Becky's Bouquet

If you look at the dates of my posts, you will see that I've had this blog for a few years. Sometimes I post a lot, sometimes not very often. Sometimes I get really excited about an idea and it consumes me until I've written and rewritten and rewritten and rewritten and published it. If you could see behind the scenes, you would see several draft posts as well. There's a part of me that wants to post on a regular schedule. But blogging is only one of my hobbies besides my full time jobs of wife and mommy and sister. And those jobs have priority. I used to worry a lot about my neglected blog, thinking I'd never have readers if I didn't have regular updates. But then I read this post by Sarah Mae . (*Disclaimer) And I came to the conclusion that I won't do the same thing. I don't want to be so popular that I feel like I have to be accountable to a fan base. I won't get so busy with my blog or anything else online or in real life that I neglect my God...

Not eating (cow) dairy makes it difficult to create a yummy, smooth, creamy chicken and rice dish. (Yes, I could make my own cream of x soup using goat milk, but that's like making two meals and only eating one.) Enter the pressure cooker. I put this together last night because I wanted to start it and walk away. Now I'm writing this so I don't forget what I did, because it was scrumptious! Creamy-without-the-Cream Chicken and Rice 2 cups brown basmati rice 4 cups water 1 red onion, chopped 1 pound baby carrots 2 pounds FROZEN cubed RAW chicken (yes!) That's it! I simply put all these ingredients into the cooker, set the timer for 16 minutes, then walked away. An hour later, I opened the lid, stirred it up and put it on the table! After it had been on for a while, I remembered that I had not put any seasoning in the pot. Not even salt. Oops. At the table I offered salt, pepper, Trader Joe's Garlic Salt, and Trader Joe's Everyday Seasoning as toppers....

Some friends and I are taking the " 31 Days to Clean: Having a Martha House the Mary Way " challenge. We were going to start May 1st, hoping to end May 31st, but decided that if we want to take Sundays off and still hope to end on May 31st, we should start today. Today's Mary Challenge was to create a list of why I want to have a clean house, then write a mission statement "in the form of a paragraph, a poem, or a list." Here is mine. It is a condensation of my "why I want my house to be clean list." When pondering what type of wording to use, I considered that the worthy woman of Proverbs 31 was a woman of action. When reading the verses about her, notice the quantity of verbs describing this busy lady's activities. I desire to emulate her (which to me is not that overwhelming because we know she wasn't perfect--only Christ was and we are supposed to imitate Him--there's a thought can be overwhelming), so I chose to use words that woul...