In the Kitchen

I can't believe there are people who cook like this daily... I made breakfast muffins, zucchini bread, and a steak dinner with sautéed veggies and salad. It's been a kitchen-y day.

Not to mention Bart has fleas so we gave him frontline AND powdered all the carpet (including moving furniture), swept the powder into the carpet, let it sit for several hours, and vacuumed it all up. We'll see if it actually worked.

Anyway, I'm posting the recipe for the breakfast muffins since a friend asked. I got this recipe from a coworker...

Breakfast Muffins
-lightly spray muffin tray with oil
-preheat oven to 325
-cut up ham and/or bacon (I used one slice of each)
-grate cheese (I just grated til my arm got tired. Did not measure.)
-2 eggs
-finely chop chard or spinach (optional, but I'm trying to use my greens)
-tube of regular (not jumbo) biscuits
-seasonings (salt, pepper, whatever you like)

1. I used a mini-muffin tray, but it would also work with regular. I separated the biscuits into thirds and lined each muffin cup. For regular sized muffins just use half a biscuit; for jumbo muffins, use a whole biscuit.
2. Mix everything together in a bowl (egg, meat, cheese, greens, seasoning). The mix was pretty thick. Lots of meat and cheese for us.
3. Pour into biscuit-lined muffin cups. At least 3/4 full.
4. Cook for 10 mins. They come out a little liquidy looking, but they continue to cook out of the oven. I mostly just made sure the muffins were lightly browned.
5. Consume.

Here's the delicious zucchini bread recipe I used: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/moms-zucchini-bread/.

Let me know if you have any questions!

You're welcome, neighborhood.

We live in a calm, quiet neighborhood. The average neighbor probably qualifies for a senior discount at any restaurant. They are nice, and all have well kept yards... Not so much at The Jeongle. I had 'decorated' with a poorly painted rock and some weeds. My mother informed me several weeks ago that I was decreasing the property values and these beloved neighbors were likely giving my yard the stink-eye... All of that has changed.

In the garden...

I grew a 5'6 weed.

I grew an amaryllis.

I have some super tall asparagus that really needs tending to.

I have three trees getting too big for pots that I cannot plant in my tiny, rented yard.
......………

Anybody want a free sapling?

Christmas

First we had a small tree... but I was distraught because I loved it, but I wanted more, but I didn't want to spend money on Christmas, but my house didn't feel holly jolly- it felt like a spurt of cheer sat in the doorway, but I could spend $40/month to sponsor a child's LIFE or $40 this month to fill my house with shtuff, but I wanted more Christmas, but Christmas isn't about things (okay, you get it).

Then God heard the cries of my heart and the next day at work, my wonderful coworker, Robin, was giving her giant tree and some of her decor away!!!

So we were stoked. Super pumped. We went to her amazing home and loaded the Sportage with Christmas. We put up everything (I took the little tree up to my work). Now my house is a holly jolly home.

We were also given free tickets by another wonderful coworker, Michelle, to go see the Living Tree at First Baptist Church. There are 100 people in that tree and they're all singing their little Christmas-ball-shaped heads off. A LOT of work went into this production.

Lastly, Shin found some AMAZING deals on camping stuff so we gave a joint Christmas gift to ourselves. We froze our buns off sleeping outside the other night, but it was good practice for the camping we plan to do in 2012.

Merry Christmas! I hope you notice and give thanks for the Christmas miracles Jesus is working all around you and in your life too!

Life Updates

We’re going to INDIA!

Shin and I are embarking on a grand adventure to India with a group from Gateway Baptist Church. The trip is from Sept 22^nd- Oct 1^st and our specific interest is related to the work I’ve been doing with India Child Sponsorship, a program of Community Development Initiatives. It's a ministry organized for people in America to sponsor Hindu orphans in Dehradun, India.

Our church has been working with this ministry for the last 7 years and we work directly with the staff of New Life Center. Unfortunately, unless sponsors step up by September 20^th, they will lose funding that will cut 120 children from the program. Our church is taking a small group to assess the situation and find out how our money can best be used to aid the children that get to stay. For Shin and I to go, it's going to cost us $2,200 each.

I am trying to pick up some extra part time work cleaning, organizing, yard-working, errand-running (pray for people to take an interest in hiring me!)  and I may be taking a semester off from graduate school. However we also fully believe that missions is not just about us experiencing God, it’s not just about the people we will meet and share God’s love with, it’s about all of us – including you – worshipping God!  We believe that, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”¹

We hope you will pray for us as we prepare to leave (for passports, Green card, and visas to process quickly), and we hope that you will let others know about what we are doing. If you are interested in prayerfully and/or financially supporting us, you can contact us by email at: Alycia.Jeong@gmail.com OR shin.d.jeong@gmail.com or use our PayPal donation button at the top right of the page.

As we prepare for our trip, I’m planning to post more on Dehradun, New Life Center, Child Sponsorship, Fundraising, and how we’re trying to figure out trusting in God on this seemingly financially ridiculous path He’s called us to. We hope you’ll follow along as we learn more about India and what God is doing there.

As an aside:

For anyone who read this post and thought the poky-grassy plants were weeds… you were wrong!  Check this beautiful flower out! Now I really wish I knew what it was because it successfully grew! All I did was water it, and one day it developed a tiny bud. Then the bud grew. And it took about two weeks. Then I thought it was never going to open and it was just going to die (the plant turned yellow-ish and was leaning over). So I repotted it Wednesday night into a larger container… and Thursday there was a BEAUTIFUL white blossom.

 It has yellow pollinator guys and they’re dusty and lovely (I’m sure anyone who knows anything about biology remembers what those are called but I don’t. Grease 2 only taught me “stamen” and “pistil” and I have no clue which is which). It also has purple veins on the outside that are perfectly impressive. (Can you tell I’m in love with this blossom?)

Our Master Bathroom

Our Bathroom

So, we spent a ridiculous amount of time working on our bathroom. I think we started in April… and finished July 4^th!!! That’s three months on one regular bathroom. We had to strip the horrible wallpaper. That’s what took so long. The first layer came off WONDERFULLY. It just “shhhhhhhhrp” came right off with one pull. From the top all the way down to the bottom. “Shhhhhhhhhhhhrp” “shhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrp” “shhhhrrrrpppp.” But it was that second layer that killed us. We rolled remover liquid on those walls. We scraped them. We sponged them. We picked at them. We grunted. We quit. My lovely husband finally picked a scraper up again and got the job almost finished for me. But it took forever. Then I patched scrapes and chunks that were taken out of the wall by the crappy scraper and the weak dry wall. Several parts of the dry wall just really crumbled when we went to remove that second layer. So the spackel began. And then the priming. And then the edging with the primer. And we had to pick out the color. First sample was too bland and brown-ish, second sample too bright and just screamed “I’M YELLOW!”, combination of them was good but not enough paint and still a little yellow. So I went to SW and they matched the color on some high quality paint and made it a little lighter. Our bathroom is now the perfect shade of yellow after only one layer of paint. I love it. I want to paint everything yellow now… but never remove wallpaper ever again.

Before:

 After:

Anyone know a good, cheap home remedy for getting rid of rust stains? 

Oh Em Gardening

Okay, I love GARDENING. I’ve been gardening some. And tending to plants and such.

My potato plants all died. I think gardening might be addictive. I had kind of given up on it when my plants started dying, but once I got to eat my own potatoes- I fell back in love with it. All potatoes pictured have been eaten. They were delicious and I wish I had a bunch more.

 I want to expand my garden next year. I don’t love the mosquitoes but I do love it when I get to yank all the weeds out of the ground (I know, weird, right?) and see my fluffy asparagus growing and my onions flourishing. I wish my garlic had worked (planted garlic but they didn’t grow… at all!). I think next year I’ll try tomatoes and garlic again and maaaaybe carrots. If I do carrots I’ll need to do a little better about my rows and organize better (right now everything’s just stabbed in the ground in regions).

All plants pictured are still alive… I really only needed to post one picture. But I’m just excited about them. Does anyone have any idea what the plants are on the front row on the respective ends? My grandma says they are weeds! (Which might explain why they’re doing so well.) But they have hard bases that they’re growing from, not like a weed that you can just pull out of the ground. They were included in the dirt that came with my asparagus plants so they could be weeds but I really hope they’re actual planty-plants. I also have three other plants that are not pictured (along with my whole garden).

New Bookshelf

Well, we got a new bookshelf! Actually it's an old bookshelf from my room at home. I guess I've had it in my room since I was 12. But now it's in our house and I really like it here. It's full of good books that we like and like to read or want to read. For some reason it just really makes me feel like my living room is much more livable.

We like our house, we like it a lot. But we don't like just buying stuff to put in it. The other day I was looking around in amazement because probably 95% of the furniture and decor are gifts. Which I think is amazing. Now it also means there isn't really a theme and not everything matches, but I love being able to look around in my home and to know that almost everything I see is a little piece of love from someone else.

Anyway, it's getting to be summery. Shin's job is better. I still like my job. I think this is going to be a good year #2 of marriage.

A tail of two kitties

Ugh. This post is starting off disappointed because I wanted to upload a picture of Bart showing how he has it made in the shade, but I can't upload from my phone. I know, 'woe is me, my privileged lifestyle smart phone won't do exactly what I want when I want it.' anyway, all that to say, possibly a picture to come if I decide to edit this post from a computer.

What this is really about is that in two days we are going to be a two cat fam, and I am excited. My coworker is going on maternity leave and we get to keep her cat for a while (at least a month) and I think Mia is going to be a great addition to our home. Bart is super spoiled and shin always plays with him alls the time. Now at least I'll have a cat too, or the cats will entertain each other. Anyway- yay temporarily two cats!

(another yay: actually survived reading a tale of two cities. The real, unabridged one. It almost killed my reading kick, but the ending was good.)