Spring in NYC

I'm offering this to you all for no other reason than the fact that I liked it! When we were in NYC this month the cherry blossoms were just barely starting, and I wondered what they would look like by now. When I ran across this link today it was irresistable. Enjoy!

Oh Boy!

Prom night is coming, the dress is bought, the princess is twirling while she looks for her dancing shoes. Graduation follows quickly on the heels of prom, and the summer will fly by. Oh boy.

Sunday Hospitality

(My apologies: I have no idea why everything is underlined today!)

I've been reading a book called "Static" by Ron Martoia. I loved this quote and thought I would share it with you. By the way, for those of you who care about such things, I did NOT bake that yummy looking bread. I saw it in NYC and couldn't resist. And the tables and chairs are at City Place, in front of Sloan's Ice Cream.

"Another thing I learned is that great food and a great setting create space for love and life to flow. This is one respect in which other cultures around the world are very different from ours. Meals in Italy, France, Hungary, and Nepal and other parts of Asia are seen more as events, focal gathering spots to connect, debrief, and experience life together. I want to suggest that in some ways this is part of God's original intention for the Garden -- the full flow of love, sharing, food, drink, and conviviality that come in that setting."

Sick Day

I spent most of this day asleep or wishing I was asleep. I feel like I have mono. So imagine my delight when Kylie and Jillian announced they were doing a sleepover tonight. Fear crept into my soul as I imagined them attempting that! Don't worry...we put it off for another night.

So the picture up above is the pitcher of homemade limeade I made for dinner on Sunday night. Doesn't it look good? Does that count as something creative this week? Hope so! I'd have put a pic of my poundcake up there, too, but it didn't last long enough.

Palm Beach Gardens Tourist Attraction

What is there to say about such a cultural icon as this? Now doesn't it make you want to start singing the Oscar Meyer Wiener song? I know that when I saw it in the parking lot of the Palm Beach Gardens Mall, I just HAD to stop and take a picture. And lucky you...I'm sharing it! I was laughing, because another guy pulled over to take a picture too. I think there is a deeply buried child in all of us that just wants the world to be simple again: a place where the Oscar Meyer Wiener symbolizes a fresh wave of excitement rolling over the town. Too bad it was really just a stop in a parking lot of the mall.

One More video of the fire

This is the best footage of the fire: David took it.

Click Here to see the Fire

Picture of Fire in Square Lake

Fire in Square Lake

This is the house next door to my mom's house. At about 12:45 we began to hear sounds like fireworks. We looked out the back door (having just finished Greg Reade's statistics mid-term with him) and saw flame rising well above the Free's house. That was the direction of Mom's house, so we went running. David and Bill managed to get Mom out of her house ("My hair!") before the power went off. We all spent the next hour watching her neighbor's house literally burn to the ground. The embers were flying, the firetrucks arrived in force (7 of them, plus numerous police cars we didn't count) and the neighbors all crawled out to see what was happening. The man in this house heard the fireworks sound and found the fire. He grabbed his cell phone and his computer and ran. Now that's all he owns.

Top Ten Moments in NYC

1. Walking into the first Starbucks with JR Kerr and David to get my first espresso of the trip.
2. Top of the Empire State building taking useless pictures that sure were fun to take. Could have done without the security lines, though.
3. Sitting at the long table at Nikko's after walking through Central Park with David and Jay watching the gang from Buddy's church (Grace Fellowship) and the gang from Todd's church (Christ Fellowship) get to know each other.
4. Lunch in the basement of Macy's with the same gang.
5. The free books in the SWAG bag from Q!!!!
   
6. SOHO: three good espresso bars (! no wonder it's a top moment!), designer boutiques, an amazing Apple store that was offering an iMovie tutorial in its cool theater, not needing the $220 denim shorts I found in a boutique.
7. Sitting on the rooftop terrace of our hotel with Todd and David after the Fray pondering what the lasting takeaways of Q would be while we watched the Empire State Building.
8. Making Spring ride the subway.
9. Riding the wooden escalator at Macy's. It was so...authentic.
10. Returning to the upper West side for dinner at Bodrum, an amazing Mediterranean restaurant David and I found through research.

I am Home

Plane was an hour delayed, then we were #30 for take off. (No kidding). When we got to #3 for take off, a man in the front of the plane was taken violently ill and we had to return to the terminal. We finally took off after having sat on the plane for three hours already (not including the original delay). Three hour flight and we arrived home at 12:30 to... an empty house. At 2:00 the girls came home and Jillian began to get ready for bed.

It is 4:05, and I am home.

Q day 2: fun and friends!

This is what Gotham Hall looks like with all the Q dudes on break! It's very funny, actually. Most of them are making phone calls or having very in-depth conversations. The lady at Starbucks today wanted to know what in the world was going on down there. When I explained the concept, she got it. She thought it was a great idea!

You just gotta love these water bottles. I know....crazy pic, but honestly: art deco water bottles.

This is one of the pictures that the visual "scribe" did of a session this morning. It's just so cool looking. All these posters are now hung along the walls of Gotham Hall.

This was lunch in the downstairs restaurant of...you guessed it...Macy's. Buddy, Gabe, Trey, Spring, David and Todd. We were also joined by a miscellaneous woman from World Vision named Shelley. Thank you for joining us, Shelley!

You can read all about it at coffee shop, but I had to post a few pics before going to bed. It's 1 AM and I really need to NOT keep my normal hours!

More on Macy's

I know this is a weird picture, but this is the escalator at Macy's. It is wooden! It feels like church pews made into an escalator. It's also kind of freaky to step on...there's an optical illusion effect. We went to Ben and Jerry's on the fourth floor during one of our breaks.

During lunch Todd, David and I took off to an Irish Pub somewhere in the fashion district. We weren't sure we could find food, but we knew we could put new buttons on my coat or buy some sweet trims! Project Runway fans rejoice. During lunch we had the computers out and were looking at the Christ Fellowship website. I got a blog in on Coffee Shop Journal, too.

Spring Hoffman managed to get to Q by 11 or so; not bad considering she had to get up at 5! We were hunting for caffeine to charge us, and a phone charger to charge her battery.

Day One at Q came to a close when we went to Little Italy to meet Greg Reade and his parents for dessert. Long but good day!

Q day

This is the building we are meeting in...GOTHAM HALL. Does it get any better than that? Yes, it does. Gotham Hall is just down Broadway from the flagship Macy's. Do you know they have 7 restaurants inside including Starbucks? I am so energized by being here in this city, learning about new ways God wants me to work in the world, hanging with so many of my best friends in the world. If you know me, you know the mood that I am in: I just want to jump out of my skin with the sensations of it all. And in addition to that I'm learning new ways to change my world all the time!

Comment, people: I wanna know if you are listening!

Landed in New York City

What a great day we had! David and I had a smooth flight, love our hotel, and had a yummy dinner at Carmine's with great friends. We poked our heads into the Times Square Church, shopped at Macy's for black T-shirts for David for tomorrow, wandered Herald Square and climbed the Empire State Building. Not bad for our first few hours in town! I can't wait for the conference tomorrow, but I've already felt refreshed.

I'm going to the Q conference!

I took this picture earlier this week to remind myself why I love South Florida. It's so blue and green!

I am headed to New York City tomorrow to attend the Q conference sponsored by the fermiproject. I will be blogging about the conference on Coffee Shop Journal, so check in for updates. And I think I will attempt to upload some fun NYC pics here, so check back here, too. Honestly...pictures are so much easier to upload in Blogspot than on Wordpress. Hmmm.

Not Your Average Joe's

In a collection of my favorite places, this restaurant would sure rank high on my list! It is called Not Your Average Joe's, and it lives up to its name. This restaurant is a small, local-owned chain in the Lexington, MA area. The first thing I fell in love with in this restaurant is its use of color. Every color is clear, intentional. The mirrors are positioned perfectly to make you feel like you have a view of "living artwork" in the room. I love this effect, even though (to be honest) I sometimes get motion sickness from staring into the mirrors. Walking into Joe's you just feel hip and cool. Sometimes I don't feel worthy. By the way, the food at Not Your Average Joe's is amazing. Every dish has a twist, like the caribbean buffalo chicken tenders with pineapple-mango salsa.

So what good does reading about my favorite restaurant do you? Not much unless you happen to be traveling to the Boston area. But I just wanted to put up a picture of a place that makes me feel happy. Something about the way the colors and design work with the food, the smells, the ambiance. I like the thoughts I think when I am in this room. Do you all have any places like that?

What Do You Smell Like???

This is part two of the post that began when the guy smoking cigarettes came to our front door and smelled everything up. Nasty smells surround that guy and he doesn't even know it!

Well today I had a rough "re-entry" to our normal life, if there is such a thing. Wednesday nights are always tough around here anyway, and last night was no exception. Which made this morning a difficult day to start, and it got worse from there! There is a point to this, I promise. I'm not just rambling to get you all feeling sorry for me!

By the time dinner rolled around, Mama had HAD IT. And you all know what happens when Mama has Had Enough. So David, being the peacemaker that he is, took me out for a bite to eat leaving the dueling divas here at home. I had a nice dinner, but honestly my mood did not improve like it should have. Until...

We were standing in line at Moe's to buy some rice and beans for Jillian. Just standing there behind two girls out for a quick dinner. They were not beautiful. They were not special. They were not dressed up for an amazing night out; in fact they were quite casual. One girl had a tattoo that said Princess (which I kind of think is funny.) The other looked like she had worked as a receptionist all day and was glad to get to some real food. They were just standing there. But I caught a whiff of princess-tattoo girl's perfume. I don't know what it was. But suddenly, everything was right again. In that slightest of smells I was reminded of sweet summer nights when it is worth putting a dab of perfume on. I was reminded of being happy, of the lightheartedness of standing in line at Moe's. I was reminded that life is good. All from just the littlest sniff of an unknown perfume.

I love a world where God makes smells that transport us to another place in a heartbeat. And once more, back to my metaphor of being a fragrant offering to God in all we do, I wonder what we smell like.

New Artwork for Creative Every Week

This is a painting I did of a sunflower. It sits in my Lexington condo waiting for me to find it a home. Funny thing is, I like the digital version of itself better than I do the real thing. I just took a picture of it on my camera using the digital macro setting, then cropped it the way I liked. I also took a version of it where the color was all removed except the golden color. I think it is kind of interesting, too.