Weekly Writing in October 2016 Link-up – Week 2

By bobbi
October 7, 2016
1 Comment

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Welcome to the Weekly Writing in October Challenge – Week 2! A big thanks to all of you who linked up last week! Over the next few days, I’ll be reading through your posts. 🙂

If you didn’t get a chance to link-up last week, hop in this week. The main thing, as bloggers, is to work our writing muscles and share a bit of our hearts to our readers. You can get more info and read the introductory post here.

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If, like me, you are also participating in the 31 Day Challenge, feel free to link up your favorite post of the week. And since today I am grateful for other bloggers who are posting more often this month, I am counting this post as my 31 Days of Gratitude (Day 8) post. 😉

The Weekly Writing Challenge main page is here.

Have fun and remember – Today: Write!!

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Link-up Guidelines

1. Link up below. Make sure you’re sending us to your actual post, and not to your general blog address.

2. Add a link back here so others can play along.

3. If you want to use it, here is the html code for the logo:

The link up will be active for a week. Have fun!

PS – You can follow RoL on Bloglovin, Feedly or another news feed. If you are a social media fan like me, we can stay in touch through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, GoodReads, Letterboxd, or Spotify, 😉

An InLinkz Link-up

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31 Days of Gratitude (Day 7): Feast of the Rosary

By bobbi
October 7, 2016
No Comments

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It’s Day 7 of the #write31days challenge. My topic is 31 Days of Gratitude. You can see my previous Gratitude posts here.

Want to join the writing challenge but are unable to write everyday? Join me for the Weekly Writing Challenge in October instead.

Now for today’s post…

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Today the church celebrates the feast of the holy rosary. It’s a beautiful feast day but I wasn’t always a fan of the rosary. Oh, sure I’d hang one in my car as the cultural Catholic thing to do but I’ve had a love/dislike relationship with the rosary. It wasn’t so much the theological understanding that troubled me. Frankly, it was the fact that sometimes praying it was a little boring. Why the need to keep saying the same thing over and over again?

However, after a difficult break-up and period away from God in my early twenties, Mary was very influential is helping me turn back to her Son. As I grew older, there was a definite draw towards the rosary.

It’s not always easy for me to quiet my easily distracted mind but somehow, closing my eyes and saying the repetitive but calming words of the Hail Mary has helped me to slow down and meditate on the life of Jesus. It gives me peace, as well as the opportunity to pray for my family, friends and the world at large.

There are times when I’ll pray only a couple of decades, such as when I am driving about town. Other times I will pray the whole rosary such as when I take a morning walk or when I meet weekly with school parents to pray the rosary together. Sure, I admit there are mornings when I am so cranky and stressed with getting the kids off to school on time that the last thing I want to do is pray a rosary. However, Brian usually reminds me that this is when I need it the most. And dang it, as much as I may not want to admit it, he’s right. It does calm me down and turns my heart back to God.

So today, for the gift of the rosary and for a heavenly Mother who is always pointing me to her Son, I am truly thankful. 🙂

Want to know more? Here are a few resources:

If the rosary is something you aren’t familiar with, you can read about the history of it here.
If you want to know how to pray the rosary, this PDF – How to Recite the Rosary from New Advent is really helpful.
If you want to read how we started praying a nightly decade of the rosary as a family, read this post – A Sacred Space for Family Prayer.
8×10 prints of the Mysteries of the Rosary are available for purchase at EWTN.
Want to listen to the rosary in the car or while you are working around the house? There a number of apps available. The Laudate app has a many Catholic resources, including various versions of the rosary. Personally, I use the Rosary Audio by Gaussuan Knights. (If you have another rosary app suggestion, please leave it in the comments.)

I hope these help. 🙂

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31 Days of Gratitude (Day 6): Throwback Thursday – Healthier Pumpkin Donuts

By bobbi
October 6, 2016
No Comments

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It’s Day 6 of the #write31days challenge. My topic is 31 Days of Gratitude. You can see my previous Gratitude posts here.

Want to join the writing challenge but are unable to write everyday? Join me for the Weekly Writing Challenge in October instead.

I’ve got to admit that the only way I am going to make it writing 31 days in a row is to cheat a little. I’ll be having Throwback Thursdays and reposting past posts. Here is one I posted two years ago in this date.

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I love Fall and today was the first day that it felt like it. The fog cleared and the sun came out, yet there was still a little chill in the air. There are pumpkins everywhere and changing leaves and it makes me want to bake something that will make the house smell like cinnamon and nutmeg. So today I’m trying a new pumpkin recipe – Chocolate Covered Pumpkin Donuts from My Whole Food Life.com. I especially liked that these donuts are baked, made with whole wheat and have no processed sugar.

Normally, I change a recipe to my liking but for the donuts, I followed Melissa’s ingredients exactly. I think the next time I may use a touch less ginger and cloves.

Ingredients

For the donut:
1 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour (To make them gluten free, just sub GF all purpose flour)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
1/3 cup applesauce
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg (I used a flax egg replacer)
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup pumpkin
1/4 cup milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)

For the chocolate coating:
2 cups chocolate chips
3-4 T milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)

Melissa’s Instructions

Preheat oven to 350.
Grease a mini muffin tray.
In one bowl mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and spices.
In another bowl mix pumpkin, maple syrup, applesauce, egg, milk and vanilla until smooth.
Add dry to wet and mix just until combined.
Spoon mixture into the mini muffin tins and bake for about 11 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
After the mini muffins have cooled start the chocolate coating.

Chocolate Coating
Using a double boiler, melt the chocolate chips and the milk until you get a smooth chocolate sauce.
Roll the donuts into the chocolate sauce until it is covered.
Then place each covered donut onto a baking sheet or plate and put in the freezer for at least 10-15 min.
Store them in the fridge on a plate or baking sheet.

(Melissa has a lot of other delicious looking recipes that I want to try. Check out her blog at – http://mywholefoodlife.com/.

Now, when I made Melissa’s recipe, I didn’t have mini muffin tins. Instead I made one batch in my mini-donut pan and one batch in my regular donut pan. I also didn’t have a double boiler so instead I stuck a handful of chocolate chips in a bowl with a dash of milk and microwaved it for 30 seconds. I stirred it and added milk to make it the right consistency. It worked great.

The final verdict. When I tasted the donut plain, I wasn’t convinced since it seemed like it had too many spices and not enough sugar. However, after topping each with the chocolate, which added plenty of sweetness, I thought they tasted really good. The proof? I can’t show you a photo of the mini-donuts because the kids wiped out the batch. So there you go. 😉

A “healthy” fall treat that the kids loved, for that I am thankful. 🙂

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31 Days of Gratitude (Day 5): An Unexpected Gift & Lesson in Prayer

By bobbi
October 5, 2016
7 Comments

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It’s Day 5 of the #write31days challenge. My topic is 31 Days of Gratitude. You can see my previous Gratitude posts here.

Want to join the writing challenge but are unable to write everyday? Join me for the Weekly Writing Challenge in October instead.

Now for today’s post…

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Yesterday I talked about my prayer journal and how the beauty of its design is pleasing to the eye and makes me more inclined to use it. Like my planners, I’m not a big fan of plain black and white. I like some color and cheer to be added to it. That preference plays a part in this little story.

As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago I attended the Blessed Is She Team Retreat in Wisconsin. We received some lovely gifts and one was a print from HatchPrintsShop.etsy.com. Katrina does beautiful hand lettering. To give you an idea, this is the print I will be ordering from her next.

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Photo Credit – HatchPrintShop

So as I was sitting there with the others and all the ladies were opening their envelopes and pulling out similar gorgeous prints with flowers and lovely colors. I was eager to see what mine looked like! I wanted to know what inspirational quote the Holy Spirit was going to give me for the weekend.

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Photo Credit – HatchPrintShop

I opened my envelope and pulled out a pretty but decidedly simple print. There were no flowers and no quote, just a simple JMJ for Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I thought, “Huh. That wasn’t what I was expecting. Oh, well.” I didn’t have much time to think about it since our next talk was about the start so I put it away.

Later, when I was in a small group discussion, we were talking about prayer in our personal life. I was quietly thinking about it when suddenly my mind turned to the print I received. Our Lord (interiorly) spoke to my heart saying, “Do you know why you received that print? Because you need to get back to the basics. Sometimes you get so caught up in the distractions that you lose the essence of prayer. You need to get back to Me and you. Just be with Me.” Whoa.

Later that night, we were led into a quiet meditation by Beth and (in my mind’s eye) Jesus pulled me into his arms and we spoke like we haven’t spoken in awhile. I understood what He meant by me needing to have time with Him alone and nothing else. It moved me to tears because prayer is not easy for me.

p_lobos_4_15_a I remember a priest once explaining that sometimes we treat our prayer life like mountain climbing. When we go mountain climbing we research the activity, we buy hiking clothes and equipment and do all this prep work but eventually we’ve got to stop talking and preparing for it and just start climbing.

I’ll often fall into that trap. It is easier for me to talk about prayer, write about it, and find tools that will help me to pray but eventually I need to just shut up, get on my knees and be with Jesus. It’s a process and each day God gives me the opportunity to let go a little of my “Martha” and embrace more of my “Mary.” I’ll be working on it until the day I die but Our Lord is always there to teach me and call me back to Him.

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So although, the JMJ print I received would not have been my first choice, now I love it. I hung it up in the kitchen by the counter where I make dinner. Now whenever I see it, I remember Jesus’ words to my heart, “Just be with Me.” And for that, I am truly thankful.

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31 Days of Gratitude (Day 4): May Designs Prayer & Gratitude Journal

By bobbi
October 4, 2016
7 Comments

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It’s Day 4 of the #write31days challenge. My topic is 31 Days of Gratitude. You can see my previous Gratitude posts here.

Want to join the writing challenge but are unable to write everyday? Join me for the Weekly Writing Challenge in October instead.

Now for today’s post…

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Anyone who has followed my blog for awhile knows that I have a thing for cute paper products. I love planners but have little love for plain black and white ones. I need to seduce my lazier side with color and cheery pages in order to trick myself into being more organized. I will sometimes play the same tricks with my prayer life. Now I shouldn’t need glitz to get myself to pray (more on that topic tomorrow) but let’s face it, sometimes you gotta do what works.

That’s where the lovely May Designs notebooks come in. I heard a lot of great things about them and got a coupon on Facebook so I decided to give them a try. You are able to custom order your notebook and they have so many options! I bought a graphed notebook, a fitness journal and a prayer/gratitude journal. The prayer/gratitude journal is my favorite because it is gorgeous inside!

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The prayer journal is set up for 40 days of prayer and gratitude. Here’s the inside cover.

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The pages look like this. So pretty, right?

I thought it would be the perfect tool on my 31 Days of Gratitude because I want this to be more that just a quick writing exercise. I really want to go deeper and make it mean something in my life. Getting page views and likes on FB are fine but that mean squat if the words I write here are not heart felt and making a difference in my spiritual life.

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So my pretty little prayer journal inspires me to turn off my phone, log off the computer, turn off Netflix and the stereo and quiet myself before God so I can pray. Then I can reflect on what God is speaking to my heart, write it in my journal and later share a bit of it with you.

It may be superficial and frivolous (go ahead and roll your eyes) but I can’t help it. Today I am grateful for my pretty prayer journal and the opportunity to actually use it. 😉

What are you especially thankful for today?

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Blog Archives

Weekly Writing in October 2016 Link-up – Week 2

31 Days of Gratitude (Day 7): Feast of the Rosary

31 Days of Gratitude (Day 6): Throwback Thursday – Healthier Pumpkin Donuts

31 Days of Gratitude (Day 5): An Unexpected Gift & Lesson in Prayer

31 Days of Gratitude (Day 4): May Designs Prayer & Gratitude Journal