Culinary Cabaret!

Hey guys! Check out the brand-new news from the sister-blog, Two's Company that I share with Sarah! :)

Okay guys! I am thrilled and excited to introduce to you to the new blog series starting here on Two's Company! This series will be called "Culinary Cabaret" after the line in Disney's "Be Our Guest" which runs: "Beef ragout, cheese souffle, pies and puddings en flambe! We'll prepare and serve with flair a culinary cabaret!"Essentially, this series is a challenge you all will be able to link up with any week you'd like! It will run for 52 weeks (hopefully 52 adjacent weeks...we'll see how that works out) which is a year. The idea is that each week I'll post a theme, and you will have a chance to make one new recipe (or a variation of an old one) that fits the theme. Themes could be as simple as "Indian", "Greek", "Italian" or as complex as "Pixar Movies", "Downton Abbey", "Autumn", or, hey, something as crazy as "Oxford don". Sarah and I will chose one new recipe a week and blog about it--and you'll do the same!

And for those of you who are sitting there looking at this post thinking, "Aw, gee, I don't think I can be that creative," all I'm saying is that it is one recipe a week. Not a whole meal. It won't be expensive because, hey, people in India don't always have a ton of money and if you've got some watermelon and some milk and ice you can make a melon lassi that would fit that theme and not cost a dime. And besides--a challenge isn't supposed to be terribly easy. It's meant to be doable though, and I thoroughly believe that one new recipe a week is doable. I will be posting the theme for the week on Mondays and you will have until the following Monday to link up with your post and recipe. Not only will Culinary Cabaret improve your own creativity, but we can serve as inspirations for each other! And remember, linking up once does not mean that you have to do all 52 weeks! I would love to see you anytime throughout the course of the challenge. So please spread the word, and if any of you are wizards with blog buttons, feel free to make and share a button about the challenge. I want to get as many people involved as possible. :)

Looking forward to breaking out my skillz,
                                                          Rachel

Crossing off the Bucket List!

"The Big Brown Bear went LOLLOPPING over the mountain!"

-Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

(and, consequently, so did I while in Colorado!) I love how life will sometimes suddenly throw dozens of new experiences at you and ask you to juggle them accordingly. You know I've been busy busy busy with my travels and only just got back in time for my very own birthday. But now I foresee very few wanderings for a couple months and hopefully can get into the swing of quite a lot of things I've neglected over this Spring and start to the Summer. I  would appreciate prayer for wisdom regarding employment this fall. While I hope to be a published author someday, such a thing takes time, and I find I must seek some other thing that will earn me money while I pursue that dream. The current ideas a literary-themed online shop, creative-writing tutoring/mentoring, and the teaching of creative writing at some local co-op or another. These things would require me to move my botto and get out talking to people and quite frankly, that freaks me out. However, I do see the necessity and the productivity of it, so whether I pursue one of these avenues or another, I would love a spot in your prayer-time! But to round out the topic I began this post with, here are a few of the Pioneering Things I've done in recent weeks!

(bucket-list items in red!)

Cooked dinner without a single recipe in a dinky bachelor kitchen for The Three Bears.

oh look! one of the bears took a photo and instagram'd it!

I turned 21. :)

I tried Swing Dancing

I was dipped while dancing (without falling over)

I began to read my first Amish Romance (pressed upon me as a birthday gift by Abigail)

I started to save for my possible return-trip to Romania/Europe sometime next year!

I visited the real Whit's End

I set up my own iTunes account and made the choice to purchase a whole album of Kate Rusby songs simply because I like her voice and the music and now I'm nervous because I didn't consult Sarah, my Sister Who I Consult on these matters. O.o

I drank Sparkling Cider for an occasion not at all related to New Year's

I went to Colorado

I bought a grammar book

I drank an iced-coffee without the ice.

I dropped my copy of Winnie-The-Pooh on a poor man's feet next to me in the airplane.

So that's what's new with me...how about you? Having a bonny summertime?

Officially Old.

HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY RACHEL!!!!!!!!

LOVE,

SARAH

Your Daddy's gone but your Mama's good lookin'

"Summertime and the livin' is easy...fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high.

Your daddy's gone, but your mama's good lookin' so hush little baby, don't you cry."

"Summertime" from Porgy and Bess

Know what i like about summer? 

I like...

Catching fireflies.

 (even though I'm grown up)

Silly Sisters

The fudge popsicles the Silly Sister makes

Kissing my Baby.

(uhh....literally a baby)

Picnics at Fort Boykins

(under a thunderstorm sky)

Sunsets, after the thunderstorm:

Double rainbows over the house and field

(two already!)

A little more time to read the books I've neglected all year

Discovering for the first time The Wind and the Willows

Chicken salad

Garden dirt

Making videos with the Silly Sister

(um. Link to come. you will laugh your head off.)

Windswept beaches

Flip-flop day at Tropical Smoothie

Travel plans

Watching romances grow among friends

Blueberries

Listening to rain

Catching up on letter-writing

Lemonade

Peach Cobbler

and soooooo many other things that make summers precious!

  What says summer to you?

Don't Waste Your Life

"You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."

1 Corinthians 6:19

     I sit down to review Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper...

     How on earth is one supposed to review a book that is both fathoms deep and extremely practical in a manner that won't make a hash of it all? I have never been much good at reviewing things because I am no good at logic or logical thought processes. But I know that God spoke to me through reading this book and I know it's a book that every single one of you (yes, even you friends who wandered over from the link on Facebook and don't really feel like reading a book review) NEEDS to read. Per my recent fascination with underlining favorite bits in books, each time I sat down with this book, I did so with pen in hand. I am so glad I did--there was scarcely a page I didn't mark up in some fashion.

    This book is just that good.

     He starts out with the quotation from 1 Corinthians above and immediately jumps in:

  "If you are a Christian, you are not your own. Christ has bought you at the prince of his own death. You now belong doubly to God: He made you, and he bought you.  That means your life is not your own. IT is God's. Therefore, the Bible says, 'Glorify God in your body.' God made you for this. He bought you for this. This is the meaning of your life."

     Wham.

     A page later: "It was becoming clearer and clearer that if I wanted to come to the end of my life and not say, 'I've wasted it!' then I would need to press all the way in, and all the way up, to the ultimate purpose of god and join him in it. If my life was to have a single, all-satisfying, unifying passion, it would have to be God's passion. And...God's passion was the display of his own glory and the delight of my heart."

 And this is only the beginning of one of the most revolutionary books I've ever read. Revolutionary not because John Piper is making up a new system of "How to Live a Full Life". Revolutionary because he simply digs into God's word and pulls out the thing that has been lying there forever: God's passion. And when you get a sense of that passion and what it means, your life will never be the same again. My life can never be the same again. I suppose the thrust of the book can be simplified in Piper's words on page 38:

"God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of , but to make much of him in every part of our lives."

    I'm finding it hard to put into words how much the message of this book excites me. I am gripped with a passion to not waste my life. I want to be the person who lives recklessly for Christ. A person who sees the cost, knows the cost, and delights in paying that price so she can bring glory to the One who rescued her soul from death.
       "Won't it hurt?" you might ask. Oh, I know it will sometimes. I might even die for living recklessly in pursuit of His glory. But here again, Piper addresses the fundamental misunderstanding that causes so many people to waste their precious, short lives:

"Death is a threat to the degree that it frustrates your main goals. Death is fearful to the degree that it threatens to rob you of what you treasure most....(when we treasure) Christ most, (our) goal (is) to magnify Christ. And (we see) death not as a frustration of that goal but as an occasion for its fulfillment." 

     When you are living for any other reason than to bring glory to God, death is terrifying. But isn't that quote beautiful? THIS is why Christians can be joyful in the face of any and every terror. THIS is the glorious mystery of Christ! Living is Christ. Dying is gain. In every situation we are more than conquerors through His mercy and grace.
     I wish I could get you to see the amazing thing this ultimate goal is: how the passion for it shines so brilliant a light over history, current events, and the world that all other voices are drowned. I really can't describe it...just read this book. It will change the most mundane task into a service of praise. It will cause you to risk all because you know the loss of each thing for Jesus' sake only serves to show the world how highly we value him. It will give you a passion for telling everyone else of the Glorious Lord, and a raging hunger to be more like him. I can't help but think of the words to "Let Your Kingdom Come":

"Your glorious cause, Oh God,

Engages our hearts

May Jesus Christ be known

wherever we are.

We ask not for ourselves

But for your renown.

The cross has saved us so we pray:

'Your kingdom come.'

Let your kingdom come

Let your will be done

So that everyone might know your name.

Let your song be heard

Everywhere on earth

Till your sovereign work on earth is done

Let your kingdom come!

Give us your strength, O God,

And courage to those who speak

Perform your wondrous deeds

Through those who are weak.

Lord, use us as you want,

Whatever the test.

By grace we'll preach your Gospel

Till our dying breath.

Read this book. It's going to change you into something different, I warn you. You'll never be able to view your life the same way. You'll never want to view it the same way. My heart is full and still while at the same time beating like a caged bird to be allowed to dart forth and set the minds of men ablaze to His glory. I can say little but this:
Oh, Jesus, let me live and fight and die in the pursuit of Your glory! This is all I want. This is the service I am giving my life to. Let everything I do be to this end. Because your love is better than life, my lips will praise you. Jesus, please, let me do this: let me live recklessly for Your name. Give me the courage and the tenacity, and use me as your image-bearer in the way your created me to live this precious, heart-beat life.
Piper rightly says "a life devoted to making much of Christ is costly." But it's a beautiful cost, and one I am going to fight for night and day, moment by moment, from now till His kingdom comes. Will you give Him your life--quite literally--so when the end has come you can look back and know it was a life well-spent?

"And they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you (O Christ) to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.' " -Revelation 5:9-10

My Crazy-Single-Writer's-Life Includes...

Editing.

Playing with Paper when I'm not Writing On It

Sending Belated Birthday Gifts:

Turning Utter Chaos into Chic Order:

I have a Writer's Lair now!

Making Shrinkage-Worthy Pies:

And filling blue-glass vases with flowers:

What about you?

:)

"Yeah, you gotta go deep//Way on back//Cross a few creeks//And a couple little shacks//You gotta get lost//Way on out//Crickets and frogs//Yeah you're getting close now//then you kick it into 4-wheel drive//till you run outta road//then you go//and you go and you go and you go//till you hear a banjo//

-"Banjo" by Rascal Flatts

If you'd like a little ramble...

Disheveled glam. How do we manage it?

The funny (and wonderful) thing about families is the fact that even when I am gone, they go on. That being said, when I come home from my travelings, I jump back in with both feet and a right good will. Father's Day is this weekend! I've been so busy I hadn't even realized it! That being said, we've got a family fishing trip planned for early tomorrow down at the farm-pond. The fishing trip will, supposedly, include Krispy Kreme doughnuts! Technically I am supposed to be off flour and sugar, but I might make this diversion. I don't know. We shall see. We will then proceed to make an awesome, Southern dinner for Dad.

Excuse me for a moment: DAD. If you are reading this, I'm sorry but you'll have to come back sometime AFTER tomorrow and finish reading it, because there are spoilers coming and I won't have you reading everything beforehand and acting surprised when it comes up later! ;)

I have plans to make three different clean-eating pies for dessert tomorrow night! Since Dad is off of sugar and has been for the last year or so, I wanted to make him something he'd love...I couldn't decide over the three of these so I'm just making them all. Since they are freezer-pies they will certainly keep and I know there isn't a single person in this family who will balk at the idea of left-overs! As soon as I finish this post I will be off to the kitchen to make Samoa Girl Scout Cookie Pie, and No Bake Peanut Butter Pie from Chocolate Covered Katie as well as Avocado Key Lime Pie. Can't wait to see how they turn out! I love a good cooking challenge--always have--so all of these clean-eating recipes are right up my alley. :)

I forget if I mentioned where I've been the past two weeks: I'm sure I have but you never know. Especially when you consider the brain-overload I've been in the grips of recently. At any rate, for the first week I was counseling at Generation Joshua's iGovern East camp, which was so neat. The Gala, the DC trip, the scenario and the chapel times... :)

Sarah's room: Shayna, Bethany, Sarah, and Heather...lovely girls!

God directly answered so many prayers in so many ways, and I was privileged to be able to have ten girls in my wing for whom I was responsible. I also acted as the House Secretary which meant I got to read all the arbitrary and/or thoughtful bills aloud for the congressmen and women to vote upon. Such fun. I was a lobbyist for Disney and had a blast playing up the part:

I kept the guys laughing with my inventive ways to bring Mickey Mouse into the hair-styles... :)

It was so great to be able to spend extensive time with Daniel, who we hardly ever get to see anymore. I loved working alongside him, getting to know his people and places and just hanging out with my big bro. I've missed him. :)

Daniel and his cohorts (Glenn, Fergie, Jeremiah, and Joel) did a boy-band parody for Friday Night Live (they called themselves Hack5) and it totally grew wings and flew.

They had asked me to be the crazy Fan Girl up front (with Josie and a couple other gals) so in the Epic Video (clink link to watch) that crazy woman you see? That's me. And halfway through I lost my balance and toppled over, landing with my head in the lap of one of the camper guys. It was totally embarrassing and totally hilarious. I laughed my stinkin' head off, and so did the Hack5 guys.

We are seriously trying to make them go viral just to tease key members like Joel Grewe and Jeremiah Lorrig who find themselves with (to quote Nick) "sudden cases of dignity". And actually, it has spread through the entire HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense Association) office till Mike Smith, The Higher Up Man has given permission to print Hack5 t-shirts because right now it's looking like the kids at camps will totally buy them. :D I am still laughing over the irony of it! What started as a joke is now an actual project that might soon be making money. Anyway, you can like their Official Page or the Fan Page on Facebook and encourage the whole ridiculous thing! During the week I made the first fan-art since I was, after all, the first Fan Girl. The silhouette actually turned out pretty well!

The second week, Abigail Taylor and I were staying with Tatum and Brittany (sweet gals!) in the room Tatum rents from a couple. We spent the days working in the GenJ office when needed, as well as rummaging about Purcellville. Tropical Smoothie figured largely in the offing.

*Squint*

Poor Brittany. I made her squint into the sun. She's such a peach.

I found the darned cutest little bookstore (or, rather, sought it out after Daniel told me of it) and bought Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse as well as a No-Fear Shakespeare "As You Like It" (so neat because it has original and simplified text) and The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. It makes me feel literary! I felt like I was on vacation, getting to just hang out with the awesome people of Generation Joshua & Co. I swear, there are probably very few offices in America wherein you can find such wonderful people in so tiny a space! While up in NoVa we saw Star Trek 2 (Benedict Cumberbatch makes a SCARY villain. And no, Jeremiah and Josie, I am NOT a fangirl!), and we had a gourmet, healthy-amazing meal made by Lucas Mason. and we sang "Wagon-Wheel" in beautiful harmony with a mandolin and guitar completely spontaneously at midnight. And it sounded so cool.

Annnnyway. I need to get to my pie-making and leave you to your other more important-things-in-life-than-reading-Rachel's-blog. I hope you have a lovely evening, and please please pray for the families effected by the wild-fires in Colorado. Brittany and Nick's family's home was almost burned, and Jeremiah Lorrig's parents/family AND grandparents lost their homes for certain. Colorado-strong, people.

I hope God blesses all of you tonight. I'm feeling so blessed because I got the chance to sit in a rocking chair in the dusk and the night smelled like good things growing and honeysuckle and roses blooming and there was a whippoorwill and a sliver of a moon and one solitary star. *sigh* It's so good to be home.