Happy Birthday, Hermanita Bonita!

I love you! Hope that your day was great!

Want to help bring freedom to the world this Christmas?

Well, you can! That may sound a little cheesy, but I am serious when I say that you can help bring freedom to the lives of women around the world. The Word Made Flesh fields in India and Bolivia serve among women who have been trafficked into the sex trade. WMF offers these women freedom, restoration of dignity, and a new way to make a living. You can support these women by purchasing some of the beautiful products they have made. Check them out here:

Sari Bari

Suti Sana bags

It started with some napkins...

...and turned into Thanksgiving Feast 2010! Let me explain...

I was in Hobby Lobby with my roommate, and saw some really cute Thanksgiving napkins. I decided then and there that we would have to come up with a good excuse to buy the napkins. So, we decided that inviting our favorite people over for a pre-Thanksgiving meal would be a good plan. And it was! The food was amazing, and it was really fun to get everyone together to share a meal - especially since I will be working on Thanksgiving and won't get to spend it with my family and friends. It was my first time cooking a whole turkey, and I was pretty proud of how he turned out:

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

Obsessed??

It's possible... You be the judge.

Go Clemson!

From inside the stadium this time! Thanks to AJ's brother, we managed to get tickets for the Clemson/Ga Tech game last weekend in advance. Sadly, though, Lauren wasn't available to come this time :-( I guess we'll have to make it up to her next season... AJ and I had tons of fun cheering on the Tigers to a victory!

Wordless Wednesday: Fall Fun

Good Words

I was reading in 1 Peter 1 this morning, and was using a commentary by Jon Courson for some extra insight. I usually find that Courson has lots of good nuggets of truth, like these for example:

"You cannot change your heart, but you can change your mind. God can change your heart. He won't change your mind, but if you choose to change your mind, God will change your heart."

"It's not how we're doing or how we're feeling that matters. Whether we feel high or dry is irrelevant. It's the power of the Word that works."

I have been in a "dry" season for a while now, and I know that I need more of the Word in my life. I was encouraged in 1 Peter this morning through the basic truths in the passage:

* We have a living hope - Jesus (v3)

* We have a promised inheritance (v4)

* Trials may come to test the genuineness of our faith (v6-7)

* Set your hope on the coming of Christ (v13)

* Be obedient (v14)

* Live lives of holiness (v15)

* Jesus made the way for us to God (v19-21)

* Love one another well (v22)

* The Word of the Lord is forever (v25)

My Newest Craft Obsession

Coasters!

I totally stole this idea from a boutique in Athens. I saw some coasters there and thought they were really cute until I turned them over and saw the $39 price tag. That's when I decided that I could definitely make those for myself at home. Watch out family and friends - you may just find some in a Christmas package near you...

Furman Fall

This past week, I headed out of the city to spend some time in the mountains. While I was driving through Greenville, I decided to make a visit to Furman. I walked around the campus for a while and enjoyed the beauty of the fall colors. I also stopped in the coffee shop to get a Tower Freeze before I headed out. I was pleasantly surprised to find the same lady still working there that used to make my drinks 8 years ago! She said that she recognized me, too, which is probably a statement about how much time I used to spend in there filling myself with caffeine...

While I was there, I also stopped into to the bookstore, where they were having a big 75% off sale. I decided to bring something home for my adopted puppy, Cali. She's really a Clemson girl, but she looks good in purple, too!

A Fall Recipe

Picking some of these:

+

Playing in a patch of these:

=

A great fall Saturday!!

Just because...

Go Clemson!! (Well, almost...)

This past weekend, I headed up to South Carolina with two of my favorite people, AJ and Lauren. We were doing a belated birthday celebration for Lauren, since she was out of town being a 72-mile-bike-riding-rockstar on her actual birthday. The plan was to head up to Greenville, spend the night, and then go to the Clemson game on Saturday afternoon. The plan hit a slight detour, though, when we weren't able to get tickets to the game. Turns out that a lot of people shared our plan to just buy tickets outside the stadium. Oops. A lesson learned. But that didn't stop us from having a fun day. Instead of heading into the stadium, we headed downtown to do a little shopping, then listened to the game on the radio while eating ice cream and driving with the windows down on a perfect fall day. When the game was over, we did a little bit of hiking to Issaqueena Falls, and finished the day with a quick stop at the outlet mall on our way back to Atlanta. Not what we had planned, but a fun trip nonetheless!

the sad "we need 3" fingers

"we're gonna have fun anyways" faces

underneath Issaqueena Falls

some sisterly love

a few of my favorite [fall] things

1. colorful leaves

2. college football

3. cooler weather - yay for temps this week in the 50-70s!!!

4. hiking - it's the perfect time of the year to enjoy mountains and waterfalls!

5. pumpkin flavored things - like pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin pie!

6. fall activities - like corn mazes and pumpkin carving

7. candy corn pumpkins

What are YOUR favorites??

Go Gators!!

I am so excited that college football season is here! Ever since I went off to college myself, college football has been my favorite sport season. Because Furman football was never quite as exciting as the SEC, I decided that I would stick to my roots and continue to cheer most loudly for the Gators. I had never made my way down to the Swamp for a game though, until yesterday. A friend and I had put seeing a Gator game on the list of things to do this fall. My dad was able to get some tickets through a generous friend of his, so AJ and I headed down to Gainesville and met my dad and sister Carla for the game. It was so much fun! It was so exciting to be a part of the sea of orange and blue! (Especially since I am usually always surrounded by a mob of red and black.) The Gators didn't disappoint...they dominated Kentucky to a 48-14 victory! Go Gators!

(More pictures to come later when the internet decides to cooperate!)