A Little Bit of Home

I've been wanting to pick up my camera more often so yesterday I snapped a few photos around the house. I love our house! We're renting a cute old house not far from downtown, which we love! The house has the original hardwood floors, and I'm pretty sure these doors are original too. There's so much character, and we're loving adding our personal style as well.

I almost didn't take this photo because the front was so nasty, but I figured I'd love to look back on our old door one day. This afternoon I finally took a rag to the door and frames and accidentally washed off some of the paint! Oops! 

The colors of the house are... interesting. Not what I would have chosen, but the lady we're renting from loves them. I do love our cute mat though! Unfortunately, the front porch is inside our gate, so it's not used. (Well, except for by the cat, since his food bowls are there.)

Casey and I are loving incorporating more green into our home and bringing in plants! We're accumulating succulents and also snagged a Majestic Palm for $8! It was in poor condition, so we got it for a steal. We accidentally overwatered it, but are trying to learn how to take proper care of it! I'll have to get a photo of it soon. (You can see it in the background of this photo.)

The yellow bathroom. Y'all, this bathroom. That yellow tile (though I love the hexagon shape). The yellow tub. And sink. And counter. But I'm truly learning to love it. The white curtain and rug from Target help break up the yellow at least a little bit. Also, I took some tips from The Home Edit and completely reorganized our bathroom cabinet using some adorable bins and boxes I scored at TJ Maxx and Target! I thought I'd really hate the bathroom when we moved in (Casey actually thought I'd give the house a "no" because of it), but it's not as bad as I thought it would be! 

Last, but certainly not least, is our coffee station! For some reason I've always wanted to have a coffee station, and I was thrilled to inherit the family Singer sewing machine which was the perfect coffee cart! One day I'd love to have my coffee mug collection displayed on the wall behind it (see my inspiration), but in the meantime my DIY scroll looks cute! I used this tutorial.

That's it for now! Hope you have a great weekend!

A New Chapter

Every time I get on here I'm like, wow! Life has changed so much! And it has! (Probably because I so rarely blog!) Obviously the biggest thing is that Casey and I are married! People ask me a lot how married life is and I tell them it feels right. I can't believe we've only been married a little over a month. It feels like we've been married for longer, and I think that's just because it feels so natural! This is how life is supposed to be!

The second thing is that I'm living in South Louisiana! (Which I mentioned in my last post.) When we started dating, I knew if we got married that I'd be the one moving. Not because we talked about it, but because I'd felt for a while that I'd eventually find myself living further south. And here I am! Though it was tough to leave home and my family and my church, I really love it here.

We live in Hammond, just a walk away from cute downtown. We love walking downtown to the many delicious restaurants! On Saturday mornings, we walk to breakfast (a lot of places have outdoor seating so Oxford comes with us!) then head to the farmers market for a few goodies. This area is known for strawberries and strawberries are my favorite, so I often get those!

Here are a few photos that I've taken on some of our walks!

Taking New Territory

So Joshua said to the people of Israel, How long will you put off going in to take possession of the land, which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you? Joshua 18:3

The children of Israel, y’all. Those crazy people. You’d think after all God did for them, they’d trust Him completely, no matter what. Instead they just rebel and rebel and rebel over and over again. As soon as things get bad, they forget God exists and try to take things into their own hands.

In this verse, they’re procrastinating. Raise of hands for the procrastinators? (My hand is up really high right now.) They’re putting off going into the land that God has given them.

Why? Because they were content where there were.

Where were they exactly? They were wandering. They’d been wandering a loooooonnnng time, over 40 years. They didn’t have homes or permanent structures because they moved from place to place. But now, they had land! In fact, they’d been taking some of it already! They already conquered Jericho and many other cities and people. So why not go settle down into the new land?

If you’ve ever moved before, you know it can be scary. I just moved to a new town a few weeks ago, five hours away from where I lived before. I still can’t find my way around anywhere without Maps on my iPhone. It’s new and I feel lost a lot. Here there are supermarkets I’ve never heard of and the closest Michael’s is in another town!

It was scary to move here. To move away from home and all that I knew. Truly, I just had to trust God because I knew it was His will for me to move here.

It was God’s will for them to have and live in the land. Not to just conquer it and kill all the people and then move on. But it was theirs to have! It was great land, and God provided it just for them.

And yet… they didn’t want to go into it. Because they were content in their current situation.

How often does that happen to us? That we’re content where we are when God has something better for us? Don’t get me wrong, contentment is a good thing, but sometimes it’s so easy to be so okay with where we are that we think we don’t need anything else. But God has something greater for you.

It’s easy to become content in your walk with God. To be just fine with the amount you pray or read your Bible (or don’t). (My hand is up again because I’m totally guilty of this.) God wants to go deeper with you. He wants to know you more and wants to reveal more of Himself to you as well. Maybe he wants to take you further in your ministry, but if you are so content with where you are, you have no reason to move into what He has for you.

Maybe you’re scared of what He has for you. New territory is scary! Not knowing what to expect… scary! Even the Israelites, who had seen God’s miraculous works a million times (honestly a million is hardly an exaggeration), had trouble trusting in what He had in store for them. But thankfully, we serve a God who is completely, totally trustworthy, and who has greater plans for us than we even can think or imagine.

Application:

Are you content with where you are? In your walk with God? In your ministry? Maybe in your job or home or some other area of your life. Seek God and see if He has more for you. Be willing to step outside your comfort zone. Channel strength from the Holy Spirit and take a new step. Spend a little longer in prayer time, find a new Bible study, take on more responsibilities at church. See what God will do in your life and how He will bless you even more abundantly.

Bloom

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!
2 Corinthians 5:17

I recently made a friend on Instagram, @dear.abby.rose. This month she is hosting the #EverydayBlessingsChallenge and I decided to join in. The basics: Post a photo every day of something that you're thankful for or makes you happy and include a Bible verse. The point is to focus more on the blessings that surround us every day. I'm sure it will be a fun challenge!

Today I took this photo of these beautiful daffodils. As I quickly typed out the jumbled thoughts in my head that went along with the verse I chose, I realized that my short Instagram caption could be a whole blog post! I'm not even sure where those words came from--they surprised me as I typed them! It's in moments like those where I truly believe God is doing His thing and using me to get the glory!

I picked up these daffodils at Trader Joe's on Sunday. I love stopping at Trader Joe's in Baton Rouge on my way back home from visiting Casey. They had a huge box of them... but they hadn't bloomed yet. They looked like asparagus. Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

I didn't buy them because I wanted to put an asparagus look-a-like on my nightstand. I bought them because I knew that in just a few days they would be beautiful.

And, oh, how beautiful they have bloomed! Every time I look at them I see spring!

Something ugly became beautiful, just as the old becomes new.

You've made mistakes. You've failed. You have a past and let's just not talk about it okay? But despite all that, God thought you were beautiful. He thought you were worth buying. So He bought you with his life and His blood.

Just like I knew the potential of the unbloomed flowers, God knows your potential. He knows it because He's the one who created it.

He wants to turn your old into new. Release your old to Him. Allow him to make you a new creation.

It's your time to BLOOM.

Waco Weekend

I had a whole post typed up about our weekend in Waco and then my computer froze! So I lost my words but have lots of photos! Besides, Rachel did a great recap here!

The girls and I had a blast celebrating Rachel with a weekend getaway. Julianne and Sarah managed to convert our drab hotel room into a cozy getaway in the few minutes it took Rachel and me to park the car and get the rest of the bags inside. When your friends are extra...

On Saturday we went to the farmers' market, the Silos (we got cupcakes from their food truck and they were super yummy!), and Heritage Homestead. We made new friends and met up with an old one for dinner. Then we ended the evening with face masks and Coco. There's nothing better than having friends you can talk to for hours on end about anything. We can have fun doing anything or nothing! We make a sensational team.

Also, we made a besties instagram hashtag: #LagniappeLadiesWander. Click to see more pics from the weekend! OR you can go check out my saved stories on Instagram! Find me: @thefamousJB.

My besties are the best. These ladies mean the world to me. They’ve been there for me from the very beginning—when we first realized we all loved spy books and sang High School Musical songs in the racquetball room at church. They’ve helped me through many a bad day with encouraging words, sleepovers that involved very little sleep, flowers to brighten up my home, and during a particularly bad time, they showed up with bags of groceries and made me some delicious meals. They’ve shown me the love of Christ when I felt unloved. They’ve made me laugh until I cried. They helped me find my way when I was lost. They’ve encouraged and supported my dreams. I treasure their friendship so much and I will never ever take it for granted. Love y’all! 💗 #LagniappeLadiesWander #SistersOfGillian

A post shared by JB (@thefamousjb) on Mar 16, 2018 at 11:54am PDT

Valentine's Day Cookies

Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday! I love how the world is filled with pink and hearts and flowers and chocolate and chocolate covered strawberries. I love love! 

Last year around Valentine's Day, I was trying to figure out how to raise money for a missions trip. Casey convinced me to sell cookies. So I did, and I was amazed at the response! It ended up turning into a side business for me so I get to make lots of cookies!

This year I decided to share the love on Valentine's Day. A few months back, I felt God leading me to donate the money I received to an orphanage. I'd connected with a friend, Katie, who is currently in Brazil doing missions work and I thought it would be really cool to give the money to an orphanage there. What I didn't know was that the host missionaries she's staying with have spent the last few years raising funding to open an orphanage! So that was that and I partnered with Jubilee Orphanage. 

The Jubilee Foundation is truly amazing. They've been helping families in the community with things like food, clothing, and school supplies. Katie sends me their stories often as she meets the people the foundation has helped. The foundation currently owns land for the orphanage and needs to raise enough funds to start their building plans. I'm so grateful that I was able to be a part of this and not only raise money for the orphanage but also awareness. I hope it put a spark in someone's heart to pray for and support Jubilee Orphanage.

Enjoy some photos of the cookies I made! I don't know how many cookies we made total. Hundreds, definitely. Maybe over a thousand. It was a ton of baking and hard work, and I was grateful for the help and support from my mom, her husband, my sweet guy, and my cousin. I couldn't have done it without them!

Coffee Date

One thing I want to do more is pull out my DSLR more often. I've become so accustomed to just using my iPhone. I was going through photos from Singapore and realized that I only pulled out my camera twice! What?? I can't even believe myself.

While being in Singapore was obviously super special and different and exciting, one of my favorite things to do is document the daily stuff with photos. Hence why I have over 10,000 photos on my iPhone. Oops.

Here are a few snapshots we took a few months back at Rhino Coffee. We went for breakfast (and coffee... duh) and ended up hanging out and chatting for several hours. I don't think I could even tell you a single thing we talked about, but it was one of my favorite "dates". Spending hours talking to my favorite human (and looking at my favorite human *heart eyes*) while drinking coffee... it truly can't be beat.