not all who wander are lost…

I know - I’m really crazy. But I have decided that I want to have cupcakes at my wedding instead of a traditional wedding cake. And my amazing bridesmaids have offered to help me make them. So I decided we needed to do some testing of recipes and decide what kind of cupcakes we want to have.

I’m still recovering from sugar overdose. My good friend Becki agreed to help me out with testing some cupcake recipes yesterday. We had a lot of fun shopping for ingredients, making 6 different kinds of cupcakes and 3 different kinds of icing, drinking girly drinks, and watching Gilmore Girls. Here is the picture overview of our afternoon:

this was the first 4 batches (pre-icing)

After baking all 6 batches, we decided to take a break with a fun “Orange Paradise” drink, then we had to clean up the kitchen a little - we had already made a huge mess!

Icing the many cupcakes

We had Josh, Becki’s husband, taste test them for us

He approved. He especially liked the Oreo one, the Cookie Dough one, and the Red Velvet.

Then Becki and I tried them all

We made 43 total cupcakes (1/2 and 1/4 batches depending on the ingredients needed). The 6 kinds of cupcakes we tried were:

Mini Oreo Surprise

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Pink Champagne

Perfect White Cupcakes

Kool-aid Cupcakes

Red Velvet

All of them were recipes I found online that start from a box mix (I figure we need to keep it somewhat easy when we’re making dozens and dozens of them) and they really were all good. I think I decided though that the top 3 that I want to make for the wedding are the Red Velvet, Pink Champagne, and Mini Oreo Surprise.

Love - “a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise, and the lips to pucker.”
                                        - Anonymous

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I created a wedding website to help keep all of our family and friends up to date on any wedding related info and let them get to know us a little better.  I just added a blog there too and will try to update that blog every week or so.

www.abiandandy.com

Feel free to check it out!

lately I have been forgetting a lot of things….and feeling a bit like I’m drowning, but oh well.

One of the things I’ve been so busy with is planning and leading our church’s annual youth group retreat (last weekend - went really well!). We had a good time and I had a great group of 5 high school students who were my student leaders who helped out a ton. They picked out the theme, “O I Love U So” (from an energizer/song we do that they like) and theme verse - 1Cor. 13:4-8a. I somehow came up with a crazy, creative way to illustrate the 4 Greek words for love by comparing each of the types to a different kind of fruit:

Eros (romantic love) - Strawberry
Phileo (friendship love) - Orange
Stergo (parental love) - Apple
Agape (unconditional love) - Pineapple

It was a lot of fun and all weekend long the youth were asking things like “is that a pineapple kind of love, or a strawberry kind of love?”

I had a great time with the youth and had a bunch of high school girls in my room late every each night talking to me. I am going to miss all these students (and their parents and everyone else at this church) a lot! They’re all pretty upset with Andy for proposing and making me move down to North Carolina with him. But they are happy for me…..they just don’t want me to go.

I’m praying that they find a great new youth leader and that I can transition and leave well.

wow - it has been forever since I’ve put anything up on this site.  I have been pretty busy with a little bit of everything.  Youth group stuff is going well - we had an incredible time with our 30-hour Famine.  I was very impressed with the 20 middle and high school students who gave it a try and for the first time in most of their lives, voluntarily went without food for 30 hours to raise awareness, money, and canned goods for the many, many people around the world and here close to home who go hungry everyday.  It was a really neat thing to see them so motivated to let other people at our church know about all they had learned about hunger.

But my biggest news is…….

Andy and I got engaged!

On March 1, 2008

We had been thinking seriously and praying about the idea of marriage for the month or so before, especially since we found out he was moving away.  We took my parents out to dinner the day after Valentine’s day and talked to them about it and Andy asked for their permission to marry me.  So I knew it was coming….but he was really cute - we had a free Saturday afternoon and he wanted to go to the inner harbor again before he left town.  We walked around (it was a little windy and cold) and then we went up to the the “top of the world” (Baltimore’s World Trade Center - which the guide told us was the tallest 5 sided building in the country or the world?  I can’t remember, but something like that).  We were looking around when all of a sudden I turned around and Andy was on one knee!   He asked, I accepted, and we’re both really excited about the future together!

We were already planning to go visit with some friends that night, so we had a great time showing off the ring and sharing our excitement with everyone.

(thanks Emily Joy for the last couple of pictures!)

Just read this on a fellow youth worker’s blog and thought it was pretty funny:

For
those unfamiliar with this strange dialect, I have compiled a helpful
Christianese-English Dictionary so that you can find out what your
Christian friend is really saying to you. If you have any other
troubling Christianese phrases, please post them and I will happily
translate them and add them to this list. (Please read this with a
grain of salt.)

1. I’ll pray about it = NO!

2. We need to pray for so and so = Guess what I just heard?!

3. I’m waiting for God to open some doors = I’m living in my parent’s basement.

4. God gave me a word for you = I have advice to help you with your disaster of a life.

5. I’m going to have my quiet time = Leave me the heck alone!

6. God is good = My life sucks.

7. Bless his/her heart = What an idiot.

8. I have the gift of discernment = I can judge people without even talking to them.

9. I was having fellowship with them = We had beer and pizza and watched the game instead of going to church.

10. I’m saved by grace, not works = I can do whatever the heck I want.

11. She caused me to stumble = What a skank.

12. I kissed dating goodbye = I couldn’t get a blind date, literally.

13. Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth = I can’t believe you said the real curse word!

14. I don’t mean to judge but… = I’m going to judge.

15. I’m dating Jesus right now = Are you kidding? I’m way out of your league.

16. God wants me to take some time off from this relationship = I met someone else and I’m too coward to break up with you.

17. I’ll pray about marrying you = NO!

18. God told me that we are supposed to get married = Maybe you’ll say yes if God is behind this.

19. I’m fasting = Your spiritual life is miniscule compared to mine. Try to keep up.

20. God has called me to minister to her = She’s really hot.

21. I think you should pray about it = You’ll see that I’m right.

22. We’ve decided to court, not date = My parents have a death grip on my life.

23. Courting = Homeschool dating.

24. Lord willing = My plans are His plans.

25. Take this with a grain of salt = I’m about to really offend you.

26. I’m feeling convicted about this = One day my actions might change too!

27. Have I offended you? = Why are you treating my like garbage?

28. Who wants to pray? = I don’t want to pray right now.

29. Jesus turned water into wine = Jesus turned water into grape juice. (Southern Baptist Dialect)

30. Jesus turned water into wine = I can drink whatever I want. (Presbyterian Dialect)

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was celebrated last Sunday, Jan. 6th. At my church they have a neat tradition of actually giving out “epiphany stars”. These stars are simply a laminated stars with different words written on them. These words are supposed to be something to think about - journey with - throughout the year and see how God uses them in your life. Then on epiphany Sunday, whoever wants to can share about their journey with their stars from the previous year before we get new ones. There are always really interesting stories about how God spoke to people in different ways through the word that was on their star. My star last year was “power”. I didn’t have any amazing story of anything God did through that word….but I kept it all year up on my mirror in my bedroom and was reminded that it’s not by my power that I can do anything, but by God’s power. This year I got the word “Attitude” in parentheses underneath of it they had put “(positive)”. I am sure I will need to remind myself to have a positive attitude many times throughout this coming year!

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Happy 2008!

Hope everyone had a great holiday season. I had a good time of relaxing, sleeping late, hanging out with family, friends, and the boyfriend.

I know I’m late in posting holiday greetings and haven’t had anything up here in a while. I can’t even say that December was any crazier busy than usual….I just think I needed to take some time off to relax and refocus. I didn’t do or have a lot planned for the youth group and they were all pretty busy anyway - so it worked out well to take a short break. Now I’ve got to get back in gear!

Annual Family Christmas Movie and Dinner
(and we celebrated my brother-in-law’s birthday)

Here’s a pic of an original painting I just finished on Dec. 30th.

My friend, Tiffany, commissioned me to do this painting as a Christmas present for her boyfriend (who happens to be my “adopted” red-headed brother, Steve). Tiffany asked if I would do it way back in May, and I said that I would love to and thought I would have plenty of time over the summer to paint….well that didn’t ever happen….so as usual, I work best under pressure and I just barely got it done in time for their gift exchanging on New Year’s eve. I am not so good at cityscapes, but that was Tiffany’s only idea/request of subject matter - something Baltimore. So I decided to do a impressionistic view of the pub where we hang out most Wednesday nights down in Fells Point. I couldn’t resist adding Steve and Tiffany in the front….

He liked it. Tiffany was happy. It was fun to do and fun to get paid to paint (usually I give paintings away as gifts).

anyone who knows me, knows I strongly dislike snow.  Some have even seem me cry upon seeing snow….nurmerous times.  I just hate the cold wetness and the bleakness of it all….the white sky and world do nothing to inspire anything but sadness in this artist. 

When I left my house this morning, it wasn’t snowing.  As I drove to work, the white flurries started.  I decided that I was going to try and not be so depressed about it this year.  And today hasn’t been so bad.  I still strongly dislike snow, but I’m trying to just deal with it and pretend like it doesn’t bother me so much.  It has snowed all day.  But I decided to go out on my lunch break and buy a fun warm hat at Ross (since I forgot one this morning and to help with the cheering up).  Now I’m waiting around work since I have a meeting at church that hasn’t been cancelled as far as I know.  I don’t figure that there is any good reason to deal with all the traffic to go home, only to turn around and come back out again. 

Last night my friend Erin came over for dinner.  We had a good time catching up and talking about our weeks.  After dinner, she helped me put together my advent wreath.  I love advent!  Our church gives us an advent wreath kit each year with fresh greens, candles, and a devotional.  We made the beautiful wreath below (sorry for the picture quailty - it’s a phone pic) and then read the advent devotion for yesterday.   My family grew up doing advent and reading devotions after dinner.  It was nice to be able to share that with a friend!