November Photo Challenge!

Hey everyone!  I found this photo challenge for the month of November on a blog and thought it might be fun, so I'm going to do it!  I'll try to post them every Saturday! Feel free to do it with me if you want to!

(I'm working on the Q&A vlog - it'll be here soon! :)

Q&A Vlog - Questions

Hey, everyone!  A friend suggested that I do a question and answer vlog, so I'm doing it!  If you have any questions for me, leave them in the comments section, and I'll make a video with the answers soon!

My Obsessions Lately :)

My new American Eagle sweatshirt :) It's soooo soft and cozy....AND...it was on sale! Could it get much better?  Texas just needs to get colder so I can start wearing it without sweating to death...

Michael Cavallo, the guitarist for the Christian band Manic Drive - he has the craziest style of playing I have ever seen, but it's cool to watch :)  I don't even understand how he makes noise sometimes with the crazy stuff he does, but somehow he makes it work!

The bass line for the song This Is How We Overcome - it's sooo fun!  I freaked out when I first heard it cuz it's so fast and awesome, but I finally figured it out.  I'm playing it in church this Sunday, so that'll be fun :)

Colder weather!!!  I want it to come so badly!  We've had a couple little tastes of it lately, but it's super hot right now.

My 3 new Bath And Body Works body sprays - Warm Vanilla Sugar, Carried Away, and Sweet Pea - they all smell soooo good!  You know how video blogs are called vlogs?  Well I wish I could do a smlog so you could smell them :)

Football - haha I love playing ultimate football and flag football :)

Happy Saturday, y'all! Hope yours is awesome!

Flowers & Photo Filters

I had so much fun taking pictures of these flowers and experimenting with the DIY photo filters I learned how to make from Haley's post.  They are sooo easy to make (hey, if I can do it, anyone can :) and they work so well!  Thanks for the idea, Haley!

Kelly and Ben Maternity Photo Shoot

Kelly, one of my youth ministers at church, and her husband Ben were so nice to let me take some maternity pictures of them!  And y'all can be proud of me cuz I actually edited most of them!  Not my favorite thing, but I did it!

 This is one of my favorites :)

Thoughts From The Mirror: Amazing Love

(Click here for the first "Thoughts From The Mirror" post and an explanation for where the name came from :)

Though I spit on Him, mocked Him, disobeyed Him, and nailed Him to the cross, He loved me, sought me out, blessed me, and died for me.  Amazing love, how can it be, that You my King would die for me.

Kitchen Utensil Photo Contest

Here's my entry for Lindy's kitchen utensil contest!  I had fun doing it!

Forgotten Photos - Chipmunks

I totally forgot about these pictures until today!  I took these back in July when we were in Breckenridge, Colorado, for the 4th of July.

People come and feed these chipmunks all the time, so they'll come right up to you, crawl into your lap, and eat out of your hand.  There are soooo many of them - they ran all around you.  

Now, if you know me at all, you know that this was a scary experience for me - I have an irrational fear of basically all animals.  (Yup, that's right.  Blame it on the neighbor's dogs that would run up to us when I was 2 or whatever you want, but whatever the case, if it moves and breathes and isn't a human, I'm probably scared of it.  Except for bugs and spiders - I'm not scared of those :) Needless to say, I did not feed the creatures, I just took the pictures....

 Can I get a round of applause for shooting these with a Canon? (Haha saying it that way sounds like I shot the chipmunks with a cannon :)  Nothing against Canon, but I'm a Nikon girl, and I've only ever shot with a Nikon, so it was super hard to adjust.  EVERYTHING was different!  Even the zooming was backwards!  But my camera was out of battery, so it was my only option.  (And of course they're unedited, because I can't stand editing :)

Making Quiet Time More Meaningful

I don't know about you, but having a good, meaningful quiet time is hard for me.  My alarm has just gone off, I want to go back to bed, I have so much to do that day, and my heart just isn't in it.  Most of the time, I'll just read a chapter or two in my Bible and move on.  It's more out of obligation than anything else because I know that Christians are supposed to read their Bible in the morning.  

Recently I have been reading a book called The Story, which is basically the Bible as a novel - it still uses the words of Scripture, but they take out parts like all the laws in the Leviticus and adds transitional paragraphs in italics to jump from one thing to the next.  That's a great way to get a sense for the Bible as whole without having to read the whole Bible (I tried to read the whole Bible in one year, but that quickly lost its spiritual value for me)  But where I am in the book, I feel like I'm just reading the stories - I'll read a couple pages and move on, but not think of how to apply my reading to my life.

So I decided to come up with a few steps to make my quiet time more meaningful :)

• Get out of bed - since my Bible is right next to my bed I have a tendency to just read it in bed.  That is totally not conducive to focusing, because you just want to go to bed again :)  Maybe you go outside or to a different room.
• Change it up.  I think this is one of the biggest things you can do to help you.  Maybe one morning you pick one verse and spend some time really thinking about what it means and how you can apply it to your life.  Maybe you read a chapter in a book like The Story.  Maybe you read a couple chapters in your Bible.  Or maybe you print out the lyrics to an old hymn and really spend some time thinking about what they mean - if it's a prayer, pray them to God.  Maybe you pull out your iPod and listen to some worship songs.  If you do the same thing every day it can become familiar and just another thing you have to do.
• Spend some time in prayer.  Sometimes I'll finish reading my Bible and go directly to do homework.  But God wants to hear from us.  Try talking to Him like a friend - tell Him what you're doing that day, confess your fears to Him, ask Him for His help in specific areas.

Those are just some of the things I have found to be helpful in making quiet time more meaningful - hopefully they can help you too :)