God's Pursuing Presence | My Drifting Humanity

Starting this week and for the next 4 weeks Campus House is having an Easter Project Bible Study. This is the first week and we read Romans 8:35-39. It talks about how nothing can separate us from the LOVE of Christ. A question that was asked in the study was:  What do I think is separating myself from God's love? -- I came up with a short list of things: being selfish, too busy, wasting time on the internet, going out to bars, not being an example of Christ, and not spreading His word.

All of these things do not get in the way from God loving me. This is pretty crazy to wrap my mind around. How could he love me after all of these mistakes I keep repeating!? I am comforted by God's grace and his love. I am trying to work on these things... I want to take more interest in others than myself, I want to take time to stop and spend time with God, I want to read the Bible more than I spend surfing the net, I want to hang out and have deep conversation than going out to the bars, I want to do everything for God, I want to be the best example of Him that I can be.

Part of the Bible study included a poem by Jaclyn Myers. Part of it stuck out to me: "nothing comes between God's pursuing presence and my drifting humanity." I just think about how God is always knocking on the door to come into our lives but we are too busy to even hear him knocking. We need to stop rushing through our lives and spend meaningful time with God.

Another question that was asked in the study was "What is God asking me to sacrifice to be more intentional about my relationship with Him?" That did not take long to answer. FACEBOOK. I spend wayyyy too much time on Facebook just looking through stuff. I want to take all that time I waste on Facebook and use it to read the Bible. Just think how much I could be learning. I want to limit myself to only going on Facebook 2 times a day instead of 24/7. I want to do this for the next 4 weeks. Maybe I can try to even go without Facebook for a full day. We shall see.

I was cleaning out the notes from my Bible and came across this...
Romans 12: Holy & Pleasing --
The essence of holiness is not new behavior, activity, or disciplines. Holiness is new affections, new desires and new motives that then lead to new behavior. | Tim Chester

Over the summer I worked at a kids summer camp. Some books recommended were My Upmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Let me know if you have read either of these and your thoughts. I am not much of a reader but I don't mind a good book once in awhile. Have a good rest of the week!

Baby Shower for Lily Rae

This past weekend I had to privelge to host a baby shower for a good friend of mine. She is having a baby girl in April and the name she picked out is Lillian Rae. She will be named Lily. There were about 35 guests at the baby shower. I had so much fun planning the shower and making the food. I think I had more fun planning it then the shower itself! I made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting. Everyone raved about the cupcakes. They were delicious. I got my cupcake and frosting recipes from a blog called Glorious Treats. I also had pink chocolate chip cookies that a made from a blog recipe here. I put together a veggie tray and cheese tray. My mom made a mixed fruit recipe. I also put out pink and white chocolate covered raisins that I got from Marsh. I also made punch from a recipe here.

Vanilla & Chocolate Cupcakes - recipes here. Cupcake liners from Hobby Lobby and Marsh.

This cupcake was used with a Wilton 1M tip. You start in the center of the cupcake and pipe to the outside. See the link here. 

This stye is also used with Wilton 1M and you pipe from the outside to the inside of the cupcake. 

Display of cupcakes :)

Pink chocolate chip cookies. Recipe here.

I made several decorations as well! I made tissue pom poms from a YouTube video here. They are very easy to make! I made mine 1/4 the size of the ones in the video. Mine were much smaller than hers and worked nicely. I also decorated my mantle with pink baby clothes. I found two little egg trees at the Dollar Tree. I hung little baby ornaments from the tree. Having a baby during the spring is perfect because there are so many pastel Easter things! I put some flowers around too. Tulips and Lillies since her name is Lily.

Tissue pom pom instructions here. Plates & napkins from the Dollar Tree.

Pink onesies hanging above the mantle.

Egg trees from the Dollar Tree with baby ornaments hanging from them.

We played baby games too which was a lot of fun. We played baby bingo. Everyone got a bingo card with different baby gifts in the squares such as onesie, rattle, or bottle. As my friend opened up her gifts, guests marked off what she opened. Everyone had a different card so once they got 5 in a row they got a Bingo. Everyone had a lot of fun with that. We also played two guessing games. One was guess how many toilet paper square around the mother-to-be was. The other game was a jar full of hair clips and to guess how many clips were in the jar. We also had wishes for Lily cards which can be created here. We also had a bag where guests could write down advice for the mother-to-be. The party was a lot of fun and I hope this post gave you some inspiration for your shower!

Guessing game of due date, time, weight, length, hair color & eye color

Wishes for Lily cards that each guest filled out. Link here.

Baby Bingo - we played as the mother-to-be opened her gifts.