My lovely weekend

Hello dearest blog followers (and stalkers-yes, I love you too),

I am sad that another weekend is drawing to a close, but happy that it was a weekend spent with friends and our Waco family. Here are some photos and musings. I apologize for the length. Only the most committed readers need continue. :)

Friday: IKEA, traffic jams and my lovely husband

On Friday, I spent the day traveling to Austin, Texas to host an MCH table at a government fair. Employees are encouraged to give to local charities, so we were invited to have a presence at the fair and share our mission. I, of course, brought candy which was very well received. :) We were a popular booth and generated some interest. I can only hope that it will lead to some donations or perhaps even help a struggling family find the resources we offer.

It rained on Friday, so my travel was a little crazy. In fact, at one point, I was actually sitting in totally standstill traffic on I-35. So I started playing solitaire on my iPod until the traffic jam was fixed. No worries, I didn't play and drive. I was actually sitting on the interstate with the car in "park." Because of a brief-but-fun stop at IKEA, not to mention the traffic, I didn't get home until 7. However, my time at IKEA made the traffic jam worth it.

As many of you know, I have been on the prowl for a comforter/duvet that was a down alternative. Being the frugal seminary family we are, I knew it would also have to be cheap. I found a great bargain at IKEA! It is a light (very light- I love it!) comforter that only cost $19.99 for a King size. Yes, you read that correctly! It is, however made of that material that covers airline pillows and pillows at the doctor. But it is soft and comfy and goes inside a duvet cover anyway, so I don't care!

The duvet cover was $29.99. I went for a plain white. I thought this would make it easy to change our color scheme down the road. I also like the idea of a clean white comforter, so I went with it! I bought a blue pillow at IKEA for $9.99. It is my inspiration pillow for the colors of our room. I will be making other pillow covers to coordinate with this theme. I love that the blue pillow ties in the brown curtain too.

The "old door" headboard (that is in the making), will be painted a light white/blue/grey color. That way it will stand out a little from the wall, but will still be a light color. Someday, when we are no longer temporarily renting, I will have beautiful colored walls in our bedroom, so I wanted to choose a headboard color that would look good in both environments.

I also purchased a bath mat for only $9.99! It is light grey and looks very nice with our beautiful white shower curtain. Now to coordinate the rest of the bathroom! Does anyone know of a cheap place to buy under-bed containers? I would like to use these for our beach towels, etc. since we don't have a linen closet.








Have I mentioned that my husband is wonderful? :) Here is a photo of Marc putting the comforter inside the duvet cover. :)




We pinned the corners so it wouldn't float around inside the cover. It is wonderfully comfortable and makes every night feel like a beautiful bed and breakfast! Plus, the bed is easy to make in the morning!

Saturday: Sleep, showers, chocolate and friends

On Saturday, we slept in! I love sleeping in! More accurately, I slept in. Marc didn't really sleep in, he worked on cleaning the house. Have I mentioned what a lucky girl I am? :) I got up, cleaned up and frantically went to Target to purchase some onesies to make a gift for my friend Lynne's baby shower. Since her shower was at 2pm, I was a little stressed as I tried to make all the crafty-loveliness happen in a very short period of time. Never fear, my friends. I made it! Here is a photo of the finished product. :) It is a ruffle-butt onesie with a little matching button detail on the front.




Here is how I wrapped it. I love wrapping in scraps of fabric because it reuses something and is easily reuseable by the recipient. For this gift, I used a bit of the purple fabric instead of a ribbon.




After the shower, I went to JoAnn's fabric store and purchased some binding for the quilt I've been working on. It was an antique quilt top that I found for $4! I patched up the holes with a fun contrasting fabric and I plan to quilt it sometime soon. Maybe next weekend?

When I got home from JoAnn's, my hubby had made some wonderful and delicious Spanish rice, so we ate together and then both felt that it was time for some social interaction with the outside world. What better way than chocolate? :) We met up at Chili's for some yummy desert and conversation with our dear friend, Jalon.

After a fun conversation, we called Julie and RJ and met up at our apartment to watch Kung Fu Panda. It was an interesting movie. Not my favorite animated flick, but it had some great moments. I really just loved looking around the room and seeing friends. At moments like that I am so thankful for the friends God has provided over the last few months. It is so nice to have our wonderful Waco friends, but also to now have friends who know our "home" in Sioux Falls.

Marc and I spent the late-late evening watching Man vs. Wild. Bear Grylis is insane. I watched him bite off the head off a frog. He said he needed the nutrition, but then he got picked up by a helicopter twenty minutes later. For me, helicopter means "normal food nearby." So why the frog, Bear? Why?

Sunday: Preaching, eating, watching and fellowshipping

Sunday morning brought us to Ridgecrest Retirement Home in Waco where Marc preached at their chapel service. DaySpring leads the service every few weeks and Marc volunteered to preach. It was fun to interact with everyone.

After a marathon shopping trip at the local HEB, we went home and prepared food for our dear Midwestern friend-family group. We have been laughing lately at the motleyness of our Midwestern crew. We are a funny group, to be sure. A bunch of Midwestern transplants who happened to go to the same undergrad and are now living in the same town again. We have a shared experience of the Sioux Falls area, so that makes getting together fun, but on the other hand, we are an odd group of people who probably never would have ended up together otherwise. In that way we feel like family. No one can be voted out. We all love each other, but sometimes we also drive each other crazy. I love it. Thanks for being my family, you guys. :)

Here is a photo of part of the crew today.




After a wonderful afternoon nap (on my part), and some football watching (on Marc and RJ's part), we headed out to Common Grounds for some more Jalon time. This time we were studying. Well, they were studying, I was really just sitting here blogging and being creative.






I just love my Jalon. :) And that concludes the weekend, my friends. Now I shall go home and snuggle under my wonderful new bedding! It has been so nice having the rain this weekend. It is so nice to fall asleep to the rain and smell the ozone. God is good.