Roasting Coffee at the O'Neal's

Spencer has recently taken up a new hobby... roasting his own coffee. (Buying green beans are almost half the cost as buying already roasted beans, and they last up to a year. Once you roast them they last about a week, but are fresher then store bought.)

He wanted to share the first roasting experience with the O'Neals when we were over there last. Here's a few snap shots from the day...

All you need is an popcorn popper (that has slits in the inside to circulate the air), cardboard or metal tube (that sits in popcorn popper opening), metal strainer or stock pot, and a wooden spoon.

The first batch...

cooling the beans...

The girls have a turn :)

The finished medium and dark roasts... Spencer is pleased :)

It's a small world after all...

Color photo found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46355638@N00/2142122437

I was working one wintry day over the holidays and in walks this girl who I recognized from the church in California... and she looked at me and immediately said upon recognizing me... "This may sound strange but are you from California?" And said "Yes" and she said, "Are you SPENCER'S wife?"... "Y-eeeesss?... It's Shannon right?....O'NEA-llL?" "Yes, and my husband is Sean! Do you live in Lincoln???" "Yes we just moved out in August." "Wow, we just moved out Last August!"...

So come to find out they actually live about 3 blocks from our house, so we exchanged info to get together for dinner after the holidays. It's crazy that while living in California, we hadn't actually gotten to know the O'Neals, even though we had the same circles of friends... so when we went over to their place for dinner it was strange to see pictures of people we knew from Grace hanging on their walls.

We have since gotten together again for crafting/sewing days, and it's really refreshing to have a friend and fellow believer close by again... something I really miss having at my fingertips, like I did while at Grace.

It's so amazing how God puts together certain groups of people together when HE wants them to be put together... perfectly orchestrating everything in HIS good timing, so that we find new friendships when we least expect them, and need them most. PRAISE GOD!

Motherhood Maternity...

During the initial interview, Suzette prefaced the interview with "We don't really even consider any applicants who don't have any retail experience, but since you have a background in fashion I wanted to give you a shot." Praise God! Also, the Motherhood stores usually "don't get very busy over the holidays... Easter and Mother's Day are the busiest times of the year," so it awesome that they even considered me over the holidays (since we'll be moving up to Omaha in January to be closer to my hubby's work, and church).

On top of all that they were looking for someone to do the morning shift because they had a lot of closing shift people.... which was perfect because I was looking for a morning/afternoon position so that I could be home to make dinner for my family, and get any chores done before they got home.

Motherhood sounded like it was going to take a long time to go through the process, so I wasn't sure if it would be quick enough before I got hired at the other places, but I really wanted to work there of all places. I just prayed that God would place me where he wanted and it was really amazing to see God's hand working in all this. Suzette the manager was really great at keeping me posted all through the process so I wasn't left hanging. She also warned me when the upper-level manager from Kansas was going to be calling for my phone interview so that I was prepared, I thank God for that!

Praise God!!! I got the job at Motherhood Maternity! Totally an act of God... the other two jobs that I applied for seemed to be on a roll, and then after things were looking good with Motherhood Maternity, the other two places seemed to drop off the face of the earth. They were talking about their pressing need to get people placed before the holidays and we were talking about scheduling, background checks and such but they never called back since the beginning of last week (when all the Motherhood interviews started).

More acts of God to come I'm sure...

Putting the house on the market pt. 2...

As some of you may already know, my in-laws are trying to do some improvements to the house before they put it on the market. One of the projects my husband and I have been helping with is the small middle room upstairs. This is the update from my previous post about the progress made on the room... Now we have the ceiling finished and are now working on putting up the textured wall paper that you can paint on. (the white side is with the wall paper).


It's beginning to look like a fresh canvas again. I can't wait to see a fresh coat of paint on the walls, carpet pulled up and furniture in the room.


The walls are going to be a greenish blue color and the baseboards and trim will be an off white (kind of close to what it is now, but reversed).

Fall is Here!!

Once the temperature starts to get a bit cooler (which this year was Oct. 10) the leaves change colors and start to fall. If the temperature gets too cold all the leaves will fall off and everything looks dead, but if it warms up a bit after the cooler weather, the trees change beautiful vibrant colors before falling and it wont fall as quickly. This week has been really nice and warm, so the leaves look so beautiful and vibrant.


I've been wanting to take pictures of the trees around here while there is still leaves on them... so I finally was able to. Here are some pictures of some of the trees a few blocks away from our house.


In preparation for the fall I've reduced all items in my etsy store $2-$70 off original prices. And I'm also offering a 2 pack special for belly bands. Please feel free to look around and tell your friends about the fall sale.

Happy Autumn everyone!!!

Early Canadian Thanksgiving and First Snow Fall of 2009...

This morning I woke up and noticed a bit of a white reflection coming from outside the bathroom window. After further investigation I quickly ran back to our bedroom to wake up my husband... "Honey.....(nudge).... honey.... (nudge, nudge) .... there's SNOW outside!!!"

Here's my nephew, he was looking out at the snow as I was snapping a few pictures. He really wanted to go play in the snow when he woke up this morning.

Today we are celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving (which is actually on Monday).... I can't wait to try all the yummy foods! I'm trying the Alton Brown way of cooking the turkey (or in our case chicken, since I couldn't find any turkeys)... where you soak the turkey in a brine over night. It should be interesting. Instead of mashed potatoes this year we are going to try poutine (with shredded mozzarella cheese instead of cheese curds). My sister-in-law is bringing a traditional green bean casserole and then for dessert we are having one of two pumpkin cheesecakes I made... (one pumpkin-banana with a graham cracker crust, the other is a pumpkin with a ginger snap crust). YUM!

Happy early Canadian Thanksgiving and first snow fall everyone!

Leaf or bug?

Nebraska is full of various bugs and creatures that I'm not used to seeing in California. Since we leave our windows open on the warm nights to allow for air flow, we have been able to experience some of these creepy crawlies up close and personal.

This morning we woke up to find a leaf next to our bed, or was it? After closer examination I found it to be a bug. It almost looks like a grasshopper with a leaf on it's back.

Getting the house ready to put up on the market...

My in-laws are planning on putting the house back on the market this month, so we've been working hard to get it ready to show. We've gone through boxes of stuff, put things in storage and one of our more recent projects has been re-doing the small upstairs bedroom.

It used to be my husband's younger sister's room when they were growing up, but until recently it's been a catch all for random stuff, and it was where we were storing our boxes of stuff that we moved out from California.

We rented a wallpaper steamer and found ourselves peeling 4 or 5 layers of wallpaper off the walls before getting to the plaster. (It kind of reminded me of our time in Spain because one of the projects some of the guys did to the blue room).

We found a part of the wall that looked like it had at one point been a window before they added on to the house, and they had patched it up with a different kind of plaster then the original walls (notice the slightly lighter color and sheen to the patched up wall above). On the same wall someone had written their name and the date most likely when they patched the wall, or put wall paper over it. This is a very old house, among the others in Lincoln... it's neat to see little pieces of history in even your own house.

This is how far we got... my husband and father in law are putting up a new ceiling with drywall because the old plaster ceiling had cracked in an area and was starting to come down.

I can't wait to show you what it looks like when it's all done. We are going to convert this room into a nursery/toddler room which will be perfect for our little nephew when he comes to visit.

The run-in with the bat...

A couple nights ago my husband and I were woken up by the sound of laughter and loud shouting at 5am... it was my in-laws trying to apprehend a culprit that had broken into the house and was flying into the ceiling fan... a BAT!!!

My father-in-law was trying to create a barrier using a pillow, so that the bat wouldn't go upstairs to our room, and called for my husband to come down to help him get the bat out of the house... while my mother-in-law laughed hysterically at this charade.

My husband came down and after my father-in-law whacked the bat down with a pillow, my husband sandwiched it between a t-shirt and the pillow, and got the bat out of the house.

The next morning we found the bat where my husband had put him... we thought he was dead because he wasn't moving, so my husband picked him up with a plastic bag on his hand and took him out to the alley. He was still a live but injured, so when my husband put him down on the ground and used a stick to turn him over, so his head wasn't in the dirt, he wasn't happy and he hissed at us.

Bats have been the topic of discussion in the house since the incident...