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Thursday, February 21, 2008

consider the lillies


one of my creative hobbies is floral arranging.  It all started back in 1995 when I took a floral arranging class thru the local community college while I was living in Illinois.  Over the years, I've enjoyed doing arrangement for parties and gatherings.  In 2005,  I did my first wedding.  



Since then, I've done 5 more. 


 I love working with the couple and dreaming with them about how they want the flowers to look.  Each wedding has been different and fun and a total reflection of the couples' personalities and how that is expressed throughout their wedding celebration!


Last June, I did the flowers for my friends, Nik and Laura.  Laura had some really cool, two-toned bridemaids dresses and wanted gerber daisies and roses.  the wedding was held at my old church in Baltimore which has a beautiful pipe organ in the front of the sanctuary- I knew I needed to have something tall and which some texture and height- so I used curly willow and hung votives down and put gerbers in them. 


 I was able to borrow some really tall, cylindar vases from my friend, Lela.  A challenge was hanging the gerbers within the arrangement of the curly willow!The flowers turned out great- the bouquets, centerpieces at the reception, the flowers at the front of the church, the boutinieres.  I'm still trying to get the corsage thing down...


Laura recently sent me a disk with photos of the flowers!


I love doing floral designing for big events- especially if it's for people I love.  Doing time sensitive, big events, like weddings, reminds me why I'm in full time ministry and NOT in a profession like floral design.  While I love the challenge of doing a time sensitive, creative events- it can be pretty exhausting!  

smack talking grapes

So I was urged by one of my blogging friends to post again- so here goes!

my lack of posting is due to four facts: sick kid, chinese new year, 2 back-to-back Wednesday Nite Fellowship talks, and winter conference- phew- would make anyone tired a bit distracted to blog about it all! 
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I did a two week series at Wednesday Nite Fellowship on "how's your breath?" looking at how our words can bring life or death to people- pretty intense- but good.  I was able to draw on
 a lot of my past failures in this area and the ways Jesus has redeemed my blunders.  I received some great feedback from the students.  We'll see what fruit it produces...

XiXi was out of school for 5 days which "conveniently" was in the midst of one of the weeks I was prepping to speak.  Needless to say, it made for some interesting time management- or lack thereof!
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my brand new- less than a month macbook pro decided to have a faulty video card last week- not the greatest timing ever- but what can I do?  Fortunately Ross hooked it up to our old mac monitor- so I'm still in business until I can take it down to the apple store to have them ship it off for repairs! ugh!

the nite it broke- I was rather upset- and Ross had to gently remind me not to take my anger out on those around me!  Good teaching example in the middle of my two week talk series!  Gotta love it when Jesus gives you those humble teaching moments and then you get to share them with others!
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Chinese New Years was a blast- we had to miss the first of the two parties we were going to attend due to XiXi being sick, but the second one in Baltimore was fabulous!  I've attached some pictures below. 



My parents and sister, Jennie, came up for the weekend.  After the party we went to China Chef in Columbia for some authentic Chinese food.  This is the best food we've have since being in China.  We love going there.  Their dishes are very authentically Chinese.  We were just bummed they didn't have fish- our FAVORITE chinese dish.  sigh.

My mom gave XiXi a few CNY gifts- a "beauty parlor" kit, some handmade doll clothes and hand made dog collars for Simon that fit thru his dog collar.  Pretty cute!

The next nite we invited our friends, the Burchs, over for a chinese new year dinner- XiXi and Chloe got the costumes out and I gave Hannah the camera to take some photos.  I'm featuring her work below!
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The well drillers came and dug 2 400 foot wells for the geo-thermal system- now there is a huge pile of ???? from the earth- the yard looks like something you'd see at Yellowstone Park in one spot- or maybe a 5th grade science project.  Needless to say- we'll be having some re-seeding and landscaping done once it gets warmer.
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Our InterVarsity Winter conference was last weekend.  I am continuing to learn more and more about McDaniel student culture at these events.  My latest discovery was watch the smack talk.

 One male student was licking the bowl our baked ziti was just in and asked me if I was grossed out.  Now having been the ONLY female in my high school percussion section and worked at a predominately male sports publishing company- it takes a lot to get to me.  So I stupidly said, "I'd be more impressed if you put grapes up your nose!"

BAD CHOICE!

in the next 5 minutes about 7-8 mcdaniel students put grapes up their noses!  One of them blew it out- another put grapes in both nostrils.  lesson learned!  although I have to say- I didn't know that grapes could actually fit up one's nostrils until Saturday nite.

despite this new and scary discovery- I was reminded of how grateful I am to be with this amazing group of students!
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Finally- the last bit of amazing news on our front involves new life...

the first was when I got a call during the Super Bowl from my sister, Debbie, announcing that they are expecting in early August!  I was shocked and estatic and made quite the announcement at the party I was attending at the time!

What's even more amazing is that our entire family was at the beach together for a week over Christmas and they didn't let on at all that they were pregnant!  Impressive- especially in my family!

my only wish as a doting aunt is that I knew if I'm going to have a niece or nephew.  It's so much easier to buy clothes that way!

the second involves the birth of our future puppy on Feb. 8th.  We got a call about 20 minutes after the first black male of the litter was born- there were 7 puppies total- 4 black females, 2 black males and one white male.  We get first pick of the black males.  We'll get him the first weekend in april!