Valentine's Jane Austen Style

Yesterday I had one of the most fun parties ever! We had a Jane Austen themed Valentine's party complete with scones, cucumber sandwiches, tea and so many other yummy treats. We watched Sense & Sensibility and the Jane Austen Book Club and just had so much fun! I just love bonding with friends over our adoration for Jane. We discussed our favorite characters and books. It was just a great afternoon of good food, good friends and good movies! I even got to use my grandmother's milkglass tea plates and cups! It was so special! Here are some pictures from our great (hopefully annual) party!

Our delicious spread of food - all scrumptious!

My co-hostess Maria

Heart-shaped chicken salad sandwiches

My teapot from Bath, England - where Jane Austen lived for a while

Jane Austen lovers - Maria, Katie, Beka, Candice, Keren, Jen and me!

Awesome Concerts at HPU!

One of the things I've been doing in my job lately is helping bring concerts to HPU. It's such a fun thing to be involved in! My boss Louise calls them "Concerts by Kalie." haha. It has a nice to ring to it!

A couple of weeks ago we had a little coffee house concert on campus with an up-and-coming contemporary Christian artist named Lindsay McCaul.

Lindsay is precious and so very talented! She was one of the openers for Shane & Shane during their Christmas concert at HPU last semester. She has such a beautiful heart for the Lord and her voice is amazing! Lindsay is definitely going to go places! I can't remember her line-up exactly, but I know she's touring with Jeremy Camp and Casting Crowns in the near future. I'm pretty sure she's going to be a big some day and I can say I knew her when! Here are some pictures from her concert - and if you are interested in listening to her music, you can click here!

I just found out on Friday the next concert we're having is next week! It's going to be so much fun! One of my favorite bands, Addison Road, is coming to perform at a Valentine's banquet on campus. My favorite song right now is Hope Now! It's so good! The lead singer of the band, Jenny Simmons, writes a blog that I love! I don't even know her - but I think she's so funny! I'm looking forward to having them on campus for a great night! And did I mention they are serving steak and lobster and it's free for students with their meal plan? What a deal!

And on March 31st, Brandon Heath is coming with his tour - Leaving Eden - featuring Dave Barnes and Kristian Stanfill. So awesome, right? I'm definitely excited about all of great bands coming to HPU in the next few months! It's going to be great!

Clean Water

There are lots of things in life that we, as Americans, can many times take for granted. Thanks to the ice storm of 2011, I have a new appreciation, make that love, for running water. On Wednesday morning, I woke up and realized that all of the water pipes in our house had frozen. You know what that means, right? No showering, flushing, clean dishes, clean laundry or drinking/cooking water. Wednesday wasn't so bad, Candice and I went over to my friend Kristy's house to shower and we made do the rest of the day. Well, Thursday, the temperature didn't get above 20 degrees, so you know what that meant? Still no water! And Friday? You guessed it! Pipes were still frozen. I will admit that by Friday morning I was in kind of a bad mood about this inconvenience. Dishes were starting to pile up, I needed another shower, my laundry was out of control ... you get the picture. I'm so thankful that I had people to turn to in the midst of my mini-crisis. I headed to my friend Larissa's to shower and then last night Candice and I ended up spending the night with her parents for a reprieve from the seemingly desperate situation.

I came home this afternoon to find that - Praise the Lord - my pipes have thawed out and we have water again! One of the lessons I learned from this experience is to always leave your pipes dripping when a potential freeze is coming - it's amazing how many people told me this AFTER our pipes froze. I'll never forget that lesson!

The other thing I learned, was to truly be thankful for running water. My friend Katie Ellwood reminded me of this earlier this week through this video she made with her brother. For their birthdays this year, they are asking for people to donate money to Charity: Water - an organization that works to bring clean water to the people around the world. Apparently, there are over 1 billion (1,000,000,000!!!) people in the world that don't have clean drinking water. The number is truly astonishing. While I was without water in my home for 4 days, I still had access to clean water in a number of places. These people face EVERY day without clean water. EVERY DAY! I'm sure Katie had no idea how this video would resonate with me personally this week, but I'm thankful for my friend who opened my eyes to a much bigger problem than my 4 days of uncomfortableness.

So, right after I did my dishes, I donated to Katie's birthday goal. Now, I'm going to hop in the shower and enjoy my running water.

Thank you, Lord, for teaching me to be thankful in unique (and sometimes smelly) ways!

Snow Day in Pictures

Today we had a snow day - and I've been loving every minute of it! I decided to get out my new camera and play around with my zoom lens. Turns out it is bitterly cold outside, and there isn't much snow - mostly ice - but I still got a few pictures that I thought were pretty fun. So, here's how I spent my snow day:


I made beef stew and chocolate chip cookies for dinner, so if you're hungry ... come on over! :) Except my roomie has strep - so it's probably not a good idea. Maybe next time!