Great Music is like Pure Emotion, Bottled to Relive Indefinitely...

Combine melodious instrumental with harmonious vocals and you've got a good sound... Add in some clever, true, inspiring lyrics and you've got a timeless masterpiece... 

How many times have you gotten into your vehicle after a rough day at work, one of your favorite songs comes on and suddenly your mood lifts? 

Do some songs 'take you back,' like a time portal, to the past? A moment in time, forever preserved in a song...

What songs Move you? Why? Is there a story that goes with that?

 

I'd love to hear about it in the comments below!

The Importance of Knowing What Words Really Mean In Context...

True Story.

I was having a heated discussion with a relative once, and in the middle of the argument, I believe I was saying I could get along well with someone he insisted was mean to everyone, I said, "Look, this is what I excel at... I'm a Diplomat." (defined as: a person who is tactful and skillful in managing delicate situations, handling people, etc.)

His response was, "Well I'm a Republican!" (defined as: of or relating to the Republican Party.)

My husband and I looked at each other for a long second and burst into laughter! We all ended up laughing and congenial, but the moment stuck with me...

It was a classic case of Miscommunication.

He "Heard" Democrat. I said Diplomat... The difference is Vast!

In light of this remembrance, I plan to make a lot of words in my future posts link up to their definitions, so that people can click the word if they misunderstand. Also, remember that many words have multiple definitions, and most times those definitions aren't the least bit similar.

So much of the English language goes unused and eventually forgotten. A sad fate for such beautiful and eloquent speech...

-Words are so Cool!!!

P.S.: I moved so much, as a child, I somehow missed the basics in English, so please forgive me for occasional misuse of words or proper grammar! I'm still learning, and it's a slow process. Constructive criticism is welcome here, but please also recognize that I'm a sleep deprived mother of two babies, so I do good to SPEAK full sentences, much less write them...

Your Words are Powerful

Evidence abounds and emphasizes this truth.

Like Yen and Yang, the bible describes both a "shady side" and a "sunny side" to speaking...

Proverbs 18 speaks of words having the power of life and death. James 3 speaks of the tongue being a fire, and paints a picture of great forests being burned by it...

Hope can be found in verses like Proverbs 10, which says that the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.

I like that!

Then, there is the "Self Fulfilling Prophesy" theory... I can say, from personal experience, that words have effectively shaped the view I carry of myself; thereby shaping who I've become, so I tend to find this theory quite probably true.

All in all, try to remember this: What you say of Yourself, you tend to become, and what you say of Others, they tend to become.

-Speak Life into those around you. Plant Seeds of Self Assurance. Change the World, one word at at time...

That time I went flying with Pan and Tink...

I was maybe four years old and I can vividly remember sneaking into the kitchen, after my parents went to sleep, so I could eat pinches of graham cracker crumbs from a butter dish in the pantry.

Well, one night, I dreamed I was walking into the kitchen to sneak some crumbs and I was intercepted by Tinkerbell and Peter Pan.

Tink was trying to steal my favorite little spoon from the silverware drawer and I caught her in a diamond patterned jelly jar!

Peter told me that I could fly with them if I just let her go, so OF COURSE I did...

She sprinkled me with pixie dust, he said I had to REALLY BELIEVE and I could fly like they did. I jumped off a chair and flew around the kitchen, then off we went! We flew far and fast that night, and we shared many adventures...

I had dreams of flying for years after that!

I recently read that flying in dreams can mean Boldness, Release and Possibility.

I would imagine that this was a very Spirited time in my life, because I can still remember some of those dreams! Some would even pick back up the next night, wherever they left off.

I hope and pray that the positive changes in my life recently, and this new World View I'm developing can help me get back to this... back to truly feeling Bold.

I hope to Fly with Tink and Pan again soon!

Saving bleach stained clothes by using more bleach...

I bought new tank tops and within a week I had bleach stains on two of the cutest ones, so I put some more on them...

By placing a folded paper towel into a lunch baggie, adding a little bleach and water, rolling it up and cutting a tiny hole in the corner, I was able to doodle a pattern onto them.

Close up of the stain

Stained shirt, the stain is in the middle-ish

To this:

Finished Product!

Super easy, cheap and fun! 

Another shirt I decorated with bleach, to save

This is one of those projects you want to wear "paint clothes" for... very messy.

Don't limit yourself to flowers, this would be a fun way to make chevron print or striped shirts too! 

Really, the only limitation is your own imagination!

(Just kidding... there's always Pinterest for that!)

That time I walked out on my job, because of a stalker...

So, this one time, when I was waiting tables in a big city, I quit my job with no warning...

At the time, I used to sit in the local book store/ coffee shop to read and sip coffee or study for my school courses...

I'm a genuinely friendly person who has "never met a stranger" (mom's words, not mine) and tend to make small talk with anyone near me...

Not sure how it happened, but the manager of the book store sat at my table one day and talked for a short (and annoying, to someone who's studying for a test) time...

At some point in the next few months, of which I saw little of him and never thought about it again, he popped up over the top of my book and said they had gotten his coffee wrong, and asked if I wanted the extra. 

Girls, I must aside here, don't take drinks from strangers... Especially men....

My coffee was fine (yes, in my naivety, I accepted it). 

I believe this is where I went wrong. I guess he got the wrong idea. I don't know... 

I do know, I had repeatedly talked of my husband (I think we were only engaged at the time), so I had made it clear I was off the market.

I had never led him on in any way that I knew of, aside from being kind to him as a fellow human. 

So, one day, this dude follows me to work. 

I had NO CLUE. 

I was probably singing to some good tunes & thinking about school. I wasn't paying any attention. 

I got out of my car and turned to walk into work and in front of me, blocking my path, was an expensive car with an older gentleman in the driver seat; the bookstore manager. 

He had his windows rolled down and was telling me he wanted to see me and he would be there tonight. 

I assume he was going to eat in my section at work, but all I could picture was me having to be nice to someone, for an extended length of time, who was giving me the willies... 

I immediately found my managers and informed them I was quitting, got my shift picked up and hauled my butt home, crying all the way...

I don't know that he meant anything by it. True. 

I do know that I was in a parking lot by a noisy highway, blocked in by a man twice my size, in an overcrowded city, where a young girl could easily go missing before anyone were the wiser. 

-Momma always said, "Better safe than sorry."

Little known fact about corporations...

As anyone who's worked at the places I've worked or some of my family members have worked can probably tell you, waste is rewarded, come tax time...

It's the strangest thing. 

It makes no sense. Like, at all. 

Every night, there are THOUSANDS of loaves of perfectly edible bread thrown into bags, then into dumpsters by employees of these companies, nation wide...

In other places, perfectly good plants are thrown into a giant shredder machine... It's called culling. 

You will be fired if you're caught "saving" anything from the shredder or dumpsters...

True story. 

It's a tax write off. Wtf?

Why are we, as a whole, rewarding such deliberate waste??? 

Signed,

one seriously confused ex employee

7 Layer Dip Casserole

Made this baby up tonight. Huge hit! 

I'll update with pictures later...

Seven Layer Dip Casserole

Layers:

1. 1/4 regular sized bag, spicy dorito chips crushed 

2. 2lb ground beef, browned, rinsed & cooked in taco season

3. Knorr 7 minute Spanish rice

4. Can kidney beans cooked with 1 bag Santa Fe Instant, fat free vegetarian refried beans

5. 1can drained black olives, crushed/diced

6. 1/4 Fiesta Ranch packet Mixed in sour cream

7. Enough shredded cheddar to cover the top

You know he loves you when...

Whenever you've been together as long as we have, you learn each other's quarks.

For instance, I think flowers are beautiful, but I prefer to find them on a living plant rather than have their lives cut short (quite literally) to be gifted me in a vase that will smell putrid within weeks...

Don't get me wrong, I love receiving flowers from my honey, but the custom itself has always struck me as a wee bit morbid and strange, so I asked him years back to stop with that and do chocolate instead!

It began with those amazing chocolate covered cherries with that creme sauce inside, which he would bring home by the box any time he needed some brownie points.

After nearly 10 years together, he's a master at this. He's moved past the cherries and graduated to a 6 pack... of Mr. Goodbars!

You da man! Good move babe! Major points for this one!

-Men, take note: If your lady likes flowers, buy the girl some beautiful, yummy smelling flowers, but if not, find out what she really loves and get her that! 

Powderpuff football and my Ignorance of how to be a team player...

In high school we had one of those Powderpuff football games... you know, where girls order cool shirts to match like a team and essentially play touch football?

Yeah, well as it happened, we ordered these really cool shirts for the game, but when they came in, they were creepy. They were not at all what we had agreed on & I had paid for... I mean the girl's eyes were solid white and it was just... ugh.

I have to admit here, I'm one of those people who cannot just leave something alone... If it doesn't work, I want to fix it. If it is Ugly as sin, I want to transform it into something beautiful!

That being said, a little forethought goes a long way.

I got home, the day we got our shirts, and went after mine with a rainbow of permanent markers... By the time I was through, My name was polka dotted alternating pink and green on the back & the girl on the front had gorgeous flecked green eyes and instead of purple hair, it was brown...

Yup, needless to say, my fellow "team" mates did not approve.

Not to say it looked bad, but in hindsight, a little forewarning would have been nice, so they could decorate theirs as well...

I had genuinely not even considered that. I just didn't want to have to wear something so God awful! Honest!

Anyhoo, we kicked ass in that game!

There was a girl nobody could catch & I asked them to put me in...

I got her every time & she got pissed! I'm pretty sure that ended with her getting so mad, she punched me in the face and I beat the snot out of her, resulting in us getting kicked out of the game... So worth it!!!

*Moral of the story: Don't be short sighted like my 16 year old self... Try to think of how your actions are going to affect those around you, or you just might end up with a bunch of ticked off teenaged girls gunning for you too!

-happy trails!

I'm Free to be Me, You're Free to be You...

Let us set the tone...
get your heart right with- Freedom Reigns/ Jesus Culture ft. Kim Walker Smith
kick it old school with- Free/ All Right Now
admire Steven Tyler, in all his uniqueness with- Steven Tyler- Love is your name
now let's get real with- Jake Owen- Real Life

So, I shared this message with my friends on fb this morning:

I expect to lose a number of friends on here in the near future...
I've come to realize, somewhere along the road, I quit being myself & instead followed the masses... No mas.
I understand if the real me is a little too much for you, or a little too different. Lol.
No hard feelings, I wish you well! Just do me a favor & don't try to conform me to your personal standards/ preferences/ mold and we'll get along famously!
I'm so done altering my appearance, practices, language, taste etc. to suit those who have no right to dictate such.
I'm no longer a slave to societies whims! I'm FREE TO BE ME! Thank the Lord for that!

Seth Godin's Blog post this morning was so in line with where I've been headed mentally lately...

I Realized I'm Pretty Neat,

and that if I'm BRAVE enough to just be myself, instead of trying to conform to whatever I happen to see around me at the time, I'll be a much happier person... which is sort of a big deal.

Too many of us spend our lives trying to live up to these UNREALISTIC images our parents/ teachers/ grandparents/ peers etc, want to see us turn into... I don't want to do that to myself.

I want to be like Oh in Home, or like Eep in The Croods... they're my heroes right now. So Brave!

This is sure to be a wild ride, as I REMEMBER WHO I AM, who I truly am on the inside...

-Thanks for joining me on this Struggle Bus! 

The First XXV vs the Second...

I've spent the last 25 years of my life listening to the voices that say I'm not doing it right, sit down, shut up, behave... I'm going to spend the next 25 listening to the voices that say go forward, don't give up, you can do this, you were made for this, conquer the impossible, overcome the unspeakable, break these chains and be the you, you were created to be! 

Want to join this bandwagon? 

Welcome friend! 

My Lesbian in Church Encounter... where apparently I was the supposed lesbian...

Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover...

Once upon a time, I cut my very beautiful and very long hair off...

When I say cut, I mean I essentially scalped myself. My hair was shorter than most men wear it now days, by the time I was through.

It was a very intentional and purposeful cut, for very personal reasons.

I tend to have these moments/ times/ seasons, of my life that I buck society and, well...

This was one of those days. 

THE DAY I WORE A FAUX HAWK TO CHURCH

That day, this nicely dressed older gentleman whom I have never seen in my church before, pulled me aside DURING praise and worship to tell me, "Your sins are forgiven and God loves you right where you are!"

He said more, but I was trying to sing and praise my Lord, so I tried to politely ignore him... He persisted through most of one of my favorite songs. Grrrrr...

I LOVED the message his words conveyed! The love and acceptance they seemed to share was greatness! But...

He made it very clear, by his ACTIONS not his words (his interrupting my prayerful worship), he believed I was a homosexual woman visiting our church... AWKWARD!!!

The WORDS he used were a wonderful message whenever partnered with mirrored actions, however; let me encourage you not to interrupt a person who is In the middle of Talking to the Big Man Himself, to make them feel out of place, uncomfortable and in my case, a little peeved... 

Not cool man.

In his defense, my hair was in fact spiked into a faux hawk and I was wearing jeans, boots and a button down... lol.

Sorry dude, I'm not gay... just a little odd and apparently I don't like to dress like a girl sometimes...

Point being, DON'T GET ALL WEIRD ON PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT THAN YOU...

Click This Link for a story about two lesbians walking into church that really helped shape my worldview and inspired me to share my story.

-Have a blessed and beautiful day!

Fun and Affordable Door or Wall Decoration

We took our Christmas wreath down and our door looked naked. So, we put the wreath back on the door and I set out to make a doo-dad for our door. Success!!!

I'm just going to explain what I did, and you can take it and run with it. I'm sure you can make something WAY cooler!

You'll Need:
-1 square wooden plaque (found this neat board at WallyWorld for $2, I believe)
-2 contrasting colors of paint (little tubes are $1.99 at WM.com)
-1 .5" paint brush (any size works, just this size was easy to control my mess, to paint background)
-1 tapered, thick, penlike paintbrush (I actually cut the bristles on one I had to make the shape I wanted)
-Patience

How To:
1. Remove any tiny pieces of board that stick up 

this is really just so your project will look tidy... I'm a little OCD.

2. Paint alternating boards one of your chosen colors using the .5" brush, then rinse well and paint the bare slats with color #2. Allow to dry.

I went back after this step and lightly brushed some of the opposite colors onto the boards to give it a worn look, but this is entirely optional.

3. Carefully write your chosen words in contrasting colors over your background. Allow to dry.

4. Hang up your masterpiece!!!

Unicorn Hair Soup

(Ella Enchanted reference... movie, not book)

Honestly, It's really just a broth with tiny, heavily cooked celery & carrot bits, with long, skinny cooked onion strings... but the name is fun, huh!

*Disclaimer: eating this soup can, if you're not accustom to it, cause your body to excrete the toxic waste contained in your innards, so do not eat this before a big race, okay! If you'd actually like to clean your system out *raises hand* drink a gallon of water or more through the day while drinking this broth. Good luck!

Unicorn Hair Soup

Serves:
1 day's worth of quality fasting broth (you'd discard the veggies) or 2 large bowls of veggie & chicken broth soup.

Ingredients:
1 small yellow/sweet onion
1 whole carrot
1 stick celery
2 tbs Knorr chicken boullion
3 cups water

Directions:
1. Chop all veggies according to your preference, while the bullion boils in the water. 

I cut the onion stringy and cooked that some first, then the celery tiny and added it to the pot, last the carrot, I cut tiny and added in.

2. Bring all veggies in the broth to a rolling boil, then reduce to simmer for 15-30 minutes, to your desired tenderness.

I don't time mine, just check it occasionally.

3. Stir well and sip broth to ensure desired saltiness. 

I love mine salty, some do not.

4. Whenever desired texture and salt content are achieved, remove from heat, allow 5 minutes to cool, shovel into a bowl and enjoy!


***Side note: I'm no expert at cooking, so you don't have to listen to me. I once literally mixed batter with my hands, because a recipe called for hand mixing... not a joke.

So, Apparently, I'm kind of a Biatch...

Pardon the french...

I've done some serious soul searching lately, in a big way, and I've come to the conclusion that I am 100%, certifiably a big ole B word...

I, once, was so mean to a boy on the phone that my tender hearted momma, who happened to be unfortunate enough to hear my tirade, forced me to accept his (10,000th) request that I accompany him to the (supposedly Sadie Hawkins, aka "girls ask boys...." just saying) Sixth grade school dance. Then, I had the audacity to abandon him the moment we arrived (in his mom's car, like it was a date or something. lol), and hide from him the duration.

Yep. I'm a B.

 And that's just one example I've recently remembered and felt extremely convicted over. I'm sure there are plenty I don't remember... I'm aware that I've repressed a majority of my, at times traumatic, childhood, so it's entirely possible there are thousands of equatable stories as such.

Greeeaaat...

I think I'll gladly spend the rest of my life righting wrongs and attempting to be the best person I can be now, thank you very much.

If I've ever wronged you in some way, I formally apologize and beg forgiveness.

Sincerely,
that mean girl in class

Wisdom vs knowledge

A sure sign of wisdom is acknowledging that you don't know everything, but you're willing to learn.

If you tend to think you know everything about everything, chances are you've a lot to learn...

~thinking out loud