Chicken Alfredo – low carb crockpot

Last time I made this delicious recipe I had a couple of people on Facebook ask for the recipe. Well, I have found the recipe and am making it again and this time I’m posting it! Haha. It’s really easy…

Put 12-16oz chicken breasts in crockpot. Season with seasoned salt (or garlic salt if you’re like me and don’t have seasoned salt!). Pour 1/2 jar alfredo sauce over the chicken, add one clove (1/2 tsp) minced garlic, and top with sliced mushrooms. No need to mix! Add pepper and onion powder to taste. Cook 4-6 hours on low or until done.

 

That’s it! I’m serving mine with spaghetti squash because my husband loves spaghetti squash. I’m serving these green beans on this side: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Bacon-Feta-Beans/ They are my favorite green beans – bacon, feta cheese, and green beans make a great low carb side dish!

 

Anyway, gotta run – if you try the recipe let me know how you like it!

Trust, DELIGHT, Commit, Rest

“Delight yourself in the Lord;

And He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Psalm 37:4

I’ve been thinking about hunger for a couple weeks now, ever since Pastor Darrin talked about spiritual hunger in his Baby Steps series (listen here — http://yes2god.org/#/welcome/sermons – 04/21/13). He talked about how many times we confuse spiritual hunger with other needs. People may say they don’t feel spiritually hungry, which is why it’s hard for them to feed themselves by reading the Bible. He countered that everyone feels spiritual hunger, we just don’t always recognize it. We try to feed it with things like acquisitions, human companionship, physical food, the approval of others, even drugs or other addictions. The fact is, all of us are hungry for a relationship with God, we all have spiritual needs.

This verse reminded me of that sermon. It says that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our heart. I read that and thought, if you delight in something, isn’t that the desire of your heart? Doesn’t delighting in something mean you desire it, it’s something you want and need, it’s your heart’s desire? In other words, I think of other things I delight in — I delight in Greg’s love for me, for example. I take great delight in the kind words he speaks and the acts of service he does and the patience he treats me with. I delight in his love. His love is also the desire of my heart! One of the things I want most in this life is to continue experiencing his love. There are so many things I want or I’d like, but I’d trade any of them if I got to keep Greg’s love in my life. Our relationship and his love is one of the deepest desires of my heart.

In the same way I feel that if we truly delight in the Lord, He will actually become the desire of our hearts. In fact, what if the Lord is really our desire all along? What if our desire for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for prosperity, for joy — what if all of that, is a desire for the Lord? Maybe it was Him that we needed, all along. Maybe when we delight in Him, we will find that our heart’s desire was walking along side us the entire time. Let Him fill those empty places in your life that the world never quite seems to satisfy. You might be surprised at what you were wanting all along.

 

 

Blessings <3

TRUST, Delight, Commit, Rest

“Trust in the Lord and do good;

Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.”

Psalm 37:3

 

This is the first of a four-part series of blog post concerning Psalm 37:3-7. (-:

 

“Trust in the Lord and do good” – I love the simplicity of this verse! Trust God. Do good. There are so many ways this might apply to an individual’s life because it is so basic and beautiful. For me it spoke to my desire to always be one step ahead, know what’s happening next, plan everything out, be in control. As it turns out, according to the one who made the universe, my job is not to control everything or know everything. My job is to trust HIM to do all of that. My job is to do good – make good choices in my own little life. Occasionally we might be confused as to what the good or right choice is, but let’s be honest – 95% of the time we know what’s good, don’t we? I think part of what keeps us from doing good is that we’re so busy worrying about the outcome and whether we’ve got our backs covered. Trust in the Lord for that part! Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and moving in the right direction. Trust in the Lord. Do good.

 

The second part of the verse spoke strongly to me, as a military wife. “Dwell in the land, and cultivate faithfulness”. A familiar saying among military families is, “Bloom where you’re planted”. It’s our way of acknowledging that our families may be uprooted and transplanted time and time again, but we can still prosper and bloom – even if we didn’t get to pick where we got planted. The word “dwell” here comes from the word shakan, which means to settle down, become established, reside, dwell. Put down roots in the land, make it your own. For me it was a reminder to make new friends, carve out a nook for myself in my army family and in my church family, find a favorite coffee shop and a favorite nature walk and a favorite place to watch the sunset. Don’t spend your life waiting for the next step; dwell in the land.

 

The phrase “cultivate faithfulness” was of interest to me, because other versions translated that part as “enjoy safe pasture”, “thou shalt be fed”, or “befriend faithfulness”. I looked to my good friend BlueLetterBible.org which is an online source of commentaries and concordance. The word for “cultivate” comes from ra`ah which can mean to pasture, tend, graze, or feed. Faithfulness comes from ‘emuwnah which means firmness, steadfastness, fidelity, steadiness. So one word speaks of feeding, the other speaks of certainty and reliability. NASB, the version I quoted, puts them in a way that means feed on certainty, and other versions switch it to say certainly be fed. Either way it actually means the same thing – there is certainly provision happening here. I’m glad for concordances that help me understand tricky phrases that seem different in different versions! So ultimately that part of the verse is talking about how when we trust in the Lord, do good, and dwell in the land, we will absolutely be provided for. Enjoy His provision. Feed on His faithfulness.

 

 

No matter where you are in life, trust that God has it under control! Make good choices as you walk with Him. Put down roots wherever He’s placed you. Experience His steadfast provision and be satisfied.

 

Blessings. <3

 

When I read this verse, I felt like it really spoke to the military family. To me it says to trust in the Lord (we all know how uncertain army life can be, and we… can’t trust in the army to always make the best choices for us, but we can sure trust God to keep us secure), do good (don’t be idle, or wallow, or justify sinful behavior — do good!); dwell in the land (bloom where you’re planted!) and cultivate faithfulness. Now, the NASB says “cultivate faithfulness”, which to me seems to be an action we are expected to do in order to grow faithfulness in our lives, but other versions (include in the link) say things like feed on the Lord’s faitfulness, or enjoy safe pasture. Those phrasings seem more passive; something is being provided for us and when we do trust the Lord and do good, we can enjoy his provision. The different translations are interesting to me and I’ll have to look into it more to find out why there’s a difference. What do you think?

RAW and JPEG

Have you ever heard a phrase like “I always shoot in RAW” and wondered what that meant? RAW is a file format and is the main alternative to shooting in jpeg. Jpeg is nice because it make your photos look pretty nice straight out of camera (SOOC), and takes up less room than RAW. When you’re shooting in jpeg, your camera automatically evaluates all of the date and does a couple things. One thing it does is compresses the file to save room, and it does this by sort of “summarizing” the pixels. If this pixel is a certain shade of blue and the one next to it is *almost* exactly the same and the human eye can’t tell the difference anyway, then it just calls them the same color to save space. The other thing it does is automatically make a few adjustments, usually a little contrast, saturation, and sharpness, to make the picture look really nice SOOC. Point & Shoot (non-DSLR) cameras shoot in jpeg. My camera is a point & shoot but has full manual controls and can shoot in RAW also, just like a DSLR. So if jpeg saves space and looks better without working on it, why does RAW matter?

When a camera compresses a file to make it jpeg, it looses data. You may not be able to tell if you just look at the photos as they come, but in post processing (PP) you may want to bring out some details you couldn’t notice otherwise. For example, yesterday was overcast and the clouds were full of texture and movement. I took a photo in RAW+jpeg, meaning my camera saved both file types. Both photos came out of the camera with the clouds looking fairly flat and gray. Very boring. With playing around with contrast and curves in post processing on the jpeg, this is the most I could get out of the photo:

Look at how the clouds look grainy and blotchy. When I tried to make the darks darker and lights lighter, there’s a bigger step between each shade of gray and emphasizing that only makes the photo look like poor quality. I did a very similar process with the RAW file of the exact same photo:

See how creamy and beautiful those clouds are? Also look at how much contrast I was able to pull out and all the detail you can see on the clouds. I was able to pull out more shades of dark gray, whereas with the jpeg when I tried to bring out the darks the data just wasn’t there to get the same effect. RAW literally keeps every pixel of data exactly the way it enters the camera and doesn’t process it at all, which is why it’s called “raw”. I hope this post helped show why sometimes that data is important to retain, and why a lot of photographers prefer to “shoot RAW”!

Photographing a Sunrise

I think more than almost any other subject, sunrises have a reputation for not showing up in photographs well. It’s understandable, since many of the colors are very subtle and the overall composition is typically quite dark. Some cameras cannot compensate for the low light and will produce a very dark picture with almost no color. A nicer camera like my Canon Powershot SX50 happily compensates for the dim light, but in doing so it overexposes the part of the photo we care about: those brilliant yellows, oranges, and pinks. On the auto setting, my camera took this photo of a sunrise:

You can tell it’s a sunrise but it’s quite unremarkable. Even in post processing (dinking around with it on the computer), this is the most I could get out of it:

The problem is that because the photo is overexposed (too much light was let in), the delicate colors are just gone. No matter how bright or dim or contrasty I make it, the center will just be white (blown out). On average the photo is correctly exposed of course due to the auto setting; you can see the sky and clouds very well and a few details in the foreground. But we’re trying to get a sunrise here! Who cares about the dark unlit clouds? I want those beautiful colors to pop. Less than a minute after that first photo, I took this one on manual:

You can see that it’s overall much darker, and we lost a lot of prairie and dark sky details. The trade off is that we managed to capture those lovely colors! Now, this photo is underexposed (it would be better with more light let in) but I show it anyway because it’s the one taken immediately after the auto pic. In other words, the sunrise itself hasn’t changed much, but my camera settings have. After processing, I was able to get this result:

This is the exact same sunrise, and is also exactly why sunrises need manual exposure. There is barely any light in this photo and a lot of dark area, but that’s how a sunrise looks to the human eye and it looks great in the resulting photograph. Again, this is not an ideal sunrise photo, but it was immediately after the auto pic and sunrises change quickly so I wanted to show how big of a difference just the camera settings can make. Another thing that can make a difference in photographs is the composition. My horizon is centered in the above photos, because I was excited by the pretty sunrise and defaulted to my natural tendency of centering the important part of the photo. A lot of photos are actually more interesting if you put the focal point or any major lines (such as a horizon) at a 1/3 point. Here I put the horizon at the lower third:

I think that makes a more interesting photograph. In another shot, I composed it the opposite way, with the horizon at the upper 1/3 mark:

You can see that I also adjusted my exposure to get a wider range of colors. Now some of the more subtle colors are coming through and not just the brightest orange. For these photos, the only post processing I did was cropping (cutting off parts to change composition) and adjusting the curves. Curves allow you to adjust the brightness and darkness, but instead of changing the entire picture at once it’s more specialized.  You can make the dark colors darker and the light colors lighters, resulting in an overall more contrasting photo. You could also make the dark colors lighter and light colors darker, resulting in a duller/less contrasting photo. Here is a side by side (well, top to bottom) comparison of three different adjustments – The first one I treated mildly with only a slight change from the SOOC (straight out of camera) shot, the middle one is a medium change which I liked best, and the third shows an overly dramatic change:

 

You can see that with a heavy hand, the colors become unrealistic and the photograph also loses quality and becomes grainy. Nice colors though! The neat part about adjusting curves is that I am only adjusting the brightness, I’m not actually changing the colors. That can be done of course but I did not add colors or “paint” them on, so to speak. I’m just bringing out the intensity of the colors that are already there.

Question: Why do some areas of the photo become grainy?

Answer: 1) These were taken in JPEG format. I also shot in RAW but don’t have a program to process that with yet. JPEG is great because it takes up less room to store the file on your camera, but the disadvantage is that it does that by compressing it slightly. If there are two shades of blue in the sky that the human eye can’t distinguish anyway (or barely can), JPEG just calls them the same color to save room. That’s fine, but when I differentiate between those colors now by adjusting the curves, it looks grainy because it jumps from one shade of blue to the next. If I was editing a RAW format, all of the data would still be present (and it takes a lot of space!!) and it could handle more editing like that. 2) I wasn’t shooting in my highest resolution available, because I didn’t realize that setting was separate in manual and in auto. So when I’m in auto I’m shooting high res, and in manual I’m shooting medium res. Oy. At least that error is fixable

Here’s two more shots. Obviously this series of photos in this post was taken over a period of time, as the sun rose. In early sunrises you can get dramatic neons but there isn’t much area of lit cloud yet. Later on  more clouds are colored and lit, but once the sun gets close to coming up it will blow out the center of the sunrise since it’s so much brighter than the clouds. It’s tricky to get just the right exposure, but I had a lot of fun playing with it and think I came out with some pretty nice shots! I hope you enjoyed viewing them.

Wolf and Tigress

Blogging is one of the many things I’d like to be a regular part of my life, that I enjoy and think is good for the soul, yet seems difficult to keep up with regularly. Other activities on that same list include sewing, photography, guitar, flute, dog training, and birding. What are your favorite activities that don’t seem to get done?

I have a lot of posts in mind but for this morning I thought I’d talk about the title of this blog. “The Wolf and the Tigress” is a mouthful! I love how it symbolizes my marriage though. Greg and I are so different in some ways, but of course quite similar in others. I like to think about how peoples’ favorite animals sometimes reflect their personalities. Greg’s favorite animal is the wolf. We actually went to the wolf sanctuary recently which was fantastic.

Wolves are remarkable animals. They have complex social structures, and a strong “pack mentality”. Everyone has a job, and everyone does their job. The pack survives because there is a leadership system and delegation and routine and methods. They spend a lot of time around each other, and they might squabble sometimes (wolf arguments are quite vicious sounding actually!) but it’s just part of life. They are able to take down even large prey like elk or moose due to their teamwork. Wolves can definitely be described as team players.

It makes sense to me that wolves would be Greg’s favorite animals when I consider his personality. For one thing, he loves spending quality time with his family. I was blessed to spend a week with him at his family’s house recently, and I noticed how frequently everyone would gather in the living room and talk, play with the dogs, or just “be together”. Greg is definitely a family man and I love that about him. He cares strongly about his “pack” and thinks of those he loves, not just himself. It seems that he would rather spend time with his loved ones than do just about anything else. In fact his entire family was extremely welcoming to me and made me feel like I became part of ‘the pack’ when Greg and I got married; I’m now part of the family structure just like anyone else. I love that about them, too.

Greg also seems to think in terms of leaders, roles, and structure. This makes his military career choice particularly appropriate! He doesn’t seem to have a problem with leading others, nor with following appointed leadership. If he has a job description you can bet he’s going to fill it to the letter – whether that’s his first choice or not. He understands that groups of people need to work together and each accept their role to accomplish great things. He’s a team player. In our marriage he says we will have a successful and strong marriage when we each put in 100%, not 50/50. He takes his role as husband seriously and dutifully. Again, one of the many, many things I love about him!

 

My favorite animal is the tiger. Well… it’s one of my favorites anyway; I have several. I feel like I identify with tigers. In fact as a child, Tigger was my favorite character from Winnie the Pooh, and I still have most of his song memorized. Tigers are solitary animals. They need their personal space, and they certainly don’t need help from anyone else. They are very good at what they do; there’s a reason tigers are feared in their native countries. They are made to hunt, and they are excellent hunters. They are made to blend in to the jungle’s shade, and their stripes are perfect for this. They are made to be stealthy, and their enormous soft paws can sneak right up behind you. They are powerful, quick, graceful, and independent.

Much like these beautiful animals, I lean towards an independent attitude. I don’t like doing what other people tell me to do, and I sometimes snarl if I feel pushed. For the things I think I’m good at, I don’t need (or want) any help; I’d rather just do it myself. I strongly dislike routine and will do things differently than last time for the sole purpose of mixing things up. I resent being put into a box, and question whether I can or should do more, or if this part of the task is really my job or if someone else could do it. I do like spending time with the people I love, but I’m an introvert at heart and get “peopled-out” and need alone time to recharge. I feel strong when I feel independent; for many things I’d rather be able to say I did it by myself than that I was merely a smaller part of a group effort.  That’s not to say I never accept help, because I do, but as my dear husband could tell you it can be hard for me to let go of some tasks and allow others to help out. It’s not just a pride thing, it’s also a perfectionist thing; naturally, my way is the only right way and I’m the only one who can do it right. Right? Let’s just say delegating is a skill I’m working on and it stretches my comfort zone.

The good thing about an independent spirit is that as a military wife, I don’t collapse into helplessness when my spouse is deployed or training. I don’t get as much done without Greg around, but I get by. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone and spend every moment I can with him, but when we can’t be together I can handle the separation and be alright. I think it takes a bit of a tiger to handle the house, finances, family relations, and vacation planning virtually solo.

 

As with any marriage, the fun part is putting two very different people together and seeing what happens! With us, what happens most of the time is we feel like a power couple. Our contrasting strengths make for a more complete team. I love my wolf! He’s a little more extroverted than I am I think, and *definitely* more psychologically stable… haha! He’s a do-er, he gets things done. I’m an intellectual and a multi-tasker, always keeping tabs on a dozen things at once (I think all of you ladies know what I mean!) and trying to find the best ways to do things or make the very best choices. Greg follows rules, I invent my own rules. Greg is good at both leading and following leadership, I’m not a fan of doing either one. I tend to head up the financial planning, Greg makes it actually happen. I research workout and diet strategies and learn as much as I can, Greg actually gets us to the gym and working out. He may be a wolf and I may be a tigress but one thing is sure – the wolf and the tigress make a rockin’ awesome team.

 

Thanks-giving

As the last night of this deployment crawls on and I practice the ancient art of not-sleeping, I feel like it is important to stop and thank everyone. I was intimidated a bit by this past year. New marriage, new job, new city, new home, new to army life, new to deployment, new friends, new family… In my sleep-deprived mind I almost added “The only thing that didn’t change is my name!” but I guess even part of that is new. Without a doubt, God deserves the credit for getting me though this time as well as I have. He is the only one who never changes and in seasons like this, that’s a comfort. I often find that He shows us love through other people though, and I certainly experienced that this year.

 

I want to thank each of you who has supported me, encouraged me, taken me out to do fun things, laughed with me, cried with me, and definitely prayed for me. It’s incredible that there are so many loving people in my life. Some of you are family I’ve known all my life. Some of you I’ve met only once but you take time to talk with me and offer help. For those and everyone in between, I am so thankful. All of you did such an amazing job taking care of me during a chaotic time. Thank you thank you thank you. What would I have done for eight long months without you in my life? Your loving acts do not go un-noticed or un-appreciated. Despite the tough times (because of them?) I feel confident that I am a better, more mature person now than I was this time last year. I have a long ways to go in some areas but at least I know that I have beautiful people in my life that will be there through it all.

I also want to thank the friends and family of Greg for all the prayers, support, good vibes, and love you’ve sent to him. I’m thrilled that he’s coming home to people who love him! Every time someone posts on his wall I like reading it and feel thankful that he has all of you to come home to.

 

Now I’m going to work on tidying up the Create Room (office)… there are still so many hours between Greg and I but the anticipation of his warm hug won’t let me sleep. Everything really is better when he’s around and I can’t wait for his return!

Imitate, as children

I haven’t been keeping up with my Life Journal lately, which is in part a yearly Bible reading plan. I got back to it today and was flabbergasted to find that the first scripture of the day was Ephesians 5. Earlier this year Greg and I tried to memorize some scripture together (it’s very tricky long distance, as it turns out) and Ephesians 5:1 was the verse of choice. I felt like God was smiling benevolently on my faltering efforts at spiritual discipline by making that little “coincidence”. I chose that verse as my verse of the day and followed the “SOAP” acronym to journal about it: Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer. Before I get any further, here is the verse:

“Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” Eph 5:1 (NASB)

I’ve always thought it was interesting how children imitate their parental figures (whether or not they are biological parents, they are the ones who fulfill that role in the child’s eyes). In both major and minor ways, children pick up habits, views, sayings, and mannerisms of their parents. I work with children a lot and whenever something surprising comes out of their little mouths, whether it’s a very grown up sentiment or a profanity, it gives me a glimpse into their home life. I read about a female dog who had a healthy litter of puppies. Unfortunately, mama dog had a past injury and moved around by twisting and throwing her back legs up since they were immobile. Guess how those perfectly healthy and normal puppies walked? They didn’t use their back legs at all, but instead twisted and turned exactly like mama dog. Children imitate blindly – they have no knowledge of the world other than what they experience in their homes. It is the most natural thing in the world for a child to imitate their parent. They don’t have to think, “Mommy is such a good person, I want to try harder to be like her. I’m so bad at this; I should be more like mommy.” They don’t imitate out of guilt or shame, they imitate out of the most natural and effortless place in their hearts. I love that this verse doesn’t tell us to be imitators of God, as studious scholars. It doesn’t say be imitators of God,  as dogmatic religious fanatics. It doesn’t say be imitators of God, as guilty prisoners. It tells us to be imitators of God, as beloved children. I believe that when we view God as our parent and place Him in that position in our hearts, we truly will imitate Him as beloved children – naturally and without even realizing it.

 

How do we set God as our parental figure? Well, how do children view their parents? When a child has a need, their very first instinct is to look to their parent for fulfillment. What infant tries to make a bottle for itself before it resorts to crying? What toddler will fetch a flashlight and explore under the bed, before confessing to mommy and daddy that he’s scared of a monster? Laughably, many tired babies and children won’t even fall asleep on their own before telling their parents they are tired, by way of fussing, crying, or throwing fits. If God is our parent and we are His beloved children, He should be our first resort, not our last one. We should bring all of our needs to Him. As we grow up we foster a sense of independence from our earthly parents and take pride in meeting our own needs. That’s great for needs we are able to meet on our own, like feeding ourselves, setting our own bedtimes, and not watching scary movies right before bed. But our spiritual father is the only one who can truly meet our spiritual needs. How often do we try to meet our own needs when we are faced with loneliness, fear, uncertainty, anxiety, sadness, lack of motivation, or insecurity? Think about all the ways we try to meet those needs. Human relationships. Food. Money. Alcohol. Music. Physical activity. None of those are bad things and they all might help take the edge off some emotions, but none of them can deeply fulfill our truly spiritual needs. When we are lonely deep down in our souls, we should turn first to the one who never leaves our side. When our greatest fears are triggered, we should instantly reach for the hand of the one who has it all under control. Children instinctively expect their parents to meet their needs, and I think we would do well to trust God to meet our spiritual (and even physical in some ways) needs and ask Him for help as soon as we need it.

 

“Be imitators of God, as beloved children”. God takes care of the “beloved” part. When we learn to act as children with a loving father, imitating His righteous ways will become natural instinct. Next time I find imitating God to be a struggle and a chore, I hope I’ll remember this little bit of Biblical truth!

States, Seceding, and Statistics

This is not a political rant post. This is a statistical rant post.

 

Alright, many of you have probably heard by now that 33 states have filed petitions to secede from the United States and create their own government. This statement is completely inaccurate. The states filed petitions? No, several thousand people filed petitions in each of 33 states. It’s driving me absolutely crazy that people say 33 states filed petitions, because that sure sounds like over half of the US, now doesn’t it? Well, over half of the states have people in them that filed petitions, yes. The states have not filed any such thing.

 

You can think of a state either by its government or by its people. The state governments haven’t said anything about seceding so that’s not even a part of this discussion. Of course it’s what the people want that matters, right? Right! So just how many people have signed these petitions, anyway? I personally went to We the People which is where these petitions are being filed. This is a website from the White House that allows Americans to file petitions. I typed up every single state with a petition filed and the number of signatures. The state with the most signatures was Texas, with 74,991 signatures. The grand total of all signatures for all 33 states was 428,710. Think that’s a lot?

 

My next step was to find the population for each of those 33 states and itemize them as well as find the sum. Grand total? 252,342,027. In case you’re not quick with math, that means out of all the people in those 33 states, 0.17% of them signed petitions. The state with the highest percentage of signatures vs. population was North Dakota with 1.29%, which was also the only state to break the 1% mark. All those signatures in Texas only come out to 0.29% of its total population.

 

Now. Here’s what I see out of all of this. People are saying that 33 states are filing petitions to secede. The reality is….

Less than one fifth of one percent of the total population signed these petitions.

 

Seventeen one thousandths. 0.17%. If you had ten thousand people, seventeen of them signed these petitions. If you had a hundred dollars, seventeen cents signed a petition, and ninety nine dollars and eighty three cents did not. You cannot accurately claim a state did something, when so few of its citizens did it. 0.17% does not a majority make.*

 

 

I don’t care what anyone’s political views are on seceding. I don’t care if you signed it or if you voted for Obama or if you’re on your way to Canada. Just please, please stop making it sound like well over half of the US wants to secede, when in reality only 0.13% of the entire US population signed a petition. “Thirty three states signed petitions” means 66% of the US. “428,710 signatures have been collected” means 0.13% of the US. Get your facts, don’t use incorrect or deceitful (even unintentionally) wording, and don’t freak out because you saw something on facebook or even the news without checking the statistics first. Cheers.

 

* Speaking of majorities. Obama received 62,285,005 votes. Romney received 58,907,640 votes. Obama won the popular vote as well as electoral vote. Stop saying the popular vote didn’t matter or the electoral voting system is at fault or this isn’t what America wanted. It’s not what ALMOST half wanted, but it is what JUST OVER half wanted. I’m as bummed as you are, but I’m glad the person who received the most votes is in office.

 

 

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All data was collected on 11/13/12 around 12:00pm.

Finally, an Update!

Since I’ve been able to contact my dear husband regularly, I haven’t updated this blog as a way of letting him know what’s going on. However, I would like to update it more regularly as a place to put my thoughts, post pictures, relay quotes or sermons I like, etc.

The biggest news right now is that I am going back to school, for culinary arts! I’m excited! Especially since Greg has been extremely supportive. I sure love that man. It will take me about four semesters, and I’m hoping summertime will be one of those semesters. This fall, the class I’m most interested in is Wine and Spirits. I know nothing about pairing wine with foods, or what the different wines are, or any of that. I’m going to learn a lot! I’m still working as a nanny and teaching cooking classes, so I’ll have to stay on top of homework and housework. I think I can do it though!

Another big change I made is a change in my diet. I’ve been following “The Primal Blueprint”, which is similar to paleo. Mostly, I cut out all grains, legumes, sugars, processed foods, and unnatural oils and fats (canola is bad news!), and I eat a lot of meat, natural oils and fats (coconut oil, olive oil, avocados, olives, fatty meats, butter, heavy cream), and veggies and some fruits. I don’t eat that many veggies yet but I’d like to work on that. The hardest part of the diet for me is not getting rid of bad foods, but bothering to prepare real, healthy food! A lot of times by the time I make a meat dish, I don’t feel like bothering with veggies. Oh well. The diet is working so well for me! At 6 weeks in, I had lost 15 lbs – and I ate whenever I was hungry. I also have an improved mood, better energy/motivation levels, and tend to sleep better. You can learn more at marksdailyapple.com and I also highly recommend the documentary “Fat Head”, as it explains why carbs are what make us fat, not natural fats! Low fat diets with lots of grains and other carbs are ineffective for many people.

This weekend I hope to make a lot of progress in organizing, cleaning, getting rid of must of my stuff. How did I end up with so many things, anyway?? I’m going to have a big garage sale once I go through it all. Any advice about getting rid of things, or about setting up a household?

Well, more later. Thanks for reading.