A pre-Thanksgiving praise party.

Have I mentioned www.wordle.net yet? No? Okay, well it’s about time. It’s a website that lets you insert some text & it transforms it into a word collage of sorts. There’s options to change the font, layout, colors, shape, etc so you can create a piece of art that communicates a message. I love these. I’ve made one of these a while back for a wedding of a teammate {see this blog post}, including words of love, weddings, traits and experiences of the bride & groom, and then I matted it & placed it in a nice frame for the newlyweds. Later I got an email from the bride telling me it was her favorite wedding gift {score!} Anyway, I love these wordle creations & they make great gifts.

So anyhoo, I decided to have my own little private praise party a couple days ago. Back in college, my teammates/friends & I would get together periodically and host a “praise party” where we’d take a notecard {or something similar} and fill it completely with all the things we’re thankful for, from the tiniest things like a cup of coffee to huge things like grace. So with Thanksgiving {my favorite holiday} right around the corner, I felt the urge to have a praise party.  I placed all my words of praises into wordle & came out with this…

I just might frame it & display it for the holiday. I love it {so much!}

Going right along with the theme of being thankful – two more things…

{my mom is in the tan dress with her sisters & my grandma at my wedding}

First, my mom had a surgery today and, without going into details, I just want to say that I am so very thankful to God for they way he clearly answered our prayers for safety, health, and good news. God is good {all the time.}

And second, remember the house we failed to get last month? {See here and here for a refresher.} Well, we got a call from our realtor yesterday evening that the outside offer the bank originally accepted a while back actually fell through! Now, this is pretty unusual {in my humble opinion} because the potential buyer had already been pre-approved for the loan, so the funding was in place at the time of the offer.

Honestly, I shouldn’t be surprised because I’ve been praying since our offer was rejected by the other higher offer. I’ve been specifically asking God to let the offer fall through if we’re supposed to have that house. Weird to pray that since it’s been a month since our offer was rejected, but I just felt like I should be praying for it to work out that way. And lo & behold, it did!  God surprised me with an answer on that one {why do I ever doubt His responses?!} So Eugene & I submitted a brand new offer for the same house last night at 10:30 pm. We’ll see where God takes it. {I’m trusting Him to put us right where we’re supposed to be…wherever that is.}

So a big, fat, happy praise to God for answered prayers!

Enough…and flag football champions.

Last night I did devotions with Eugene’s basketball girls. We talked on chapter 4 of Crazy Love about “lukewarm” Christians. I found this video of John Piper on the prosperity gospel that connected well to the chapter. It begs the question:   Is    God    Enough?

The video’s intense, and I’d like to keep it, so I’m posting it here. So often people want God for His stuff, the blessings we receive, and the Hell we avoid, but in actuality, God, just who He is, should be enough for us. We should want to follow Him and love Him because of who He is. Strip away all the blessings, all the stuff, all the people in our lives and God is still enough. He is all we need now and He is all we will ever need. {Praise the Lord for that!}

On a much lighter note, here’s some pictures I took of the guys playing winning during the church Flag Football Tourney. I don’t have a great lens for zooming, so they’re not the best pics, but still fun.

A quick huddle for our blue team before the play starts…

A play from the beginning – Eugene made sure I knew when editing this picture that he did in fact make this catch.

This guy {like all of the guys} was so pumped to play. He was a quarterback in high school, so it was a return to his glory days…

A touchdown play for my man…

Not sure why {considering he has a torn rotator cuff}, but Eugene took a try at being quarterback…

Of course, the pup had to attend. He was a very good mascot…

He wanted to play with Eugene on the field SO badly!

Here’s another series of a play. Run…

Dodge…

Score!…

They had a great time playing all day…

but I think the wives had an even better time teasing them about how ridiculously sore they were the following day! ;)

A cake pop trial.

You’re probably sick of hearing about cake pops now that this is the third post that mentions them, but it’s a recipe worth keeping, so the blog must continue!

Cake pops are gaining a crazy amount of popularity, just see www.bakerella.com to get the idea. She has a book out on all the different variations these treats can take – I’m talking reindeer, cupcakes, trees, even farm animals…no joke, see for yourself!

{source: http://www.instructables.com/id/Cake-Pops/}

{source: http://www.babble.com/holiday-gift-guide/2009/stocking-stuffers/}

I went with the plain & simple for my first attempt at the cake pops. I didn’t have a recipe, but I found hints from other blogs out there & also used this helpful video on amazon.com from Bakerella.

So here’s the process…

Cakepops

1 cake mix & the ingredients needed to make the cake
1 tub of frosting
sprinkles
food coloring
colored sugar crystals
lollipop sticks {I found these at Walmart,$2 for 50 }

So first, you bake your cake. I picked chocolate cake and chocolate icing. I’m sure any cake/icing combo would work great. Once your cake’s completely cooled, you slice it in quarters or sixths and crumble the pieces into a large mixing bowl.

Once you’ve finished crumbling the cake, you want to add your frosting. I used almost the entire tub, but next time I’ll use left – maybe just 2/3 of it. My mixture was a bit more moist than I wanted, making it trickier to keep the cake balled together.

Using a spoon {or your hands} mix the frosting in with the cake crumbles. Then you shape 1” to 2” balls and place them on a cookie sheet {be prepared, this is messy}.

Once you’ve formed all the cake pop balls {mine made 47}, you pop ‘em in the freezer for fifteen minutes to chill. Don’t leave them in there longer than that because you don’t want them to freeze. Transfer them to the refrigerator if you need to keep them cool while you work.

While they’re in the freezer, you can melt your bark in the microwave as it says on the package directions. I found that having the melted bark in a coffee mug worked the best for me because it was deep enough for the cake pop to be covered easily.

You’ll also want to pour out your sprinkles or crystal sugar into bowls with spoons.

Lovin’ the bright colors!

Once your pops are chilled and your bark’s melted, you dip the end of the lollipop stick into the bark and then about halfway into the cake ball.

From there, you submerge the cake ball straight into the melted bark. It’s really important that you just place it straight down into the bark and remove it straight out of the bark without swirling the cake pop around in the bark {see the amazon video linked above.}  If you move it around the cake pop will likely fall off the stick.

Once you pull the cake pop out of the bark, you want to gently tap your hand that’s holding the cake pop to remove the excess drips. {Again, see the video where she demonstrates this.} This, to me, was the most annoying step because you have to be patient and soft with it – you can see below that this was one of the first ones I made and I must have swirled it or tapped off the excess to hard & the cake pop is tilted on the lollipop stick.

Okay, after the bark is done dripping off the cake pop, you can use a teaspoon to sprinkle the sugar crystals or sprinkles over top of the cake pops – don’t work too slowly because the bark will harden quickly.

From there, you can either stick them into a styrofoam block to harden, or {like me} gently place them upside down on a wax paper covered cookie sheet. {This worked for me because I wanted to display them upside down on a cake pedestal.}

You can also use your food coloring to dye the bark to a color to match your party. I did half my cake pops with the white bark, and dyed it blue for the second half. {Cute!}

After doing 47 cake pops, I still had some melted bark left over, so I dipped some pretzel rods. I actually had a few people say they liked the pretzels better than the usual white chocolate covered pretzels.

 

Once the cake pops have hardened, they make such a cute tasty treat that’s easy {well, that’s relative, but they weren’t the hardest recipe I’ve done, that’s for sure!} and offers lots of ways to customize them for your holiday or party.

As I said before, they were definitely a hit at the baby shower!

Yup, it’s a long process, and it’s pretty mess but so gosh darn cute!

Baby Griffin’s shower details.

As I mentioned yesterday,  this past Sunday the other ladies in my small group & I threw baby Griffin & his momma a shower at our church.

See the guests of honor {by guests, I mean the baby bump & mommy-to-be}…

We went with a blue & green theme because Libby’s decorating her nursery in those colors. I lucked out with some great ladies who wanted me to plan it all & delegate. They were willing & oh-so-helpful, so the shower turned out great! Sarah made the tissue paper poms for the decor. {You can find tutorials on how to do it online, like this one from good ole’ Martha.}

I just love how bright & airy the tissue poms are!

For the food we went light because it was at 2:30 in the afternoon. I tried my hand at Bakerella’s cake pops {I’ll post more on those another day} which were a big hit & we had sour cream & onion chips {green part of the theme}, popcorn, chocolate covered pretzels, fresh fruit, chips and dip, and a candy buffet. I also used my favorite go-to punch recipe & froze some ginger ale in a bunt pan with some blue food coloring so the ice block turned the punch green & blue. :)

Aren’t the little “hello baby” signs cute?! A little work on my computer & I just printed them off nice & easy!

The pretzel rods were a lucky thought because I just happened to have leftover almond bark from the cake pops.

I loved the bright colors in the mini candy buffet!

We also used a picture from Libby’s maternity photo shoot {done by another small group wife} to decorate.

When Libby’s guests arrived, we asked them to sign a children’s book on the gift table that we later gave to her as a gift. The book was “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” by Kadir Nelson – beautiful pictures, great message. I actually bought it at a Garden Ridge in Tulsa.

 

We decorated the gift table with some garland, balloons, & poms.

Here’s the beautiful mommy near the gift table.

I’m not a shower game type of person, so luckily, another small group wife took on that task. Here’s Emily explaining one of the activities – she passed out cute little cards {blue & green scrapbook paper} and asked us to write words of encouragement, scripture, or helpful hints on the cards for Libby.

She then put all the cards into a cute homemade photo album so that Libby can turn to them anytime {Libby’s love language is Words of Affirmation, so this was great!}

Here’s some friends getting some sweets.

Libby got some great gifts for baby Griff & she said she felt very “showered” by all her friends at the church. :)

And finally, here’s a group pic of the wives in our “Cleaver’s” newlywed small group.

They were such a help making the shower possible & I’m so thankful it all came together so well & that Lib was happy with it!