happy christmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I went to nky to spend time with the family and it was pretty great. For graduation I received money & was debating about what to use it for. I decided on a Canon Rebel camera. I think it was a good choice. My brother and I found a deal online I couldn't turn down, so I have documented my Christmas with my own pictures. :) treat.
Scott is learning how to speak Russian, so he was studying flash cards all Christmas eve. He got some books about Russian on Christmas, including a Russian/English bible (which came when we were home and our mom was not, so we wrapped it, put it under the tree & labeled it from Santa). It was pretty awesome to see how confused our mom was.
This tree is from my Lexington house :) I just like it. My roommates and I have never had a real tree before, so we decided to do it, and it pretty precious if I do say so myself!
My accomplishment of the Christmas week: finishing my scarf. I started this scarf 4 YEARS ago. I am not exaggerating. It is now complete :) It represents almost my whole college career...started it second semester sophomore year, and finished it after graduation 4 years later. awesome.
I drove back to Lexington today to pack and be productive before I head to sunny Florida in the morning! I wrote some thank you cards and am actually still working on the whole packing/productive thing... the camera is kind of distracting :)
Thought you would all appreciate my brother's gift to me... Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Haha... it is the original text with added sentences about zombies. So funny, had to document it. :)

I hope you all had wonderful Christmases, and I hope even more that you got to reflect on our Savior coming from Heaven to earth to serve and give His life for ours. It really is too good to be true. I will leave you with some of my favorite Christmas lyrics :)

"long lay the world in sin and error pining, till he appeared and the soul felt it's worth...a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!"

"the first time that you opened your eyes, did you realize that you would be my savior, and the first breath that left your lips, did you know that it would change the world forever...I celebrate the day that you were born to die so I could one day pray for you to save my life"

a jane austen love

so i have to say that outside the realm of christian books, i have a favorite classic. it is pride and prejudice.

i started with the movie featuring keira knightly, and quickly fell in love. i know you aren't supposed to watch the movie before you read the book, but in this case, i think it is better. this is only because if i picked up the book and just went for it i would be SO lost. i am no good at keeping up with old language in books. i need a general idea of what is happening first..

after reading the book, though, i have to say it is 900 times better than the movie, and i still love the movie. that is a good book. my current copy has random people on the front with little random facts throughout the book. it does the job but i have a confession.

have you seen the new Penguin hardcover classics? i love them. they are precious. does a book need to be precious? no.


thought i should confess my need (want?) of a precious copy of my favorite book... :)

graduation in 3 days. FINALLY!







[picture linked to source here ]

crafty girl christmas :)

girl christmas was a success! last year we decided to be crafty, but this year, we decided to each make a craft for every girl, and it was wonderful! i have such crafty friends! i will attempt to tell stories with pictures below.. :)



For my craft, I made little Christmas aprons for all the girls! For the tutorial, go to Darby's blog (which is pretty wonderful in itself) :) Megan let me borrow her sewing machine, so I got to work!
The first time I made an apron from this tutorial, I flew through it and ignored a whole lot of steps like pinning and ironing, but since these were presents, i listened to all the rules, as you can see above..


The finished products are above! Aren't my friends precious?! And Cory is going to have a tiny baby! Love it.
Rachel, who is so crafty that she has her own little jewelry business called Stella Bella Boutique, made us little jewelry gifts, here are my little flower bobby pins! Love them.

Shannon made these precious little tea cup candles! So cute and they smell wonderful! You'll have to click on all of their names, because I'm sure they will explain how on their blogs :)
Cory made a jar of bath salts, a jar of sugar scrub, and a bar of soap (not pictured) that has colored wool wrapped around it like a built in loofa. So creative! (The picture also has a little jar from Katie Howard from when she asked me to help in her wedding that I now use for q-tips)
Jen made these precious tote bags! Each has an initial with a doily design around it in the corner...so cute! I put all my treats in here :) She has a precious picture of all us girls carrying our totes, visit her blog, i bet she'll put it up there :)
Here are all the girls :) It was a fun day. Rachel and I felt pretty sick, but other than that it was wonderful to get to spend the day with good friends. Especially Shannon and Cory who don't live here!

better late than never :)

well, about a month ago, my sweet (and very missed) friend shannon from mynewsweetcarolina passed this little award on to me, and i am just now getting around to it. :)


so now for the rules... (copied & pasted from shan)
~thank the person who nominated me for the award
~copy the logo and place it on my blog
~link to the person who nominated me
~list 7 things people may not know about me
~nominate 7 creative bloggers
~post their links
~leave a comment on each

Well...7 things..
1) I love to read. Love it. I recently sat down with the new donald miller book and read it in the equivalent of less than a day. I just started Pride and Prejudice (my favorite) for a second time, am finishing the new Francis Chan book, and have about 10 books on my shelf I am waiting to get to.

2) I have the greatest friends in the whole world. I really do. I could not be more thankful. They are just super amazing and encouraging people. My bible study is a perfect illustration of that. They are all wonderful :)

3) I am about to graduate in about 9 days from nursing school! I will finally be an RN at a children's hospital. I love kids, and I know this will sound weird, but i especially love sick kids. I don't know why, I just have a special place in my heart for them :)

4) I have been crafty these last few days. I failed to find a tacky christmas sweater for festivities this year, so I made one a couple days ago. You will see pictures on here soon enough :) I also have recently made an apron (photos and blog to come) and am about to make a bunch of crafts for girl christmas. I promise to document all of these things. When I was in high school I was super crafty. I painted and drew and played guitar... where have those days gone?

5) I am a Young Life leader at a local high school. I LOVE it. I get the chance to meet some awesome students and share Christ with them. What could be more awesome?

6) I woke up this morning excited about God's word. I mean, it is literally a love letter to us. It is how God has pursued our hearts from the beginning, and how He continues to do that every day of our lives. How could my heart not beat faster thinking about that?! I mean, really?

7) My brother is pretty awesome. I mean, really. He is super selfless and giving, and although I don't always track with his weird british movie and tv quotes, he is fun to be around. He was most definitely born in the wrong country.


Well, that is all for now. :) I will pass this lovely award on to my best friend in the whole world Shannon Henson, another best friend who has an amazing story, Kristy, and my precious friend angie who just had a tiny PRECIOUS baby boy (don't worry ang, it took me a month to respond) :)

into something beautiful

i have been a blog failure lately. i apologize. i figured i should start with that.

so i laid down about an hour ago to go to bed and tonight is one of those nights that i can't shut my mind off. even after i journaled some of these thoughts. usually i hate when i can't sleep when i want, but tonight i don't mind.

i just have this feeling that the Lord means to make something tremendous of this life i am living. i know he wants to mold me and form me into something that looks more like Him. i think that this past year has been really cool in that i have learned, well, i guess i have come to realize the depth of my need for Him. there was a long stretch of my walk with Christ where i really thought i had it all together for the most part. i was fairly self-sufficient.

i just feel like i am seeing my need daily. i feel like He is showing me the parts of my life that do not glorify him. this isn't in a self-depreciating way. i feel more like it is in a life-giving way. there is so much freedom in need. his grace and love is pushing me onto growth and dependency.

i just want to be refined, pruned, sharpened...molded into who he has in mind for me to be. i don't care about the process, just that it happens. i want life to the full. i don't want to miss out.

i like the jars of clay song "something beautiful". i just feel thankful that 8-somewhat years into this thing with God, i am still learning that there is so much area for growth and so much adventure still ahead.

i maybe should have learned by now that blogging at night when i am thinking too much might be a bad idea. maybe more than people care to read. anyway... its a tool to help me process i guess. :)

...on a very exciting note: tiny silas daniel poston was born yesterday! i want to meet him so bad! i will attempt to do this tomorrow :)