Update on cookie recipe

I made the cookies and they tasted great but they spread out quite a bit during baking. I am not sure what I did wrong because Stephanie's cookies were not flat but very pretty.

They tasted really good, though!

Verse of the Day

2 Thessalonians 3:3
from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
“But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.”

Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) NIV. All Rights Reserved.

I love this verse, and I love God's timing! Lord, thank you for your strength and protection. You are so good, and I praise You for Your faithfulness.

For the first two weeks of the Wednesday night Bible study that I am facilitating, crazy things would always happen on Tuesday. So crazy that the Bible study couldn't be held at my house but had to be moved elsewhere. It was frustrating and a little stressful, but nothing that God could not overcome!! We finally had it at my house last week. So today is Tuesday, the day before Bible study. Thank you, Lord, for Your strength for today and your protection over me, DH, and our home.

Servant Leadership in the Workplace

I have been so blessed this week because God has been teaching me new things through my Bible study, friends, and Sunday school class. I'll share about today's lesson from Sunday School, which was taught by the Grays.

It was about servant leadership and the verse we ended on was Luke 22:27. Here Jesus is speaking to His disciples at the Last Supper:

"For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves."

This is a great example of how we are to lead -- by serving. This message comes at perfect time because I am starting a new job tomorrow and I feel like God is telling that I need to be focused on serving. I can be billing a lot of hours but it does no good to the Kingdom unless I am intentionally serving the clients that come in.

So it is nice to go into work with my focus in the proper place. I hope it can stay that way!

Lord, help me to serve others like You did and still do. Give me a heart to serve. Help me to be patient, kind, and encouraging. Help me to do my very best while serving them. Keep my focus on You and Your Kingdom. Be glorified, Lord. Be glorified. Thank you for your unfailing love and continual reaching out to me. Amen.

Managing your time effectively

I just had a wonderful visit with Jaime, who goes to my Sunday school class. She has three young children and works in accounting. I had heard through the grapevine that Jaime is an excellent manager of her time and very organized. Since I start my new job on Monday, I asked for her help. Here are some nuggets of wisdom I came away with:

1. Don't be a slave to your email's inbox. Set aside time to deal with email but don't let it dictate your day's "to do list." I thought this was especially helpful because I am addicted to email and check my personal email constantly. DH (dear husband) says I have an email monkey on my back.

2. Schedule the important things. For me, this means my quiet time in the morning and my new found respect for exercise. The QT will be easier than the exercise. I don't know if I can squeeze in exercise time in the morning as well.

3. Don't be afraid to work hard. I liked this one, and I needed to hear it. Thank you, Jaime.

OK, all you hard working people out there! What is your advice on managing your work day efficiently? At my new job, I will have billable hours so I need to be really productive and efficient with my time to meet my goals. Your help would be greatly appreciated!

Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies and they taste good!

This amazingly tasty cookie is from my friend, Stephanie. She is a Mary Kay representative if you need anything!

Stephanie made these cookies for Bible study, and everyone loved them!! They are pretty healthy and taste great. Everyone wanted the recipe so I thought I would share them with you! She got it from the Real Age website and modified it a little.

I'd love your healthy recipes! Post a link to your blog in the comments section if you want to share.

Ingredients
3/4 cup rolled oats
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup canola oil
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

Directions
-preheat oven to 350. Coat 2 baking sheets with cooking spray (if needed)
-grind oats in blender or food processor. Transfer to a medium bowl and stir in flour, baking soda, and salt.
-beat butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add oil, granulated sugar, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla - beat until smooth and creamy.
- slowly add dry ingredients to mixture, beating on low until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
- teaspoon dough onto prepared baking sheet, about an inch apart from each other. Bake until firm around edges and golden on top about 15 minutes (my oven cooks them perfectly in 11-12 minutes so this time may vary!) Cool for 2 minutes on baking sheet before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

If you want to know the nutrition information:
PER COOKIE there are 99 calories, 12g carbs, 5g fat (2g saturated, 2g monounsaturated), 1g protein, 11g cholesterol, 1g dietary fiber, 55mg potassium, 64g sodium - better than regular chocolate chip cookies and just as yummy! :)

For other EatingWell recipes check out http://www.realage.com//ct/eat-smart/

Menu Planning for the Week of June 23

Since I am starting a new job, I thought it would be a good idea to plan a menu for the week so that I can manage my time better and eat healthier. I have never been a healthy eater. I always ate to not be hungry since I have a fast metabolism and get hungry every 2-3 hours. So, I would end up eating a lot of junk food because it was fast and easy. Frozen pizzas, candy bars, cookies, Coke.

So I am turning a new leaf and trying to eat healthier and exercise more. I would love to hear how you are trying to be healthy and what works for you!

I am trying to cut out white flour, caffeine, and high fructose corn syrup from my diet and drinks lots of water. DH will also help with the cooking. (Thank you, DH - I appreciate you!!!)

For more weekly menus, check out this website. She hosts the weekly menu organizing and has many other helpful tips. My menu for next week:

Monday, June 23:
Breakfast - whole wheat bagel with cream cheese, yogurt with granola
Snacks - Triscuits with cheese, peanuts, ripe peach
Lunch - Penne a la Betsy from my MOST favorite cooking blog ever, and a piece of fruit
Dinner - lunch leftovers

Tuesday, June 24:
Breakfast - Thomas Whole Grain English muffin with Polaner strawberry jam, banana
Snacks - Baby carrots and Athenos Roasted Red Pepper humus, whole wheat pretzels, ripe peach
Lunch - Lemon Herb Chicken Ring, healthy chocolate chip cookies
Dinner - Eating out

Wednesday, June 25:
Breakfast - whole wheat bagel with cream cheese, banana
Snacks - Triscuits with Laughing Cow spreadable cheese, nectarine
Lunch - Penne a la Betsy, cranberries
Dinner - DH cooks (wahoo!), Lemon pepper pork chops with linguine

Thursday, June 26:
Breakfast - whole wheat bagel with natural peanut butter, peach yogurt with granola
Snacks - Kashi TLC 7 grain crackers and Athenos Roasted Red Pepper humus, peanuts, ripe peach
Lunch - Grilled chicken breast with naan (an Indian bread), fruit
Dinner - Left over pork chops

Friday, June 27:
Breakfast - whole wheat bagel with cream cheese, peach yogurt with granola
Snacks - Triscuits with hummus, peanuts, nectarine
Lunch - Grilled chicken breast with naan (an Indian bread), fruit, cookie
Dinner - Eating out!

What is your favorite healthy snack food? Any suggestions on what is healthy and filling? Please share because I would love new ideas!!

The Hulk

Movie Spoiler Alert!

We went to watch the Hulk. It was pretty good. I had low expectations going in but was pleasantly surprised. Edward Norton did an excellent job. DH loved the action. I enjoyed when Norton turned into the Hulk. He spent the whole movie trying to not become the Hulk. Then, he ended up having to fight a bad Hulk.

My favorite movie of the summer is still Ironman, who made an appearance at the end of the movie. DH says they are prepping for an Avengers movie.

HE Challenge Dinner

Last night I had dinner with four great gals from church. We were meeting to discuss how the Husband Encouragement Challenge was going. We are about two weeks in and it is the midpoint.

It was great to hear how doing the challenge helped some to improve their marriages and we were able to encourage others. The dinner was a lot of fun and provdided great support. I got some good advice!

I would highly recommend that women do this challenge with some other friends. I think about two people read this blog but if you do, what do you do to encourage your spouse? I would love some new ideas!

Worship Song Video of the Week

This song is "Before the Throne" sung by Selah. This is an oldie but a goodie. It really spoke to me and I hope you enjoy it!

Weekend Fun!

Hello!

I apologize the long interlude in between posts. I really wanted to be one of those people who blogs like twice a day but I can't. I don't have it in me. I tried. I really did.

So, this weekend we did what all good Dallas folks do on the weekends - SHOP! We hit some of the largest malls in the area - North Park and the Shops at Willow Bend. We also went to Ikea and two Half Price Book Stores. There is a HUGE HPBS near North Park. We go to HPBS so much we had to shorten the name. We will also go to another HPBS tomorrow. We love books!!!

Books we bought this weekend:

Mine:
Life Management for Busy Women by Elizabeth George
A Woman's High Calling by Elizabeth George
Beautiful in God's Eyes by Elizabeth George
Fugitive from the Cubicle Police by Scott Adams
A Low Carb Cookbook

DH's:
Russian Grammar (for after he finishes learning NT Greek)
Nibelungenlied by Unknown
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Lysistrata and Other Plays by Aristophanes
Three Play of Euripides by Euripides
The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles by Sophocles
The Oresteian Trilogy by Aeschylus

To top it all off, my brother fixed us an awesome meal! He is a terrific cook, and we highly enjoyed his cuisine. Thanks, little brother!

Church

What a crazy weekend! It's been busy but good. Church was really good today. We had a great review of Financial Peace University in Sunday school. At church, Andy preached a message about the tax collector, Matthew. He was known as Levi before he decided to follow Jesus. The message was basically about how anyone can find and know Jesus - no matter what stage they are in their lives.

Light Oat Bread - Yum!

I love baking and cooking. I have been forever searching for an excellent bread recipe. The kind that make dinner guests go "This is the best bread I've ever had!" I have tried many, many recipes. I think I am getting closer. I found this recipe at http://www.allrecipes.com/. I love this website because users are allowed to rate and review the recipes so you can pick recipes that have been tested.

I like this recipe because I can use my bread machine, and it only requires all purpose flour, instead of bread flour. It turned out really well. The inside was light and fluffy and actually tasted good. The only downside was that it required more flour than the recipe called for. The dough still looked wet at the beginning of the kneading so I slowly added one cup of flour.

I am not an expert bread baker. But I'm trying to get there. Do you have a bread recipe that works for you? I'd love to read about it!

Light Oat Bread

INGREDIENTS
1 1/4 cups water
2 tablespoons margarine
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

DIRECTIONS
Add ingredients to bread machine pan in order recommended by your manufacturer. Use regular light setting.

30 Day Husband Encouragement Challenge - Day 1 and part of Day 2

Yes, it's another challenge. :)

I am doing this challenge with a group of ladies from Sunday School. The goal is to encourage our husbands for the next 30 days and not say anything negative to them. Here's the link to the pdf guide: www.reviveourhearts.com/pdf/30DayChallenge.pdf

I have done this challenge before and it was really helpful. I am quick to say whatever pops in my head and that is not always the best thing! This challenge has helped me to be much more mindful of my words to DH and it has lessened conflict quite a bit. Isn't amazing how much easier conflicts can be resolved without negative mudslinging? I learned that we can still have a disagreement and get it resolved without World War III happening.

The last time I did this challenge it was during the month of the bar exam. I knew that I would be stressed and if I didn't take extra measures, I would take my stress out on DH. It was hard but it really did help. I remember CLEARLY messing up on the first day. Since I try to journal on a daily basis, I would keep a record of whether I said anything negative or not. And the first day had a big X. The following days got better.

I prayed each morning that the Holy Spirit would guide my heart and words and to my surprise - He did!! I finally began to gain some control over my tongue by doing this challenge. I have heard that it takes 30 days to start a new habit or a break a bad one. I hope this challenge blesses you as much as it did me!

So yesterday was Day 1. I think I did OK. It wasn't my best day but I did not say anything overtly negative but I didn't have the best of attitudes towards DH.

As for Day 2, I did start off with encouraging words as he headed to work. So far, so good! :)

I’ll keep you updated, and thanks for the bloggy accountability. If you are doing this challenge, I'd love to hear how it's going! Feel free to leave a comment!

Ragamuffin Top Challenge - Getting into shape!

Hello, all! I am finally getting into shape and I am using the "Ragamuffin Top Challenge" to help me. Check out the challenge: http://www.ragamuffinsoul.com/?p=5299 I really like this particular blog. The writer is a worship leader at a church in Georgia. He and his wife adopted a Korean boy and also have two beautiful girls. His blog is hilarious and insightful.

So.....onto the challenge!

My goal is to be able to run some distance without falling over dying. So this week's goal is to run half a mile three times this week.

And I am very pleased to announce that I actually completed half a mile this evening! (Insert the sound of applause!) I am so an anti-runner/work out person. I never thought I had it in me; I am pretty puny. But for the last couple of weeks, I have gotten more serious about exercising. I have a dear friend who has been so encouraging. We walk together, and she is in terrific shape. She has made me walk further than I ever would have voluntarily and pushed me to try harder in a very encouraging and kind manner. Thank you, Donna! So I really do owe tonight's outstanding feat to her!

I am so serious about this exercise thing. I even bought a good pair of running shoes - Asics GT 2130. (but I had a kick-butt coupon during the Memorial Day sale, so it was OK.) These are the feet and shoes that carried me across the finish line tonight:

Thank you, Lord!!!