worship team

About the same time we joined the church, Steph and I met with our worship leader at Grace in order to join the worship team. One thing we love so much about our church is that the worship music is so laid back, and very honest and intimate - not anything like the big over-productions that so many churches are known for.

This made it very inviting for me to get involved on the team, and for the past three weeks I've been a part of the music on Sunday mornings, playing piano. It's been great and I've really enjoyed it. Surprisingly, given this is Nashville, our church is short on piano players, so it's nice to be needed to some extent! Steph sang on the team last Sunday as well and that was fun.

So, step 1 in getting involved with our new church is underway...

thanksgiving recipes

It's my personal tradition to cook a new sweet potato recipe every Thanksgiving... this year's was definitely a winner. It included mashed sweet potatoes and a healthy concoction of butter, sugar, and cream. I then topped it off with a brown sugar / crushed pecan crust and baked it in the oven.

I've also been searching for good cornbread recipe (one that wasn't so boringly dry). Thanksgiving was a good time for that as well, and I was quite pleased with my results. Made some cornbread muffins and found that a combination of 2/3 flour and 1/3 corn meal actually made them much less dry. That in addition to some whole kernels of corn made for some very traditional muffins that went over quite well.


2 Recipes of 10 Complete

kitchen painted

There are four rooms in our house that we absolutely want to paint (at the very least, prior to selling it). Of most importance to us is the living room and kitchen, and we're happy to report that the kitchen is painted. Grape Vine was the color we chose (after much deliberation) - it's a nice Tuscany green color that works well with our color scheme of dark woods and earthy tones. Now we need to find something that works for the living room, which has proven to be much more difficult.

grace community church

Within the last month Steph and I both became members of our church, Grace Community Church. That was a long time coming, and part of the hold-up was reconciling myself to the fact that I would need to get baptized (according to Baptist tradition)... so I eventually did, and wrote a post about the whole experience on my personal blog.