectly, so I'll always sweat them for the longer amount of time.
☛trust her...and me...you do need a julienne peeler for these babies.  Don't try to teeny-tiny slice them on your own.  It'll take waaaaaaayyy too long.  Amazon has this one for $10 (and plenty of other choices around that price range)...it's SO worth every penny.
☛if you feel like you need something more substantial than zucchini and eggs, in a separate deep skillet, sauté some chicken breast along with your favorite W30-compliant sausage.  Toss in a bit of minced garlic, along with whatever other seasonings might float your boat.  Oh my, the deliciousness.  This is what I did the first time I made these.  I'm making them again tomorrow night (my second time), and I think I might throw some fresh grape tomatoes in with the chicken breast and sausage, and maybe even a bit of green onion.
☛most importantly, don't skip the almond flour topping.  Trust me.  It sounds like such a little thing.  Don't skip it.  It is SO yummy and well-worth the extra bit of effort to throw it together.  I will say, though, I had a hard time getting mine to crunch up as much as I wanted it to.  When I make these tomorrow night, I'm going to try to use my homemade almond meal rather than almond flour...I'm hoping that the coarser texture of the meal will yield a crunchier end result in the topping.

I'll be back in the next day or two to share another fabulous meal I made...
In the meantime, run out and grab some zucchi-nucchi (zookey-nookey...that's how we say it in this house) and whip up a batch of these.
You won't regret it.