Ten Thousand

 This semester has been a whirlwind and I'm so behind on everything! (And even more horrible about taking pictures than before.) 

Last weekend I had the sweet opportunity to roadtrip with some precious friends to Selma for some home cooking and a little JMM concert. What a wonderful time for fellowship and sneaking in a quick nap outside!

My Not-so-obligatory-yet-still-important "What I Learned Junior Year" List

1. It is possible to bake 1,000 cookies in one week.

2. You're never too old or too smart to make a puppet show for a class project.

3. Finally finding a hairdresser after 3 years is only marginally ridiculous.

4. Papers start to write themselves after a while.

5. Bribing boys with baked goods to do odd jobs around the house is okay.

6. Not knowing how to change lightbulbs is not.

7. Crunchy peanut butter is not all bad.

8. Neither is country music.

9. A life-size replica of the Tabernacle of Moses actually exists.

10. Procrastinating until the morning things are due is completely normal.
11. Getting fresh eggs will make all of your baked goods 567x better. Approximately.
12. You can start your own band with play instruments you bought at Cracker Barrel. Piano Man on harmonica= legit.
13. Sweet, sweet time with Daddy gets even sweeter with age. Sharing music festivals together and discovering new bands while we munch on popsicles is something to always cherish.
14. It's okay to cry on your birthday. Again. But more embarrassing while you wallow on the kitchen floor.
15. It's totally possible to become best friends with four other people once you're trapped in an office with them for a solid week.
16. Food is always better when it's miniature sized.
17. Never walk around with a backpack full of bread.
18. Junior year is not too late to have a quarter-life crisis and explore all sorts of ridiculous career options.
19. Sometimes you just have to be a princess and iron your sheets so your monogram lies flat.
20. Being an English major is a lifestyle.
21. It's totally okay to bake your professor an apple pie before the final in hopes that your grade will get bumped up a little bit.
22. If you spend enough time in British literature, you'll start to spell words with the extra 'u.'
23. It is entirely possible to have one too many cheese straws and cucumber sandwiches.
24. Attempting to watch the entire season of The Wonder Years in one semester is a noble, but impossible, dream.
25. Chick-fil-a breakfast is meant to be eaten while you study the Word.
26. You know you're real friends when you only salt half of the chips at dinner.
27. Wanting to create a TV series called "Dairy Belles" about two girls on a quest to find the best soft-serve in America is a legitimate alternative to graduate school.
28. Always check your watch when there's a time difference and you spring forward so you don't wake up at 4:30am instead of 7:30am.
29. Everyone has a cat voice. You just have to get in touch with your inner feline. #meowzaa
30. You can't spell chunk without hunk.
31. Sometimes you just have to have a meltdown in Chill when they don't have your usual flavor.
32. You know you've reached a new low when you can't go home because you'll bake instead of write your papers.
33. The difference between a cat and a comma is that one has claws before the paws and the other has clause before the pause.
34. Growing up only gets harder.
35. These lists only get longer and longer each year.

If You Can't Take the Heat...

Midterms have hit again. Thankfully, all of my work was due within a three day period rather than spread out over two weeks, so I've had a little extra down time to play in the kitchen.

Samoa Bark. Didn't turn out as well as I expected because nothing stuck together. And really, what can compete with the Girl Scout cookie?

Chocolate Reese's Chunk Cookies. Perfect for my baby sister, the chocolate lover.

Funfetti Whoopie Pies. Hindsight: I should have taken the time to sift all of the dry ingredients like the directions said so the cookies halves could have turned out smooth like they were supposed to. Sigh... I guess we can't be perfect all of the time. But the buttercream frosting was to. die. for. I had so much leftover and I seriously could have eaten it all with a spoon.

And I got this little baby in the mail this past week. Joy is seriously my favorite baker ever. Even though most of her recipes call for simple techniques, the results are extraordinary. I sat down and read this book cover to cover like I would read a novel because she is just so witty.

Have a happy week, lovelies!

There Ain't No Place Like Birmingham

This weekend was fabulous.

Jana and I dined at Do Di Yo's on Saturday night. Holy Smokes. SO GOOD. I miss Birmingham's Greek food when I'm in Auburn. The whole restaurant was an experience and I'm so sad we had to eat so fast and couldn't fully enjoy it.

"There are two kinds of people: those who are Greek and those who wish they were Greek." Mr. Portokalos, My Big Fat Greek Wedding

So true.

We ordered fried doughnuts for dessert. Soaked in honey. Best I've ever had. Ever. And I've tried a lot, so that's saying something. I think I scared our waiter when we ordered these. I wouldn't let him get through the rest of the dessert menu. I just wanted these.

Step Sing at Samford! I think I've been almost every year since I was in middle school. This is pretty much the only evening I begin to second guess my decision to go to Auburn. It was probably one of the better shows they've had... right up there with DAP's Monster performance. Dudes-A-Plenty, get at me.

Visited this sweet little squirt while Caroline and I caught up with Momma Ashley. I'm looking forward to hanging out together this summer!

Hope all of your weekends were lovely, lovely, lovely!

Treasure

It's finding little gems like this that make me love small town life.

Knit Together

"...their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ"

Colossians 2:2

photo by the talented Jenna

Meet some of my bible study girls. They are more of a blessing than I could have ever imagined. Our fearless leader Jenna so graciously opens her home to us and has made us all her baby chicks, which is funny since she does have actual chickens in her backyard. Even though we are just beginning our second semester as a group together, I cannot even fathom what my year would look like without all of these women! Jumping into the Word with them has been so encouraging and challenging and I am so incredibly excited to work through the book of James with them. We never have a dull moment in bible study and their humor refreshes my spirit constantly! Imagining the love we have for each other is just an iota of the Father's love for us just blows my mind!

Chicken, Veggies, Soy, Rice

I was blessed beyond measure to serve as a D-Now leader this past weekend in my home church alongside some of my nearest and dearest friends. It was a wonderful weekend and I was so encouraged to watch my sweet group of eleventh grade girls grow in understanding the movement of Christ!

I have been so challenged recently in giving of my money to glorify God beyond tithing. This weekend provided a wonderful opportunity to see where some of that is going, and I want to encourage you to pray over where God wants you to give! Here are a few of my favorite ministries and ways to contribute...

We participated in Feed My Starving Children on Friday night. What an experience it was! Total, our church and community packed enough food to feed 1,494 children for an entire year!

Read more and donate HERE.

It's okay, you can be jealous of our hairnets.

"Blessed are those who are generous, because they feed the poor." Proverbs 22:9

Maybe you want to support some workers being called to His field. Meet Dana and Laura, two Auburn grads called to serve the Lord in Uganda. In efforts to raise funds for their trip, they are selling some super cute threads HERE. I bought mine this past week and am so excited to sport that bad boy around campus.

Um, how precious are they?

"I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given to me the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace." Acts 20:24

Last, but not least, Urban Purpose is a ministry near and dear to my heart. I had the opportunity to work with them last spring break and occasional Sundays when I'm home and don't have to get back to Auburn. Started by two men in our church, this ministry is devoted to building relationships with Birmingham's homeless population and seeking to meet physical needs while actively sharing the Gospel. Read more and donate HERE.

Through these ministries, may God be glorified above all else.

Why I Am The Way I Am

I went through some of our childhood photos this weekend trying to find the perfect one to embarrass Kendall with on her birthday.

I had to keep in mind that my birthday is just three weeks away, so it couldn't be too humiliating.

Along the way, I found some real gems of me. I was a pretty spunky child. Rather than show all of them to you, I picked out one that I thought really summarized infant Kelsey:

February 1993... aka my 2nd birthday.

No, you don't need to get your eyes checked, I am indeed holding a child-sized broom. When I questioned my mother why on earth they included a broom in my birthday gifts (because pictures of me with the other gifts just weren't as entertaining) she insisted that I really, really wanted a broom and was obsessed with sweeping our entire house, but specifically the kitchen. She found the cutest one she could, and I was apparently a very happy child. Way more pumped than I was about my Winnie the Pooh VHS tapes (that I watched until we literally wore them out) or Thomas the Tank Engine Trains (another obsession) or classic children's books.

So there you have it...

This is why I am the way I am.

And sadly there are so many more pictures that anyone could guess was me a mile away.

Chili Night

First Crock-Pot meal of the semester! (In case I haven't told you excitedly in person, I got a slow cooker for Christmas and have been itching to use it!)

Last night I made taco chili from the Better Homes & Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes with a few of my own variations. It turned into a little party with three other sweet friends coming over to celebrate making it through the first day of class! Naturally, we completed the meal with cornbread and some terrible cookies I ended up throwing away. Live and learn, you know?

Here's to a great spring semester!

Taste of the Town

Let me tell you about my hidden talent.

I am a great restaurant picker.

Maybe it's not such a talent after all. And maybe no one else feels I have this gift. But I certainly feel that I do.

It took me two and a half years of living in Auburn, but I finally branched out to nearby Opelika for restaurants after being a regular at all of the Auburn ones.

Pause. If you haven't wandered around downtown Opelika, it's an absolute must. Adorable. I go to church down there and knew it was precious, but the entire downtown district is to die for. Resume.

So on our first night back after break, I had a hankering for pizza and had my heart set on going to Opelika. Enter Ma Fia's, also known as the best decision we made all day. My friend Hillary and I popped in there on Friday and we left as changed women.

A general outline of the evening, as follows:

1. We circle the parking lot about 6 times trying to get a close spot, then decide to park like 30 yards away. Struggles. We are such divas.

2. We walk in and find out a girl in our pledge class is one of the hostesses there. I'd just like to take this opportunity to go ahead and bless her heart.

3. We find out that at 7pm on a Friday night there will be an hour and a half wait for a table.

4. Our sweet friend tells us she can seat us in an hour and she'll give us a call when our table is ready. She assures us it will be worth the wait.

5. We bless her heart and decide to go to Target to kill time.

6. Our precious friend calls us after we've been gone approximately 30 minutes telling us our table is ready. We feel cool already being treated like regulars here.

7. We abandon our hand baskets in Target and book it to the restaurant.

8. We walk in, and sit down at a table by the bar--perfect for people watching.

9. About this point we notice that we are the youngest people there in a rather trendy crowd, by Auburn standards at least. Typical.

10. We peruse the menu and after much deliberation decide on each building our own personal pizza, a decision we do not regret.

11. We have excellent service. I drink a lot of water, but the waitress kept my glass full even though she probably had a ton of other tables to keep up with.

12. We see a lady with a sweatshirt on that says "Pets Leave Pawprints On Our Hearts." That's not important, just really funny.

13. Pizzas arrive. Holy. Smokes. Mine had cheese, dried basil, chicken, caramelized onions, and prosciutto ham. It was fantastic. Perfect size, perfect taste, perfect texture, perfect ratio of toppings. I can't even deal.

14. We bask in the pure ecstasy that our pizzas brought to our tummies.

15. We go for dessert, also known as the second best decision we made all day.

16. This arrives.

Party in my tummy. These italian doughnuts were like a beignet, but a little chewier. The man who brought out this dish forget to bring us some extra forks, so I swiped some baby ones from the bar that I'm pretty sure were just for the bartender to use to fish out garnishes for cocktails. You know what, desperate times call for desperate measures. And once he saw why I was so needy for eating utensils, I think he understood.

17. We pay a perfectly reasonable price for such a wonderful meal and leave feeling extremely satisfied and marveling at how wonderful our lives really are, even if we act like old ladies.

I think it's safe to say we can whole-heartedly recommend Ma Fia's since we're already looking forward to the next time we go back, which, if we're being honest, will be this week.