On a lazy Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago, I watch Trisha Yearwood make strawberry cupcakes. I’m not an avid Trisha fan but watching her make those cupcakes brought back many good memories, especially of my Mother-in-law, Julee.
A few years ago Julee helped me throw a bridesmaids luncheon for a dear friend. Being the lovely hostess and southern belle that she is, she snagged these scrumptious mini strawberry cupcakes for the event. (Have you ever eaten something you wish you could eat over and over again, but chances are you’ll probably only eat it once in your life? That’s how I feel about those cupcakes.)
Anyways, watching Trisha make those cupcakes made me crave Julee’s mini cupcakes like never before. Being that it was 10am and I couldn’t justify making cupcakes so early, I decided the next best thing was pancakes.
So in honor of my mothers (Mom and Julee) here’s my strawberry pancake recipe…
What you’ll need…
- 2 cups cake flour
- 3.5 tbsp granulated sugar
- pinch of salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup milk
- 2 tbsp melted butter
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 6 fresh strawberries, puréed
- 1 scoop sour cream (the secret ingredient!)
- red food coloring (optional, I just didn’t like the grey/pink color the puree turned the batter, so I went all out pink.)
Then follow these steps…
- Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar in a large bowl.
- In a separate bowl beat the egg into the milk. Add in the vanilla.
- Make a small well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the milk mixture into the center, whisking while you pour.
- Add the strawberry puree and the scoop of sour cream.
- Last (but certainly not least) mix in the melted butter and a few drops of red food coloring if you wish.
- Butter your griddle and cook up a pancake for your mom!
-Michelle
summer, i know you’re on your way
just a couple pictures that remind me of my hometown AND that summer is just days away. (YIPEE!!!)
happy friday!
-Michelle
(images found here)
Lindsay + Shauna
Back in the day, the first small group I was a part of read Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist.
Her stories left lasting impressions on me. She showed me that day to day life is exciting and brilliant and blessed.
In part, you could say that I started blogging because of Shauna’s writing; because Shauna reminds me that we all have a story.
A few months ago I feel in love with Lindsay Letters (or maybe I should say I feel in love with Lindsay’s Lettering, anyways…) in my favorite magazine, Southern Weddings. Her lettering is fun and creative and frankly I wish it covered every wall of my house.
Turns out Shauna and Lindsay are friends, who would’ve thought :).
For Shauna’s new book Bread & Wine, Lindsay created a line of prints of quotes taken from the book.
Friends, these prints are fantastic.
Usually I can resist a purchase of something like this for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two; but this I just couldn’t.
I my prints shipped today and I am a happy girl!
Go check out the collaboration for yourself, you’d be happy you did.
-Michelle
tuesday
image/quote via laracasey.com
Yesterday rocked. I met my daily goals and made things happen (I even wrote part of this post yesterday). With the school year coming to a close I feel like I barely have time to breath; so today was one of those days when I realized, “it can be done”. Since I’m on such a high I thought I’d tell you a bit about how I’m making things happen and how YOU can do it!
1. Setting Goals. I’ve been giving myself time frames to get stuff done, especially ongoing projects. For example I’ll say “for an hour I’m going to work on… uninterrupted”. For me it’s like running a race, when I’m tempted to be distracted I’ll look at the clock and when my hour is up I can go on to that thing I’m tempted to be distracted by. Also, I’m learning new ways to set goals using #2….. PowerSheets.
2. PowerSheets. The past few weeks I’ve been working through Lara Casey‘s PowerSheets (not as quickly as I would like), but I’m doing it. If you haven’t heard of the PowerSheets or Lara Casey for that matter yet, go check them out. Working through the PowerSheets is helping me set goals and cast a vision to make my dreams a reality. I’m the kind of person that dreams big and then doesn’t know where to start; I think God’s using Lara to help people like me get a grip and move forward. Thanks Lara!
3. Prayer. I’m not talking about hours of prayer or meditation. Just simple sentence prayers asking for the ability to focus on the task at hand or for the ability to focus on Jesus not the hectic life around me.
How do you make things happen? I’d love to know!
Leave a comment or write a post and leave a link!
-Michelle
on happiness
image found here
I have been thinking about God’s will a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about how we know (and can be certain of) His plan for our lives.
So this was my divinely inspired thought a few days ago;
My happiness doesn’t mean I’m in God’s will.
My unhappiness doesn’t mean I’m not in God’s will.
I know what you’re thinking “duh, Michelle”.
But for me, I needed to verbalize it- write it down and say it out loud few times.
You see, I’ve lived a lot of my life this way, without even realizing it.
I look back on difficult situations and circumstances in my life and think “Oh, well that sucked, I was out of God’s plan then.” or “I must have done something bad and ‘walked away from God’s will’ “. I look towards the future and think ” Well, if we’re happy then we’ll know we’re in God’s will”.
Yes, it’s embarrassing to admit that I’ve been thinking like this (and that’s why I’m writing it here).
Now with this new perspective, I see more clearly that God has used those rather “unhappy” times to make me the person He wants me to be. And He’s used the “happy” times to bless me.
God hasn’t guaranteed our happiness….
“I don’t think the way you think.
The way you work isn’t the way I work.” Isaiah 55:8 (the message)
He has promised us other things…
“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” Romans 8:28
-Michelle
on waiting
A few weeks ago CH and I had lunch with some new friends, Laura and David. The four of us sat in a cozy cafe and shared lunch, laughs and great coffee. As we got to know them we started talking about seasons of life and waiting on God’s timing.
Laura was first to mention the concept of “actively waiting”. It’s an oxymoron, I know, but it makes so much sense. She shared with us that while we are waiting on God and his timing in our lives, there are still things we can be actively doing, like spending time with friends who encourage us, for example.
Since our lunch I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept; asking myself what does “actively waiting” look like in our life?
One thing I determined was that we can expand our prayer life by praying for missionaries all over the world. I designed a little chart for the fridge with one missionary or missionary family that we can pray for each day.
I’d love to show you our chart but we chose to write the location of each missionary and we can’t share that on the blog. Although it hasn’t been up for even a month yet, it’s already been so helpful to CH and I to keep those people in our prayers (It also gets your mind off praying for yourself too much).
You can download the chart HERE!
-Michelle
the headboard CH and I built
Wow… it’s been over a month since I blogged! So Sad!
In previous instances where I have randomly stopped blogging for a few days (or even a few weeks) I’ve always come back and posted about how “I’m alive” and “I’m so sorry for not posting”. In truth, I am sorry because I love blogging, but I can’t apologize anymore. Life gets busy and priorities shift and frankly, CH and I have made some of the best memories this past month (more on that later). I’m still making time for myself these days, it just hasn’t come in the form of blogging lately. (Actually it’s been more like hand-lettering and graphic design.) But I haven’t given up blogging all together – oh, no, I probably have more to say than ever – I’m just relieving myself from the pressure of daily posting.
All that to say… last weekend we literally built one of my favorite memories in our marriage so far, our headboard.
Saturday around 1pm CH looked at me and said, ” Do you want to build something for the house?” (Music to my ears!) I had no idea exactly what he had in mind to “build” but we quickly decided on a headboard. (Our bedroom decor hasn’t exactly met my taste since we tied the knot and started living under one roof.) After about 10 minutes or less we came across this beautiful headboard made by Tim and Emily of Today’s Letters.
image found here
They get all the credit for basically the rest of this post because we followed their step by step instructions with a few minor adjustments to create the beauty that is our headboard.
It started by screwing a two boards (1″x 2″ x 5′) into the wall to support the headboard. We wanted this process to be as minimally invasive to our walls as possible so CH created the support boards.
Cole says if he were to do it again he would use one board, just longer instead of two boards overlapping.
Meanwhile we stained the edges of the other boards so that when they were attached to the wall we wouldn’t have to try to stain them.
The stain we chose was Cabot Dark Walnut and we only did one coat because I loved the way the knots in the grain looked grey with the stain.
Next, we attached 3 boards (1″x 6″x8′) to the support boards.
This is where I stopped taking pictures and started working more, sorry.
I can say that the boards we used for the outside of the headboard are 1″x 12″x 8′ cut to 5′, and that we stopped for Pei Wei half way through.
The next morning we drilled the bed frame into the headboard…
and put the bed back together!
Originally, I had wanted to hang lights on either side of the bed like this. We already owned the shades and we purchased HEMMA cords and DIMMA dimmers from IKEA.
BUT we had a hard time attaching them to the ceiling and so I threw my light over the headboard to kinda get it out of the way – and I fell love with it like that.
CH and I have always dreamed of staying at the ACE Hotel and now I feel like we live there!
Again, we couldn’t have done it without the help from Today’s Letters.
-Michelle
still lookin good
This year I dropped a big hint. A couple of days before Valentine’s Day I looked at CH and said “I think you think I don’t like flowers, but I do. If you got me flowers for Valentine’s Day that would be really special.” It’s true, I said that. (I’m not embarrassed.) And he didn’t mind – he actually thanked me for telling him.
The flowers he brought me on Valentine’s Day were beautiful. They sat just as they had been arranged until I read Jo‘s post on how to arrange supermarket flowers. I quickly decided to follow Jo’s step by step and rearrange the flowers myself.
image via jo
It worked! I know it’s not a surprise to you, but it is to me. I have almost zero flower arranging skills. (I say almost because I have enough to follow the steps above.) The vase I used was a bit different so they don’t look exactly like the photos above, but regardless I’m pleased and will definitely do it again.
-Michelle
Sierra & Scott’s Watercolor Wedding Invitations
Last year I had the honor of designing wedding invitations for one of my dearest friends, Sierra and her man Scott. She wanted a simple, classic invitation that showed off their color sceme; pink and grey. I had so much fun working with her to see these invitations form start to finish and they gave guests a great taste of what to expect at the most beautiful wedding in the south.
The invitations were printed on 11olb white paper with grey ink and the backers were hand painted in pink watercolor by yours truly. 
wedding photos by pam minott photography
-Michelle
5 things I liked this week
Honestly this week was rough, full of things I didn’t like- and thats why I’m sharing what I did like this week. It’s just a little therapy to remind myself that there is much more in life that I do like compared to what I don’t.)
Also.
this list is totally random.
1. Valentine’s Day was simply wonderful. It wasn’t the holiday itself and we didn’t do anything fancy, CH and I just had a fantastic time being together. Halfway through our dinner at Coolinary Cafe we realized that it was our 5th Valentines together, which made it all the more reason to celebrate.
2. Hunter Boots. They’re on my wish-list for so many reasons.
3. Travel blogs
image via Mr. & Mrs. Globetrot
other frequent reads include Scout. and Explore. Dream. Discover.
4. VINE app. I’m a big fan. Sadly I don’t even know how to tell you to follow me, but I do have a profile lol.
image via designlovefest
5. Handwritten notes. I experimented with watercolor calligraphy for Valentine’s Day, I’m also experimenting with having some confidence in my own handwriting.
-Michelle
Delighted 