Bread & Wine

I have always appreciated that my mom creates home-cooked meals for our family.  Every now and again she would stop in on her way home to grab a pizza or some seafood, but for the most part everything is picked from a garden or produce stand, sauteed in some type of old school pan sauce and marinaded in a tried and true recipe.   Our family always jokes about how she can never leave the kitchen without flour, oil or grease splatters all over her clothes.  But what I am realizing more and more.. is that that is a translation of the gospel.  Stirring, kneading, creating something beautiful in the mess around us.  Fulfilling a need.  Feeding our hunger.

For my birthday this year, my sister-in-law got me a cookbook.  She wrote me a note saying that a review of this book "screamed" my name.  A review that ultimately said cooking a love song, an ode to the people you love.  That in cooking there is healing power in food that was prepared with love and joy and creativity.  I love that Sidney acknowledged that.  Because that is what I want. Not for people to acknowledge the things I like, but to know that I believe there is power in your knives and wooden spoons.  Probably something I picked up from watching my mama manhandle the kitchen for my 20 plus years of life.

I just finished an unbelievable book called Bread & Wine.  A book that I plan on giving as housewarming or newlywed gifts from here on out.   It is a book that is heart warming from page one.  The kind of book that you read when candles are lit and you are curled up in a knit throw.  It's the kind of book that truly inspires you to get in the kitchen and invite people into your messy homes.  To nourish their stomachs as well as their hearts.  To share your life with the people you love with nothing but a table between you.

"When you eat, I want you to think of God, of the holiness of hands that feed us, of the provision we are given every time we eat.  When you eat bread and drink wine, I want you to think about the body and the blood every time, not just when the bread and wine show up in church, but when they show up anywhere - on a picnic table, or a hardwood floor or a beach."  - Shauna Niequist

 Last week, I decided to make baked spaghetti for supper.  It was about 5 o'clock and I knew Colby would be headed home soon, so I started making my mama's famous spaghetti sauce  that takes both time to cook and practice to perfect.  Then my wheels started really turning.  What if Colby came home to Italy?  While I was stirring sauce and boiling noodles, I tossed a salad and threw a baguette into the oven to get nice and crusty.  I laid out an absurd amount of candles in the dining room so we could have a candle-lit dinner.  I set the table and poured tall glasses of water and small glasses of wine.  I drew a menu to sit on our plates and laid out a small bowl of blackberries for us to munch on until supper was ready.  I found an Italian Pandora Station, Bluetoothed it out the Bose speaker and cranked it up.  But Colby came home like 30 minutes earlier than I had expected.  I locked the back door, so he couldn't get in and ran frantically around the house to find a box of matches to light all those candles.  Then the timer was going off, telling me it was time to lay a hefty layer of cheese on the top of the spaghetti and I had planned on changing into a dress.  Instead, as Colby was walking in the door, half of the candles were lit,  I was burning my hands getting the spaghetti out of the oven and I was wearing a wrinkled flannel shirt, skinny jeans and cowboy boots.

In Bread & Wine, Shauna (aka my new BFF) says it perfectly... "I'm not talking about cooking as performance or entertaining as complicated choreography of competition and showing off.  I'm talking about feeding someone with honesty and intimacy and love.  About making your home a place where people are fiercely protected, even if its just a few hours, from the crush and cruelty of the day."

Colby couldn't care less what I was wearing or that every thing wasn't perfectly in place by the time he walked through the door.  He appreciated the fact that I was being creative in how I was loving him.  He praised me for my efforts for the rest of the night and kept saying sweet things like, "Man, Italy was great.  We should go again next week."

And then Shauna says it perfectly again, "What people are craving isn't perfection.  People aren't longing to be impressed; they're longing to feel like they're home.  If you create a space full of love and character and creativity and soul, they'll take off their shoes and curl up with gratitude and rest, no matter how small, no matter how undone, no matter how old."

I believe feeding and being fed is life-giving.  Both physically and metaphorically.  After reading Bread & Wine, I have the greatest desire to invite more people to my table.  To create conversation between mouthfuls of bread.  I'm not talking about super fancy dinner parties (which I hope to conquer one day, but today is not that day).. but just inviting our college roommates to catch up over for some take out Chinese or pizza.  Or inviting our siblings over and all of us taking part in the menu.  One on sides, one on the grill, one setting the table.  Or inviting our parents over for dessert and coffee and board games.  Or inviting new friends, that you know nothing about and learning their middle names over salads and steaks.   Ultimately, inviting people into our homes, into our lives.  Showing their place around our table and exchanging the hard and good and sour and delightful things in each of our lives.  To feed and be fed.

(PS.  This is a blueberry crisp.  A recipe that Shauna so graciously reveals in her book.  It is delicious!!)

Naked Tree

The first Christmas is exciting.  You get to start fresh and buy all of your Christmas decorations.  The first Christmas is terrible.  You have to start fresh and buy all of your Christmas decorations.  Since we are incredibly limited on dollar bills for pretty decorations we had to to find ways to steer around our budget.  We bought some matte white ornaments and a couple of gold ones thinking it would suffice.  My parents came over one night to eat supper with us right after we had just decorated our Christmas tree.  The very next night they came Christmas caroling (literally!) and bearing gifts.. aka tinsel and more ornaments.  My mom is very much against a "naked" tree and she felt bad for us. 

 

(my favorite ornament my parent's gave us)

 

Oh ya know.. just classic pity gifts.  Don't bother me!  I got more ornaments!  Even still, my tree looked seriously naked.  So Colby and I decided to make some more ornaments to save on money.  We bought clear glass balls for like $3 a pack and filled them with twine and red ribbon.  We also spray painted some coffee beans with gold glitter and put them in a glass ball ornament - that's one of my favorites!  

 

We also cut down some wood and sliced them into 3 to 5 inch diameter coins.  We next got Colby's wood-burning kit and started burning them in several designs.  We did the outline of North Carolina, the state flag, words of the Christmas season like joy and hope, and bunch of other things.  We loved them.  We made smaller wood coin ornaments that we combine with keys to the multiple houses we had lived in since being married.  The ornaments were hung by strings of twine and dipped in polyurethane to keep them from warping.  

We loved them, seriously.  One more sentimental ornament I created this past Christmas was this one:

At our wedding, we had buttons on our cake.  I had kept them in a ziploc bag, moving them from room to room, trying to find their place in our home.  I had given up hope of finding that place and decided to toss them.  But I literally couldn't throw them in the trashcan.  It was like a force field had engulfed the trash can.  So I, impulsively, laced some baker's twine through the button holes and threw them on the tree, thinking at least it will get them out of that ziploc bag and out of my way for now.  And I actually loved how they turned out. 

We still have more ornaments to buy for next year.. so our tree will retire from nakedness.  But we will worry about that in December!

So as you can see, Colby and I are pretty good at taking what we have and making it somewhat decorative.  We were in my in-law's basement one evening during the Christmas holiday when I caught of glimpse of Colby's first deer he killed when he was 11.  I got completely fixated on it and we took it home.  We threw some old, red ornaments on the antlers with some fishing line.  And we threw a scarf around its neck.  Viola! A homemade reindeer.. a stylish one at that!

 I wanted to find a way to be very intentional this Christmas.  So I made it a goal, a vow rather, to write a personal note with each gift I wrapped.  Some explained why we bought the gift we did, some explained what we most loved about them, some were simple truths.  I want this tradition to NEVER stop.  I loved reflecting on the people we love and letting them know why.

 

I bought a gorgeous print from my sisters' new typography company, Leelyn & Co.  It is one of my favorite Christmas songs and this particular lyric completely sums up the season for me.  

And I had to throw my little gold-leaf reindeer in the blog because he is just too dang cute for me not to mention him.  

Regardless of our best efforts to not go over budget.. we did.  Only because of lights.  Christmas lights are going all LED this year, which I love and hate.  I hate that it doesn't give off that classic amber glow when lit.  But I know that this is good for safety reasons and the environment.

I do believe that the phrase a day late (or month) and a dollar short fits oh so perfectly into this post.

The gospel according to John & Will

So I have been wanting to blog about several things as of late.  Like the perks of unemployment... and also the pits.  Like my makeshift Christmas decorations.  Like the book I am currently reading and have vowed to give as gifts from here on out.  Like life as of late.

But this weekend, John and Will came to spend a night with us.  So I'm gonna blog about that today.

 

I am always surprised about how the gospel in revealed to me when those boys are around.  I don't know why I am always surprised.  Their mother is woman of unbelievable faith and every lesson, punishment, conversation that she has with her boys is drenched in scripture.  When we said our bedtime prayers on Friday night, Will, the 8 year old, prayed so specifically - something I am trying to be more aware of in my own life.  John pulled out my chair for me, while thanking me for fixing him supper, at the dining room table a couple hours prior that that.  And that respectful gesture was the gospel revealed to a 23 year old from a 12 year old.

 On Saturday morning, Colby and I took the boys to a park near our new home.  It was freezing cold but the boys ate it up.  Colby and I love the outdoors but these boys like looove the outdoors.  They freaked out when they saw a little island of cedar knots and they could honestly look at a waterfall for hours.

We wandered off beaten paths and crossed bridges.  I snapped pictures, they skipped rocks.  It was incredible.  Yes, it was cold, but we were outdoors, in the heart of the world that man cannot compete with.  This is all God.  Trees and creeks and moss and dirt.  Cold winds and cracking tree limbs.  Cedar knots and smooth rocks.  I mean this is it.  This is the stuff we are suppose to be in awe of.  God is way cooler than Van Gough.  Are you kidding me?  He MADE TREES.  And lots of them.  The whistling of wind and the crunching of leaves under your feet is nature's music.  Mozart, who?  

I have no doubt that their sanctuary is the woods.  Not a building with a cross on it.  The woods.  Where simplicity, sanctification and restoration for the heart resides.  I bet their alters are fallen trees.  And communion cups are those that John whittled out of acaia wood.  I bet you that they are baptized by waterfalls and their joy comes from the warmth of the sun.  I believe that whole-heartily.

And I also believe that is the gospel according to John and Will.

To you, Mr Scott

Sending a little love out for the husband today!

I am so incredibly proud of Colby.  He started his new job today.  He worked for this company back when I was in college, but quit to join the family business - just before we got married.  A couple months of getting into the swing of things back at home, his old boss gave him a call and wanted to know if he would like to come back.  

For my homebody husband, moving was a huge deal.  For my family man husband, leaving the family business was a huge deal.  But Colby felt the Lord moving in our situation.  So we decided to pack up as a family and move so he could pursue a different career path.  

I am so incredibly encouraged by his boldness and willingness to surrender his own plans.  We prayed this over Colby this morning, "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do". (Ephesians 2:10)  And we rest in the fact that The Lord has planned and prepared us for this.

Oh happy day, Samuel Colby.  I am so proud of you.  A gorgeous steak supper awaits your arrival!

A Year in Review | 2013

Oh my my.  What a year 2013 was!  Is it hard to imagine that a single year could be this eventful.  How did we get here?  Oh, well let's just have a little review of our past year.

But first, go grab yourself a cup of coffee!

Remember, Colby & I started 2013 like this:

A recently engaged couple of wanted to get married in just a couple of months.

_________________________________________________________

2013 consisted of this... (in chronological order, I might add).

 - We bought a brand new car // March

- Colby quit his job in Raleigh to pursue the family business back at home // March

- Colby moved back in with his parents and started his new job // April

- I graduated from North Carolina State University // May

- I moved back in with my parents // May

- WE GOT MARRIED! // May

- Colby & I spent a week in the Dominican Republic // May

- Colby & I moved into our first home // June

- Colby & I moved into our 2nd home... the one we were gonna buy // August

 

- My sister got engaged! //August

- Colby decided to quit the family business to pursue a different career back in Raleigh // October

- I got in PA school!  Go DEACS! // October

- My sister-in-law got engaged! // October

 

- My other sister-in-law announced she had another human growing inside of her! //December

- We celebrated our first Christmas together // December

- We moved out of 2nd home into our third // December

Whew!  Don't that make ya'll wanna take a nap?!

It is truly amazing all that can happen in a single year.  We are so incredibly blessed to have life and life to the full through Jesus.  After all he is the one that is guiding us in the crazy life.  Life to the full for us, for this season of our lives, has consisted of late nights, early mornings, cardboard boxes, tissue paper, pots and pots of coffee, family, laughing, food and pure joy.  

Oh, 2014, you have incredibly big shoes to fill.