so it's been five months...

After a unannounced summer hiatus. (Sorry, more to come on that later.) I'm here and attempting to put things back together.

I'm sitting here staring at boxes full of my Etsy shop that need to be unpacked, however I just re-opened my shop. I'm the kind of person that needs inspiration to get things done. Unpacking and cleaning up my office? Yes, I'm going to need a few orders to force me to untape them and find my glue-gun. I have an email from someone talking about a project where they share the work-spaces of bloggers. I said I was interested in more details, but wow, that would definitely be inspiration to get my things back in their spots. Yikes - but in a good way, I guess. I've been looking at the boxes for almost two months!

I never posted about our plans before I fell off the radar, we spent the summer in the DC area while my husband interned. Now (cough - as of almost two months ago) we're back to our cozy little place in Williamsburg enjoying the unlimited free apple cider, tree frogs on our front door and pitch black nights.

It's almost halloween and I really can't stand the holiday but fall is my favorite season so I'm going to attempt this year to do a few fall related things before it's too late. The first on the list is to make apple cider with actual apples. I found this recipe from My Heart Beets that seems simple enough. I am, however, laughing to myself that it asks for whole cloves and one whole nutmeg. I have no idea what those are or where I will find them. But I will. A nutmeg is a thing? Maybe it's one of those funky looking items in the produce section that has spikes on it that I always want to buy (likely not.)

We're going to go to a pumpkin patch, I think the same one we visited last year, but a little earlier this time. I believe last year we put our pumpkins out just in time for Halloween, didn't get a single trick-or-treater and then left them on the front step for two months. Then come December, we tossed them into the woods, the trees were bare and we could see them out our window for the next 2 months. Talk about an honest depiction there folks, no sugar coating that experience. We're hoping to do things differently this time.

I loved the white pumpkins we got last year and I want to find a few more again this time. I love these colors in the palette on the right from Design Seeds. I'm sure you've been to their site, but if not - it's so great! Our lower level has all of these colors except the plum/purple so it will be easy to add that in I think.

So, pretty ambitious goals - make some real apple cider and attempt to find something plum and purple to add in on our table to make it look like fall. Shouldn't be too difficult. :)
 
I'll be posting soon with a few pics customers sent me this summer, they are great and I honestly can't wait to share - they were a big inspiration for finally sitting down at the blog again.

Paper Flowers, Provision & Promises

Friends. I just posted that we were able to sponsor our first child through No Ordinary Love Ministries yesterday!

For a little back story. I had been praying about this for the past few weeks. The month of April was the slowest month for Pancakes & Glue Guns in almost a year, it brought it approximately 1/3 of the profit it normally brings in. It was during this month that I reached out to No Ordinary Love Ministries.

The entire month I waited and waited for the shop to return to its former glory, but it didn't - it was slow! I've always said that God's hand on this shop is so perfect as I have rest exactly when I need it, it provides a distraction from work stress when I need it, and it provides finances the exact minute we need them. All of this never happens in a "safe" way, instead the shop is constantly fluctuating in sales and profit month by month to provide exactly what we need when we need it. For instance, in April I finally had some time to make my paper flower crosses and after making a few was inpsired to reach out to Hope Spoken about being a vendor in their market. Without that down time to create these I wouldn't have pursued it. God is so good and perfect!

When I first contacted No Ordinary Love Ministires, providing a sponsorship for a child once a month was actually in the excess of my shop. I would definitely notice it, but it didn't require too much faith to make it work.  I kept telling myself, well April was a little slow - so let's just start the sponsorship thing in May. But then as the days went on and I was in the Word I read about how giving in faith as a sacrifice is a form of worship to the Lord  is so pleasing to Him.

So, I went ahead and did it - the funds from April went 100% to sponsoring a child at No Ordinary Love Ministries - there wasn't any excess, this wasn't an easy donation as it forced us to rely on faith to provide what we needed for the rest of the month.

Well, two hours later the Hope Spoken instagram account shared a picture of one of my crosses and I had dozens of new followers inquiring about custom orders in my Etsy shop. Then the next hour my husband receives an email that his scholarship for his summer internship had been increased by about $500 - the amount of the sponsorship.

Step out in faith friends, the Lord always keeps his promises. I am so blessed to be used by Him through my paper flowers. :)

Hebrews 13:16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Phillipians 4:19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

May Sponsorship & Hope Spoken

Friends, we've sponsored our first child through No Ordinary Love Ministries' home-based reunification services.  You can read his story here. Please pray for him and his family. :)

Thanks for supporting Pancakes & Glue Guns this April and helping me use this shop for His glory!

And another exciting note: I'll be attending the Hope Spoken conference in Dallas next March and will be a vendor in their handmade market! I'm also providing some free swag for their "swag bags." More to come on my idea for that soon!

I'll be building up an inventory of paper flower crosses for the market. It's going to take me the entire 10 months to make enough...!! Exciting though :)

 

Great Commissioned Moments - She Shares Truth

I'm writing my first "assignment" from the She Reads Truth devotional series. We're asked to think about what holds us back from being available for commissioned moments and to share any that we've experienced. Well, my blog post will focus more on the "holding back" than the sharing. (Insert nervous laugh.)

Mark 16: 14-20 talks about the "great commission" and asks us to "Go into the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation." (v15)

Now when I read that it makes my stomach hurt and get a little nervous. I don't want to be a overbearing weirdo and I get anxious in general about a lot of things even though I'm mostly pretty outgoing.  The thing is, the Lord knows this. He knows every secret in my heart and he also meets me (and all of us) exactly where we are.

In general I think I'm not available for commissioned moments because I over-think and over-analyze every interaction I have with someone and I'm very concerned about making sure they are happy and feel comfortable. Sometimes sharing the word of God (in love of course) can cause conviction and make someone feel uncomfortable. That's the part that makes me anxious.

But again, the Lord knows all of this, he knows every detail of our being and every secret of our heart. He knows exactly how I feel about this. It was through our recent adoption journey that the Lord opened the doors and kindly pushed me through them to get better in this aspect of my life. When we decided to start the adoption process nothing about it made sense. Logistically - we're away from our family, living on law school loans, my husband is a full time student and my job was a nightmare of stress. And personally - it wasn't because we couldn't have biological kids. We started this process because we really truly felt the Lord called us to do it. One of the reasons we pretty much knew it was the Lord was because nothing else about it made sense and walking in blind faith is a scary, but amazing opportunity. 

So, that being said, when people would ask about the adoption and why we decided to adopt (which is always everyone's first question) we really had absolutely no other answer than we felt called to do this by the Lord. Well, for many of our friends who had never heard us utter such words before I'm not sure what they thought. But I know that the Lord provided a huge number of moments through this story for us to share at work, at our new church, to our friends, family, etc. And  when my stomach would hurt to say it because I didn't want an unbelieving co-worker or friend to feel uncomfortable the Lord gave me the strength to say it and then go on to explain it. 

Now I'd be lying if I said it went perfectly all the time. So, for instance one time I believe I said "well, you know it's just like, you know, like, what we're supposed to do, ya know? YA FEEL ME?!" Ha! I didn't say it exactly like that but pretty darn close. And man what a terrible feeling in my stomach when I walked away thinking - man, I just had the opportunity to share my faith and also the truth (instead of my half-hearted lie) with someone and I didn't. And you know what? Instead of feeling anxious that I made someone uncomfortable I felt more anxious that I didn't give them the opportunity to hear and that was my selfish choice. So after that things started to turn around. But I'm still not perfect, and never will be. 

It's amazing to talk about this experience with my friends who are believers, but when you attempt to explain why you are doing something seemingly irrational to a non-believer and they stare at you with a blank look and then physically look uncomfortable, that's hard friends. 

Currently we're still being pushed in this direction as in the recent months we've felt that this is no longer the direction the Lord wants us to go right now. He has revealed some amazing wisdom to us and also opened doors for us to partner with organizations who help keep families together and reunite families in Ethiopia. Explaining now to our friends, some of whom never understood in the first place, that now we are placing this on hold is even more difficult! But at the same time it allows us to explain that we're becoming more familiar with the Lord's voice, that the Lord used this process so far to do amazing things and that now that we know what it feels like to hear him give direction in our lives we are waiting for what is next. 

#shesharestruth

Yum....Waffle Grilled Cheese? Try it.

I came out of my office to a surprise from my husband. Of course, being the "pancakes" side of this blog - I should have expected this, but what I found was a grilled cheese sandwich on a belgium waffle.

He casually explained that we ran out of bread, so why not put cheese on a waffle?

Friends. I totally recommend this. I'm sure there will be more to come with additional ingredients we've added on. Now to make sure I don't over-do it and I allow this to be a treat and not a daily meal...sigh.

A follower on instagram said the perfect thing "Hungry men are sooo inventive!" True, true and true. Inventive doesn't always mean tasty, however as I've seen some weird creations appear from extreme hunger, but this time it did!

(And yes, that's a clearance $0.38 pack of Rolos behind the waffles. We do eat relatively healthy, but I couldn't say no to the Target red tag!!)

Reflections from the Calvary Chapel Philly Conference

I'm going to share my reflections from the Calvary Chapel women's conference in Philadelphia this past weekend. I don't normally do this, but I'm feeling challenged to do so and a few people have asked so here goes...

First of all, I just want to say that this church was huge! There were about 2,000 women there for the weekend. And it's not even as big as some of the other Calvary Chapels are. They have a school, a huge parking lot with parking attendants (speaking of parking attendants I'm a firm believer that the Trader Joe's in my area needs some of these to keep things civil), and baseball fields. When we arrived on the second day everyone was waiting in line for the doors to open - check out this line in the picture to the right! Everyone was peaceful and it was awesome to see so many people there for a conference on the gospel, this wasn't a line for a 1999 N*Sync concert or something :) (haha).

The theme for the conference was "The Glorious Gospel of Christ" centered around 2 Corinthians 4:4-18. 

In the first session by Pastor Raul Ries, we learned it's not just how we share the gospel with our words, but it's how we LIVE it. He showed us that the Glorious Gospel of Christ will set us apart (Romans 1:1), will open doors (2 Corinthians 2:12), and will reach all the ends of the world (Matthew 24:14).  His wife then spoke the following morning and one thing that stood out to me was her point that we have to focus on preaching Christ, not ourselves. The son of man came to serve (Matthew 20:27-28). And to preach is to serve, not to elevate ourselves. Similarly, the third speaker, Karyn Johnson highlighted 2 Corinthians 4:7 "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." So from the first session we learned that it is how we LIVE the gospel, but then this is qualified that it isn't focused on ourselves. So this means that we need to be setting an example for others about the truth of the gospel while also making sure that the focus isn't on us, but instead the work that God is doing in us. Great, super easy right?!

Of course it's not easy! No one is perfect at this, and God doesn't expect us to be. What a relief. 

Setting an example is something we've learned from our earliest days from our parents (hopefully :)), especially those of us who have younger siblings. People are always observing our lives, especially with social media now. Acting as an example while we put some of the most minute details of our lives on the internet can be a challenge! I think what makes this most difficult is that we never know where others are at in their lives truly. Someone may be really struggling with their job and or finances, drinking, or struggling in their marriage and a photo of us or a physical example of us drinking, posting a complaint about a co-worker or our job or making a joke about how "awful" our spouse is for something silly could change the entire focus of their day or challenge how they are feeling. We never want to be stumbling blocks to others and everything we do as examples could influence how non-believers and believers alike think about Christ. What a difficult, but great challenge. I remember thinking to myself regarding various examples and things that were posted on Facebook and that I saw in real life: "Oh! She's a believer so that must mean it's ok for me to do X or say Y" and relying on the examples of fellow believers instead of the Word.  Obviously that isn't a great practice, but for newer believers, that may be the case and it's important for us to realize. I'm also not attempting to make rules or laws for us to follow, I'm just showing examples from my personal life of how lives of other believers have influenced my idea about the Word of God. 

Several of the speakers light heartedly joked about social media and blogging, but that particularly stood out to me as I obviously am writing a blog post right now and I spend countless hours trying to pick out beautiful colors for it :). They stated that obviously these tools can be used for good, but they can also quickly turn into a "self-focused" platform. One of the speakers made a joke that we'll post a bible verse, then we'll post a selfie, then we'll post a bible verse and then we'll post a selfie. Everyone laughed, but it made me think. It's an illustration of how easy it is for some of us to quickly snap a photo of what we're looking like that day but we might not as quickly be comfortable to drop a line about how we are feeling spiritually each day when our spiritual self is SO much more important than our new hair-do (is that just a term from the 50s? I'm laughing now re-reading this before I post it) or glasses!

The speaker also told us that when our eyes are not on the treasure, they'll fall on the vessel. How true that is! I'll often talk about some of my favorite bloggers and when I explain why I like them, some of the first things out of my mind are - they are so artistic, I love her style, she posts the cutest outfits on instagram, or the blog is beautifully designed and I'll just leave everything about their Christ-centered message out.

And my favorite - one of the last sessions was Adie Camp. She talked about in order to fully understand the cross we must die to our selves daily. This literally means to give up our lives to allow Christ to reside in us. 

Adie talked about God's perfect plan and that through suffering and hard times we have a great opportunity to depend fully on the Lord. He doesn't create these bad things that happen in our world, but he does allow things to happen that he knows we can handle or be perfected through.  She mentioned the emphasis of our society to always focus on being happy and not letting things bother us, to move on, to distract ourselves from our burdens. But, she also mentioned that one can be in a time of sorrow and unhappiness but still find joy in the Lord. 

God allowing suffering is a tough thing to think about and something that many of my friends who aren't believers ask me about. For me, the foundation of my faith is that I believe in the absolute perfection of God's plan for the world and I also believe that I will never fully understand it because we just aren't able to while we are on Earth. If we understood every detail of his plan and how it works - we'd be equal with God.  As I grow in faith I find that He's revealed more and more and I've come to a fuller and better understanding that can't be easily explained. It's a gift that comes with time! Taking that into account, there are some things that I know I won't be able to figure out, but when it comes to the bad things that happen here - what if they didn't? What if the world was perfect, no evil. Would we even need God? Would we willingly choose to enter into a relationship if we can already have perfection here on Earth? He doesn't force us to believe or enter into a relationship with him, he wants us to choose that. 

In Adie's talk she talked about the importance of really understanding the cross of Christ referencing Phillipians 3:10 "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death." Suffering allows us to really know Him and become like him, and while the world may say this is a burden - is it really? 

I think the Lord's heart breaks for the terrible things that happen to His people, but Romans 8:28 tells us "and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose." In Genesis 50:20 an example "as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." 

For me, being away from home and all of my family and friends can be really tough, but in this time when I haven't had that support system to rely on I'm closer to the Lord and I'd move out here and be "lonely" all over again for that. Now some of you may be saying "my burden is worse - that's not an extreme example of suffering", but in this point in my life I trust that the Lord knows I can handle this and knows what you can handle and he's using this period of being alone to perfect me. I am so comforted in the fact that I'll only be dealt what He knows I can handle. 

Remembering what was said before about using suffering to become more Christ like and dying to our selves, Adie gave awesome examples of what this could look like in someone's everyday life. She talked about those who were struggling in their marriage, instead of fighting based on what their emotions or feelings told them to do, choosing to give up their personal desire to defend themselves.  She also talked about those who are burdened with something as simple as their page-long list of monotonous household chores, to essentially not allow these things to frustrate us but instead give them to the Lord and tell Him your heart, because he already knows it and we don't have to hide it. And after we've been honest, we need to give these things up, die to our selves and pick up the cross that God has asked us to carry. Whatever our cross is, in carrying it and dying to our selves we allow Christ to live through us. Galations 5:24 says "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." 

Last but certainly not least, imprisoned pastor Saeed Abedini's wife Naghmeh was the last speaker. Naghmeh was such a perfect example of a real life person who was living her life as an example to others, dying to her self and allowing the Lord to work through her in unbelievable ways. It was so abundantly clear that the Lord was using her. I've been following Saeed's situation for a long time now and was excited to see her. Naghmeh talked about the overwhelming peace she has received from the Lord and the amazing chances she's had to share the gospel with the UN, over 50 million Iranians via television and other world leaders she never dreamed she would meet. Every time she speaks about her husband's situation she emphasizes the peace she has and explains that this peace would not be possible without the Lord. She also explained how she does not like public speaking and she does not like flying - but through this experience she has had to die to her self almost every day and allow the Lord to use her. She is an amazing individual and her strength in the Lord is so awesome to see in person. If you haven't heard about her husband read the link above, pray, and follow along! His suffering has allowed millions to hear the gospel. He also released an Easter message about the same verses Naghmeh spoke about at our conference. You can find the letter here. 

Almost the end, I have to include something about the music! The Scott Cunningham Band from Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa performed throughout the weekend, this was my favorite. I LOVE that song and their music, check it out if you don't know them!

Ok obviously that's a ton of information. On top of that we had the strangest hotel experience ever where we saw someone in a full glitter body suit, our room was a mess like someone else was already living there and we found a champagne bottle topper on the floor and then when housekeeping came to change the sheets they instead just sprayed our sheets with lysol to make it "all better." (Since then we've been refunded in full for the room without me asking for that so that was good!) I also was terrible at giving directions on the "turnpike" or whatever the crazy 12 lane road right outside of Philly is called, and we also got ourselves some true Philly cheesesteaks. All in all an awesome time.

Thanks for reading friends <3

Hello Wednesday: So you're wondering what it's like to help your husband study for law school exams?

Time has been weird this week, feels like Monday and feels like Friday at the same time. Ever have one of those weeks?  My husband just started his second semester of law school exams. Where has the year gone?! Williamsburg feels like home to us, but just missing our family, wish everyone was here!

So you're wondering what it's like to help your husband study for law school exams? Glad you asked because I'm going to share.

While studying for exams may really stink for him, it's been a surprisingly "fun" (I use that term lightly) time for us these past few days. He spends many many days in a row watching tutoring videos and writing an outline that's 100 pages. It's an outline, isn't it supposed to be like, two pages? A 100 page outline is a book. I rest my case. (HA, the law school puns and ridiculous jokes I produce these days are second to none.) But anyway, he spends a lot of time writing and sighing really heavily.

But then after his outline is finished, it's flashcards time! I am a visual person, so I tend to think that if we move around a lot and study flashcards he'll remember the time we talked about defeasible somethings or fee simplys (whatever they are called, you get the point) and be able to think about a unique location to jog his memory. Or maybe I'm just hungry and want to go to more than one fast food restuarant in a day.

So for instance, here's how we did flashcards for his property exam.

Round 1: At Jimmy Johns while eating a humongous pickle. We got a booth and I spread the cards out everywhere. So many of these cases were brother v. brother - that made me sad. I made up stories for each of the characters. I also made up a really elaborate story about a lady who wanted to sell her house but was really sad about leaving the coy pond in the back so she wanted to make sure the next owner took care of them. That scenario stuck with us all day!

Round 2: Eating sweet frog in a little down town center. That was fun until we realized we were sitting on a pile of ants. Literal ants in the pants. You bet he remembers those cases!

Round 3: On the way to Taco Bell. What did this look like? It looked like a flash card, and then a 30 second discussion about if we should just get regular tacos or a crunchwrap supreme, and then a flash card, and then me questioning if I think this is going to make me sick, and then a flash card, you get the idea...

Round 4: In the Taco Bell parking lot while eating tacos. Why didn't we go inside Taco Bell? I dunno, our car was like a safe little nighttime club house. So we nommed on some tacos - I got a crunchy potato soft taco. Only $.99. I love them. We ate and quizzed some more flash cards.

Round 5: Taco Bell drive through round #2 to get some carmel apple empanadas. We debated for about 5 minutes if it would be embarassing if the guy at the drive through window would remember us. We have an Alaska Airlines card, so we decided that was really noticeable and instead scrounged up all of the change in our car to pay with that instead. LOL Really? I'm seriously laughing about this in hindsight, but it was a very serious decision at the time.

Round 6: Eating the carmel apple empanadas and more flash cards. I think we were talking about landlords and stuff.

Round 7: On the drive home and then walking to the mailbox. (Gotta fit one in wherever you can!)

Round 8: Taking a walk on the golfcourse at 8:00pm. It's pretty dark at 8:00pm so when it was time to read a flash card I'd have to stop and read very slowly, I couldn't even pronounce half of the words anyway "alienability"  somehow became ""an alien's ability to rent a property..." which I legitimately thought was a question a law school teacher would ask with their crazy hypotheticals. Apparently not. It was literally pitch black by the time we finished walking. I caught a frog and picked him up - that was fun. This was our view in the picture to the right. We walked quite a distance away to the 18th hole across the little lake. (Side note: look for a blog post from me soon about my adventures catching a bull frog in the pond....I hear them and I want to catch one!)

So what do you do when an exam is over? You order a tray of 60 chicken nuggets for the two of you and eat them all.