Search Results for: baked goods can change the world

My Aunt Linda told me the other day that from the blog point of view it seems like all we eat are sweets 🙂  Myself and the wee Kelleys do love sweets, but we really do eat reasonably.  Veggies at lunch & dinner, some protein, fruit, whole grains, but that’s a bit boring for pictures.

I would much rather show you the surprise doughnut treat Brea brought us this morning, along with a bajillion sweet outfits for Amon.  THANK YOU Brea!!!!

Or how I made Gooey Butter Cake to share yesterday…baked goods can change the world you know.

I cannot even begin to tell you how many times my Mom made this.  Just saying the words Gooey Butter Cake makes me beyond happy.  My all time favorite for sure.  YOU.MUST.MAKE.THIS.TODAY!

Anybody else watching the Olympics like crazy?  We are.

Harper told me today that she wants to be a swimmer in the Olympics.  The boys are absolutely adorable watching any of the events.  They are completely entranced.  Maybe some of my favorite pictures ever of them together.  This shows them…totally and completely them.

We’re still hoping we’ll be leaving any ole’ day now to go get Amon.  I got a bit excited when I packaged up our backpacking backpack to mail to my friend Ashley who is going with me.  #gettingready #packingright

Did you know they still put toys in cereal boxes…at least in the Cheerios?  I did not, but this little guy was in our new box we opened this morning.  Super fun.  Thank you Cheerios for bringing back the fun in our morning cereal.

This 12×12 Names of Jesus canvas that I made for a local donation raffle has been sitting just waiting to have it’s little edges painted for way too long now.  Baby on the way means it’s time to wrap all the little loose ends up.

Harper enjoys some good organization.  For a slightly OC crafty Mom…part of this thrills my heart and the other part terrifies me 🙂

And more “thank you” key fobs hit the mail today.  You guys are crazy awesome and I am beyond grateful for all the ace of hearts that have been pouring in.  A big thank you!!!!

Hope your Tuesday has been a good one.  All the little things in life can add up and make things pretty great.

Happy Tuesday!

Let’s just all pause for a moment and sit in awe of my title creativity for this post before moving on.  Be amazed.

I specifically remember the day some dear friends of ours dad died.  I remember itty bitty Harper, Hudson and Solomon and how we stopped right there on the sidewalk outside of TJ Maxx and Joanns to pray.  At that point I had never been drastically affected by death.  I had lost some loved ones, but I had never fully felt the sting of death before.  I remember driving with my friend Jess over to see Courtney and I felt something so different in this tragedy.  I told Jess as we drove, “This needs to be different.  We need to handle this so differently than anything before.”  My mom died just 3 months later and I instantly knew God had been preparing my heart.  He’d been working on me for a loss I never saw coming.

Death, grief and loss have drastically changed me and I now stand in a place where I can see the good.  Where I can see God’s goodness along the entire rocky, rough path.  I can see His light and love.  I can see His mercy and grace.  I can see what a mess and disaster I was and how He ever so slowly nudged, moved and carried me from point A to point B to point C and so on.  I can see it now, but I couldn’t always.  It was a massive process.  Definitely in the top 3 hardest things I’ve ever had to do.  There was no rule book.  There never is.  It’s such a personal unique process.

When someone in our lives loses someone now I instantly am taken right back to those dark, hard days.  I can immediately think about all those wild, surreal moments like the first time I realized everyone was going to leave after the funeral and go back to their lives.  It made me physically sick and I begged people to stay and not to leave like a 3-year-old.  The first time I saw her body and how I touched her and laid on her chest and applied lipstick because it just wasn’t bright enough for the Sandra Hall I knew.  The first time I had to go into Mom’s house alone.  The first time I did something weird like call her cell phone and leave a sobbing message begging her to come back.  The first time I felt the hot anger race through my body on her behalf.  The first time I literally just wanted to punch someone for giving me yet another book on death.  The first time I realized it had been an entire year since her death and I still didn’t feel better…I was pissed I hadn’t progressed more than I had.

Death and loss made me do things I normally wouldn’t do.  They made me feel isolated and weird.  I was someone I had never been before and it was incredibly hard to figure out.  I was angry.  I’m still carrying around a cussing habit from those days.  I blame you Mom 🙂  I ate my emotions.  I was sad and the world certainly owed me something because of my pain and the loss I suffered.  I was not fun to be around.  I didn’t like many people.  And I felt like I was never going to escape the madness, but then one day I woke up and without fully recognizing it I was a little better.  And ever so slowly and gently God set to work healing, renewing and restoring me.  He’d been working all along.

Here’s what I actually love about losing Mom, I now understand loss from my own personal journey and can let someone else who has suffered a loss know they are not alone.  We don’t have to have all the answers.  We don’t have to say something wise or life altering.  My go to line when someone loses a loved one “THIS SUCKS AND IM SORRY!!!!!!” because it just does.

Many people around us have suffered loss including our friends Ashley and Jeremy.  A while back Ashley sat in our living room for hours.  We cried.  She talked.  I listened and told her stories from my grief.  Grief can make you do, say and think weird, crazy things.  It just changes you. People need to know they are not solo and there is certainly nothing wrong with them.  I remember being so dangerously sad and on top of that feeling so crazy weird, but Courtney was always there to say, “Yep. Me too.”  It’s nice to know you’re not the only one who has laid face down on your mother’s grave while sobbing over rice krispy treats.  You’re already so sad, so being sad, lonely and weird is the freakin’ pits.  If all I ever do is tell other people who have suffered loss all my crazy, weird, raging and “not-moments-I’m-proud-of” stories just so they know they are not alone in this mess, then so be it.  There is always beauty in the ashes and knowing how to extend a hand to someone who feels like they are drowning because you’ve felt a similar pain is one of them.

 Some of you are all “what about the cake?”  So death gives you a weird bond to people as well.  You’re now in this club you didn’t ask to join, but we rally around each other and care for each other.  That brings me to the cake…death talk and cake…my kind of post.

Ashley’s Mom after losing her husband eventually was just tired of being sad and wanted to add joy back into the world through the most heavenly bakery called Nothing Bundt Cakes.  If you didn’t pick up on it, it’s an entire bakery devoted to bundt cakes and they are insane!!!!!  I’m pretty picky when it comes to my baked goods so you know I wouldn’t steer you wrong…these little cakes are incredible you guys.  My SIL Jen brought over 4 for one of our game nights and I literally almost died.  I don’t even like desserts with fruit in them and I salivated over the white chocolate raspberry.  We were suppose to “share” the cakes with everyone and I might have eaten almost the entire strawberry cream cheese one BY MYSELF.  I kept talking about it all night.

Soooooooo, once we announced our adoption for our sweet little guy Ashely sent me the sweetest text that made me sob.  Like sob sob.  I told her I really wanted to take a selfie of what a mess I was because it was that legit, but I refrained.  Anyways, Ashley talked with her mom and she decided to give 10% of an entire week at her store to our adoption fund.  AN ENTIRE FLIPPIN WEEK.  I told Ashley it was like our perfect fundraiser.  CAKE!  Match made in heaven.

This couldn’t get much easier on our part.  Here’s how it works:

1.  Mark your calendar for September 26th – October 1.

2.  Go to the Nothing Bundt Cake store in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

3.  Buy cake.  You don’t even have to eat said cake…you could give it to me and I will eat it for you.

4.  Our family get’s 10% of your purchase to help fund our adoption.

That’s it.  The end.  You don’t even have to mention our name or anything.  It’s crazy kind and sweet and I literally just want to kiss Ms. Pam and Ashley’s faces off.

I still get teary when I think about this because Ms. Pam is sharing with us what she has and loves and does every day.  It’s thoughtful, kind, loving, crazy generous and it blows us away.  So mark your calendars for September 26th – October 1 and let’s all eat the crap out of some cake for an entire week!!!

Happy Wednesday!

**all photos are straight from the inter webs via the google**