I love to cook

I'm making dinner for a small group of friends this weekend. I can't wait. I need the creative outlet just as much as I need to socialize.
My life is consumed these days with the planning of the midsingles conference. (58 days and counting!) As I get more and more involved in the details of it all, I find that I need to awaken the creative side of my brain as well. I need to start thinking about the fun, decorative touches to add to the conference. And that side of my brain is stagnating.
But that's why I love cooking. It brings it all to life- socializing, feeding, eating, loving, touching, tasting, and creating.
My friends (unless they read this, and I don't expect that they will) have no idea what they are in for. I'm pulling out all the stops- 4 course meal, tablescapes, the whole kit and caboodle. I'm making homemade Italian bread, shopska salad (because it's cheap, easy, tasty, and I miss Europe), homemade spaghetti and pasta, and something fun for dessert. Haven't decided what dessert will be. Probably something light and fruity. And I'm making basil lemonade.
Nearly every ingredient will come from my garden, which makes me very happy. (And my pocketbook happy.)
Since I know they won't read this, I'll share this detail too. One couple is being set up. The guy knows, the girl does not. I believe in not telling both parties, so that they aren't both anxious and nervous. He isn't behind it. He doesn't even know her name. Of course, he also hasn't accepted the invitation yet, so there's that. I'm keeping the numbers 4 girls, 4 guys. Only problem is I'm one guy short. Presumably the one that would be my date. That's a problem. Gotta work on that.
Also need to figure out where to buy Serbian soft cheeses. And clean my couch.
And maybe decorate the living room.
But first, I have to finish getting over bronchitis and this migraine. Which, I might add, do not go well together. (Coughing + migraine = misery!)

I miss July already.

August always depresses me. The weather is erratic and oppressive, schedules are unpredictable, the humidity will try to kill you, and you know that at the end of the month, summer is gone, and another long, boring, cold winter is right around the corner, and all the beautiful green things are about to die.
August, you are not my friend.
July was a great month. I spent very little of it at home. I was in Europe for the bulk of it obviously, and then I spent the last 10 days in Roanoke with my nephews. But now I'm back home, facing reality in my little apartment.
Reality is confusing to me these days. I don't have a full picture on what it looks like right now. I'm very busy, but unemployed. I'm writing up a storm, and getting lots of publications, but the money just isn't coming in. I'm tour-sick and missing my tour friends who all live on the other side of the country. And yet, very happy to be home and ready to catch up with my friends that I haven't seen all month.
My mother has been getting into this new fad called "dressing your truth." I'm not too into it, because most of it seems sort of commonsense to me. But I can see how maybe it isn't that way for everyone. We've talked a lot lately about which colors, styles, and haircuts are "your truth." (And ultimately decided I already dress and style "my truth." Go me.)
But now that I'm back home and in my own little apartment, I'm thinking about whether or not my apartment reflects my "truth." I think I mentioned it last year sometime that when I moved here I had to make the sad decision to let my storage unit go. In other words, I lost all my belongings that were in it. It wasn't cost effective to fly cross country to save anything from it.
I had spent several years building up little collection and reflections of me. I had lovingly restored most of my own furniture, and took great pride in several of the pieces. My decorations were unique and unusual, vibrant, colorful, and a great reflection of the things I love and enjoy. (I had an awesome vintage movie poster collection as well as several really cool Broadway record albums.)
The most heartbreaking loss was my book collection. I had around 100 books in storage, all of which I had read and loved.
But that's all gone now.
And I'm rebuilding, slowly but surely. It's not quite the same when you live with a roommate. And it's not easy to do whilst unemployed (again).
It's giving me a lot of time to really think about what matters to me, and what I want my home to say about me. I don't like or want trendy, typical furniture, but you wouldn't know that by looking at my current home. I do like statement pieces that show or share something I love. (I have a great big picture of the DC cherry blossoms in the living room right now. And my bedroom is decorated in maps.)
And so I sit and wonder about who I really am, and have I crafted a world around me that really reflects that? Or are my surroundings simply the result of circumstances? 

Time to get the gardening gloves out!

My one big goal for this summer is to plant and grow a vegetable garden. This is far more challenging than it actually sounds.
For starters, in spite of the fact that I live on a mountain, in a fairly rural area, I have no place to plant my garden. Our yard is on the seriously steep mountainside. It goes straight down. It doesn't matter that there is an acre of nature back there. It's too steep, and too covered in trees.
Exhibit A: Our yard last autumn.

There is a little bit of room in the front/side yard to plant a garden, but there are deer and raccoons to be dealt with. And there are already a bunch of flowers planted there.
Exhibit B:

And let's face it, vegetables in the front yard is a little awkward.
And so I am forced to attempt container gardening up on the deck. But let me explain something here, this is also not as easy as it sounds. Our deck does not have stairs to the ground on the outside. It is only accessible from inside the house, and to Spiderman, and apparently a large number of raccoons. The raccoons have been known to somehow scale our deck that is a good 50-75 feet off the ground, bypass my ever-vigilant dog, and pull my plants out of the containers.
Exhibit C:

So I've invested in bucket gardening, vertical pallet gardening, deck rail container gardening, and just plain old container gardening.
Why so many different styles?
Well, that's where this story gets funny.
Last year I bought a Topsy Turvy Garden, planted a few tomatoes, and waited for the magic to happen.
And waited some more.
Nothing ever happened. My tomatoes never grew. The end.
A few weeks ago I hired a kid to come over and do a bunch of yard work for me. In the process he found some tomato seeds, and half a bag of potting soil. I told him to toss them all in the dead Topsy Turvy. And promptly forgot about it.
In the meantime I have put starts into a few buckets, and hung them up in trees in the yard. I put in green peppers, tomatoes, and strawberries. I've actually tended to them. 2 of them are next to the Topsy Turvy, but I never thought much of it.
Exhibit D:

(I have done a lot of trimming, mulching, cleaning, and improving in this area since this picture was taken. In fact, this is a 'before' picture. I will plant the 'after' picture when my new gladiolus pop up. (Assuming the raccoons don't kill them. Again.))

I also purchased several seeds and a start kit, and planted sunflowers, Roma tomatoes, sugar peas, and jalapenos. The kit said to put in 3 seeds per disk/start, because only half tend to actually grow. For once in my life, I actually followed the instructions. And I've tended to my little start kit like a very attentive mother bird. Until a few days ago it was growing on my kitchen table, and I couldn't help but go look at my little sproutlings multiple times a day.
Sometime last week I noticed a few green leaves sticking up over the top of the Topsy Turvy. That little handful of leftover seeds has easily produced 30 tomato plants!
I have counted up the starts in my kit that have actually come through, and I have a good 30-40 more tomato plants!!
70 tomato plants!!!
Exhibit E:

Heaven help me I have no idea what to do with that many tomato plants! (Keep in mind one tomato plant can easily produce more than 10 tomatoes!)
Not to mention, where the heck you actually plant 80 tomatoes when the obvious answer of "in the ground in your garden" doesn't work! And you have deer and raccoon problems!
And so you have multiple random container garden attempts!
Oh and there are a good 20 sunflowers popping up, about 10 sugar pea plants (which I just discovered will grow to about the size of a tomato plant!), and maybe, if I am lucky, 3 jalapeno plants. I'm not even sure that they are jalapenos. They might just be more tomatoes. Have mercy!
I also planted 3 more developed (not from seed) pepper plants- 3 green peppers, 1 sweet pepper, and 1 anaheim pepper.
And did I mention the 10 strawberry plants?
Yeah, I have been a little bit busy growing stuff!
This weekend I will move all of my seedlings to their new containers. (The sunflowers are going straight into the ground. I'm not going to try those in a container!) I've started to build my pallet garden, and well, let's just say, DISASTER! Total Pinterest Fail! Hilariously bad, terrible, ridiculous FAIL! There will be a blog post in the coming days illustrating just how bad and funny that fail was!
I realize that I could just throw some of the starts away, but for some reason that feels strangely unethical, like murder or something! Plus I'm sure a lot of them won't survive the transplanting. So I'm going to give all of my little babies a chance to live and give me food!
I'm in for a ton of work this summer to keep this many plants growing, especially with so many alternative container methods! But hopefully all this work will mean enough tomatoes to make the best darn spaghetti sauce ever more than once this summer, plus a few batches of summer salsa!
But here's the most awesome part, people! I HAVE GROWN A STRAWBERRY!!
Exhibit F:

We are off to an awesome summer.



Hey You! Check out my new novels, "You Heard It Here First" and the sequel "This Just In!"

In which I drive 600 miles just to amuse myself in a hot pink dress

At some point on Friday I realized I had nothing to do this weekend. As in, not one real dang thing. I tried to entertain myself by going to see "Men in Black III" (which did not disappoint at all). But I was still faced with 2-3 days of nothing. 

As always my summer schedule is ridiculous. Starting with this upcoming weekend I am booked every single weekend for the next 2 straight months. Two singles conferences (one I am attending, one I am speaking at), youth conference, girls camp, the Faith and Freedom coalition, family reunions, and my parents visiting, are just some of the activities I have going on in June and July. (And I'm still trying to find a way to get myself to the GOP Convention in Tampa in August.) I mean, who needs sleep and free time, right?

So naturally, faced with busy, crazy weekends for the next 8 weeks, I figured, hey, what they heck, I should drive to DC and have a little fun this weekend, right?

And so I did. I needed to do some shopping (and I did), visit my sister (and I did), visit some wonderful friends (and I did), and there was a singles party concert thing (and I went). It was completely insane to make a last second trip up there and then come right back, and I am EXHAUSTED for it today. But it was worth it.

It met my goal of doing something social and meeting people for the week.  And I got to see some of the most beautiful Virginia countryside. If you have never had the pleasure of driving along the back roads of Central Virginia (also known as horse country and hunt country), you are just missing out. It really does not get more beautiful than that part of the world.

Speaking of shopping-
I found a cute, long, blue maxi dress that I really liked. It came in 4 colors, but only in my size in hot pink. I have made it a personal choice to never wear hot pink. Why? Because my blond hair stands out enough. And there's just something about blonds in hot pink I never care for. Some girls can pull it off, but I'm just not one of them, in my opinion. You just stand out way too much. WAY too much! But I had convinced myself I needed this dress. Therefore, I bought it in hot pink. And sure enough, I got more comments about wearing pink, and looking like a Barbie doll in one night than I have had on any outfit I have ever worn in my life. I ended up wearing it to church today because I was running massively late. (Normally I would not consider it to be nice enough for church.) And AGAIN with the comments. (But all of the 12 yr old girls were in agreement that they liked it. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing though.)

And yet, not one person commented on the fact that I cut 4 inches off my hair!!

Let it be known, I am retiring the dress, and resuming my no hot pink mantra.

Perfect Summer Night

Tonight I am working on my novel from the comfort of my lawn chair on my balcony, with my cute little japanese lanterns lights all aglow on the railing. I have beautiful country music playing from the laptop. It's a lovely 80 degrees outside.
I'd call this the perfect summer night.


Thank you to the commenters on the novel passage below. I really appreciate it. I hope a few more people leave some feedback as well. When Juli and I wrote Beyond Perfection I never really faced a monumental block. There were days where it was hard to be disciplined and keep writing. But I never really got frustrated and unable to decide what to do with a character. Many writers will tell you that the characters tell them where they will go. And that is very true. I do feel that at times. I think the block this time is my own personal emotional block, unwilling to let the characters have to feel certain pain, because it means I will have to feel it as the writer as well. I'm not sure if that will even make sense outside of my own head. But there you have it.