How’s that for a title?!?!?!  I sound super profesh.  I just have random things to share, but mainly of the food variety.  You know I love my food.  It’s so true.  And while we’ve made major changes to our food over the last few months I still believe in the power and love of baked goods.  I just do.  It’s in my genes.  And I love that.  Long live #bakedgoodscanchangetheworld

Today I made THESE…my first batch ever of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.  My life is changed.  So flippin’ good.  Call me crazy, but typically oats don’t scream “Eat me.  I’m delicious.”  That is for the exception of yummy peanut butter no bake cookies…Josh Kelley’s favorite of faves…and Carmelitas.

Sidenote:  A friend one time told us he wouldn’t eat Carmelitas because they looked healthy.  OhEmGee.  I was all yeah because 3 sticks of butter and a ton of brown sugar, chocolate and caramel is legit health food.  End sidenote.

Now THESE oatmeal circular pieces of heaven made me a little teary eyed.  I am hooked on the oats now.  Minus all oat recipes which include raisins.  Some peeps on Instagram tried to change my mind on this, but I just don’t think I can do it…raisins do not belong in desserts.  There, I said it.  It’s not you, it’s me…no, really it’s the raisins.  Raisins are not dessert material.  I’m standing firm and unwavering.

Now for a crazy good and healthy lunch.  I snagged this little gem of a recipe from Jami Nato’s instagram.  If you don’t follow her, you should.  She’s hysterical.  I already had cooked shredded chicken in the fridge, so I made up a batch of this dressing and had 4 solid lunches from it on 4 different days.  Soooooo easy and sooooooo good.  I don’t use oils, so I just left out the lime oil.  Easy as pie.  Pie sounds good right now.  A few days I even got a wild hair and ate this salad with sweet potato chips.  Just try and stop me.

Okay dinner stuff.  I’ve tried a couple of new recipes lately.  I’ll start with my sad dinner.  I made this Sweet Potato Turkey Chili.  I don’t know what possessed me to do this since we’re not big fans of sweet potatoes in the first place.  Unsure as to why I thought I’d be game in chili form, but I did.  Josh Kelley and I put our blood, sweat and tears into the making of this one Sunday for a weekly dinner and then I just couldn’t do it.  It actually tasted good…good flavoring…but the texture did me in.  Couldn’t do it.  So I did what any normal person does and tried to think of another semi-large family and try and pawn it off on them for their dinner.  It worked.  Thank you Freeman family!

I love crockpot chicken for taco nights.  Totally a favorite, but THIS recipe is the best I’ve tried yet.  I ditched the rice, cheese and cilantro.  We like spicy things and this had more of a kick to it.  So good.

These Turkey Meatballs are awesome.  Huge hit.  Spaghetti squash on the other hand…big nope.  It was my first attempt, but again with the crazy weird texture.  My head said “You can do this Laura”, but my mouth said “No.  Spit this out like now.”  So weird.  I probably didn’t cook it long enough or something, but it tasted nothing like noodles.

And tonight we had Ancho Chicken Tacos with Cilantro Slaw and Avacado Cream.  Just go right now and make these.  Who cares if it’s almost 10 o’clock at night and you’ve already had dinner…or you’re already asleep…make them and be so happy you did.  Massive hit.  Everyone ate them right up…minus Amon, but he seriously never eats dinner lately…3-year-olds know nothing about good tasting food.

 I taught a Bible journaling class last night and it was just so good.  It’s seriously one of my most favorite things to talk about.  I love sharing about my journey, but also hearing the thoughts of other people.  It’s just such a life-giver…such an encouragement.  I’m in James right now and have highlighted, underlined, colored, boxed in almost the entire book so far.  A friend said last night she thought God made up for Romans with James.  Total truth.  Romans almost ended my Bible reading all together 🙂  James is my scripture jam right now.

I am coming to Memphis on Friday January 29th to teach a class…6-9.  Message me HERE or email me at pitterpatterart at gmail dot com if you’re interested in coming.

I’ve been painting like mad this week and it totally makes my heart happy.  Give me all the colors of the world.

And I’ll leave you with this sweetness.  Swoon city.

Tomorrow is Friday!!!  The weekend is upon us.

Happy Thursday!

As a blogger I am constantly making little notes to myself about things I would like to blog about.  High on this list is the randomness which is my brain and our wild little life.  When I sat down to type this post I laughed out loud at all the little notes I had pecked into my Notes app on my phone through out our week.  You guys, this is just me.  This is my crazy brain and honest to God I can’t believe any of you stop by to even read 🙂  Thank you!!!  Here were my notes:

*Dancing Honda Civic dude.  When I’m driving one of the highlights of my driving experience is often the car dancer.  This is the person in front of me who I can see jammin’ out to some good tunes and they are not afraid to show it.  The other day I was behind this guy in a Honda Civic and he was gettin’ down, like so much so that it occurred to me, “Maybe he’s not groovin’ to his jam, but yet yelling and fighting with his lady passenger”.  I mean, there we’re a lot of hand motions.  A LOT.  Well this straight up got the better of me and I just had to find out.  Full speed ahead.  “Oh I’m sorry children mother cannot have this important Jesus conversation right now because I must find out if this gentleman is dancing or fighting with his female companion.”  This is my brain.  I positioned the ole van as to not appear too crazy…Me?  Crazy?  Never!…and I was so relieved he was rockin’ out to his beat.  I then conjured up his epic playlist and what his girlfriend’s name was…it had to be his girlfriend…not his sister or cousin or just friend…only a girlfriend would best fit his story…it was Josephine by the way.  She was a total Josephine.

*Tuna.  I can’t remember if I’ve shared this already, but I have been making some killer tuna lately which Josh Kelley, Amon and myself love.  1 can tuna drained, good.  Random amount of mustard, good. A few spoonfuls of plain greek yogurt, good.  2 boiled eggs chopped, good.  Chopped pickles, good.  Josh Kelley had the audacity to say “Did you go heavy on the pickles this time?”  To which I responded, “There is no such thing.”  Pickle lovers unite.

BTW:  I’m starting a new pickle jar ministry.  I feel like this will be all the rage and it will take off like wildfire.

*New shoes.  This is a testament to the Brooks Pure Flow (1st generation) running shoes.  I even did a search on my own blog because I wanted to see when these sweet babies entered my life.  I did some estimating based off of HERE (don’t get me even started on baby Amon…I die) and determined these shoes have assisted my feet in running many many miles since around May of 2013.  And now…

This is just one of 3 holes.  And sadly, I’m still not sure I’ll go buy another pair just yet.  The extra weird part of me wants to see just how far my shoes and I could go together.  I’ll report back.

*Amon’s books.  Every day at nap time Amon picks a book out for us to read and every day he chooses one of these four.  Never for a second does he waiver.  He is currently crazy obsessed with 2 things…1) Baseball and 2) Bears.  And if you’re wondering, Choco’s mom is a bear.

*Amon baseball.  Yeah, so obsessed.  He would play baseball all day long.  Me throwing to him.  Him throwing to me.  Me throwing and him hitting.  Him throwing and me trying to hit his fastball.  The sooner we get this kid on a team the better.  Yesterday after he hit several zingers in a row he came over to me hand raised ready for a high-5 and said “High five.  I mash & pound.”  He’s clearly got a confidence issue.  And we’re also clearly succeeding in teaching our kids humility 🙂

*Beans.  So over the last two weeks I’ve taken something to the dry cleaners and I made my first thing of pinto beans.  I have officially arrived to adulthood…forget marriage and all these small humans.  Dry cleaning and pinto beans are where it’s really at.  I used THIS RECIPE and they were awesome!!!!  I did make cornbread muffins too, but we shall never speak of them again.

**Difret trailer.  I watched this trailer and can’t shake it.  Will definitely be figuring out how we can watch this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEWireKsK8U

*Purging gift basket.  My life continues to cycle through a series of normal, normal, stressed, super stressed, purge the house, normal.  It’s like my life coping mechanism.  I’m hard wired people.  Anyways, I have this basket I keep full of gift items to give on any random occasion.  It stays in our cabinet piece in our living room and well, I was feeling a tad stressed the other night, looked at the cabinet and thought -It’s on. The end result was more stuff being donated, but I also decided to empty my gift basket.  I immediately started brain storming and item by item I figured out just the right recipients for each gift.  I packaged them all up yesterday and away they went this morning.  And now I can breath a little easier.

And those are all my notes for the week.  Some of you may feel a tad dumber now 🙂  Some of you might come back again.  Either way, happy Friday party people!  The weekend is here.

Crazy excited tomorrow is Friday.  This week has been a tad on the edge of madness so Friday is looking pretty fine.  It doesn’t hurt that I’ll be off on an adventure with a friend.  A break from the norm is good especially with friends.  I’m over the moon.

I did make curtains this week.  I kind of love outdoor fabric or similar duct cloth for curtains and I fell hard for this green print I found at Joanns.  It did not hurt one bit it was like 50% off.

Josh Kelley and the kids went to a hockey game this week with friends.  We got 8 free tickets and Harper was so excited for her first hockey game…she compared it to Disney World…hahaha.  Then they got noise makers and Josh sent me this picture and I became quite content staying home with our littlest…and the fact I put her to bed at 6:15…muhuhahahahahaha!

Despite the busy, I did get a little work done…6×6 canvases and a big 18×36.

I picked up some Star Wars fabric for Hudson’s surprise party.  It still makes me laugh out loud when I think about us throwing him this surprise party…which he requested.  He is just going to die.  I made a bunting to hang up and this will totally be headed to their room afterwards and they will love it.

I’ve been eye-balling this little desk for Harper’s room.  I am pretty much always looking for ways to make our small space work more efficiently and this little desk is on my radar big time.

I signed up for a sugar detox with Marta.  WHO AM I!?!?!?!  It’s for 14 days.  I’ll probably die.  I’m making Josh Kelley do it with me which will not be hard for him at all which makes me just want to punch him in the face.  But I digress.  Want to join me?  If you do check out Marta’s information HERE. 

And Harper…the child who hasn’t napped in 4 years…fell asleep on the steps…and that about sums our week up 🙂

Bring on Friday!  I welcome it with open arms and a cookie in hand.

Happy Thursday night!

The year and the school year are moving right along in a mad dash pace it feels like.  Lately we have been all over the place and this coming weekend holds another wild adventure.

This weekend Hudson decided he was done with his hopes of growing a Jedi braid.  He was hot and his hair was causing a lot of the hotness.  He really had a pretty sweet mullet going on, but Josh Kelley obliged and gave him a cut.  Solomon is still holding strong and still making all the crazy faces and flashing a good double bird.  Made me laugh pretty hard upon reviewing the pictures.

I’m happy to report I am getting use to the new Kroger and Amon loves it.  Every time we go there is something new and he always and forever gets those tiny little carts and marches like he owns the place, running over my ankles and getting his shop on.  It’s the cutest/most painful.  The other day an employee was even making balloon animals for kids.  Kroger = the fair.

I did some thrifting over the weekend.  It’s become harder to do lately as prices seem to keep rising in our area.  All the sad faces.  Every now and then though I hit the jackpot and it renews my belief in thrifting.

Antique/thrift stores often have the creepiest of things and scenes.  Exhibit A:

Old baby doll + giant creepy cat + creepy cradle = all the shudders.

Just to be sure you grasped the full creepiness of the cat alone I present Exhibit B:

Need I say more?!?!

I finally made THESE again and be still my cookie loving heart.  They are just the grandest.  I’m totally repeating this tomorrow because baked goods can change the world people.

 We are 12 days away from September’s Bible journaling class.  Eeeek.  Sadly if we do not get some people on board, we will cancel this month’s class.  Let me know asap HERE if you want to snag a spot or more.

And lastly, the Ngugnwane tshirts have been wildly wonderful and popular.  You guys are amazing.  Thank you for ever and ever.

(Marcie’s pic)

We got ours from Marcie & Nick Sunday night and I immediately put it on when we got home.  Then made Josh Kelley do the same.  Then broke out my selfie stick and proceeded to take 100 different pictures…this was the best we could do.  The shirts are awesome.  Harper declared it the most comfortable shirt of all time.  I broke down and got kids sizes too…of course…I had to…it just had to be done!!!  So keep it up.  Please continue helping us spread the word.  You can read more details about the shirts HERE or go straight to www.sasquatchdesignsociety.com and order yours today.  Tons of tees are already in the mail and on their way 🙂

Hope you had a great long weekend.  Here’s to another week!

Happy Tuesday.