Channeling Jane Austen

I was feeling very Pride and Prejudice today; Jane Austen is after all my favorite author. So I decided that I would write a new blog post that is probably extremely random and add in a Jane Austen theme. First off, this is in no way pertinent to anything in my previous posts nor is it anything like them. I have two awesome recipes that I made this afternoon in an attempt to rid myself of the desire to stick a flux-capacitor into our car and travel to regency England… either that or wait for the Doctor, but neither of those events ended up happening today so I’m glad I went with the recipes. I feel like Mr. Darcy would approve of them.

The first of them is an old one of mine; scones! They are amazing and perfect with tea and/or hot chocolate. Here is the recipe:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, it takes 15-20 minutes to cook these.

2 cups flour

¼ cup sugar

1 ¼ tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup (1stick) butter (cold and cut into small pieces)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup buttermilk (substitute: 1 cup milk and 1 tbl. vinegar)

Mix those dry ingredients up! Listening to the main theme of BBC’s Sherlock really adds some English flavor to the situation, just to complete the overall theme of the day. Add the butter; mix it with your hands till the butter resembles small peas in the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl mix the buttermilk (milk/vinegar) and the vanilla together. At this point you need to add some amazingness for flavor. I usually add plenty of chocolate chips at the request of my brothers and dried cherries for my mum and I. ((I have tried so many different flavors in this recipe you can add extracts, fruit, candy, anything you want really. Today I used raspberry extract (as well as the vanilla) and I chopped up two half chocolate bars because we were out of chocolate chips. One was mocha and one was cherry-chili. Talk about your combination of flavors. They were delicious. I have also tried lemon-poppy seed, mint chocolate, and I once used fresh raspberries.))

After you add your amazing flavors, add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix it with a spoon. The dough will be very wet, add more flour as necessary. After it is all mixed together, spread a generous amount of flour onto a large cutting board and put the dough in the center.

Kneed it gently a few times till it is manageable, then take a rolling pin and roll it out into a circular shape, mine is always an oval, but I try. Now take a sharp knife and cut the circle straight down the center, then in slices like a pie. It should make about 12-14 scones, put them on a cookie sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Sorry I didn’t take any pictures; I realized that I wanted to put this on my blog as I was rolling them out. Oh well, I’m sure you can figure it out.

The second recipe I tried was a delicious cup of hot coco. I got the recipe from the Jane Austen Centere website:

http://www.janeausten.co.uk/

The recipe is found here:

http://www.janeausten.co.uk/arthur-parkers-fortifying-cocoa/

It tastes like liquefied hopes and dreams and makes you feel like you took a bottle of Felix Felicis so you’ll probably look like Ronald Weasley after taking that love potion:

These two combined are perfect for snuggles on a blustery fall day or a bitter winters night with your special someone. Don’t have a love interest at the moment?

Just kidding, curl up with some Jane Austen! Mr. Darcy, Captain Wentworth, Mr. Ferrars, Colonel Brandon and Mr. Knightly await you! 

I took a picture of the two so you can see my masterpiece:

Sure I served chocolate in a tea cup; if I had shared this with Mr. Darcy he would have disapproved and looked at me like this:

Or this:

Or even this:

Don’t mess with an Englishman’s cup of tea after all.

Well that is all I have for today, enjoy your trip into regency England!

May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ. +JMJ+

Face-Palms and Beauty Queens, A Catholic Fairy Tale

In past blog posts I have talked about modesty and how important it is, as well as living counter-culturally when it comes to dating and/or waiting to date for the right time and guy. But today I want to stress one important thing to all the young women of the world.

You are beautiful.

No matter what anyone says to you, always remember that you are amazing in your own unique way.

I know how hard it can be to have constant confidence in yourself, trust me, I am also a member of the female part of the world and I know what it’s like! My freshman year of high school was just…ugh. Even though I was home-schooled all through high school, my freshman year was the time when I started to get out more and become active in my community and Church. I was so clueless! But we won’t get into that……

My point in saying that is, without the confidence that I gained over three long years it would have been an even bigger struggle to fit in than I had already.

I was labeled the “Church girl” within my youth ministry, not a bad title, I was proud of it because having been home-schooled since second grade I have a strong Catholic education and, well, going to Church and youth ministry was the most exciting thing in my life at the time (Church is still the most exciting thing in my life!). The only problem was I let the “Church girl” title become my only identity. I was content with letting people get only so close and then I was worried that they would see that I wasn’t what they thought. I mean yeah I knew a lot about the Faith but I have other layers to my personality and other interests too. But I didn’t want other people to see that because what if they didn’t like me? So I went about my way, the typical “one person when you’re here, another while you’re at home” kind of thing. Till I eventually realized that I hated being labeled the “Church girl”, in fact I hated it so much that I got quite irritated with anyone who had labeled me as that. (Not to say they are bad people, they rock and are my friends) But I suppose I hated the fact that I had let that become who I was rather than the people who had thought of it in the first place. So needless to say I started doing everything I could to get out of that mode as quickly as possible. Only problem was, I had no idea who I was! I remember being somewhat down about that fact especially when I met people who were older than me and they seemed so confident and awesome. Kind of like a freshman in high school being in awe of the seniors because they have lived a mere three years more than you ;). So I went on some major soul seeking activities. Every youth ministry retreat that came up I was there and eventually I found one that was the perfect fit to give me the confidence boost of the entire century. The Diocese of Portland Maine has a summer retreat known as the New Evangelization Week (NEW) retreat. I will only say one thing about it: it’s awesome. I remember going to Confession and just was really upset and saying things like “I have no idea who I am and I don’t feel very good about myself.” You know typical teenage girl problems? And the priest, a good friend of mine, was giving me advice but I only remember one thing he said, “Do you know how beautiful you are? Do you know how much God loves you?” It was like the Holy Spirit came down upon me and just opened the dusty corners of my brain with a duh! moment. I mean it was like the Red Sea had parted in my mind and I could see the sunny beach from across the wet bottom, and there was my identity! It was like a Where’s Waldo book, but instead of finding Waldo I found the best man of all time, Jesus! And He was saying “Hello, did that seriously never occur to you?” Well, no, in fact it hadn’t; but it sure did now! The most epic of face-palms was preformed that day because thinking back I could not believe that I had never thought of God that way. Of course! He is the perfect gentleman! He rocks my world! Quite literally!

So to sum up that, I was totally changed after that week at N.E.W. and I love the retreat still, I’d encourage Mainers everywhere to definitely go and for everyone else check out your local youth and young adult ministries as well as Diocesan wide state retreats because you will not regret it, that’s a promise I can make with complete certainty.

I finally realized what I had been searching for, not Waldo, but Jesus!

 Another thing I had been struggling with for a long time, and still do today, was waiting for the right guy to come along. I mean really, what’s taking him so long? I’m kidding (kinda) and even though I pray for him and hope for him to HURRY UP, I realize the importance of waiting and fulfilling what I have to do before we find each other. God has a plan for me right now in the single state and I’m not sure what it is quite yet but I know that when the time is right I’ll get my Mr. Darcy. But one thought that never fails to comfort me when I’m complaining (again) to God is that he is out there RIGHT NOW. I’m so excited! My future guy is probably in college right now and that’s pretty much the most exciting news of my life. Besides the announcement that we had coffee ice cream in our freezer the other day… 

 

So for this whole post, if you didn’t get anything out of it, I have a video for you that I made and it sums up pretty much everything I have talked about and then some:

Yikes sorry about picture and sound quality I'm not the most computer savvy person in the world but I am way too lazy to do anything about it. Enjoy!

Songs:

Because of You ~Kelly Clarkson, Know Your Enemy ~Greenday, Waiting on the World to Change ~John Mayer, Don't You Know You're Beautiful ~Seabird, Perfect ~P!nk, What Makes You Beautiful ~One Direction, She Will be Loved ~Maroon Five, I See the Light ~Mandy Moore and Zachery Levi, You're Beautiful ~James Blunt, Just the Way You Are ~Bruno Mars, Hold Us Together ~Matt Maher

I do not own anything all credit goes to the artists

Pics:

Credit to the magazines: Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Vogue, and Seventeen

Credit: Ryan Gosling

Credit: Cinderella, Tangled, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, The Princess and the Frog, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Sleeping Beauty by Disney

I do not own anything

Hope you liked it!

So now that you know part of my story, what’s yours? Who are you? What are you really searching for? Or rather Who? (Not Doctor Who if that’s what you’re thinking…)

Don’t let these questions scare you, ponder them and pray about them. Not knowing yourself isn’t a terrible crisis, but it’s never too late to get acquainted! 
Be a beauty queen in your own special way. And remember no one has the right to tell you that you are not gorgeous just the way you are. 

Allow me to introduce yourself: You are beautiful and you are a creation of God. That’s a great start now you take if from here. 

 May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ. +JMJ+