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Showing posts from August, 2014

Homemade Salad Dressing

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I've started making my own salad dressing. Why would I go to the trouble of doing this, you ask.  There are a few reasons. I like to control the quality and ingredients in the food I eat as often as possible.   I think the flavor of homemade dressings are better, fresher, richer, etc.   Having good salad dressing on hand ensures that I eat more fresh greens. Sometimes I will just snack on a big bowl of fresh greens with a nice dressing on it. One of my favorite dressings is a Simple Mustard Vinaigrette . I've made this tons of times using many different kinds of mustard: yellow mustard, dijon, honey dijon, honey mustard, country dijon, spicy brown, etc. You get the point. Personally, I like all kinds of mustard, so, in my opinion, this dressing made with any kind of mustard is equally delicious.  But, most of the time, I make this dressing with country dijon, if you want to know.  I also use a food processor to blend it up.  The food processor blends everything t

Quick Visit to South Carolina

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My husband Dwayne is getting his Masters Degree in Business Administration online from our alma mater Charleston Southern University.  He had one, mandatory meeting last Saturday on site, so we enjoyed a quick and I mean quick trip to South Carolina last weekend.  We drove down Friday, stayed Saturday, and came all the way home again on Sunday. We listened to some C.S. Lewis on audio: The Weight of Glory and a portion of Mere Christianity.  I also did a lot of silent reading on my tablet while we were in the van. I finished the Wingfeather saga by Andrew Peterson, my nine year olds favorite books, and I started the Divergent series.  Note: Those are for me. My nine year old isn't reading those till she's much older. Whenever we are in South Carolina, we usually stay at the Wingate by Wyndam on the CSU campus because it's close to my family and it is always nice to be on campus again. That's where my husband and I lived while in college, met, fell in love, wor

Bodypump Certification- Update

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I thought I would provide another update for those of you who are following my Bodypump journey. Since I was certified in June , I have been subbing Bodypump classes for other instructors at the gym where I was trained. I subbed a class yesterday, actually. I did a mix of 89 and 90 that I call "I Love Pain."  (You can read more about that mix here .) And I got to team teach a launch for 90 with a coworker who helped me a lot during my certification process. Launching was really fun. I felt sort of like a rock star up at the front of the room next to her as she taught.  I felt kind of guilty because it was so easy.  Until it was my turn to teach, then I had to come back to earth and get to work for real!   I have been waiting to see if there would be an opportunity for me to get on the fall/winter schedule at the gym where I trained, but I knew it was not likely. They already have a full Bodypump program and staff in place (which is why I asked them if I could be trai

Bodypump Organization

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I am new to teaching Bodypump and I am having to figure out how to organize my choreography notes and playlists.  I can already see that keeping the notes and playlists organized might get confusing once I have a ton of releases and start mixing tracks from a bunch of different releases together in a bunch of different ways. I have been printing out the choreo notes from each release and putting them in a three prong binder. When I only had one or two releases, I didn't need to write the release numbers on the front of the binders because I could just remember which was which by color, but now that I have three releases and a mix of 89 and 90, I've started labeling them as you can see in the photo above. I thought it would be a good idea to give my mixes names so that I don't end up using number like "89 and 90," "90 and 89," and "89, 90, 91."  Even calling them by the date I use them "8-18" and "9-20" is going to

No More Talk of Darkness

For as long as I can remember, I was afraid of the dark. So naturally, I was often afraid at night in bed.  I had to sleep totally covered with blankets.  I could never let my hand hang out over the empty space next to my bed. My arms had to be tucked into my blankets, my blankets up over my shoulders, at least. I was never quite sure what I was afraid of, but nevertheless, I was always afraid.  After I left home in my late teens, I began feeling much less fear at night. Looking back, I believe my parents' home was a place where their spiritual condition prevailed, not my own.  But, once I was out of their home physically, I was also out of their home spiritually.  When I was in my dorm room or under another roof, especially when I was under another Christians' roof, I discovered that I could sleep without blankets. I often fell asleep sprawled out flat on my back with no blankets, no pillows, arms and legs wide, in perfect peace with a smile on my face.  For someone who had

Lessons From My Garden

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I learn a lot of spiritual lessons from my garden. One time, in the spring, I asked my husband what he thought about our flowerbed. "Well, it looks better than it did last year," he told me.  I was hoping for more than that, but what he said got me to thinking.   My garden isn't what it could be, what it will be. (I still have a lot to learn about caring, pruning, controlling pests, and fertilizing.) But when you consider what my garden looked like when we moved in several years ago... it is easy to see that every little bit of work I have ever done out there, even if it was just wedding, really has made a difference. My garden is not the same garden it once was and even if I don't lift another finger to care for it this season, it will never be the same garden again because of everything that has been done up to this point. It's not the prettiest garden in the world, but at this point, the flowers, though they aren't extravagant, have taken

Bodypump 91- First Impressions

Though I am a professional, this is my personal blog, so these impressions are personal . They're what I'd say to a friend over a cup of coffee if we were discussing this release. So if you love Bodypump and if you love coffee, too, grab a cup of coffee and read on if you are interested in what I have to say about Bodypump 91. I woke up yesterday morning to an email that said I could go online and download Bodypump 91.  I was certified on 89, purchased 90 myself since I wasn't on autoship at that point, but this, this , is the first time a release came to me automatically. So I can't tell you how excited that made me.  I bet those of you who love Bodypump will understand. As soon as I saw the email, I needed to figure out how I could fit an hour into my day so I could, at the very least, watch the new release once. I didn't get to just sit and watch it, but as I did my housework yesterday, I carried my laptop around room to room and watched as I cleaned. I thou

Words of Scripture Became Words of Praise

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I woke up early this morning and the Holy Spirit was prompting me to pray about something that is going on.  I felt the power and presence of God as I prayed about it and then I found that I was just enjoying the presence of God and I really wanted to just spend some time praising God and worshiping the Lord. "Lord, thank you... thank you... thank you..." I couldn't think of anything else to say, anything fitting enough to speak in God's holy presence.  I considered what else I wanted to say, what else I could say to a God so holy, and that's when the words of Psalm 103 started coming to my mind. "Lord, thank you...  You forgive all our sins. You heal all our diseases. You crown our lives with love and compassion. You satisfy our desires with good things..." It was great to have beautiful, true, and most of all, fitting words to speak to God in His presence. The words poured out of my mouth like jewels pouring out of a velvet sack. Interest