The Lord of The Rings Trilogy

I finally did it. I've been getting grief for years because I had never taken the time to watch the Trilogy. So last week when I had free time, and when I had Nate, Becca and Adam over, we started the Trilogy. The next two nights Leasha, Kim and Sean joined Nate and I. :) We had the extended editions, so it took multiple nights to complete, but we knocked them out in three days straight. Twelve hours or so of Lord of the Rings! They were really good. I'm not sure why I waited so long to watch them. I enjoyed them all! They were a little dark, but overall I'm glad we watched them :)

Brady's 11!!!

Today my youngest brother, Brady, turned 11! I would like to wish him the happiest of birthdays so far! :)
I want to introduce the blog world to my spunky, happy, hilarious, wonderful little brother! What better way than with a few pictures-newish and oldish :)

We'll start with the older ones.The middle one was taken two summers ago, and the third one was from when Brady was about four. So cute!

Now for the more recent ones...The two on the left were from snow days (yes snow in Texas!) and the top right one was from Fall Break when we went on a Brother-Sister (apparently we can't call them dates, so when the two of us hang out it's called a Brother-Sister). We went to the IMAX showing of Up. And the bottom right picture is from Brady's bridging ceremony when he became a boy scout (not just a cub scout anymore) about a month ago. :)

[Brady and Mom and Dad at his bridging :) ]
[I love these pictures of Brady! There are plenty more, but these were my favorites. They show his personality quite well! :) These are courtesy of BMGPhotography]

[The very first picture is from one of Brady's many camping trips. He was real little there. And the second picture is from Brandon's birthday this year. Brady walked in acting like Steve Erkle. He was quite hilarious!]

Happy Birthday Brady-Kid! I sure love you!!!

Book One: The Apothecary's Daughter

This week's book was The Apothecary's Daughter. I finished it last night at midnight, and it was really a good book. It reminded me a bit of reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The way it was written and the content was vaguely similar.
A bit of a book review: This book was about a young woman, Lilly, who was the daughter of an apothecary. She wants to get out of her small little town and see the world. She goes to live with her aunt and uncle in London to get introduced into society and meets many suitors. She then receives news that her father is ill and needs help in his apothecary's shop. She returns to help and the rest of the book is about her finding love between three different guys and coming back to lean on God for everything. It's a sweet story. I don't want to ruin the ending for those that might read it later. :)

One week down. Now I've got to go pick a new book for this week! Suggestions are welcome. :)

Friends and Lasagna!

So to kick off my 10 for 2010, I had some friends over last night for dinner. [Clarification: I did not invite them over simply for the 10 for 2010, I actually had the idea for dinner and then made my list :)] Becca and Adam and Nate came over and we made lasagna. It was so fun to hang out and make great food together. Nate and I also made a Peppermint-Fudge Pie. It was almost better than a bowl of mint-chocolate chip ice cream! :)


Nate made the meat sauce for our lasagna while Adam made the salad! Great job, guys! Becca and I hardly had to do anything. :)

[So it doesn't have the best presentation, but it tasted great! And that's all that matters, right?]

[Our Peppermint-Fudge Pie!]

[I think he liked it! Especially because he had seconds later :) ]

Successful dinner!

10 For Summer 2010

I've decided for this summer to make a sort of bucket list. Since it's the summer of 2010 I decided to come up with 10 things to put on my list. I may add to it and make it longer as I come up with new ideas, but I just want to come up with ten for now. :)

The List:

*Float the River

*Have friends over and make dinner

*Go tubing

*Learn to play the guitar

*Board Game Night

*Go see a major musical

*Hold a youth mud fight

*Read a book a week

*Watch all of the Lord of The Rings movies
(for the first time ever) (...finally)

*Celebrate 4th of July with my family
(For once. Usually I'm out of town or the country) :)

Here goes! :)

Just a Few Thoughts.

I’ve spent the past two weeks at home. Most of it alone since everyone is at school or working, but I have seen a few friends. It’s weird being back home. I haven’t been home since spring break, and it’s so crazy to see how my brothers have grown up! Last night Brandon and I were looking at different pictures of him and seeing how much he’s changed from the little baby of last fall to this fall to even more different from just a few months ago and now. It’s funny. And Brady is still the same goofy kid, but older and more mature I guess. A long time ago he did something silly or wrong and my aunt corrected him, and his response to her was a very innocent, “But I’m just a little kid!” This has stuck with him and us over the years. Well about a month or so ago I was talking with him on the phone, which rarely happens, and something came up and I called him a little kid. He is almost 11, but he’s still the baby of the family. He told me in a very serious manner that he is not a little kid any more, which I still denied just teasing him. His reply was “No Brittany. I’m going to be in middle school next year. I’ll be a sixth grader in two months. I’m not a little kid anymore.” Ha ha it was a fun, bantering, sort of conversation, but the truth of his words still rings true. He’s growing up! I’m excited for it. I have some friends that are weary of their siblings getting older, but I think it’s exciting that my brothers are growing up. It means that we can have real conversations-even if they get dumb sometimes, they’re still legit- and we can hang out and not worry about just dragging a little kid along and “playing” with him. It’s so fun to have my brothers get older; I can’t wait for us to all grow up and be adults. It seems like then the nine year difference won’t matter as much.

With friends, it seems that it’s the same way. I have friends that are here in Frisco, or that are from Frisco and we’re both at different colleges, and others that are with me in Arkadelphia. It’s so interesting to me to see how we are all growing up. It’s weird how we grow apart with some relationships, and others we grow separately while we’re away but come back and it’s like we never left. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but relationships are important. We grow, and we change, and it’s for the better, but we are still made to have relationships. God made us to change. He doesn’t want us to be stagnant. If we never changed that would be missing the point. We are made in the image of Christ, but because of sin we distorted that image, but because of the Cross we are to be holy as Christ is holy. This is a process, but because of God’s love we can be made pure in Him. So it doesn’t make sense to stay the same forever. We can’t do it; it just doesn’t work. God is continually revealing Himself to us, it’s the great revelation. We are constantly learning more and more about who God is and what we are made to do: glorify Him. But what does that truly mean? How do we do that? What does it look like to be holy? It looks like so many things, but summed up it looks like Jesus.

So how do we look like Him? Really and truly look like Him. Not a fake persona or mask that gives off the impression, but really is just a laundry list of things to do to please people. What if we stopped trying to please people and started living to please the One who made us?

I believe that love is at the core of all of it. Love is the reason behind God becoming flesh and going through a torturous death, even more incomprehensible than we can imagine, but conquered the mortality and death that was binding us. Because God loves us so much, we can live in freedom. We aren’t bound to the world or the ways of it. We can live the life He wants us to live-freedom, and love, in Him and with Him.

I’ve started a book which I think has brought this to the forefront of my mind. It’s on the relationship principles of Jesus. Today’s chapter was on relationships in general. It talked about how relationships are the most important thing. Period. Jesus placed relationships above everything. Our relationship with God comes first, above everything else. But then the relationships we build are what count in this life. It’s not about the amount of things that we collect throughout our lifetime, but more about how we treat the people around us. Even if we only come in contact with them for a short amount of time-like in line at the grocery store. So if Jesus placed relationships at the top of His list, then how should we follow that example? Shouldn’t we do relationships like Christ did them? What did His relationships look like? They looked like love. His were the most brilliant examples of sacrificial love this planet has ever seen. Those two words go hand in hand-sacrificial love. It sums it all up pretty well.

So, if relationships are the most important thing, God + us: first and us + others: second, and Jesus’ examples of relationships were sacrificial love, then we are to act and be in sacrificial love with every relationship we have. Above all else. Because of this, every decision we make should be made with that in mind. Am I acting towards this person as Christ would? Am I treating this relationship with utmost care because it is crazy important, or am I taking it for granted?

I know this is sort of long, and I thank you for bearing with me. I hope it made sense, and it’s not just my random thoughts rambling. This is what I’ve been challenged with today. I don’t have it all figured out, especially when it comes to acting it out in everything, but it does make one stop and think and hopefully live differently. I think I just found what I’m going to talk about for the Bible study I have to lead in a few days. Sweet! :-) May you have a day full of relationships that glorify God and may you sit at Christ’s feet today and cherish your relationship with Him and guard it above all else! Oh, and sharing the greatest Love is a great thing too! :-)

-Brittany

Wedding Cake: Day Two

This is long overdue, and for that I’m sorry. This is the first time I’ve actually had a chance to sit down at a computer since Friday really. So I mentioned the wedding cake and how I started it in my last post. Well, here are the results! (And pictures from along the way, of course)

[The roadtrip begins!]

[We made it!!]

The weekend was perfect! Amy and I had a fun little road trip to Arkadoo. I showed Amy around town and campus and all the “sights” (which took all of ten minutes). We got to hang out at the Bean’s and eat a “preliminary wedding cake”, which was extra from what I needed for the cake. It was so good! I’m probably not supposed to say that about my own cake, but it really was so tasty. I’m so thankful to Becca, my suitemate, who stayed on campus for May-mester and let us stay in her dorm room, even though she went home this weekend for a wedding and wasn’t there. Staying in Perrin was an experience! We had a lot of fun laughs as Friday went on, and Amy was w-w-w-welcomed to Arkadoo right! We ended the night with one of our favorite things: an Audrey Hepburn movie, Roman Holiday. Lovely!

[Amy's first OBU Campus experience! (I tried to give her a tour like she was a prospective student and convince her to come to Ouachita. It didn't work.)]

[We tried to get a picture of both of us in front of the tiger. When there's only two of us that's a little tricky. So there's the feet of the tiger in our picture. haha]

[If you know the name of this parking lot, that's why she's freaked out. We call it purgatory because it's in between the really good parking lot (which we affectionately call "Heaven" and the terrible one that floods, "Hell") We're a Baptist college, what can we say?]

[The Saturday cake adventure begins!]

Saturday came around, and we had a lot of time to spare in the morning. We sort of broke Becca’s blinds Friday night as we tried to lower the blinds, so I think the blaring sun through the make-shift curtain, a towel, woke both of us up a little earlier than we expected. So we had some nice time to get ready for the day and find some coffee. We both needed it!

[Burger King commercial?]

[This how we felt about making a wedding cake!]

By noon, the cake making began! I was a little nervous about how this was all going to go. It was completely a first in everything I’d ever done. First time stacking a cake, first time to step foot in Fellowship Church of Arkadelphia, first time making a wedding cake, first cake away from my own kitchen, first best friend road trip, first time cutting my own cake, and many others I’m sure.

[Before]

[I was worried about how to stack the cakes, but it went just like the website said! they were a little lopsided at first, but I fixed it. And, icing can cover up anything, so all my flaws were not noticed.]

[It's so cute and little! Perfect size for the top!]

[Mom told us to be safe and careful and safe and safe (you get the idea), so this is me not being safe standing on a chair to get the top straight. Don't tell Mom! haha]

[It's assembled!]

[Look at all that icing! we didn't use all of it. I had enough left over to ice another cake, the size of the bottom layer.]

[I put little shells around the bottom and second tier. They are easy and dainty. I really like using them as edges because they cover up where the icing meets the counter, or whatever the cake is on. It covers up the imperfections.]

[Amy helped! In more ways than this, but this is her making green icing. She had to mix the color because I realized that I didn't have a green color. Luckily in kindergarten we learn that blue + yellow = green!]

[Little rosebuds all around the cake.]

[The flowers are done! It was tricky getting the design that I saw in my head onto the cake, but I really like how it turned out. The rosebuds are really dainty and just precious.]

[And now for the butterflies!]

[The top. I like how the spiral of rosebuds turned out.]

[The placement of the butterflies]

[The finished product!]

[It looks so little on that table!]

The cake making process went pretty much flawlessly. It was so much fun to make a cake, and it turned out pretty good. There were a few flaws and things I would have done differently, but I think it’s one of those things that only I would notice.

[The groom's cake had not arrived by the time everyone arrived at the reception, so some of the ladies that were in charge of the reception ran and grabbed some cupcakes at Walmart. If you ask them, I made them; they just came with my cake. :) I added butterflies to them so that they would match the cake, plus we had a lot of butterflies left over. It was a nice touch, and there was not a piece of cake left over by the end of the reception. So between the groom's cake, my bride's cake and the cupcakes we had plenty for everyone!]

Richard and Renee’s wedding was beautiful! The rain held off for everyone except Amy and I to get inside the chapel, and we were the only ones completely soaked. The ceremony was great. It was so fun to be there for it! My favorite part was that Richard was beaming the whole time! I couldn’t really see Renee’s face because of the veil, but she looked beautiful and they both were so happy! I wish them every happiness and that God grows them closer to Him and to each other, and that they fall more and more in love every day.

(I don't have pictures of the actual ceremony, but I'm sure there will be plenty on Facebook.)

As the reception rolled around, I had so many compliments on the cake. We waited around for the wedding party to arrive, and it was fun to visit with my friends even though it had only been a week since I last saw them. I was impressed at how many of our youth kids came to the wedding. Since Renee works with the youth with us, she invited the youth group, and it was fun to see a handful of them there.

The groom’s cake arrived and was quite an interesting thing. Renee had told me that Richard’s grandmother was making it and that he wanted it to be an Optimus Prime cake. Well in my mind I saw some cool cake that was the shape of the Transformers figure. Nope. She walked in with a bought cake from Walmart and stuck a Transformers action figure toy on top of it. Not the cake I would have picked, but Richard loved it.

It was precious to watch them cut their cakes. What fun people!




It ended up that I had to cut my own cake. I don't cut cakes. I always avoid it. Even though it's my cake, I still didn't want to cut my cake. I think the real reason was because I simply don't know how to cut a cake unless it's a rectangle, and even then I'm always worried that the sizes are too small or too large. Well we walked into the reception and Sarah Bean and Amy Taylor (Amy's in the picture below) informed me that I had the "honor" of cutting the cake. I really didn't want to, but I figured that I should start sometime. So Amy (my friend Amy. This is confusing!) and I plotted about how to best cut the cake, and I did it! I cut my own cake. I told you this was a day of complete firsts!

[This was Nate's third time to come by and get cake!]

And the roadtrip home begins!

[This is us tired after a long weekend. How lovely...or rough is more like it. haha]

Amy and I headed home after a long successful trip! I did it! I made my first wedding cake! What a fun, successful weekend of firsts!
I couldn't have done this weekend without a few people: (It's like I'm giving my acceptance speech). But my Mom was a huge help! Thanks for the kitchen space, the unending support, letting me bounce ideas off you, and helping me think of things that I usually forget. She's the logical side of my brain! Dad and Brady, thanks for testing my preliminary cake (that wasn't that great). I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm also glad that the cake I made with the extra icing was better than that first cake. Amy, thanks for going with me! It would have been a nightmare without you! Plus it was way more fun with you next to me in the car! Wilton was a huge help. If you ever want to know anything about cakes or parties or anything, Wilton has tons of information on their website. It was so fun to do the research behind this cake. Plus it was the Wilton classes that first got me started on cakes. Thanks Renee for letting me make this cake. Thank you, Bean family for testing my extra cake and letting us hang out! (ok I'm done with the acceptance speech now. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but you know who you are and I thank you.) :)

Next step: opening my own shop! Haha just kidding. Maybe way down the line in the future. We’ll see what God has in store. In the meantime, I’m just going to enjoy college, hanging out with my family and friends, hanging out with some youth kids, and making cakes every now and then just for fun. Enjoying where God has me at this moment! :-)

Congratulations Renee and Richard! Thanks so much for letting me make your wedding cake. It was an absolute blast!!

I have videos from this weekend that I wanted to share, but for some reason I can't upload them from this computer, so I'll try and do it another time. I guess that means you'll just have to stay tuned. :)