a twister

Gah, where do I even start?!?! This day has seemed like a crazed whirlwind!

I guess it all started with this bowl of oats this morning.

Perfect oats.

I ATE THEM WITH THE SPOON FILLED WITH PEANUT BUTTER! O.M.G. So freaking good. A bit of peanut butter on every bite, not stirred in like normal. ‘Gasm.

Work was a madhouse, so I soon broke for lunch.

Leftover veggies and quinoa. My lunches of late seem to have a theme.

And my snacks as well. It appears I just grab leftovers + a piece of fruit on the way out the door. Ignore the fly-looking thing on the pineapple. I am pretty sure it was just a thingie off the outside skin of the pineapple. Not a fly. Or was it? I don’t know.

Soon after I had some ‘natural’ chips and an orange, and jetted off to a CharlotteOne volunteer meeting. Good news! Connecting + Greeting are one big group now, so I no longer have to do that awkward connecting thing and I get to wear a name badge. Official, it is.

Anyway, the rest of my evening was spent tied up there, and afterward we went to Fox and Hound for a fellowship time. Lovely. My friend Victoria ordered some sweet potato fries which she so kindly shared with me. Gotta love fellow foodies.

Once home though, I raided the fridge like a madman. Pears, grapefruits and craisins are all in my belly!

Off to bed in a minute…nighty night.

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CharlotteONE Rocks Out w/ David Crowder!

Oh thanks for all the well wishes, my loves!

I am all better now, ‘twas nothing but a 24 hr thing! I was so productive today at work in fact. Loves it! I should be sick more often, me thinks!

Cause maybe then Mama D. would bake me more muffins. Yes that is three muffins consumed today. What can I say? I am a muffin fiend. I ♥ muffins.

I skedaddled home from work and mixed up this lovely plate of munchies:

cracks, tuna salad, carrot.

Tuna salad has not been consumed by me in many months, due to my flirtation with vegetarianism. We were happy to be reunited, tuna and I.

Glory.

I wish there were more green, but alas there was not. I had no time to cook up any peas or such. I had plans, as you recall.

Yeah, CharlotteOne hosted the David Crowder Band tonight at Forest Hills Church. It was the best christian concert I have ever attended! If my feet had not been killing me, I would have danced around or something. Of course my dancing skills leave something to be desired, so probably not. Anyway, they were awesome in concert! I loved how they interacted with the crowd and even tweeted! ♥ [Follow that link, my arms are in that crowd somewhere!]

So if you have not guessed by now, CharlotteOne is basically one of the best things to happen to Charlotte in a long time. Did I mention that they hosted Charlie Hall + Steve Fee last week? No? Well they did. For free. Yeah, CharlotteOne pretty much rocks. If you are in the Charlotte area and not attending, why not? And if you don’t live in the Charlotte area why not come? We can be pals! [I am only partially joking there!]

See you later love muffins [muffins!!! mmmm] I’m going to hit the hay!

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of scones and shells

Well costume shopping was a success [sort of]! We are going to end up making our costumes. Should be interesting!

This afternoon I had a scone that my boss brought me for a snack:

Scone love.

Then after work I ran a quick 3.5 miles. Lovely. Speedy, because we had our shopping trip planned!

Before we left I had a bossy dinnah that Mama D made.

Stuffed shells. ♥

And a side of broc. I’ve been cheating on spinach. Broccoli is numero uno on my green veggie list right now. J’adore.

I also had this lovely pumpkin muffin:

And this bitty apple:

I must have a hollow leg.

****

Cool news: Andy Cherry, who leads worship at CharlotteOne, has a single on iTunes! It’s part of a mixed worship album, Catalyst Music Project, and he does a song called Revival’s Fire. You can click here to see what I’m talking about:http://bit.ly/3aQJ8. Pretty awesome, no?

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Spooooooky

S’mores bar, that is!

I finally got around to trying one of the Z-bars Holly sent me for a snack today.

 

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Holly, you adorable little lady, you.

After work, ‘twas CharlotteOne of course!

Our speaker tonight was James-Michael Smith and wow, did his message hit close to home! It was called ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ and was about dealing with depression. It was, in a word, amazing.

I have touched on my own struggles with depression here, so you guys know what this subject meant to me. I was nearly in tears by the end. I wish I could have heard this message two years ago! It was so ME. I just wanted to go up to the pastor and thank him, but unfortunately I couldn’t find him afterward. It’s just as well, I might have gotten blubbery.

Just a reminder:

If you feel any of these symptoms or emotions, please, please see a doctor immediately. A good therapist can get you through a lot.

• you can’t sleep or you sleep too much
• you can’t concentrate or find that previously easy tasks are now difficult
• you feel hopeless and helpless
• you can’t control your negative thoughts, no matter how much you try
• you have lost your appetite or you can’t stop eating
• you are much more irritable and short-tempered than usual
• you have thoughts that life is not worth living (Seek help immediately if this is the case)

Remember, you are not alone. You do not have to face this monster alone. Please, ask for help.

Ok, PSA is over.

On a lighter note, here is a gorgeous photo of my friend Powell who went to CharlotteOne with me tonight.

Doesn’t he look convicted with the spirit? I adore.

Just as I sat down to eat my [unpictured] dinner of a Shrimp + Crab tower [described as: fresh avocado, crab meat, tomato and poached shrimp in lemon mayonnaise. Accompanied by fresh grilled flatbread.] I heard it. You know the noise. The dreaded sound of…a BUTTON popping off your shirt! And in a most pertinent button it was!

LOOK!

AUGGGGHHHH!

I desperately tried to cover it up:

Um, yeah. Not working.

So I treated my new friends to a peep show all during dinner.

So me.

So klassy.

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famous in a small town

Hey, hey!

I made a lil’ collage of Fiberfuls that I consumed today for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy. It took many tedious hours of effort.

Or not.

Straight after work I did my Tuesday regular and headed to CharlotteOne. It was packed out in da house tonight! Author Donald Miller was the guest speaker. [He is on a 65 city book tour, currently. Cool, no?] May I just say that between he and Susan Isaacs [who is on tour with him] they brought the house down. Seriously, if this tour comes anywhere near you, you should go. It’s awesome. Really life changing.

The coolest thing happened while I was there!

I was goofing off, taking twitter pics on my phone and joking around with my friends while we were waiting for the speakers to start, when the girl behind me asks: ‘Sorry, I have to ask. Are you Whitney?’ She reads the blog! How cool is that? I felt like a celebrity for a moment.

Anyway, thanks Megan! You made my night, and I hope to see you again at CharlotteOne!

As you can imagine, with my lame snack that is collaged above, I was HANGRY when I got home.

Guess what I wanted?

PANCAKES!

I had a serious craving.

And I seriously took care of it.

I made tropical whole wheat pancakes. I used a peach Chobani and some pineapple in Kath’s yogurt pancake recipe [that I swear by] and topped it with some of that [non-chemical and completely healthy ] spray whipped topping, pineapple and a cherry!

Nom nom nom.

I am stuffed, so I’m a gonna go pass out for the evening.

See you tomorrow!

****

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Plan A

My Larabar grew a ‘fro.

But she seems pretty happy with it, so I let it go.

After work I scrambled to get to CharlotteOne, and low and behold I actually got there on time!!

What! What!

I never do that!

CharlotteOne was amazing, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Dinner was an SIAB [Kath speak for Smoothie In A Bowl]

I happily dumped a muffin in that thing.

Muffins go with everything.

My smoothie consisted of:

• 1 frozen banana
• 1/2 a bag of spinach
• 1 scoop protein powder
• 1 spoonful PB
• coffee (!!!)
• almond milk
• ice

It had a lovely mocha flavor. I was mucho excited about adding the coffee. SCORE!!!

On the side I had some crunchy + crispy grapes.

Yes, they are freshly washed, but are they clean?

That is the million dollar question, because I did indeed spy some dirt on one even though I vigorously ran water over them.

Wash fail.

***

At CharlotteOne tonight the topic was Epic Fail. It’s the same topic that we talked about last week, but this week it hit really close to home.

I am sure that we all have had at least one epic fail in our lifetime, or else you must be living under a rock somewhere, which would be an epic fail in and of itself. Rocks are darn uncomfortable. Plus, I just don’t know that they make very good homes.

Anyway, Dave [the worship leader] started out by saying ‘God is bigger than your epic fail.’ Wow. Just wow.

I posted that to twitter, and honestly you guys, I don’t always think twice about what I post on twitter, but I was so surprised to see that get RT [retweeted] several times.

One girl put ‘I needed this today’ in front of her RT.

It just brought a huge smile to my face to see the response to that, because we all do have epic fails, but in truth God is bigger than any epic fail we make.

Not only that, but he forgives us our failures and shortcomings and makes something great from it.

Remember God’s Plan is always Plan A for you. Not Plan B or C.

If you are living Plan B, why?

What’s stopping you from living your dream?

Get out there and do it. God has your back.

Me?

I’m doing some soul searching and figuring out just what Plan A is.

I’ll let you know.

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Mr. Right?

Wow, I totally did not expect all the response to my relationships post.

I was so glad to see, as many of you said, that I am not alone.

It seems that so many of us are in the same place in life and relationships and didn’t even know it.

For those of you that were worried though, don’t be. I’m happy. I’m single, and I’m happy. Were the right guy to come along, sure I’d probably be happier. But I’m not desperate. And I am certainly not going to marry the next guy to come along, just cause he’s there. In fact, I am most certain to do just the opposite. 100% of the reason I am single is because I am waiting. I’m waiting for that one guy that makes all my problems go away. The one guy, that when I’m with him, all my problems seem small. The one guy that completes me. Even though I thought my life was complete, he fills that little spot that I didn’t even know was empty.

And I’m okay with that.

I’ll wait forever for that guy.

Mr. Right.

For now, I’ll focus on eating apples and pb.

 

Honeycrisp apples and creamy pb.

And I’ll focus on church.

I’ll keep going to CharlotteONE and meet new friends. I’ll go to dinner with these friends afterward and get to know them better.

I’ll order a salad and not take a picture of it. Because let’s be honest, I don’t know them well enough yet to start taking pictures of my food in front of them.

It’s ok.

I’ll come home and draw you a picture of my salad.

There’s my salad.

I never claimed to be an artist.

I just like to eat.

I like to eat salads from Rock Bottom.

Salads called Hummus and Goat Cheese.

Oh dear.

I guess I forgot to draw the goat cheese.

On that note I am going to bed.

Because it’s late.

And I am tired.

And feel like I got beaten soundly with a baseball bat all over my upper body, thanks to my strength training yesterday.

Nighty night.

[PS: And if you are out there Mr. Right? I’m waiting.]

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Bowls, pt. 2

Ok, it’s gray around here again.

Yep, that means day of bowls #2!

Today’s breakfast bowl featured PB&J oatmeal, which consisted of:

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 1/4 cup water
• mashed banana
• flax
• pb
• Je’s jam!

I went from EMPTY to FULL in about .005 seconds! Seriously, oatmeal has been keeping me SO FULL in the mornings lately. I love it.

Except, then I haven’t really been hungry at lunch.

But when you have delicious ingredients, you must use them, right?

Yes, you must.

You must use them to make delicious STIRFRY!

So that you can eat it out of a MUG!

With GRAPES!

GRAPES! are so delicious right now, no?

GRAPES! and APPLES! [now I want to go apple picking.]

****

So, as you saw my friend Amanda got married over the weekend. [Congrats to her!]

All your comments + my own thoughts got me thinking…am I going to be the last one to get married? Should I be worried that I am not even in a relationship [of any kind?] I mean, most of my friends are married. Gah, some of the even have KIDS! [Mama D. made certain of that not happening by giving birth to a little devil angel at a most opportune time in my life.]

I feel sort of behind, even though I am really happy with where I am in life.

What about you?

Are all your friends married, pregnant or in serious relationships? Do you often find yourself chilling with a cup of coffee watching Gossip Girl alone? [GG is my show of choice, insert your own here.] If you are in the same boat as me, do you find it a little strange? Like everything is happening so fast? And how did it happen?

As to not end this on a downer [not that I am down about that, as stated earlier] can I mention something I am excited about?

CharlotteONE is tonight! Yay, I get to connect!

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CharlotteOne

I haven’t forgotten what a great snack yogurt is.

• vanilla greek yogurt
• Kashi Go Lean
• dark chocolate chips

Far from it. I have only expounded upon it’s wonderfulness as a snack.

This was perfect for today, because I had my new Tuesday worship with my small group from church at 7, so I needed something that would last until I got home around 9:30.

I loved my new worship! God is really blessing me with a great job, a great church and wonderful friends. I ran into a few people at service that I had not seen in awhile, so that was really nice.

The speaker, Todd Phillips, was amazing and gave a wonderful sermon on getting through the storms of life. I believe the live stream will be posted soon; I will link to it when it is. I would love for you guys to hear it as well, because it was so powerful. I found myself just nodding in agreement the whole time. Don’t you love that?

If you have a second, check out the movement that is going on at CharlotteOne online here. This group of people is amazing, with a great love of Christ. It’s so beautiful.

After I left the church, I did some crackberry checking, like any good crack addict does. I was so glad to see an e-mail from everyone’s favorite homegirl saying she got her college care package! I have renewed faith in our Postal Service. I just sent that package Friday, and it made it to Vermont by Tuesday. Ally, be on the lookout for your cupcakes. The way my post office runs, they might be there tomorrow!

When I got home around 9:30, I made a very snacky snack plate for dinner.

Almond butter and hummus dippers.

Kiwi, dates and Kashi cracks.

Blue corn chips.

Do me a favor. Dip these in almond butter. You won’t be sorry. You’ll probably thank me.

Orange tinted apples.

These apples weren’t really orange, but for some reason my camera kept insisting they were. Whatev, I’ll roll with it.

Pretty, pretty snack plate.

After consuming all that was delicious in my life, I proceeded to moan and groan until all those chips settled in my tum.

Then I swore sweated through Level 2 of the shred. 

Now I must get to bed, for morning comes early.

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