Once again, we're AWAKENING.

Or we will be at AWAKENING, actually. Awakening is a youth conference in the New England area which my youth group, MERGE AHEAD, goes to each spring. *SEE PROMO HERE.

This year not only will my amazing youth pastor "Rev" Eric Peoples be speaking, but our worship band (of which I am a part-vocals and keys!) will be doing a couple of worship sets. SO EXCITED! We were privileged to do it last year as well and it was an amazing experience.

For those of you who can't come to the conference (the last weekend in April) I will be posting up links later on that you will be able to watch the conference streaming live on the internet or on GodTV. It is great stuff. Really check it out.

Anyway, last night our band practiced. Unfortunately we decided to practice after our Wednesday night church service which meant we didn't even get started until after 9:30. And we went until after 11. Normally we have a rough time not goofing off during practice but get us all together late at night and the experience becomes very...special. For a good while our 2 electric guitarists were working on intro parts so I grabbed my camera and decided to take pictures instead of sitting there silently holding my mic. Here's what that all looked like...

More pictures to come!
Go explore the Awakening site and get ready to tune into the conference April 28th-30th!

*sorry about the grainy pictures. we only had some of the lights on and it is an already tough to take pictures in room. But you get the idea...

Quoteables.

I'm currently writing a paper on Just Causes and Justice for English class. This involved a lot of research reading and that reading appropriately included Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience."

Now, some of Thoreau I like. Some of him I don't. He and I have very mixed feelings in our relationship towards each other. But this quote I LOVE. This quote is a great summation of how I feel about rebelling against normal and refusing to accept the commonly accepted just because it is common to do so. This quote is about knowing what you stand for and then standing. This is what I aim for.


 "LET YOUR LIFE BE A COUNTER FRICTION TO STOP THE MACHINE."- h. d. thoreau


I can't get it out of my head.

I liked it so much it even got stuck to my computer monitor via yellow sticky note. As far as quotations and my treatment of them go that is a high honor.

Avi was a little girl...

My littlest sister LOVES books. This kid (as I frequently tell you) is amazing. Her favorite book, titled "A Mother for Choco" is a story (with an adoption theme) about a lonely little bird named Choco. He looks different from all other animals and he can't find himself a mother who looks just like him. In the end Choco is adopted by a mother bear. It's pretty cute.

But what is REALLY cute is my sister has the entire book memorized. And when I say memorized I mean MEMORIZED.

She cannot actually read yet, but it you hand her that book she will be begin at the title page ("A Mother for Choco" By: Keiko Kasza) and work page by page, word for word (and there are like 3 sentences to a page) up until the very end. 

"Choco was a little bird who lived all alone. He wished he had a mother; but who could his mother be? One day he set off to find her..."

I'm telling you, she has it DOWN. At first we were doubtful, but then we realized she didn't even need the book or the pictures to tell the story. Any one of the people in our family can say, anywhere, anytime, "Choco was..." and she'll recite us the whole book. The child is a freak. And I love her.

Yesterday was her third birthday. She is a special little girl who deserved a very special present. I, being the creative chick that I am, thought it would be fun to make her an amigurumi (crocheted) Choco. I made very sure to copy him as best as I could. the book very specifically mentions that he is yellow, has stripey legs, wings and big round cheeks. I gave him all those things. I was rather interested to see if she would recognize him out of his book context and made of yarn.

 I hand her the gift bag. She pulls out my creation and instantly, with no hesitation whatsoever, exclaims "HIS NAME IS CHOCO!"

Needless to say, I was thrilled. I had successfully created her favorite story character in such a way that she found him recognizable. She also said it was her favorite birthday gift. Major points to big sister Bella!

And I said how about breakfast... The Cosmic Omelet

Last weekend my friend Jeri took me out to her favorite local breakfast restaurant-THE COSMIC OMELET- for some Saturday morning eating. It is a cute little place with a very...unique...atmosphere. The walls are covered with local art, old concert posters, and sarcastic signage. And the eggs themselves are quite scrumptious too (and also all have fun names).

 When I go to cute places like that I generally like to take pictures, but now that I have a D-SLR people get a little freaked out. I come in with a big camera on my neck and people get all weirded out and think something special must be going on.

Nope. Just a college kid wearing a camera as a necklace. Nothing weird there.

 My breakfast: hashbrowns, 2 pieces of rye toast, and a cheese/tomato/spinach/mushroom/jalapeno omelet.
(No ALL the food isn't mine. That's Jeri's blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs.)

I tried to get some good pictures of the place, but it is very tiny and I could tell I was creepin' people out. So eventually I just started taking creepy shots with the camera at my waist and my finger inconspicuously on the shutter butter. Good times.

Awesomebella Cooks- BRICK CHICKEN AND ISRAELI COUSCOUS

*yes. it is Wednesday. yes I cooked this last Thursday and am just getting to posting it now. oh well...other priorities...

This last week I cooked some BRICK CHICKEN AND ISRAELI COUSCOUS for dinner. This whole meal stemmed out of the fact that my mom had purchased a bunch of Israeli couscous (basically like couscous only like 4 times the size. More like small pasta balls?) and we wanted to use it in a recipe.

This recipe from Tyler Florence actually called for just regular couscous but we made a substitute. I more or less followed the whole recipe. Few changes were made along the way when we forgot to buy scallions and instead of buying dried apricots we bought dried cherries/cranberries/blueberries. But in the end it all worked out and a tasty (and colorful) meal was cooked!

 roasting cinnamon sticks and cumin seeds before grinding (used already ground coriander)

 Chicken (I used thighs, not a whole chicken like Tyler did.) marinating.

 Israeli couscous is rather like frog eggs...only it is not...
Looks like it though when it is cooking!

 Roasty toasty almonds.

 One would not have thought at first looking at the recipe that all that snazzy stuff in couscous would be good. But let me tell you from me and my taste bud's experience: IT WAS DELICIOUS. And pretty. Win win.

Yogurt sauce for the chicken. This was the 2 year old's favorite part.

 "brick" chicken usually involves cooking chicken under a heavy object, such as a foil wrapped brick. This however is totally impractical. Obviously when one wants squished chicken a WOK on foil is the way to go.

All plated up pretty...

Another week, another meal cooked. What will I cook next week tomorrow? Well...I'm not actually sure yet. I will now go and consult google on the matter.

My {NEW} Photography Blog- SOMETIMES I SHOOT THINGS

YES! You read correctly! There is something exciting underway!

This post is announcing the launch of my new photography blog, called  

SOMETIMES I SHOOT THINGS:

http://sometimes-i-shoot-things.blogspot.com

A lot of it is still in the works, but I thought I'd let you all know so you can go and read the story behind it and consider following. I am going to use it to focus more on my photography. 

Hopefully it will motivate me even more to improve my skills!

My goal is to post pictures (taken with my beautiful new camera!) on a semi-regular basis.

For the amount of pictures I take I figured they deserved their own blog.

Go check it out! Happy weekend all!