Friday's Fave Five #682

Welcome to another Friday's Fave Five.  Looking back over the last week to find those things in our everyday that God has blessed us with.  Have you been intentional in noticing those things through out the week that have lifted you up, helped carry your through, made you smile and enjoy the moment?  Hopefully we are all developing the habit of noticing the hand of God in our lives everyday whether it's been a great week or a more difficult one.

~ coffee and flower shopping ~ Saturday my dear friend and I hopped in the car, grabbed a Starbucks and headed off to my favorite garden store.  Time spend doing something we both enjoy on a beautiful sunny day was the best medicine and mood lifter.  All the worries of the week just dissipated during our little excursion.  The most stressful thing about the afternoon was having to choose which flowers to buy.  I love this garden center because they get such unusual colors of basic flowers like petunias, which are a favorite of mine.  And so many unusual and lovely varieties of flowers.  It is so hard to choose, but I finally did it..  Oh my.  I always overdo!  

Now if it would just quite being so cold at night and windy and raining in the day so I can plant them.

~ spontaneous last minute invite out to lunch ~ just before leaving for church on Sunday we got a text inviting us out for lunch after the service by some wonderful friends.  Of course, we are not turning that down.  It was a wonderful time of good food and lots of laughter and conversation.  

~ Monday's supper made ~ thanks to Sunday's invitation out the roast I had put in the slow cooker became Monday's already made supper.  Love not having to worry about what to eat on a workday.  

~ parsnips and carrots ~ such a simple thing, these veggies, but I sure do love the combo.  Added them to the roast dinner and enjoyed every bite.  I love them so much I made extra for my lunch the next day.  I'm thankful we have access to such a variety of vegetables to spruce up our dinners and we don't always have to eat the same old, same old.

~ dirty chai tea latte iced ~  I love them hot, but boy do I love them cold too!  After a warm afternoon flower shopping, it's was just the best drink.  

And there are my favorite 5 blessings. What are you grateful for this week?  Were they easy to notice or did you have to dig a little deeper?  Mine were not big and splashy but they were blessings I knew God had brought into my days to make my days.

One Word Wednesday

One Word Wednesday is a little fun weekly thing where a picture is posted with a one word description.  If you'd like to join in just add your post to the Mr. Linky below.  If you're new to the page please keep it to a G audience.  All posts not One Word Wednesday related will be deleted.  Have fun!

cha-ching!

The Maid by Nita Prose ~ Book Review

Twenty-five year old Molly Gray struggles with social cues.  She does well with routine, repetition and rules.  She takes things pretty much at face value and misunderstands hidden, vague or complex meanings others might direct her way.  Without her beloved grandmother to help her navigate through the social hurdles, Molly sometimes finds herself at a loss.  Others that also work at the fancy hotel where she is a maid, often smirk and laugh at her behind her back.  However, she is not the idiot some of her co-workers at the hotel take her for.  She is actually quite smart.  But she hides herself in her work, taking pride in following all the rules her employer lays out and doing her job to the best of her ability.  When attending to the suites of one of the regular wealthy patrons to finish up her work , Molly finds not the clean orderly suite she left a few hours ago.  It is in total disarray and the body of Mr. Black is dead in his bed.  Molly soon finds herself in the cross hairs of the detective in charge.  But as the detective tries to pin Molly,  friends she didn't know she had come to her aid to help her prove her innocence, but can she trust any of them to help her find the real killer?

This was a fun and quirky read that kept me turning the pages and kept me pretty much engaged through the story.  Molly is quite the character and I found her charming in her language, using words and phrases continually through the story to "talk" to herself in the old fashioned way that her beloved deceased grandmother would have talked to her.  After her grandmother passed away Molly really found herself struggling to make sense of things and loneliness was her companion as she now lived alone in the tiny apartment she had shared with her.  While Molly's personality and issues really sucked in my emotions and made me really feel for her some parts of the story were a bit on the unbelievable side to me.  Molly misses and misreads the simplest of social cues and situations yet can think through and discern other's motivations.  The two somehow didn't jive together for me.  The story was enjoyable right up to the very end where the plot twist didn't make sense to me considering the personality of Molly that had been established.  

But it was enjoyable and fun escape read for the most part and so I gave it a rating of 7.5/10

Reading Goals Met:  Book purchased in 2020-2022

Friday's Fave Five #681

What a week it has been!!  Work stress and uncertainty,  grief while trying to deal with choosing a headstone for Dad then I also found out a long time friend had passed away this week.  So much to  overwhelm the mind and heart it has been hard to push through each day.  I'm glad I have FFF to re-center myself back to noticing blessings in the midst of the everyday troubles. 

~ Mother's Day ~  Mother's Day was very quiet again this year.  No kids down on the actual day though my daughter came midweek last week knowing she couldn't be there the actual day.  So I slept in, read a lot, drank a lot of coffee and Hubby took me out for all you can eat Sushi for lunch.  I got nice phone calls from all the kids and had great chats with them all.  A really nice day in spite of not seeing the kids.

~ over the fence chats ~ my neighbor also has a child care in her home and we share a backyard fence.  It's a real blessing to be able to talk to her over the fence sharing ideas and supporting one another in our jobs.  These last weeks especially so as we're both trying to navigate the changes we are forced to deal with.

~ soothing tea ~ I've been enjoying some herbal teas in the evenings.  Mint, Bengal Spice (it's a herbal chai type of tea), Turkish Apple, Caramel Pear.  A nice hot cup of tea to help soothe away the day.

~ funny facebook memes ~ there have been some pretty funny ones lately I haven't seen make the rounds before.  One of them fit perfectly to a situation and so I sent it to my friend and we both shared a really good laugh over it.  Love having a good laugh each day.

~ books I stay up way too late reading ~ I love finding stories I just can't put down even though it's getting way past my bed time.  I'm in the middle of one of those right now.  Groggy in the morning but so worth it.

What have been you're favorite blessings this week?

Radical: taking back your faith from the American Dream by David Platt ~ Book Review

The question, therefore, is not "Can We find God's will?" The question is "Will we obey God's will?"

David Platt

Radical

pg 160

In this book by David Platt he brings a challenge to the American church to ask ourselves "How much of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is biblical?"

                     pg 28

In trying to get the reader to honestly consider this the author takes us through a look at the foundations of the gospel and the great commission.  He goes from there and examines how it really is that America does church, their means, methods, plans, strategies and goals that really may require little, if any, power from God.  (pg 48-49).  Where has the American church veered off the path?  Can it be we have adopted the goal of the American Dream of gaining more money and possessions, becoming more and more bigger and better, reaping the blessings but forgetting the purpose of those blessings.  And can it be that the American church has unknowingly grabbed ahold of the American Dream ideology that our greatest asset is in our own abilities?   In this book is the challenge to take what God has blessed the church in America with and turn it to the great commission as a church in general and as individuals.  

I found this book to be very challenging and convicting.  It very heavily gears towards global missions and helping those in desperate need around the world.  It is very interesting to note that as the author questions whether the typical mega church in America has got it right, he himself is the pastor of a mega church.  As he has dug into the scriptures it has radically changed the way preaches to his congregants and the goals of his church.  The challenge is made to the reader who calls themselves a Christian to "give liberally, go urgently and live dangerously" for the glory, not of oneself, but of God with not one's own abilities but relying on the power of God.  There is lots of food for thought, conviction and motivation.  The author at the end challenges the reader with a doable one year 5 step radical experiment.  The book is very thought provoking but as is with non-fiction such as this I found it did start to get a bit repetitive is some parts and some parts were generalized in it's applications.  But I believe coupled with prayer and asking God to lead us it with it  is a powerful call toward taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.  It would be an excellent study for a group or book club as it would foster some very deep discussion and other materials are available that go with it. 

I rated it a 9/10

Reading Challenge Goal Met:  Read 3 non-fiction this year.

 

Friday's Fave Five #680

Happy Friday, everyone!  Another week has whizzed right by and it's time to take a breath and a pause to consider what the Lord has blessed us with over the last week.  I swear, the weeks are just in a race and without pausing to think about my blessings I would not even notice some of them.  Blessings in our lives don't have to be big, over the top events.  They can be subtle and meaningful in so many different ways.  Sometimes unless we take that pause to think about it, a certain thing actually being a blessing may totally be taken for granted and not even noticed.  Let's be intentional in noticing all our blessings brought into our everyday lives that lift us up and then take the next step and be thankful to the Lord for them.

~ geraniums bought ~  we took a drive to the nursery that has the rosebud geraniums that I absolutely love and have been purchasing the last few years.  I wanted to make sure I got my geraniums as they have limited quantity and with Mother's Day being this Sunday I didn't want to miss out.  Because it's a couple weeks early yet and the bedding out plants are still being set out and organized for the big shopping weekends coming up, some of the geraniums were not labeled yet.  But I saw the color I was looking for and grabbed three of them.  There were gorgeous but I remembered thinking the individual "rosebuds" on them looked bigger and the pink was a bit more red.  But I happily bought them home and have been nursing them.  Our plant out date is May 24 or so because it can still freeze overnight around here so I bring them in every night.  Well one night I noticed there was a tag stuck in one of the pots and lo and behold I never bought the rosebud geraniums after all.  I bought ones called "Apple Blossom" geraniums.  At first I was so disappointed and wondered if I could get there this weekend in the Mother's Day rush and exchanged them.  But then the more I looked at them the more I thought how much I liked these one's too so I'm going to give them a go.  Hopefully they will bush out like the others and produce a nice display too.  If not, well there is always next year.

~ pizza takeout ~ have I ever mentioned I love pizza. I can have it anytime.  We have a new pizza takeout place here on the south end of town and it's become a favorite.  

~ Mother's Day crafts ~  even though it's a ton of extra work, I really do enjoy doing special occasion crafts with the kids.  My group this year is still in the age category where they need all the supervision and lots of help and explanation but I try to pick crafts that they are capable of doing with as little of my "doing" as is possible.  I help and guide but perfection is not my aim, not even with Mother's Day crafts, the process is what's important.   I'm just not the provider who sends home crafts where I've had to do 90% of the work.  I love when they are all excited to take home a "present" or can't wait to show the parent what they made.

~ cinnamon buns ~ I rarely ever buy baking or sweets anymore.  But once in a while I get a craving so Saturday I happened to be in the store and they had some really yummy looking cinnamon buns that came in a two pack.  Perfect, I would be bringing home and eating a whole dozen by myself, so I decided I'd treat myself.  It was so good.  Super fresh and lots of cinnamon with just the right amount of cream cheese icing.  I hate when you rarely get a treat and you finally buy one and you get it home and it isn't as good as it looked.  That was not the case with this one.  Delicious!

~ summer shoes ~ I'm so glad the weather has been getting nicer and I can pack away the big ol' boots and heavier shoes and get out the fun summer sandals and shoes that I can just slip into. 

What have been your 5 favorite blessings from the week?