Shadow Stories

Saturday
hooray for our weekly review of beautiful things! this was my last full week at school; by this post next week I'll be leaving for my summer job the next day! 
This was a tea for young girls at my church I went to last Sunday. They sent me home with dozens of extra tiny cupcakes, so a few days later I went to the library with a friend and handed them out to studying people! It was so fun!
This is my sweet friend Hannah. Her birthday isn't until the summer, so we had a surprise-early-birthday party for her at the ice cream shop. 
One of my friends is transferring next fall, so we went downtown for dinner to hang out. I know Bham's downtown isn't comparable to huge cities', but I love it; there's a lot of great places down there. 
 I shared with y'all on Instagram some pictures of the sweets I made this night. Here's the dinner I made and the lovely sweet ladies I ate it with. I took a picture during the prayer (ssh! don't tell!), and you can see how exultant Mary is when she talks to Christ. It's beautiful. She was a missionary for 34 years in Japan. I overheard (when I was in the kitchen later) her telling one of the women, "they have four-step plans to teach salvation, but life doesn't follow a four-step plan.  So what I taught people was that you can have a relationship with Christ and know him. That is what is important."
I know I shared this with y'all on instagram, but this week my work was published!! This is the Journalism department's publication of short stories, poetry, and photography. EEEPPP!!PUBLISHED!! Thanks to the Holy Spirit for teaching me this lesson as I wrote this poem. It's because of Your Truth that it exists. 
My ballet final was Thursday (it went well!) and our teacher brought us donuts for a great year. So here's our sweaty bodies and happy donuts!
MY 10 PAGE PAPER IS FINISHED AND TURNED IN!! If you ever want to know anything about Augustine and Achilles' similar relationships, ya let me know. These are alllll the books I used. This moment was so victorious.
This week/weekend has involved lots of note deliveries (accompanied by baked goods of course!) to people who have blessed me in my time in Birmingham. God has set up so many divine appointments, providing for me at every turn. I'm thankful for relationships with people. Because, as I wrote in my paper, relationships are essential to the human condition. And I didn't have any here in August, and it's May now and I almost cry when I think about leaving. I'm thankful for the Lord's faithfulness in that.
I stopped by Birmingham Fashion Wwek. Not much was happening when I was there, though. But I said I would, and I did! Those fashion resolutions are another matter...
Also last night, I hammocked with some girls and spent the night in one of their rooms. 
Last week of freshman year? Bring it on. 

My closings seriously need some help. Any recommendations? Anyone?

Recommendation: The Pioneer Woman

Happy Thursday!
I have decided to use today's post to briefly alert you to the existence of a wonderful blog. I understand that this is backwards, because instead of my millions of followers following her and getting her blog off the ground, my 0 followers have probably already heard and . . . yeah. But she's wonderful, and she's one of the first blogs I followed, so here's a list of great things about her blog via pictures:


This brownie recipe. Reese's INSIDE brownie batter. Genius, I know. I made these for a group of 40 friends this week, and it was so quick and easy! They're wrapped in foil on the right side of this insta picture. 


RIDICULOUS dessert recipes (sorry, I don't know where this all-caps mood came from!). I scrolled for so long that I finally had to just pick something. Because I couldn't pick everything. And her posts are humorous and happy and human and wonderful. I have a feeling she would have something funny to say about that succession of adjectives. But that's okay.

She also does sick giveaways! 


And posts funny pictures of her dog . . .

and kids.



She also has quizzes about movies that I haven't seen or heard of. But the quizzes are fun I'm sure and have cool prizes! Ah I need to do something on here with prizes! If you exist, you'd be sure to win, probably!


And her recipes. For everything. Are wonderful.


Ree is wonderful, and her dear heart shows in her blog. Check it out: thepioneerwoman.com
Happy [Thursday]!

In the Gap: Dance
Well, the point of having Wednesdays is so that I'd show y'all choreography. And it didn't have to be polished, it just had to be done. So here you go: me being imperfect.