Photo Challenge: Day 2

Photoblog Challenge

Good morning everyone! It's Friday! I am very excited. Know why? Because it's a 3 day weekend!!! The only thing better than Labor Day weekend is Thanksgiving Break. And the only thing better than Thanksgivng Break is Spring Break. And the only thing better than Spring Break is Christmas Break. And the only thing better than Christmas Break is... you guessed it, the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! But I digress.

Yesterday I was going to start a 30 day photography challenge. But the assignment for Day 1 was a self-portrait. And after I got home from work, I slept for two hours, woke up to say goodbye to my husband (stupid football game and friends who like to watch the stupid football game), and then pretty much just sat on the couch, waiting for it to be late enough for me to justify going back to bed. So I took my self portrait with my phone on the way to work. And I'm going to post Day One and Day Two today. But not now. I haven't taken the Day 2 photo yet. I'm not even sure what it's supposed to be, but I have my camera with me at school today. So I'll get it and then I will blog it. Be excited. I'm sure it will be epic. Or not. But at least it will help me get some pictures on this thing. I realize that my blog is extremely picture deficient. That's probably because my life is really photo-op deficient.

Anyway, without further ado, please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to the Metamorphosis 30 Day Photography Challenge. *drum roll*



Music Monday: Nothing But the Blood

It's Music Monday again!

This weekend, God really broke my heart over the flippant way I view my sin. I tend to look at it as a normal part of life, something that is inevitably going to happen, and therefore, not something to cause me to freak out. Our pastor preached Lamentations 3 yesterday. In Lamentations 3 are the verses which inspired the hymn, "Great is Thy Faithfulness". It's a chapter where the prophet Jeremiah is mourning the destruction of his people, Israel. He says that God has broken his teeth with gravel and covered him with ashes (v. 16). But then he remembers the covenant promise that God made with Israel so many years before. He promised that they would be His chosen people, and out of them would come Messiah, who would save His people from their sins. And even though Israel continually failed to hold up their end of the covenant, God was faithful to keep His promise.

What I've never realized before is that God made a blood covenant with me, when He called me to accept the sacrifice of His son and to become His daughter. His covenant with me promises that He will cover all my sins with the blood that Jesus spilled on the cross, that He will claim me as His own, that I will not die, but will have everlasting life. My covenant with Him says that "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Gal 2:20). I no longer have to right to live in my own will. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. My covenant promise is that I will live for Him and the way He wills. I must conform my will to His.

And even though I fail miserably at holding up my end of the covenant, God is faithful. He does not nullify the covenant with me when I fail, just as He didn't abandon Israel. He is faithful.

I have entered into a blood covenant with the Almighty God of all. And I am a fool to think that violating the terms of that covenant is something to be taken lightly. When Israel violated the covenant relationship, God responded with warnings, and when those went unheeded, He sent other kingdoms to destroy His chosen people. I have spent too long treating my sins as mundane and unavoidable. I have sought to execute my own will instead of seeking His. And now, I am filled with wonder and gratefulness that He is infinitely more faithful than I.

Consider the blood of Christ today, and what it means to you. How seriously are you taking the covenant that God made with you when He called you as His own?

My set list for tonight is as follows:

1. Glorious One (Steve Fee)
2. Mighty to Save (Hillsong)
3. How He Loves (David Crowder)
4. Glorious Day (Casting Crowns)
5. How Deep the Father's Love for Us (Stuart Townend)

I hope you have a blessed week.

 

Introducing.....

Welcome friends, to my new "thing". Today shall henceforth and forevermore be known as Music Monday here at Metamorphosis! Whoa, that's a lot of M's. Totally didn't do that on purpose. The point of Music Monday is to share music! Music that you just found and are absolutely loving, music that you've known FOREVER, but want to share again because it's so stinking awesome, or even music that perhaps shouldn't even be counted as such. I will hopefully be able to post at least a clip of the songs that I find each week, if not a YouTube video. On Music Monday, I will also begin posting the setlist of worship music that I will be playing for my Bible study group.

So here we go. The very first Music Monday. I feel I should pause in honor of this auspicious occasion.

...

Good enough. :-)

The song I want to share this week is becoming one of my favorite worship songs. It is a good song that reminds me a little more of Who God is when I consider the lyrics. I hope you enjoy it and it touches your heart!

My setlist for tonight:

1. Happy Day - Tim Hughes
2. Marvelous Light - Charlie Hall
3. Cannons - Phil Wickham
4. Revelation Song - Jennie Lee Riddle

I hope you have a wonderful week! I'm having fun seeing all the little ones from my school who have gone from pre-k to kindergarten, kindergarten to first grade and so on. They are all so cute, and even after only knowing them for one school year, they still seem too young to be such big boys and girls. I can only imagine the way all you parents feel.

Whew.

Happy Music Monday!

Chocolate Cake and Flying Pups

Happy Friday everyone. Except me. I didn't want this Friday to come because this Friday signifies a very sad thing. Summer is over and I have to go back to work on Monday. UGH. I am thankful I have a job. I am thankful that I have a job that I don't hate. I am thankful I have a job where I get paid to not work for two and a half months. All that being said... I do not want to go back to work on Monday.

Last week I made a chocolate cake and icing from scratch. I ate some. It was good. My best friend's husband also ate some. He said it was good. My husband ate some. He said chocolate isn't his favorite. This week, I made spice cake and butter icing from scratch. I ate some. It was gooooooood. I ate some for breakfast this morning. My husband ate some. He said that he likes chocolate better. 

Facepalm.

One of my favorite things that we've begun to do as a married couple is go hang out with our friends, Amanda Jo and David. Amanda and David have a dog named Benny. I do not like dogs. I'm sorry if you think that is unAmerican, but it is true. Dogs are hairy, dirty, smelly and they have breath that smells like death. Benny is not a dirty or particularly smelly dog. I like Benny more than most dogs. But not enough to let him cuddle in my lap. Which is what he tried to do last week. So I picked him up and threw him. Which didn't seem like such a bad idea in my head, but the execution of tossing the poor pup to David's lap failed miserably.

So the next time we went to Benny's house, I let him sit in my lap and I petted him. 

I think he forgave me.

I have spent way too much time over the last few weeks playing SIMS 2 on my PS2. (It's better than watching a zillion and one depressing crime shows.) I've completed about 50% of the game. And I haven't turned off the PS2 in days because I can't find the memory cards and I don't want to lose all that hard work.

When I was 19, I got a new-to-me car. On my one-week anniversary with this car, I showed it my appreciation by sidling it up against a huge truck. The passenger side front door would never open again. Now I'm 24. And I got a new car this week. I am staying far, FAR away from all ginormous pickup trucks.

I go back to work Monday. The kids show up the Monday after that. I am going to be teaching computer this year. Pray for me. I've never taught computer before. I am scared.

Have a good weekend! :-)

Confessions of a Newlywed

Hello again! It's been so long, I hope you still remember me! My confessions aren't going to be in bullet points today. They're better served with paragraph-like form.

I've been married 48 days, and, to be honest, I think that the newlyweds who gush that newlywed life is, "so great! We've never been happier," are just being cliche. That's not to say that I'm not happy. I am. I love my husband and I'm very glad to be married to him. But this whole newly wed thing just seems like a natural extension of normal life. It's not the fairytale that I used to think it would be. He leaves the toilet seat up right before bed, and I fall in when I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without turning the light on first. I creep him out by leaving hair in the shower. We bicker about who takes up more space when it's time to sleep. Then I apparently kick him in my sleep while I'm having nightmares about getting pregnant and being chased through the street (no more NCIS before bed). He tells me he's leaving for work and then scares the crap out of me when he comes back upstairs, looking for his keys (no wonder I kicked him). I make dinner and he does the dishes. I fill up the trash can and he takes it out, although after last trash day, I feel the need to check the locks after he comes in. He tickles me when I'm not paying attention to him. I do laundry (it works better when you don't get the fabric softener mixed up with the detergent) and bake (also works better when you don't confuse baking powder with baking soda), he acts like I'm a culinary genius when my first attempt at yeast rolls turns out perfectly risen and moist and yummy and gratefully stops eating when his picky, but creative wife proclaims the new recipe she tried is absolutely disgusting. 

All of this is just life. It's messy, and boring and fun and normal. 

I guess that's what happens after the fairy tale ending. After the credits roll and the music ends. Life just happens. And I guess that IS the happily ever after. Because the alternative is life not happening. And that;s just a buzz-kill. 

Welp, it's date night, my hubby will be home in about 2 hours and I still haven't washed my hair or shaved my legs, so I should probably sign off. 

I go back to work August 17. School starts again August 22. My principal called me yesterday and instead of being the library aide this year, I'm going to be the computer teacher. I'm excited to try something new, but I'm sad that I won't be in the library. Wish me luck, I probably won't have anything new to post until after school starts. Most of what I do these days doesn't merit being written about.

Take care, everyone!

A Wedding Story

I know it's been almost a month, but I finally got the pictures from the wedding! So now I can tell you the story of our wedding. (Since I know you've been waiting with baited breath to hear all about it)

The first thing I learned about planning my wedding is that I should have taken more pictures myself. Or else I should learn to draw. I am fairly certain I will never forget June 10-11, 2011, but I didn't take the pictures that speak so much more than the descriptive words I could use. Oh well. On Friday, I spent all morning and the afternoon at the church setting up for the wedding. I could not have done it without my wonderful friend Amanda Jo who stepped in at the last minute to be my maid-of-honor (that's a story for another day), packed up her laptop and Star Wars movie for her little guy to watch, got me a sandwich from Chick-fil-a, and came up to the church to help me set everything up; my mom and sister Amanda, who also came up to the church and helped set tables, dye water, distribute Hershey kisses, etc. We also made the buttonieres for all they guys. Even some of the groomsmen came and helped move tables and stuff. We set each table with a white table cloth, a 12" by 12" square mirror, a half-fishbowl type of bowl half-filled with purple water and floating ivory candles, and a mix of milk and dark chocolate Hershey kisses.

The guestbook table

I chose not to decorate the sanctuary, so there aren't any pictures of how we did that. :-) (Side note, I think not decorating the sanctuary was a GREAT idea. Less to do = less stress = happier bride)

After decorating all day, I had just enough time to go home, shower and get ready for the rehearsal dinner. 

Everything went smoothly, and we walked down the aisle for the first time.

The dinner was yummy. Matt's family did most of the cooking, and we had barbeque. After we ate, I went back to my apartment with Matt, John (the Best Man) and his girlfriend, and Cody (one of our ushers) and his wife Sarah. Then I realized I didn't have any shaving gel, so we had to go to Walmart. 

Saturday morning, I woke up at 6:45. Not because of nerves, but because my sister CALLED me to tell me that I was getting married that day. I was rather mad at her for waking me up when I was so peacefully unaware that in just 7 hours and 15 minutes, I would be walking down the aisle, but I was also happily excited that in just 7 hours and 15 minutes, I would be walking down the aisle, so I didn't even give her a hard time for waking me up at such an ungodly hour.

We stopped at the florist to pick up the flowers for the girls and everything was BEAUTIFUL. I wish I had taken a good picture of my bouquet, but there were other things on my mind... In addition to looking beautiful, our flowers smelled lovely too, thanks to the addition of purple freesia. Mmm. FYI, if you need flowers and live in the DFW area, call Cooper's Florist in Bedford. Jamie is a wonderful Christian lady and she did a beautiful job for a very reasonable price.

Then we were at the church and it was time to get ready! (And I'm totally about to blow it up with photos. (Yay!) 

My dress! I was so excited to get to wear it. My momma picked it out and it is so beautiful. Now I'm kinda sad that I won't get to wear it again. (Nerd alert!)

I will never, EVER wear a petticoat in June again. It made my dress look AWESOME, but it was hot. 

As in, I had to put anti-perspirant on my upper thighs.

Yeah. 

Ugh.

My momma laced up my dress. In the top picture I was apparently talking animatedly about something, but I don't remember what. Sorry. In the bottom picture, I was holding my breath and sucking in, praying that the dress would fit. Guess who had nightmares about ballooning to the size of a gorilla?

Amanda's friend Crissy gave me a HUGE blessing by coming up to the church and doing our makeup. She even had fake eyelashes for me! (They kinda freaked Matt out at first, but I thought they looked epic!)

And after my hair was fixed, the veil in place, makeup done, dress on, flowers in hand, this was this finished product.I felt so absolutely beautiful. Which I have decided is a minor purpose of weddings. 

After all the pre-wedding photos were done, we still had to wait 45 minutes for the ceremony to start. One of my bridesmaids prayed Proverbs 31 over me,

and I ate a granola bar. But I don't have a picture of that. Aren't you sad? I'm sorry.

Then everyone left me to go line up, but I couldn't leave the dressing room because I didn't want Matt to see me, and he wasn't in the sanctuary yet. And I had to watch my flowergirl because there wasn't anyone else to keep her from running amok and messing up her sash. So we sang songs from the Sound of Music and then it was time to go. I got in line with my grandpa and waited for the doors to open. 

Then I walked down the aisle and got married. :-)

My Ring Bearer and Flower Girl

The doors opening

I'm not sure why I made this face.

"I...

...do."

Alrighty, I know I'm stopping in the middle of the ceremony, but my computer is freaking out and I've been working on this post for 3 days and I really don't want to lose it. So I'll post the second half of the ceremony and the reception pictures later.

Hope you're having a good week!

~Allison~