A Beautiful Hymn

"Come thou fount of every blessing, 

Tune my heart to sing thy Grace..."

Such beautiful words found in such a beautiful hymn. Tune my heart to sing thy grace. But a few days ago as my family was singing this hymn I asked myself, what does that mean, to have our hearts tuned?

I remember years ago when we had a piano tuner come to our house to tune our piano. He had to open up our piano and pull all of the strings until the piano sounded like it was supposed to. It took a few hours but once he was finished our piano sounded better than before. The music was pleasing to the ear because all the notes were tuned perfectly.

Just like the piano, our hearts need to be tuned. And who tunes our heart? God is the great heart tuner. Sometimes it's a long process, and sometimes the pulling of our heart strings may cause pain. But we cannot make music pleasing to God on our own accord. Our life song is just noise until we allow God to come inside and change us. 

Once we allow God to enter in and give him the okay to have his way in our life then He will get to work on tuning our hearts. In His perfect timing He makes our lives into a beautiful arrangement of his Grace.

Lord Jesus, make my life into a song that is pleasing to you. Lord, I want to live a life that brings glory and honor to your name.

A Special Summer Treat

Nothing says summer like a basket full of juicy blackberries. I wish I could say that I picked all those big round, delicious looking blackberries, but we bought them at our local farmer's market.

With all these blackberries just begging to be eaten, I knew I had to make something special with them. I decided to make blackberry jam!



Other than making apple butter I've never made homemade jam before. I found an easy recipe to follow and you can find the recipe here: Blackberry Jam Recipe

I know that jams and jellies are always full of too much sugar than I'd like, so I substituted half of the sugar with honey. It still tasted very sweet!



Included in all the fresh fruits we picked at the farmer's were some ripe peaches. They smelled amazing!  You know what sounded like the perfect treat for a busy day? Peach and Blackberry Cobbler. Yummy!

I saved one small basket of blackberries and picked out two of the juiciest peaches. Here is the recipe I used: Blackberry Peach Cobbler Recipe.



Once I chopped up the peaches and added the blackberries it looked so pretty I just had to take a picture.



It wasn't long before the kitchen smelled heavenly...

Now you can't have cobbler without ice cream. Dairy-free ice cream is becoming more and more popular and we found one that actually tasted so creamy and perfect. It was called "So Delicious" vanilla ice cream made from cashew milk.



Well, I don't have to tell you how delicious it tasted - just by this picture you can see how scrumptious this treat was. It was a huge hit with my family and I'm planning on making it again soon.



What's your favorite homemade dessert? Have you ever made your own jam or jelly?

You Can't Get Fresher Than This!

Hi all! I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything. These last few weeks I have been trying to find activities to keep my summer busy and you know what, it's working. I've been so busy I can't seem to find the time to write a new post.  But that is going to change soon. I have so many new projects planned for the next few months and I can't wait to share them all with you.

Last weekend my Mom and I went to our local farmer's market and we came home with so many healthy goodies. You can see all of the delicious and FRESH food we bought in the picture above. YUM!  Also, it's a hint about what a few of my upcoming post will be about. I'm hoping to share with you all some of the ways I used the yummy food we picked out.

Have you ever gone a farmer's market? What's your favorite fruit? Or vegetable?

Birthday Time ~ DIY Wrapping Paper

Well, today was a very special day for a very special brother. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful brother and I can't believe that today he turned eighteen! He's officially an adult now. I'm not ready for this. Why does time have to fly by so fast.  Anyway, there is nothing I can do about the time but just enjoy each moment and make the most out of each day.

Last night I realized I still hadn't wrapped his present and as I was digging through all our wrapping paper all I ended up finding was piles of Christmas paper. We have all the Christmas wrapping paper we could ever need but when it comes to birthdays, well, the choices are very thin.

Of course it's like ten o'clock at night when I get the idea to make my own wrapping paper. Using my new Aquash Water Brush and my watercolors I created a simple design on a big sheet of paper.



Once the paper was dry I wrapped my gift with my one-of-a-kind homemade wrapping paper. Can you guess what my brothers favorite color is?



To finish off the present, instead of a bow, because to be honest, I'm just not a big fan of bows, I tied a piece of twine around the box and tied it in a nice little bow.

And Wa-La! My gift was all ready for my brothers birthday!

I think that anything homemade, even if it's wrapping paper which will only end up being thrown away in the end, is so special. It's just a simple way to tell that special person that you love them.

Have you ever received a homemade gift before? Have you ever given a special friend a homemade gift?

Happy 4th of July!

"...and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." John 8:32

Happy 4th of July. Let the celebration begin!

Since I am not only out of town (I'm in Texas ya'll!) for this 4th of July but am also busy and tired from a long week, I decided to share with you all some of my favorite 4th of July pictures that I have taken over the last few years.

"What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" Romans 8:31

"...in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." Romans 8:37

Wishing ya'll a blessed day celebrating our country.