Friday Favorites!

Relaxation!

Tuesday Tea Time!

Tuesday Tea Time is still absorbing the beauty from what turned out to be a Manic Monday. Breath in the beauty & dwell within the space for a while.

Now get lost in the dancing lightening bug outside your window.

Yes, that just happened!

Tuesday Tea Time!

Happy Tuesday Tea Time from Camp Michi-Lu-Ca!

Early mornings & late evenings & cold mornings & hot afternoons. That sums up the current tea time experience here at camp.

Thanking Z for my new box of 'Lemon Lift' by Bigelow Tea to help me get goin' in the morning.

Tea time isn't quite this fancy & unfortunately I don't have any talking animal friends here.......yet. But tea time is still a good time as always! May your tea lift you up in the same way!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & awesome

GOOD: While Z's & my travels to new things has come to an end, my travels for the summer have only begun. For a couple of months now I was planning to work alongside the staff at Michi-Lu-Ca for part of the summer & by part of the summer it really was planned to be most of the summer. Due to some changes in others' summer plans, I am now at camp all summer long! It is a challenge in my career as I have gone back & forth with my love for outdoor ministries, but it is one that I am choosing to not be afraid of & simply jump in running. As long as I continue to center my heart & my head in that still small voice of God, then I know that I am in the right place & bound to make a few of the right choices.

BAD: This means that posting here may be a challenge. At most I will be able to post using my phone & therefore things will be short & formatted funny. So look for random sparkles throughout the summer when I happen to have WiFi. I wish I could've been more put together to pre-write my posts, but that is not the life I live.

AWESOME: Meeting new people. Hearing people's stories & being asked to share mine. Camp is a great place for this.

WORD: I finally finished 'The Color of Tea.' It took some very unexpected, yet well done turns. I encourage it for a good read. I'm fully submersed in a variety of scripture for this summer's worships, so today I shared the image I shared from K-Love's site on Facebook in my picture.

coming up: FULL FORCE SUMMER MINISTRY!

Friday Favorites!

My best friend, my God-daughter & niece with my furbaby, all taking each other for a backyard stroll. LIFE SPIRIT SPARKLE & LOVE

Tuesday Tea Time!

There's a tea in the fast lane! Life has been fun, but very on the go lately. It has especially picked up since returning home. While we were on the run with travels I saw new tea shops all over! It was exciting, but unfortunately I did not have the time or money to stop & sample ever one.

Celestial Seasonings is a common name on grocery store shelves, but unless you live in certain areas of the country - such as CO where Celestial Seasonings has their home base - there aren't always that many options of this line of tea. My mom & I had hoped to visit Celestial Seasonings while we were in Colorado recently, but unfortunately it was not near to anything else we were doing. Clearly we'll need to take another trip some day!

One thing I enjoy about this particular line is that they do not individually wrap each tea bag in the paper/foil wrapping. They also do not attach strings & therefore tags. By not doing these things Celestial Seasonings reduces waste by 3.5 million pounds from landfills each year! Seriously that is phenomenal! Just in the last 30 years I swear we have seen land fills become more noticeable in the USA because they are growing & growing & growing.

Where is all this coming from? Well, Z & I are starting our first compost & in all reality MUCH of what we toss each day can be composted. By MUCH I mean tea bags, coffee filters & grounds, used facial tissues, dryer lint, yard scraps, fruit scraps, paper & cardboard. Seriously, want to know more? (and I think you should!) Check out this list! My friend GPA recently told me that she has friends who live close to her that aren't able to start their own compost so they do the little containers in their kitchens (all you need is an air tight container) & line them with compostable bags & then contribute them to her larger compost when they're full. YaY for community building!

Here's to other people & companies doing good for the earth through the little day-to-day things like tea bags! You're AWESOME!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: I'm typing my blog from a computer again! The last couple of posts have been from my Iphone or Nexus tablet. This past week was WONDERFUL! It started with worshipping with 26 of my family members from my dad's side of the family out in CO where we were all gathered to celebrate my cousin's wedding. The worship was Spirit filled, the wedding was beautiful, & the family time was fantastic. One highlight from church is receiving an entire loaf of bread just for being a visitor! Monday was K&D's wedding & I got to hang out with my cousins' M&A's little guys H&C the entire morning. SO much fun! Fill the rest of the time with family meals & games & that's a family reunion for us. We made our way back towards home mid-week & stopped in Chicago to really visit with good friends from college & a few from other pieces of life. I say really visit because up till now all we had taken time to do was a brief visit passing through the city or at each other's wedding receptions. I thought we were spent from all our travels, but we took it easy & went to one museum a day. It was fun to show Z some of Chicago after having traveled through the city dozens of times either to visit friends or going from wherever I was living North of Chicago towards my parents' South of Chicago. And yes, as everyone should, I celebrated my birthday ALL week long. It started with my family & ended with my friends. What more could a girl ask for?!

BAD: BUGS! They're out like crazy now & I'm scheming up new ways to be able to enjoy spending time outside. Ideas that don't cost a lot of money are welcome! Also, that i just planted some of my outside plants today. You may not think this is bad, but they "should've" planted them apparently more like 6 weeks ago. Here's to growth! Plus our poor puppy keeps having what is known as 'reverse sneezing' attacks. I think she maybe has some allergy problems. And yes, my heart is heavy yet again, truly heavy, from the death of a leader, mentor, & friend from MN.

AWESOME: Being gifted a movie from Z that I gifted him for Christmas. Yes, this really happened. We hadn't watched it & it was actually the second copy of the DVD due to the first one cracking (on a night that Z & I were watching 6 kids 10 & younger!). So I'm still waiting on what Z will pick out as he has diligently returned the 3rd copy of 'How to Train Your Dragon.' AND all the ways people wished me a happy birthday. Seriously, I think the only way I wasn't told 'happy birthday' was via e-mail & that's saying something because I received wishes by FB, phone call, voicemail, text, Instagram, Twitter, Linked-in, snail mail, & in person.

WORD: Acts is hot on my brain right now with this coming Sunday being Pentecost. Plus tonight, I will finish 'The Color of Tea.' Then hopefully in the next few days I'll finish 'The Help.'

coming up: Today after worship we spent a bit of time outside & I painted our new doormat you see above! This is just in time to welcome a visit from J&E! Then prepping to head off to camp for most of the Summer. I haven't figured out how to keep up with the blog over the Summer so no fear, there will be random posts & most definitely more posting come Fall.