Petit fores

I'm helping throw my sister a lingerie shower this weekend. I want it to be fun, but tasteful. For the most part, the decorations just look like a normal shower so I wanted to spice things up a little with the food. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a bakery that would make a cake shaped like a corset so I'm trying to make one myself. 

This was the first attempt. Unfortunately it was a casualty of faulty pan greasing and fell apart instead of coming out in one piece. 

So instead of throwing away several cake mixes worth of cake, I decided to make cake balls. I got the recipe from Bakerella. The recipe is almost identical to the one I posted before when I made the tooth pops with Destiny, minus the popsicle sticks. 

I used this icing

and mixed it with the cake using a fork until it was well combined. 

Then I shaped the mixture into balls....but balls weren't very interesting and I wanted to make something cute for the lingerie shower, so I started shaping them into.....

panties!

Then I dipped them in melted candy coating and let them dry and then decorated them by piping melted white chocolate and sprinkling colored sugar. 

I think they turned out pretty darn cute, even though I may need an intervention to stop referring to them as panty fores. (I'm a sucker for puns.)

Cultural relevancy

This mission trip had many teachable moments for me. One such moment came about through a friend's experience with the children's ministry. The purpose of the children's ministry on this trip was to play with the children,

give them love and attention

and teach them about Jesus Christ. 

One way that we did this was by giving them bracelets with colored beads that represented the salvation story. 

Before they could get a bracelet, my friend would explain to them what each bead meant.

Gold/Yellow
      God has prepared heaven for us. Rev. 21:21b
Black
      Sin separates us from God and keeps us out of heaven. Rom. 3:23, 6:23
Red
      Jesus shed his blood on the cross to pay for our sin. Ro. 5:8, I Pete. 3:18a
White
      If we accept Jesus and turn from our sins, our hearts are made clean. John 1:12, Romans 10:9
Green
       After believing and receiving what Jesus did we need to grow in our relationship with Him by reading the Bible, praying,and attending a church where the Bible is taught. Matt. 18:20 John 1:7

When my friend got to the white bead she said (which was translated to spanish of course), "Jesus' sacrifice washed away all our sins so that we could be white as snow."

The children were all confused.

"What is snow?" they asked.

 They had no idea what snow was. It was 95 degrees and they thought it was winter.

I'm not sure how she changed the saying so that they could understand. Maybe she said something like, "...as white as that chicken."

The second X Chromosome

Have you ever noticed that women are born with a certain look.

It must be genetic.

Right next to the gene that codes for best girlfriends 

And a love for jewelry.

Journal entry 05/10/10

It's funny to think about the timing of answered prayers, much like a conversation with the responses jumbled. Some questions are answered before they even leave the lips, some in dialogue, and others so late that they cease to be questions at all, standing before God eternally. This morning I woke to the soft pitter patter of what was once a pounding rain, dripping from the eves of yellowed plastic and worn wooden railings, streaming past the small sealed window. With the rain has come relief, the cool, still air of morning washing away the stale, mugginess of the night before. The coolness is brief, the growing heaviness of heat filling up the small room while we meet and sing and pray and meet again, preparing for the work of today. God has goodness planned. We pray for steady hands and open hearts and mouths, for the ability to teach and humility to learn, for the skill to take away pain and suffering, for the words that will bring comfort and peace, for these people to have a better quality of life. And praises, always praises. For a safe journey, for opportunity and now alone in my room, I hear the answer to last nights prayer. The cry of my heart "Why send me, Lord? What can my meager hands do for You?" The gentle reproof of a spiral bound Bible study guide resounds with, "Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'" Mark 2:17 I am here because the sick need a doctor. I am here not because of my righteousness, but because I too am a sinner. Lord guide my hands today and always. Help me to provide healing for others as You have provided healing for me. You came to me in my sickness and eased my pain and now You have sent me here, to work with You, to help these people because of Your great love and compassion. Keep me steady in Your grip, confident in Your love and ability. Give me the courage to love without fear. Help me to see people as You see them, with unconditional love and understanding. Help me to love You as You have loved me. Mend me, Lord. Heal my brokenness and give me peace. I love You, Lord, my Savior, my Love, my Father. Amen.

Piece by piece

I've thought a lot today about how to blog about Peru. I have always been one to struggle with telling a story. I guess part of my "dental" personality is attention to detail which leads me to tell very detailed sometimes long and boring what was my point again stories. It's also why I love photography.  I was so thankful for my camera on this trip. This world that God created is so beautiful, the people so unique, so extraordinary, so indescribable. I know that it is too much for me to process in one day. It is inevitable that, as most of my stories are, this story will be written piece by piece, detail by detail. Most of it will be told in photographs. I am by no means a professional, however, I am much better with my hands on a lens than on a keyboard. I did write some on the trip and I'm debating sharing some from my journal. It is so hard to be truly transparent, truly vulnerable even with people who you know love you, much less for strangers, acquaintances, and friends. So if I do put an excerpt of my much less than professional, emotional outpouring on this blog, please be gentle with my sensitive heart.

I digress. I had so many teachable moments during this trip, many that taught me about myself, and many that taught me about people in general. The very first lesson I learned was that boys are fundamentally the same. Mischief must be coded on one arm of the Y chromosome and sweetness on the other.

Mischief 

Sweetness (This photo was taken by the lovely Mrs. Mandy McMillan)

Mischief

and sweetness

I think all boys are a little bit of both.

Case in point.

Two boys walked up to me in one of the villages. They pointed to a tree and asked me if I liked it. I said yes. Trees are nice. This one had flowers. So this boy climbed the tree and brought down fruit to give to me. 

So sweet, right?

And then he asked me for a football.

I'm back from Peru!

I can't wait to share with you what happened to me in Peru. I've been traveling since Saturday morning at 7AM and I am le tired to say the least So here are a few of my favorite pictures from the first pass through iPhoto

School is out for summer!

The semester has ended and I have made it!   I have survived 12 finals, countless lab projects, countless mornings up at 4:30am to study (every day for the last 2 weeks), and seemingly unending powerpoint presentations. I am officially a sophomore dental student and I am so thankful for a few weeks of rest. I hope that I do not complain too much on this blog of mine. Honestly, dental school is hard, but not impossible, and I really do enjoy the work. I love talking with Korey about our future plans for our dental office and our home. I so look forward to starting that part of my life, even though these four years are what all those dreams are based upon. I am trying to learn to be content where I am. I feel like I've always been looking ahead rather than truly being where I am at the moment. When I was in highschool, I longed to be in college. In college it was dental school, and now that I'm here, all I can think about are the days when I will come home from work and think about fun things rather than thinking about sleep all the time.

So since school has ended, I have been making things left and right, hanging out by the pool, and, as my sweet husband will attest to, not doing a single dish or washing any clothes. Although today I have changed my evil ways and have in fact spent it cleaning. But who wants to read about cleaning? (Well, if you do, head over to Fly lady and have at it) Here is a little bit of what I've been doing these past few days (minus pictures from the pool... fat can only get tan one way people and I don't have enough confidence to air my bathing suit body out on the internet.)


The night after my last final was the guido/guidette class party. I take my italian heritage very seriously, so of course I broke out the bronzer and got out my bathing suit cover up.

Ok So the bronzer was actually my friend Destiny's.

Here is the closeup of my super cool black eye that everyone thought was real but definitely was painted on and washed right off at the end of the night, along with my super awesome tan.

The idea was to look like Snookie after she got punched in the eye at the bar.

Our next stop was an impromtu cookout over at David Forrest's place. Where I got this awesome picture of Ben. I just love that his shirt says "Hope." This is what I looked like at the beginning of freshman year. 

Then Destiny and I went on a crafting and cooking spree.

Can you guess what we made?

Here are the ingredients...

It's coconut milk icecream! Which means that I can eat it because it is lactose free and amazing! 

And now I am lusting after Destiny's awesome icecream maker.

Then we started on our mother's day projects. 

We got this idea from i am baker. 

We made cookies and icing

And more icing

And more cookies

And then we made these super cute jars. See how the tag says "Mom, you are..."

We wrote words on the cookies that described our moms and then we filled up the jars.

Super cute right? I thought so too, but the cookies got all smashed and the writing broken. Epic. Fail. Oh well. I think that next time, the icing needs to firm up more before I put them in the jar. Maybe I'll try this again next year. In the meantime, I might find something else to put in them. I wonder if I just wrote the compliments on slips of paper if it would be as nice.

Then we made these garden signs. It was so easy. I got the idea from My friend's blog and she got it from tatortots and jello

So you see, it's been a busy week. Now off to dinner with Dustin and Lyndsey and then to pack for the Amazon.