Scoma's

Alright, so I found another restaurant for you to try if you're ever in the San Francisco area.  When we were on the plane, the girl sitting behind us was raving all about this seafood place called Scoma's.  So, we figured we would give it a try.  The girl on the plane new what she was talking about.  It was so delicious!  It's in an older building that floats in the bay.  This is another restaurant that you are going to need to make a reservation for, and it is totally worth it.  Here is the link for it if you want to take a closer look.  This is a must try when in San Francisco.  We went to the one in Sausalito, but there is also one on pier 49 in San Francisco.  I ate the Pasta Pescatore and it was to die for!  I wanted to finish it all, but it was so big that I couldn't.  I can't remember what everybody else ate, but everything was delicious!  We also ate their creme brule, chocolate torte, and berry cobbler for desert.  They were all fantastic!  It is definitely a good choice when hanging out in San Francisco/Sausalito area.  

Copita

Alrighty, for those of you that live, love, work, or travel to the San Francisco area, this is for you.  As we have been traveling around San Francisco, we have definitely stumbled upon some delicious food places.  The first one we came across was in the heart of Sausalito.  Copita, a delicious little Mexican Catina with a fantastic wait staff.  Here is the website, so that you can look at it a little closer.  Trust me, if you are in San Francisco, it is definitely worth the 10 minute drive across the bridge.  I do suggest you make a reservation though, because it can be a bit of a wait if you don't.

 Most of us got the 24-hour Carnitas, and they were fantastic.  Maddy got the Wild Mushroom Tacos and couldn't stop talking about how good they were.  The two Seasonal Salsas were extremely fresh and delicious.  However, the two things that you MUST get when you go are the Sopes and the Chili Jicama and Cucumbers.  The Sopes were absolutely delicious and the cactus on them was something fun and new to try.  The Jicama and Cucumbers were covered in chili, lime, and salt and were incredible!  I will definitely be figuring out a recipe for those and posting it.

So there you have it.  I am not a fan of Mexican food at all, but this was delicious!  It was all so fresh and I didn't feel gross or weighed down when we left.  So it is a must try when going to San Francisco!

Hello from San Francisco

Sorry if there aren't any posts for a little while.  I am kicking it back in San Francisco!  

The Uglies

I love to read.  I love the people I meet, the places I travel to, the new things that I learn, and the way that a book can stretch my imagination further than I ever thought possible.  That being said, it should come as no surprise to you that I am going to start including book reviews on Mindless Muses.  I even created a new tab for it!  So, here it is, the first book review.  

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

This book is the first one in the Uglies trilogy.  Scott Westerfeld takes Tally Youngblood and the reader on an incredible adventure from "Uglyville" to the infamous and unknown "Smoke."  In this futuristic society, when a child turns 16, they undergo a surgery to change them from "ugly" to "pretty."  Tally has anxiously awaited her 16th birthday so she can turn pretty.  However, when unexpected events force her to travel to the Smoke, she is unable to undergo the surgery.  She must travel alone to the Smoke to rescue her friend from the "smokies," a group of ugly people living in the wilderness.  Once she does this, she will then be able to turn pretty.  However, upon arriving at the Smoke, Tally is unsure if having the surgery is all it has cracked up to be.  

I absolutely love this book!  It is a fantastic book that touches on societies skewed view of beauty.  It also looks into how we treat the natural world around us, and even makes you wonder is we are quickly destroying our world.  It is a fairly quick read and it is great for all ages.  Westerfeld includes a love story, but I feel like the main plot has to do with saving the natural human race.  I would go as far as to say that it is as good, if not better, than The Hunger Games.  You'll just have to read it for yourself! 

Wrinkle Free.

If there is one thing I will have mastered this summer, it is ironing.  I think I have ironed at least twice a week, every week.  Between work pants and shirts, linen shorts, and t shirt dresses that have flipping hems, there has been a lot of ironing.  I love it though, along with laundry and cleaning.  It's all just art of being a mom, and I think that's what excites me the most.  One day I will get to do this for my husband and little kiddos, but until then I will continue to master the art of it.  Anyway, I thought I would snap a few pictures of it for you.  Don't you just love how exciting my life is?   

On a side note, my mom's friend just gave us a huge zucchini out of her garden, so I think there might be a recipe for ratatouille coming soon.  Keep your eyes peeled.  

Also, I have decided to start putting up book reviews every time I finish a book, since I love reading so much.  So keep an eye out for that as well.  

New Camera

I finally did it!  After a year of trying to save up for a camera, I bought one(with the help of my generous parents and Costco's great deals)!  I am the proud new owner of a new canon rebel t3i, and I absolutely love it!  So, here's what you can expect: lots and lots and lots of pictures.  There will be new pictures under the Photography Tab, better and more pictures for DIYs and recipes, and there will be random days(like today) where I post random pictures I took throughout the day!  As always, enjoy!

We had a girls day out today.  We went clothes shopping, antique shopping, and to peachwave for some frozen yogurt. 

I got some new Toms today!  Thank goodness too, because my old ones have about seen their day.  

Today was payday, so after work I decided to swing by the lovely Starbucks.  The one by our house is open until 12am!  It's both a blessing and a curse.  Anyway, I stopped in for a Cinnamon Dolce Latte and a couch to read my book.  As you can see (thanks to my lovely new camera :)), I'm reading Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.  It is fantastic so far and I highly recommend it.  

A New Coat of Paint.

So we recently moved from Overland Park, KS to Kansas City, Mo.  It's only 30 minutes down the road, but it contains a whole lot more character and quite a few friendly people.  I absolutely love it here!  From the huge old trees to the park across the street to downtown being only 5 minutes away.  It's perfect!  However, our side porch is or rather was far from perfect.  It was really the only neglected part of the home.  It was covered in dust and dirt.  So, we decided to do something about that.  Mom washed it all and then bought us some paint.  We spent two very hot evenings (over 100 degrees!) painting and fixing, but it was all worth it, because it turned out beautifully and we love it!

  The "before" pictures.  Just some plain boring white.

 


We didn't care too much for the colorless porch, so we decided to add some blue to the ceiling!

 
We also didn't like the fan blades being just white(or the tops being so dusty), so after much debate as what to do with them, we decided on a simple fleur de lis.  Mom cleaned them and found a stencil and I sponge painted them in a navy blue.

So this is what it looks like currently.  Did I mention that we absolutely love it?!  It is however unfinished as of right now.  We plan on painting the floor when it cools of a little bit more, so who knows when that will be.  Darn this midwest heat!  Anyway, I hope you like it.  It was such an easy fix, and it looks ten times better.  

Loose Change

For those of you that know me well, I love far off places.  And while I've only ever been to Central America, many of my fiends and family have traveled to distant lands.  One of the things I love most about other countries is their money.  It says so much!  It can be colorful, show famous leaders, display domestic animals, and even give detail to the countries traditions.  So, I always try to ask people to bring me back some bills or coins from wherever their travels might take them.  While I love looking at the different pieces of money, they have always just sait in a bowl on my desk.  After trying to figure out a good way to display them, my mom came across an easy fix.  She had seen someone else do this with just a ton of pennys and it looked pretty cool, so I thought I would give it a try.  So here it is, how to organize and display loose change:

So, we had this spare frame laying around our basement.  I took out the picture of the flowers and carefully placed each coin where I wanted them to be.  You can glue them down onto a piece of background paper if you want.  I didn't do that though, because the thought of putting glue on my precious coins scares me.  However, after placing them so nicely and then putting the back on the frame, they all moved.  At first I was kind of frustrated by this, but then I realized that I like how disheveled it looked. 

So here it is!  The semi-finished product.  I didn't have enough coins to fill in the frame, which is a good thing, because I plan on collecting more of them.  Also that one coin at the top got stuck up there, but I decided that it gave it some character, so I left it there.  In any case, it's an extremely easy way to get that bowl of coins off of my desk and display my collection.  

Dear Mr. Potter

The Joy of Community

Summer is a weird time for me now that I'm in college.  I didn't really try to stay in touch with my high school friends once I graduated.  That plus a move, makes coming home from college very different.  I don't really have any friends here, so it's a lot of working and hanging  out with my family, which I must admit, I'm completely okay with.


However, I am starting to hear a lot about the early church in Acts and that's starting to make me wonder if we as Christians have everything wrong.  I've always known how the church in Acts worked, I've heard about it over and over growing up and I know a lot of churches try to base themselves ater it.  However, recently it's been brought up in conversations multiple times and today my Bible reading took me straight to Acts.  So, I feel like it's something that I'm really supposed to be focusing on.  Anyway, I came across this verse and it really struck a chord with me:


"They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common.  They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
-Acts 2: 42-47


These people lived together!  They talked, fellowshiped, studied God's word, prayed together, ate together, and did ministry together.  Their lives were intertwined!  And so it got me thinking how incredible this would be.  How amazing it would be to live with other Christians, to spend all my time with them, to be able to talk and pray together at a moments notice, because we were always together.  How beautiful this would be.  And I realized, I have this opportunity everyday at school.  I live with Christians, I eat with Christians, I go to class and to church with Christians.  My life is constantly spent with Christians.  And yet, it is so far from this picture of the early church.  We hardly ever talk about God and our "christian" lives, we never pray together, we hardly ever study God's word together.  There is no openness, no vulnerability.  I don't know my friends struggles and they don't know mine.  I'm not sure exactly how to change that, how to make our lives be more like the early church in Acts, but I know that if we do, God will use us, and what more could we want in life?!  


Anyway, continuing on, the author of Acts speaks about sharing your burdens with one another in the hope that they will be lifted.  I am so blessed with this, because I have such incredible people in my life that are always ready to listen and pray.  I was recently matched with a mentor from The Good Women Project, which if you haven't every been there, you should check it out!  Anyway, they as do I, believe that to become a Godly woman, you must be poured into and mentored by someone that has been through and understands your struggles. So I signed up and have been emailing back and forth with this wonderful women of God who is serving Christ in Spain.  I feel so joyful for having met her!  She is incredible and has really helped me in the past couple of weeks that we have been talking.  She encourages me to pray and stay in the word, to overcome my struggles, and to rest in the fact that God loves me no matter what.  I finally feel like I have a glimpse of what God intended for the church to be.  


It should be open.  We should stretch across borders and barriers.  We should love each other no matter what, because God loves the church no matter how many times it/we turn on back on Him.  We should pray for each other.  We should encourage one another.  This relationship with my mentor has given me a picture of what a christian college should like, of what my life at school should look like.  I pray that God would open my eyes as to how that will happen.  I pray that He would use me and that before I graduate, my campus looks more and more like the early church in Acts.  

Just a thought for the day.

Pallet Sign.

As promised, here is the first craft of the summer! I saw this on pinterest and I really wanted to make it, but I was unsure where to find wood that wasn't falling appart.  Well, lo and behold, our neighbors where cleaning out their house and had a dumpster in their driveway.  Mom and I went over and "dumpster dived!"  It was tons of fun!  Anyway, I found to cabinet doors that were made out of planks of wood and they were in great shape.  So I took them home and made my sign. 

 How I felt dumpster diving. (not actually me)

 Since the doors were already made for a cabinet, they had holes cut in them.  I used the existing holes for the screws.  If you're doing this with random wood you found or new wood, you can just drill holes.

 We bought some wood and I sawed it so that it will would fit lengthwise across the salvaged wood.

 I then sanded the edges so that there wouldn't be any splinters. 

 Next, I marked where the holes were in the salvaged wood.  This way I would know where to drill holes in the new wood.  You can't tell from the picture, but the salvaged wood is slightly skewed.  I did this so that it wouldn't look "perfect."

 I then drilled the holes where I had marked then on the new wood. 

Next, I screwed in the screws.  

 The last step was paint!  This made me nervous, because I knew that if I messed up there was no going back.  But I love how it turned out!  I just used some leftover paint that we had from painting out walls.

 
Here's the finished project!  The words are from a song that we sang in church on Sunday.  It was the first time that I had heard the song, and I absolutely fell in love with it.  Here are the lyrics.  Enjoy and keep crafting!


I lie down and rest,
Cause I work no longer.
I breathe in, refreshed no more soiled in disgrace.
I look up at him to whom I am kneeling,
And I see delight there in my Father’s face.

I’m a son of God, and love is my freedom.
I can ask anything of my Father the King.
I’m an heir, I’m adopted and my brother is Jesus.
I’m a son of God and my soul is at peace.

I am last and low,
Cause I fight no longer,
To be right, or good or to prove my own worth.
I’m not driven or pushed or weighed down with duty.
I am filled with release that Christ did all for me.

I’m a son of God, and love is my freedom.
I can ask anything of my Father the King.
I’m an heir, I’m adopted and my brother is Jesus.
I’m a son of God and my soul is at peace.

I stand up in faith,
Cause I fear no longer,
And I pray and wait for God to provide.
I lean all of my weight on him who is able,
And I set aside every effort of mine.

I’m a son of God, and love is my freedom.
I can ask anything of my Father the King.
I’m an heir, I’m adopted and my brother is Jesus.
I’m a son of God and my soul is at peace.

I know now, I’m safe,
Cause nothing can harm me,
Or break in and take what’s stored up for me.
I need not to cling to dead helpless idols,
They no longer can hold any comfort for me.

I’m a son of God, and love is my freedom.
I can ask anything of my Father the King.
I’m an heir, I’m adopted and my brother is Jesus.
I’m a son of God and my soul is at peace.