Do it yourself....

Well....it's been almost a year since I've blogged! Sad...but I really don't have much of a life to talk about so...here are a few things I've been up to lately...

#1. Made my own laundry soap. It's working well so far!
#2. Painting 2 of my grandparents old end tables and using them as night stands in spare bedroom number 2.
#3. Bought supplies to create my own headboard in spare bedroom number 2. Need to buy some spray paint still and figure out how to afix it to the wall.
#4. Found a super cool nature park on 84th and Kalamazoo. JB Stryker and I walked part of it a few nights ago and Stryker was soooo excited!
#5. It's been a year (today I believe) that we moved into the parsonage at PCRC. Pretty crazy how fast this past year has gone!


Well...that's about it...not much happening...but that's nothing new! :)

A whole month

So...we've been in our new place for an entire month now. The living room is still a complete mess b/c the basement still isn't cleaned out (church stuff everywhere). so we're waiting. everytime i walk past the livingroom, i cringe. i hate it. it's messy and that annoys me. i'm not uber organized or clean and i sometimes leave piles of papers in random places, but a whole room???? UGH!

moving blues

well here i am. sitting in front of the tv. one box half packed with coffee mugs. waiting for the others to get done in the dish washer. this is weird. packing up our things....and no place to go. we don't know where we will be soon. i think we will be able to stay in our place until July 15. so that gives us less than 2 months left. 2 months to pack up all our stuff. 2 months to find a job. 2 months to find a place to live.

i know i would love to find a place with more than one bedroom. it's not fun having place for family to stay when they are in town. a bigger kitchen would be fantastic too! :)

part of me wonders if i'll ever get to live in california again....

um....ya...

so i'm not sure if anyone follows this thing anymore.  i kind of use facebook as my blog.  but anyways...

The last few months have been eventful!  JB and I moved some of our crap to Tulare California for the summer long internship at Tulare Community Church.  We drove from Holland to Chicago to hang out with his family for a day then off through WI and MN to get to South Dakota to see the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore.  It was super foggy and we had a hard time seeing the faces...but we did get a couple of good shots.

Then we drove to Colorado to visit our good friends Dan and Crystal.  After a few days of relaxing and playing the Wii we headed off to St. George Utah to spend the night before our trek to Chino.  We stayed a few days with my family and then headed up to Tulare.  We had a week of not knowing where we were going to live (if you know me you know how much i hate living out of luggage....) but then we finally got hooked up with a sister of my mom's friend who just bought a house with a guest house on the property.  Well...it's pretty much amazing.  Look at all the fun pics on my facebook...seriously...i almost died when we moved our stuff in.  

JB has been hard at work writing sermons, helping out at VBS and doing a few sundays of worship leading.  Two weeks ago we went with the junior highers to a retreat at PLNU (my old stomping grounds!) where we were completely surrounded by noise almost 24/7.  good gosh!  i was so happy to home without noise...i love quiet time!!!!!!  :)  but it was fun too!  getting to know some pretty cool junior highers was good for me.  but it was weird being surrounded by a ton of little people who were dressed in 80's style clothing.  really really weird!  now if only 80's music would come back in style!  ha ha ha  

Surprisingly we only have 2 1/2 more weeks before we're done here at Tulare and then we spend a week and a half with my family in Chino and San Diego.  Then it's off for Holland MI again!  another 40 hours in a car....mother of pearl!!!!!  i HATE road trips...

anyways.  I've really missed all the fun friends in Holland this summer.  it just makes it that much harder to leave again in year!  ugh.  i hate change!!!!!  can't all the people i love just live in one place????  is it too much to ask for?

Spinach & Mushroom Quiche

So I made a spinach and mushroom quiche yesterday. I looked up recipes online to find one but I would always be short a few items so I made up my own! here it is! it was yummy...

1 cup of fresh spinach (most recipes you can use frozen)
1/2 -1 cup of fresh mushrooms
1 tbsp butter
salt & pepper
Put mushrooms butter and seasonings together in a fry pan and fry up. Add the spinach at the very end since it only take about a minute for it to wilt.

Take a refrigerated pie crust (or make your own) and press it into the bottom and sides of a pie plate.

Wisk up about 6-8 eggs and add the spinach and mushroom mixture and whatever shredded cheese you like. Pour into the pie crust. Bake at around 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes.

so...that's my recipe. Add bacon or ham or what ever vegies you like! :-D

HAPPY COOKING!!!! and eating! ;-)

Crock Pot Fun!!

Ok so i just got this blog from a friend of mine. The title is "A Year of Crockpotting" it's saved as one of my blogs to check out. I guess the lady is making something in her crock pot everyday for a whole year! so great! and she puts the recipes up too...so take a look! I think the crock pot is the GREATEST invention since sliced bread...but that's just me.

I made a Taco Soup in the crock pot the other day and it was a success. Ask me for the recipe if you want to try it! :)

fall musings...

hello friends!

well it looks like fall is offically upon us in michigan....i do like it that the weather has cooled down and the humidity is hardly around anymore, but it means we're that much closer to WINTER...the dreaded WINTER! AGHAGHAGHGAHAGH

i know many people think that tanning at a salon is a bad thing...but getting completely depressed b/c there is NO SUN here for 5 months is not something i can live with this winter. so i'm going to get a membership for a few months. probably between feb and may. i won't get orange! i'll just get happy! WOOOO HOOOO!!!! happiness rocks! :)

oh and i put out my fall decorations. been lighting a bunch of candles and using less electricity. it's fun. also coming home and throwing on a sweatshirt and jeans is great too!

so now a question....WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PART OF FALL?

...mine would be fireplaces...even though we don't have one...