Living as a Victorious Christian Woman

When I saw these beautiful traffic light peppers packaged all lovely at the grocery store, there was no way I could say no. All I could think about was whacking the tops off, packing them with delicious Tex-Mex filling, and roasting them to melty perfection. So I did. The end. No, that's not the end! I'm going to tell you exactly how I did it so you can have the same Tex-Mex happiness we did. For two meals! Ingredients: 4 traffic light peppers 1lb ground beef 1 cup black beans 1/2 cup tomato sauce 1 cup shredded Chihuahua cheese Tex-Mex seasoning (garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, cumin, salt, pepper) Optional: Salsa Sour cream Greek yogurt 1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 2. Cut the tops off the four peppers, then remove seeds and membranes. 3. Stand peppers up in a small baking dish and bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes to soften. 4. While the peppers bake, brown the ground beef in a skillet with the seasoning mix. Stir in beans and  tomato sauce. Heat through, then ...

Do you still remember the Sunday School and Vacation Bible School lessons you had as a kid? Do you remember walls falling down, giants being knocked over, whales vomiting people up, friends breaking through roofs, and boys in fiery furnaces? We've been studying through the book of Acts with our Sunday school class. They range in age from sixth grade to seniors in high school, so there's quite a span. It's a challenge every week to find just the right mix of Scripture, questions, activities, getting out of our chairs, and listening intently. It's hard to keep brains active without filling them to overflowing. We are blessed that by the time the youth are old enough for our room, their children's class teachers have given them an amazing foundation. For the most part, they know where books of the Bible are, who the main characters are throughout, have some favorite verses memorized, and can tell you some basic timelines and themes. Not every youth group has that prep ...

Praise the Lord that April and Easter are almost here! I've been doing Bible study on the resurrection and hope, and I definitely needed it. The season of life I'm in right now is difficult from every angle, but the clean, beautiful hope of spring and Easter helps change that perspective a little. And what better place to highlight that than in the planner I have open all day? The monthly spread for April, where I keep track of my blog posts, uses all one set of stickers. They're thrown random, confetti-style all over the pages in a mix of colors and shapes. Think of it like cutting them out, throwing them up in the air, and sticking them down wherever they land - how fun is that? This style works great with a large space and small stickers, and even with different images from a variety of sets. Combining multiple sets to make them eye-pleasing is simple if your layout has a solid theme and structure, which in this case was alternating small images across the page. This wou...

When I had my spring cleaning list all ready to go, I was full of hope and confidence. There was a plan on paper and it actually seemed pretty manageable...let's get started! And then I realized there was a task before the first task. Book reclamation. Every room in our house has bookshelves. There are more than 1,000 books on the first floor alone. As I did a quick walk-through of the house, I realized that after many book sales and trips to the thrift store, there were TBR piles everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. And unfortunately, none of the piles contained only one genre. No, I couldn't have separated them as I went. That would be too easy. So now I'm sorting each room, taking other genres to their rooms, and bringing back this room's genre from those rooms.  So now I'm prepping for the spring cleaning. Books are flying everywhere like confetti, then finding their new permanent homes on the shelves they were meant to live on. And I can relax and clean.  Book...

It's been a difficult few weeks at work, but God's been faithful. To celebrate how He's helped me through some serious challenges through music, I created a planner spread of some of my favorite hymn lyrics. The black and white theme goes perfectly with the music notes and beautiful script writing, and it adds an elegant touch to an otherwise stressful week. The washi tape is black crosses on a white background, a design I've had in my collection for ages that I love. It's cut in chunks and alternated across both pages, as are the notes and lyrics. Think of them as clusters of images and words, little vignettes of music spread around the spread. As you look through the pictures of my planner layout, I hope you'll recognize all the great hymns and songs they come from. And, as is the case with wonderful music, I pray the words of God's goodness and faithfulness will stay in your heart all week. Perhaps they'll bless you the way they have blessed me, and w...

Last week I made a stop at my favorite Dutch bakery and picked up their signature danishes. The day-old section always has some tasty treats at great prices, so I grabbed several and feasted in the car on the way home.  But I couldn't feast on all of them (well, I probably COULD have) at once, so I had quite a few left. Instead of nursing them along, I threw them in the oven with some cinnamon and sugar and made sweet danish dessert croutons. They went straight from the baking sheet to our ice cream bowls, and some may have gone straight from the baking sheet to our mouths. We will neither confirm nor deny... And they don't have to be served just with ice cream. Think a side dish for fruit, served with melted chocolate or caramel for dipping, or with yogurt for some lovely crunch. What creative ways can you think of to serve these beautiful little crunchy bites? Ingredients: 4-5 danish pastries Cinnamon (3-4 Tbsp) Sugar (3-4 Tbsp) 1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray a baking ...

Oh my goodness, did I ever pray for wisdom last week! We had a work situation last week that could have spelled disaster for not just my job and my organization, but several city proxy groups throughout the community. That's one of the looming dangers of relying on entities outside your own organization - it's never 100% secure. When the situation arose, I went into battle mode. Not against people or organizations, but against whatever the enemy thought he was going to accomplish. Warrior Me gets pretty locked in when it comes to spiritual warfare. On Sunday, Pastor preached from the first 11 verses of James, how trials and testing show that we're doing the right thing, while at the same time God is ready to teach us and grow us. Growing hurts, but it's part of the natural process of maturing as a Christian. Stagnant Christians stink. My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;  Knowing  this,  that the trying of your faith worketh patience.  ...

My planner spread for this week is full of cheerful St. Patrick’s Day charm with rainbows, lucky gold accents, and sweet little sentiments sprinkled across the pages. I used a mix of mint, gold, and bright rainbow stickers to keep the layout festive while still leaving plenty of room to write. The stickers help mark the holiday and bring a little fun to the week without crowding the page. The left side of the spread highlights the beginning of the week with a playful “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” theme leading into St. Patrick’s Day on Tuesday. I added a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish!” sticker (even though I'm not!) and a little rainbow accent to give the holiday its moment, along with a cute girl in green to keep the theme going into Wednesday. Even with those decorative touches, I kept the layout simple so the boxes stay mostly open. Since we don’t have any meetings scheduled at work right now, I’m embracing the extra white space—it makes the planner feel calm and gives me lots of room for ...

It's been quite a while since I created something that wasn't just a greeting card. Maybe that's why my heart hurt...creativity is as necessary as breathing to some of us! This Easter bag topper is hopefully the start of a crafty trend in my life again. The bag topper inspiration came from the tiny bag of tiny sheep with the tiny little ears. I already had all the paper and the bags, so this is definitely a scrap project. I started by cutting the topper itself out of white card stock. I marked it just wider than the bag and tall enough to fold in half and have plenty of space for decorating. At that size and shape, I can get two toppers from each sheet of card stock, with some left over for bookmarks.  The secret to a perfect mat is to flip the patterned paper over, line up two sides the thickness you want them, and then mark the other two sides with a pencil. Two cuts with a paper trimmer, and you have a beautiful mat. I was going to stamp an Easter phrase in the middle of...

After a trip to one of my favorite out-of-town grocery stores, I realized that I had way more lettuce in the fridge than we could possibly eat. Or so I thought.  I did some looking online and through my copious collection of cookbooks (I love alliteration) to find some fun and creative ways to use both large romaine lettuce leaves and a box of spring mix. We got through almost all of it in just a few days, and I picked up some really cool recipes to add to our menu rotation. Which ones will help you use a ton of lettuce and try something different this week? 1. Big Taco Salad Night: Brown ground beef with taco seasoning, layer tons of lettuce in big bowls, and top with the beef, shredded cheese, beans and corn, tomato, crushed tortilla chips, and sour cream and salsa. Bonus: The taco meat will reheat perfectly the next day. 2. Asian Chicken Lettuce Wrap Bowls: Cook up chicken breasts and dice them. Add in soy sauce, garlic, and ginger, plus a splash of sesame oil. Then added some s...

As a 9-month-old puppy, Cooper's not content anywhere with anything. If he's outside, he wants to be all the way over there instead of right here. If he's inside, he'd rather be with Danny than with me. And then vice versa. If he's chewing on a bone, he'd rather have the one Diesel's chewing on. And that never goes well. If he's downstairs, he'd rather be upstairs. If he's out on the deck, he'd rather be wherever that random noise just came from. There's no being content with the approximately 64 million smells within reach of his leash. There's something bigger, better, and more interesting to smell elsewhere. Leashes hold him back from his true potential in life. Apparently. Cooper's discontent is a running joke in our house, but I often think about how true it is for human beings, too. How many items are in your Amazon cart right now because you're ready to buy the next thing? Do you have a list of spring home improvement p...

It is beyond time for spring to be here, and my planner pages this week reflect that mood. I found a sticker set of all the beautiful spring colors and flowers I could find and threw them over the spread like confetti. The end result is a week of encouraging words, flowers and butterflies everywhere, and a few ladybugs tossed in just to make me smile. I started with the largest flowers first, putting the sunflower spray in one corner and a large bouquet in the opposite corner. Then each day features a saying, a flower layered over it, and a butterfly and ladybug. Those clusters are all similar but different, so they really pull your eye down the page. We have a short work week so we can attend the state tourism conference on Thursday and Friday, but I have to leave early to come host our office's putt-putt hole in the Puttin' Around Downtown event. So we'll be cramming as much day-to-day stuff as we can into the first part of the week, then the learning and experiencing in ...

It took me a while to be comfortable with the idea of Cooper being out on the deck. And not just because of the cold winter weather. Not until recently was he large enough to not fall through the slats in the railing, so that eased my concerns about the lower level of the deck, as long as he wasn't trying to do the steps. He's still pretty tiny... We had some unusually warm weather before a big storm this week, so we ventured out onto the top deck for the first time, too. He's enthralled with being outside without really being outside (he hasn't been off leash yet - he'd end up miles away in David County), so I pushed past my mental pictures of him doing a swan dive through the railing and let them out. Cooper loved every minute of it. As long as he could see Diesel and didn't have to navigate the steps, he was in paradise. There was so much to see and hear from a different perspective. He discovered birds and squirrels from up there, and they definitely became ...

Have you ever had a moment in your life when you wanted to quit absolutely everything and curl up in Jesus' arms for a while. Nothing else, just Jesus? I hope I'm not the only one. Life has been fast and loud and semi-crazy for the last year or so, and that kind of motion is overwhelming. I finally broke down last week and threatened to quit my job and all my responsibilities everywhere so I could just study my Bible all day every day. That idea was vetoed, but the point was made. When I get so busy that I'm not spending enough time with Jesus, I'm too busy. Then my schedule has to give somewhere because otherwise I'm going to fill my life with the extra stuff and not leave enough room for Him. And He is vital to my survival. But this isn't news to Jesus. He's fully aware of our capacity to put other things before Him and get distracted from what's important. As He began to form His inner circle of disciples, He took special care to call them away from w...

I'm continuing my monthly series on fudge with a delicious, decadent mint fudge perfect for the month of March. It's made in two tasty layers, then spread and chilled together to make these lovely little chunks of chocolatey happiness. I'm a fan. A big fan. If you want an intense mint flavor in the green chocolate, you'll want to use more creme-de-menthe. I used about a tablespoon, and it was beautifully subtle. Start with the tablespoon, then add more to taste, stirring and retesting each time. Ingredients:  3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips 1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk 1/4 cup unsalted butter 1 Tbsp creme-de-menthe pinch of salt Green gel food coloring 3/4 cup white chocolate chips 1. Line an 8-inch square baking dish with parchment paper. 2. In a large microwave safe bowl, mix the chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, chopped up butter, and salt. Melt in 30-second intervals, stirring in between until fully melted and smooth. 3. Pour fudge into the prepare...

I am constantly reading - first thing int he morning when I do my Bible study, while I eat breakfast, a business book at work, usually a little when I get home after I get the puppies fed, and almost always at bedtime.  So when I only read six books in a month, I feel a little disappointed in myself. Yes, it's been a very busy few months, but I've been reading constantly, right? Yes, but to start the month of February, I dug through a 500+ page on the Pinkerton Detective Agency. It doesn't look like it in this picture, but James D. Horan wrote a multi-generational, doorstop-sized historic epic on Allan Pinkerton's efforts to fight crime. It is absolutely fascinating (I know I say that about books all the time, and I definitely mean it here), it just took ages to get through it. Having a Jesse James story right here in Ottumwa, that portion of the Pinkerton exploits was especially interesting, as were his Civil War connections. I highly recommend this book for anyone int...

Some of my favorite people ever were born in March, so I'm excited to start this brand-new month. Not to mention that two difficult months are now officially over. We'll celebrate the first day of spring, those special birthdays, and the start of several new projects around the house, and those sounds like great reasons to celebrate. I use the month-at-a-glance planner spread to keep track of my blog posts, so it's always fun to do a random splash of images and words all over these two pages. For March I used almost an entire sheet of St. Patrick's Day-themed stickers, full of shamrocks, pots of gold, and beautiful rainbows. Having a stash of seasonal stamps and stickers makes moments like this so easy. With all kinds of different sizes, shapes, and shades of green, I love the way these two pages turned out. Do you have some phrases and images saved up that would give them same look in your planner? Can you mix and match sets to create something completely new and diffe...