5-Year-Plan Update

As a senior in high school, I developed a 5-year-plan for the years immediately following my high school graduation. I am almost exactly halfway through those five years now and thought it would be a good time for an update! :-) The items that are struck out are items that I’ve completed (although in many of those areas, I can certainly learn more and will strive to do so!) Next to other items, I’ve made note of where my progress is right now!

Prepare to be a good wife and helpmeet by:

·         Learning how to run a household budget and do banking (*I handle a lot of my own finances, but I would like to learn more about what an actual household budget looks like*)

·         Read through all the “Tightwad Gazette” issues and book

·         Learning how to clean an entire house regularly without using lots of cleaning products (read “Household Cleaning”)

·         Learning how to cook healthy, balanced meals on a reasonable budget (read “Cut Your Grocery Budget in Half”)

·         Learning how to manage my time well

·         Learning how to garden organically

·         Learning how to raise livestock (*we are currently in the process of acquiring chickens and rabbits!*)

·         Learning how to purchase good quality clothing on a budget

·         Taking care of young children via babysitting/nannying/foster care?/church (*I have babysat, been a nanny, and worked with children at church. Currently, I am working to get involved in a local foster care and adoption agency/ministry!*)

·         Helping homeschool/tutor my younger siblings

·         Submitting to my father’s authority

·         Learning basic sewing skills

·         Learning “special” household chores (mowing grass, weed whacking, changing/rotating tires, minor household fix-it jobs, etc.) (*I probably know a lot more about car maintenance, lawn care, and fixing household things than your average college-age girl. But there’s still a lot of things I would like to know before I don’t live in my Daddy’s household anymore!*)

·         Planning our family’s annual Cobbler Party

·         Taking a week to learn how to cook Abuela’s Puerto Rican food

Grow in my relationship with God by:

·         Personal devotions and Bible study

·         Reading books on theology

·         Reading R.C. Sproul’s works (*I am nearly finished reading the books we have by him.*)

·         Memorizing scripture (including at least 1 full book)

·         Mentoring/discipling a young lady one-on-one

·         Being mentored

·         Participating in occasional group Bible studies

·         Increasing my prayer life

·         Attending appropriate conferences related to spiritual growth

·         Starting a Bright Lights group?

Prepare for a lifetime of ministry/missions (regardless of location) by:

·         Earning a B.A. in International Studies from College Plus (read “Accelerated Distance Learning”) (*Lord willing, I will graduate in spring 2017!)

·         Attending the World Mandate Conference

·         Attending the Austin Stone Conference

·         Learning how to play violin and guitar

·         Writing to Valencia and financially support her

·         Volunteering at pregnancy center or homeless shelter

·         Volunteering at VOM (*Our church is talking about doing this later in the year!*)

·         Spending a month on the mission field (preferably in Haiti)

·         Helping coordinate missions trips for A Child’s Hope (potentially a team from our church)

·         Reading books we have on missions work

·         As I’m able, financially supporting missions work

·         Youth ministry/missions internship at church (learn about relationship building, how a church works and is involved in missions, and the nitty gritty of planning and administration)

·         Learning how to be flexible and live with less

·         Taking the Perspectives course

·         Taking some type of medical training course (*After I graduate from college, if finances allow, I would LOVE to get my EMT-B license.*)

·         Getting a private pilot’s license

Miscellaneous:

·         Taking a concealed weapons class (*I’m almost old enough!*)

·         Taking a photography class

·         Doing a photography internship

·         Going skydiving (*This is on my bucket list for 2016!*)

·         Reading 52 books in one year

·         Organizing family photos into albums

·         Starting a blog on post-high school life (*You’re reading it right now. ;-)*)

·         Writing a book (*I have started the process on this, but definitely will not work on it very much until I graduate from college.*)

·         Weighing 125 (*As I focus on fitness and eating healthy, I’ve become less concerned with this number and more concerned with how I feel and how my clothes fit.* :-))

As you can probably tell, I most likely won’t get to doing everything before 5 years are up. But the goal was to keep busy and keep learning, and that is definitely being accomplished! :-)

More Pinterest Projects

Over the past year and a half or so, my creative side has definitely been growing at a steady rate! A good part of that is probably due to my discovery of Pinterest. ;-) I haven’t had as much time lately as I would like for doing artsy projects, but I’ve been able to do a few over the past few months. And yes, they’ve been gifts for Jessie. ;-) But I’m hoping to expand my artistic endeavors when I have a little more time on my hands!

We moved about a week before Jessie’s birthday. I couldn’t locate our wrapping paper and ribbons for his gifts, so I crumpled up some of the packing paper to give it a textured look, and decorated it with one of the Sharpie pens I had access to.

In September, I made a fall-themed gift basket for Jessie that included Apple Cider packets, candy corn, cans of soup, ingredients to make a loaf of pumpkin bread, and a chai latte mix from a recipe I found on Pinterest. I also included some more monogram notecards and a binder filled with some of the newsletters I wrote in middle school and high school.

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture, but my next big project was my Christmas gift to Jessie. I wrote him 12 “Open When . . .“ letters. On each envelope, I did some special lettering and word art. Then I made my own stationary by decorating some simple white paper. It took quite a while to do all of that fancy lettering, but it was so much fun!

For Valentine’s Day, I kind of had a house decorating theme in mind (Jessie is living in a small town house this school year.) I decided to do some string art! I started with a plain board I bought at Hobby Lobby, stained it several times, put a coat of polyurethane on it, found a large Texas graphic online, outlined the design with small nails, put a heart where Jessie lives, and then wound the string around to make the design.

As another part of his Valentine’s Day gift, I dug up a few smooth canning jars and tea lights, and tacky glued jute on the rims. Then I used a Sharpie paint pen to write on them. :-)

Lately I’ve been very inspired by hand lettering. I’ve bought a little chalkboard and a chalk pen that I’ve kept in my bedroom, and I bought a brush pen a few months ago. When my skills there have improved a little, I might do a post about that. ;-)

Any suggestions of projects I should try? Leave me a comment! I’m really enjoying expanding my artistic horizons! :-D

Pinterest Projects

I never considered myself to be a particularly artistic person. Yes, I enjoyed photography and music which are forms of art. But I was never good at doing handcrafts, and didn’t particularly enjoy them.

But for some reason, beginning a relationship opened up that lost side of me. ;-) Because Jessie left for college a month after we began our deeper friendship a year ago, I was limited in what I could do for him. So I tried to be creative in coming up with ways to make his first year away at college better. J Looking back, I did something fun/creative for him almost every month while he was away. So here’s a walkthrough of the projects!

In September, I started a weekly tradition of writing him a pen-and-paper letter on Sunday afternoons. I thought he might have fun getting something in the mail every week. J He even wrote back a few times despite his busy schedule. ;-)

In October, Jessie’s family invited me along to go visit him at school for the weekend. I eagerly accepted! It was so fun to see his dorm and the college campus, enjoy some good food, watch some football, and relax with him and his family.

In November, I put together his first care package! I packed some mint gum, Twix bars, and English Breakfast tea since those are some of his favorite things. I handmade some decorative cards with Bible verses on them, thinking he could use them as bookmarks or hang them up somewhere. I also sent him some homemade mocha drink mix, and some packets to make 5 Minute Hot Fudge Cake. I found some thumbs up sticky notes at Walmart, which I thought he would love! At Hobby Lobby, I picked up pens, envelopes, stickers, and blank cards. Then I made him his own personalized cards. J I also included a small photo album with one picture in it. Then every week when I wrote him, I included a new picture of us for him to put in it! J

For Christmas, I made him a Movie Night basket! :-) Mom found the actual basket at Walmart, I believe. I put in a couple bags of popcorn (he doesn’t eat it often), a box of Cheese crackers, some mini Twix bars, and a few glass bottles of Coca Cola. I put “High School Musical” in the basket as a joke (he hates that movie :P) and in his card, I put a certificate saying I would buy him a movie of his choice. A few months later, I got him the first Hobbit movie. His gift to me was much smaller but so special to me. He bought me an Infinity ring from James Avery! :-D

In January, Jessie was home for the first part of the month. We spent a lot of time together and had some fun outings. I was so sad when his month-long break was over! :-(

But he came home for Valentine’s Day! I gave him three gifts. In the box was a mini pie from a pie company in town that we visited together during his break in January. In the square package was a wooden postcard/plaque with a cute quote on it. I tried to be creative in my wrapping and by making tags (each of the tags had a question/clue he was supposed to answer before opening the gift.)

In the third package was his Happy Jar! :-) I had gotten a Pinterest account specifically to find something creative to give him for Valentine’s Day, and that’s where I found this idea. The decorated jar was filled with slips of paper. On them I had written quotes, Bible verses, and things about Jessie that I appreciate. He really liked it! He gave me the exact same thing actually. :-O We were amazed that we both had the same thought! He also gave me a bouquet of roses and a mug, on which he drew the state of Texas, with a heart where he lives (he has a matching mug of Oklahoma.)

In March, Jessie went to Austria for spring break with one of his classes. They were able to see some really cool historical sites and architecture! I have a collection of postcards I’ve collected from all over the world. So I picked one for each day of his trip, wrote notes on each of them, and sent that packet with him. J Despite the time difference, he was able to keep in touch with me every day, which I really appreciated!

In April, Mom and I visited him for a weekend at his college. It was *such* a fun trip! I took him another care package. It had some Easter candy, a bag of dried pineapple, a refill for his “happy jar”, some Guatemalan cookies that we both love, more personalized cards, his weekly card and picture, some Starbucks coffee and a gift card, the movie “Interstellar”, a jar of chocolate kisses to count down the days until he came home for the summer, and another photo album. This one was for pictures of Harry the Hippo. I had bought a little stone hippo at the Tulsa zoo and gave it to Jessie, thinking he could take it on his trips and take pictures of him. That way I could kind of go on the trips vicariously. ;-)

In May, he came home from school!! :-D I worked on a few projects in anticipation of the day he would ask to court me . . .

I hand-lettered this and gave it to him the day he asked to court me (also the day he told me he loved me for the first time.) I also played and sang a song on the piano for him. :-) He had brought me a beautiful bouquet of Snapdragons from his house that day!

Towards the end of June, his family left on a 2-week backpacking trip with a local Boy Scout troop. I had spent some time working on my hand-lettering skills prior to the trip. I came up with 14 different greetings or nicknames and found 14 different fonts on Pinterest. Then I made my own stationary and wrote him a note for every day of the trip! :-) He had been so sweet and sent me a long letter via email every day of our Guatemala trip the week before. It made my night to read those!

Then in July, we had a gourmet picnic that is basically the epitomy of Pinterest. ;-) We dined on a handmade quilt with cloth napkins and enjoyed curried chicken salad in pitas, caprese salad, strawberry (non-alcoholic) sangria, and dark chocolate coconut pudding. Our chaperones sat in a different part of the park eating their sandwiches. ;-P Don’t worry; we took them to the pool afterwards as a reward.

This past week, Jessie and I celebrated one year together. I did a little digging around on Pinterest and came up with this “Number 1” picture collage with hand-lettered decoration on the mat.

I found a similarly designed card on Pinterest and hand lettered my own take on it.

His gift to me on our anniversary was a dozen long-stemmed red roses, and dinner out at the nicest restaurant in town, followed a relaxing evening at a local park, dancing and watching the sunset. He also gave me two special letters with a prayer and a journal entry he wrote this same day one year ago. It was so very precious and thoughtful of him!

So needless to say, I am definitely being inspired by Pinterest and am building a small arsenal of arts and crafts supplies. ;-) I love Pinterest because it allows me to see the finished product and then gives me direction on how to duplicate it. Perhaps I will post about more fun projects in the future!