Tina The Storyteller

By Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola Sweet and Viola have a singular voice in this work and it is a resounding call to escape from the “Youniverse” and to live in the truth that Jesus is calling each of us to partake in. They systematically address modern Christianity and discuss the flaws, as well as, an attainable alternative. The book starts out with an exceptional amount of scripture references and then quickly falls into the applications of the scripture within the body of believers.  They do an excellent job of challenging Christians to live a life with Christ.  Repeatedly we are warned not to be like Jesus but to instead allow him to live within us.  It is a much needed reminder in a culture where Christianity can sometimes be worn around our necks like jewel that looks beautiful but upon close inspection is discovered to be worthless.  My favorite chapter is “The Forgotten Tree” in which we are encouraged to stop living next to the tree of knowledge of good...

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri. I'll post more when I get home...

Hannah and I headed out yesterday for a trip to see my dad, just outside of Atlanta.  But I like to call it Hotlanta all the same, because it's terribly hot here in the South.  It is not an endearing quality, unlike the magnolias, local honey, sweet potato pancakes, and lovely people, which are all very endearing and the reason that I keep coming back to my homeland.  I sometimes think of myself as an ambassador for the South, on my good days.  And other times I have definitely been a foreigner in a foreign land, but not so much recently.  I've learned how to speak parts of the language of the North, and then there are times when people look at me as they did when I was in France speaking French with all my heart and yet a total lack of understanding from the other person.  Oh who am I kidding, I even had that happen in Africa and at my very college with my professors, but generally that was me looking befuddled by their words and not the other way around...

I love leaving comments, but I cannot tell you how many have been lost in cyberspace because you now require word verification after I hit "post comment."  Please just ask me before hand, I'll be happy to fill it in, and am happy to do it after, but rarely if ever remember or know to wait for it once I've typed my comments and have moved on to other bloggy adventures. Thanks, MamaTina

I totally did not remember that today was really Thursday and all that it entails until I typed my title up there.  And fortunately, I generally title my blogs before I write my posts.  We had a beautifully long week full of friends and relaxing and enjoying.  We got to hang out and have lunch with our friend, Lisa, and her children's toys.  We even got to enjoy the DIA with our friend Grandma Taylor and her grand kids.  Both were great times out of the house.  I am thankful that we have friends and places that welcome us. I am exceptionally thankful for my grocery store this week.  Mainly because they gave me almost free coffee.  They would have given me free coffee, but I wanted the snooty fair trade stuff and that was not part of the deal.  So I'm sitting here drinking my 1.50 for a pound Fair Trade Sumatra Coffee from Busch's . If you live near one, I do recommend that you try them.  They have a program called " MyWay " an...

I read through a couple of different Project 52 sites last week and someone (sorry I don't remember who exactly) had the brilliant idea of watching NASCAR with their husband as a date. Since Joel loves baseball, I checked out the schedule and wouldn't you know it, the Mariners had a 7:10 game on Friday! That day we picked up some ball park food including hot dogs, nacho chips with jalapenos, dry roasted peanuts, peanut butter M&M's, and ice cold Cokes! Since we watch can watch the game off the Roku , there are no commercials, but there are commercial breaks. We brought out a trivia game that if you play it correctly has a baseball theme. It's Joel's game and we have not played it before. Instead of setting up the board, we just asked each other really old trivia questions. It made the game pass quickly. My goal was to make it to the seventh inning stretch and I was able to with a full stomach and numerous funny questions. I recommend watching a sporting even...

I think it's still Thursday, they are so long in our home.  We normally get up early to take Joel into work so that Hannah and I can have the car for the day and then we stay up late watching movies.  It's a new addition to our week, but we all love movie night.  Hannah and Joel are actually downstairs playing a game on the Wii that they picked up from the library.  I love our library!  But I'm avoiding it because I cannot find a book that I borrowed from them.  I have never lost a library or school book before in my life, it gives me anxiety just to think about the fact that I'm going to have to admit that I don't have any clue where that book is.  Anyway, this is about thankful things. First and foremost I am so thankful for the news of another expected baby in our congregation!!  That is so exciting, the count is up to five for the year, which is just flat out wonderful!  How blessed we are to be entrusted with the care of future warrio...

I really like making bread.  It's fun to get your hands dirty, but I understand that yeast is a scary thing for people who don't have experience with it.  Somehow, I started using it when I was young and too immature to understand the fear that comes along with wasting time, money and energy.  I had time and energy in abundance.  My first real forte into baking was in the 7 th grade.  I must have cooked before then because I choose to see which flour rose the highest using a cinnamon roll recipe.  I made a lot of cinnamon rolls that year and when I turned in my report, there were questions asked of me that I had no idea what she meant.  Questions about the weather and the heat of the oven.  Things that I didn't know could make a difference in the baking of bread.  Lots has happened since that first memorable baking.  Today, I invited a friend over to make bread.  I was kind of concerned about the strength of the yeast, because we ...

Hannah and I had the car on Thursday and since it was officially my turn to plan date night, she and I hit the store.  We went to Target which has those great dollar bins right when you enter the store.  I found a cross word puzzle and some water balloons.  My thoughts were to make some chocolate bowls with the water balloons and do a crossword while we waited for them to harden.  Well, I got the idea of orange truffles while I was sitting around that afternoon and went to see if we had any of the stuff that would make it and I kind of had it.  So, I made up some truffles and then we covered them with chocolate that night and they were so tasty.  We made it through one crossword puzzle and cheated very little :-D  It was fun working on it together and some of the clues and words were a little ludicrous.  All in all not a bad date for a buck and some pantry raiding. In case you are interested in the dessert, I took the McCormick Eggnog Truffle r...

We have glass doors in the master bath.  I had read somewhere that you can delay the need to clean by using a squigee on them.  I got one for a buck or so and it's been doing pretty well.  But they still got soap scum on them that was not coming off.  I tried my tried and true favorite, vinegar with little to no results.  I switched to something that was given to us when we moved in Spic and Span Everyday and that worked less well than the vinegar.  Our cat was sick in Hannah's bathroom before he passed away and Hannah was complaining about the smell, even though I had already used the Spic and Span in there, I asked Joel to bring something home from the store to clean up the house.  What he came home with was Lysol All Purpose Cleaner 4in1 .  It cleaned out the soap scum and hard water stains as if they were child's play.  I'm looking forward to trying it in the kitchen and seeing what it does for our bacon lovin' stove.  I highly recom...

For a week that has been pretty full of sadness, I wanted to let you know something that I am extra thankful for That is what I consider cute hair that does not photograph well :D I also found a new shirt (in the picture) for five bucks!  I went in to Target wanting a new five dollar shirt and it was the second one that I picked up.  Pretty amazing for me.  Hannah likes it so much she hugged me just for putting it on.  We are coping with our loss and for that I am very thankful.  Hannah has started to ask questions, today she wanted to know what makes fish die (she lost one last year this same time) and then she asked the same about Ralph.  I find it hard to know what to say that won't make her afraid when I let her know someone else has a cold or is sick in the hospital.  But we'll work it out.  I'm ever so thankful for my husband who was strong and courageous during the final hours and minutes of our cat's life.  I do not envy the d...

Our cat, Ralph got sick this past Sunday evening.  When we took him to the vet on Tuesday, he was very close to death and we had to make a decision of putting him through a surgery that he may not survive or letting him go.  He was a wonderful cat, the best I have ever met in all the world.  I am so saddened by his death.  Maybe it's because he was just here, playing with us three days ago and now he's gone.  Joel and I are pretty much taking turns crying and Hannah is finding things to stop herself from having to think about it too much.  I know this may not make much sense.  I'll probably read it again next week and think, "What was I thinking? I should really learn to self-edit" But I wanted to let you know that I probably will either not be around very much or here all the time in the next month and this mourning will probably be the reason why.

It's kind of comical to me that I ended up with one of the review copies of Plan B, mainly because I wasn't home when they became available and BookSneeze made it pretty clear that they would go fast.  I wandered in when we got back from Greenfield village and checked to see if there were any still available and lo and behold I got one.  I checked my Twitter account and discovered that the website had crashed with the initial response and I got mine right after they fixed the problem.  Pete Wilson has a very enjoyable writing style.  In someways, I imagine that he is writing a letter to us.  He isn't just asking us to get over it and move on, he is actually giving examples of people that he has admired in the midst of Plan B's and those in that he has been in himself.  The transparency that Wilson calls us to in this book is exactly what he is practicing while writing it.  I have found the book challenging in many ways and I look forward to sharing ...

This past Friday, we took a jaunt across the state to pick up our things that have been stored in our wonderful neighbor's house for the past year.  Yes, it has actually been a year since we left Port Huron and now, all our junk is back together, well, at least the junk we decided to keep.  I was tired, even though all I had done all day was ride in the truck, talk with a wonderful woman, and eat delicious Chinese food.  Needless to say, I did not have my most creative night of date.  This seems to be a theme for me.  I need to get off my tuckus and get to work on this whole date thing!  This is what we ended up doing.  Joel went and got us some frozen coffee drinks from McDonald's which sadly to say are just as good as Starbucks. (That's sad because Starbucks is in the coffee business and McDonald's is supposed to be in the burger business. But it appears that neither of them do their job well. I did read once however that they are both just in the ...