For I was hungry...

I'm not usually one to post Bible verses and such on here, but this passage spoke to me in a real life way this week. We met someone who needed help, and he asked for it in the name of God, and I remembered verse 35 and could not say no. Whether the man's story was true or not, it was obvious that he needed help and I pray the Lord will bless him. I thank the Lord that He gave us the opportunity to help someone who was in need.
Don't overlook those around you who are in need, you never know when God may use you to be a blessing to someone else.

³⁴"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

³⁷"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

⁴⁰"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

⁴¹"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴²For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

⁴⁴"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

⁴⁵"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

⁴⁶"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Cotton District Arts Festival

Last Saturday was the Cotton District Arts Festival. It was fun, but I didn't take enough pictures. We're lucky enough to live next to where all of the activities were taking place, so we didn't have to worry about parking and pesky things like that. On our walk, The first thing I noticed was that the irises that I had been waiting to see bloom, were in bloom. This picture doesn't do them justice, they were much more beautiful in person.
So we're about to walk into the madness.
We walked around and looked at all the booths and various things for sale. I saw a thousand things I wanted, but weren't in my price range. It was lots of fun to see what everyone had made and was selling, and it gave me lots of ideas of things I would like to make myself. This is where I didn't take enough pictures :-)
There's always a bagpipe parade, which I think is pretty awesome.
After we walked around till we were tired, we went to a cookout at the house of a friend who lives down the street. That was a lot of fun because it seems like all of our friends stop in there at some point during the day, so we were able to visit with several friends while we were there. Then we went home and I took a nap so that I could be rested up for the music festival that night. I'll write about that soon (hopefully tomorrow).

Here are some pictures from last year's CDAF. I never posted them last year, so better late than never, right?
The crowd.

Bagpipe Parade

I don't remember what group/club sponsored this, but there were all of these bulldogs that people had painted to represent various movies. They were auctioned off as a fund raiser of some sort. I love them and took lots of pictures of them.




They didn't have the painted bulldogs this year, but they had lots of other cool stuff. If you've never been, you should come to Starkville for the Cotton District Arts Festival next year.

This week

I had every intention of posting every day this week, but you know how life gets in the way. So I'll use this post to catch up.

Monday was really busy with housework and the typical housewife life, but I did get my Menu Plan Monday post up.

Tuesday was going to be my "free day" to get caught up on sewing projects and reading, so I slept in and was just getting started with my day when I got a text from a teacher friend.
Her - "Is there any way you can have the cake here in the morning? She's leaving at 10."
Me - "Nobody told me when you needed it or anything, last I heard about it was before Easter. Mrs. M was supposed to get back to me about it. What does it need to say and how do you want it decorated? I can get it there no earlier than 8:00."
So then there were a few more messages and she told me what they needed. So I went to the store for some supplies and spent the rest of the day baking and decorating the cake. (So much for my free day, huh?) So here's the cake, and since I had a little batter and icing left over, I made some cupcakes for some of my other friends at the school since I know they could use a little something to brighten their day.

Wednesday after I took the cake to the school, I spent the rest of the day doing more housewifey stuff. Mostly going through coupons and sale ads and making lists. Also, I made chocolate covered strawberries. They were delicious and we ended up eating all of them that night. I know we shouldn't have, but oh my goodness they were good.
Thursday (yesterday) was a pretty good day. I got a lot of shopping done and got some great deals on stuff at CVS. Also last night I went to a floral design workshop thing that was sponsored by a group on campus that a friend of mine is involved with. I've always been interested in floral design and would love to take an actual class at some point. I learned a few things, so I'm glad I went.
So that brings us to today, Friday. So far, so good. We ate lunch with friends today. The guy that Mr. McHacker works with and his wife (who works in the same building) are friends of ours and I always enjoy it when we're able to eat lunch together. Tonight is supposed to be date night, but since the weather is supposed to get pretty bad later this evening, we're probably postponing it, which is fine with me since we ate out for lunch.

I wanted to write about last weekend in this post, but it's already getting too long, so I'm going to hit publish on this one and call it done and go ahead and start working on the next one and get it ready to post for tomorrow. I hope y'all have a great weekend!

Menu Plan Monday April 19 - 25

It's that time of the week again.

As usual, lunches will be sandwiches or leftovers. We may eat out for lunch at some point this week as well.

Suppers
Monday - Lasagna from the freezer (We ended up eating out when we were supposed to have this last week). Bread machine rolls
Tuesday - Baked lemon pepper chicken, Pasta Roni angel hair pasta with herbs, green beans, rolls
Wednesday - Sloppy Joes on bread machine buns, french fries
Thursday - Chicken, broccoli, rice and cheese casserole (I'll make 2 and put 1 in the freezer), bread machine rolls (fresh batch)
Friday - Eat out
Saturday - Red beans and rice with sausage
Sunday - Salad with fried chicken

Another Computer Science Birthday Cake

Here's the cake for the Computer Science and Engineering department's monthly birthday celebration.


I know it looks a little crazy, but I promise I haven't lost my mind. The only person with a birthday this month was the professor who teaches cryptography. So I thought it would be fun to write the happy birthday message in code. This code is Caesar cipher, which basically shifts letters in order. In this case, all of the letters are shifted 2 places (since the birthday is on the 2nd day of the month), so A becomes C, B becomes D, C becomes E, and so on. The message says Happy Birthday Dr. Ramkumar. When I took it in yesterday morning, the department head said it was cool, and Mr. McHacker said the recipient thought it was great, so I'm happy with that.

We are going to the Cotton District Arts Festival, Old Main Music Festival, and possibly some of the Super Bulldog Weekend activities today, so I'll have some pictures and stuff to post next week. I hope y'all are enjoying your weekend!

Four-wheeler birthday cake

The birthday cake I delivered with the Easter cookies was for a teenage boy who loves his four-wheeler. His mom didn't give me a picture, and said that it didn't really matter what I did, as long as it had a red four wheeler on it. So I found a picture online, and this is how it turned out.

She loved it and said it looked just like the one he has, so I was really happy about that.

Easter cookies

When I took the baby shower cake to the school, several of the ladies asked me if I would make some Easter cookies for them. I've done it in years past, but this year I had completely forgotten about asking if they wanted anything. So when they asked, I said, "Sure, why not?" Well, little did I know I would end up with orders for about 12 dozen cookies, a cookie bouquet, and a birthday cake. I worked 27 hours straight to get them all done. Thankfully, I remembered to get some pictures while I was working on them, because I forgot to when I got them all finished and wrapped up pretty.
I forgot to take a pic of the cookie bouquet. Anyway, I delivered them the Thursday before Easter, and everybody was happy with them.

We spent slept in a little late on Good Friday, then headed down to Mom and Dad McHacker's house and spent the night and part of Saturday with them. Then we went to my Mom's and visited with her and my sister and her kids Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night, after everyone went to bed, I stayed up and made more Easter cookies for Sunday.

We went "across the river" for Easter dinner and the egg hunt with my Nana's family (I took the big cookie bouquet above) and had a great time. We left from there and drove back to Starkville that night. We were so tired, we needed a vacation by the time we got back, but it was fun and I'm glad we went.

Alabama baby shower cake

The Monday before Easter, the ladies at the school I used to work at had a baby shower for one of the teachers. She went to college at the University of Alabama, and is a huge Bama fan, so the ladies thought it would be fun to work that into the cake somehow.
I kicked around a few ideas about what I wanted it to look like. At first I thought it would be cute to have something like a baby wearing a Bear Bryant fedora, drawn on the cake. But I thought that might be kind of hard to draw, so I started sketching out a little elephant instead. As I was doing this, I was talking about it with Mr. McHacker. The following is the actual conversation we had (I actually wrote it down). (I included the drawings as well, you're welcome).

Him - "It wouldn't be hard to draw a baby in a fedora. Here, I'll draw you one."
Me - "If I drew that on a cake, they would refuse to pay me."
Him - "Well fine then."
Me - "Here's what I have in mind instead." (Sorry about the bits of icing on it).
Him - "That's a really good drawing of an elephant. I figured drawing an elephant would be hard, that's why I was thinking drawing a baby would be easier."

Me - "Yeah, it wasn't too hard, a lot easier than a baby I think."

Him - "Dang, I would rather draw three of those babies I drew than an elephant. I'd draw three of them and say, 'Maybe you'll have twins. God bless Bear Bryant!'

Me - Laughing so hard I'm crying. "Three babies is twins, huh?"

Him - "Oh. Never mind."

So anyway, this is what the final cake ended up looking like.

Basketweave birthday cake

I've been making monthly birthday cakes for the Computer Science Department at MSU for several months now. This was the cake for March. Since the only person with a birthday for then month was a lady, I took the opportunity to make it a little more feminine than usual. Basket weave and springtime flowers seemed like a good choice :-)

Menu Plan Monday April 12-18

I've still been doing menu plans, just haven't been posting any. Trying to get back into the habit of posting regularly, so here's this week's.

Lunches will be leftovers or sandwiches.
Suppers:
Monday - Pizza at Game Night
Tuesday - Chicken Caesar Salad
Wednesday - Santa Fe Soup
Thursday - Chicken Spaghetti and bread machine rolls
Friday - Cheeseburgers and fries (on bread machine rolls)
Saturday - Lasagna (from freezer - made extra last time)
Sunday - Southwest quiche

Thomas the Tank Engine cake

It seems like all little boys goes through a phase when they like trains, and it seems like a lot of them love Thomas the Tank Engine. Our friends' little boy is one of those kids, and his birthday party this year was Thomas themed. (He's the same one who had the Little Einsteins cake last year.) I've done a few Thomas cakes before, and thankfully they get easier each time :-)



I wish I had remembered to take my camera (or iPhone) to the party, it was at one of those indoor inflatables places, and I think the adults had as much fun playing on those things as the kids did.

Gamer girl costume

A month or so ago, our friend needed a costume for a costume party her fraternity (Theta Tau) was having. Apparently engineering fraternities are full of geeks, because the theme was "dress as a video game character." So, I told her I would help her make a costume. I didn't quite realize how much work it would be when I volunteered, but I'm glad I did it, it was a lot of fun making something other than aprons and such. I don't know the name of the character, but this is the costume she showed me, and said something like that would be great. So this is what I had to go by.



Of course, I didn't have a pattern, so I had to take measurements and make my own pattern pieces for the costume. I knew I could do it, but I didn't want to tape pieces of paper together to draw the pattern on, because I have done that before and it's a pain in the ass. Then I had a brainstorm (which I'm sure many others before me have had) that I could use the back side of some of that leftover Christmas wrapping paper I had in the closet. It worked great. So I took measurements, drew out the pattern pieces, and spend two days sewing. Here are the results.

Skirt:


Sleeveless top:


Vest over the shirt:


Arm band/sleeves:

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of her wearing it, but she loved it, and I think it turned out pretty well.

Congratulations Mr. McHacker

My dear, sweet, very smart husband received some awards from the MSU Student Association recently. They let him know that he was going to receive the award for the Most Outstanding Student in the College of Engineering, which was pretty cool. Then at the reception, they announced that he was also the winner of the Most Outstanding Student of the Year at Mississippi State University. He wasn't expecting this, and it was really cool for him to win it. I'm glad that he's being recognized for all of the hard work he's done as a PhD student, he deserves it. He said it was okay to post the picture, so here you go. Sorry about the red eyes, but I'm not taking the time to fix it. (Although it is tempting to photoshop out my double chin and fat arms).


Also, Mr. McHacker also started a new job at MSU with the National Forensics Training Center. You can read about it over at his blog if you want to know more. So now, he's working full time, and working on his PhD dissertation too. Busy guy.

It's been a while...again

For some reason, I just haven't written anything in a long time. I think about it, but I've been busy with other things. And sometimes, I'm not busy, I'm just lazy and want to goof around on the internet rather than write a blog post. So, I'm going to really try this time to write more often. In fact, I'm sitting in my husband's office at work with him right now, and while he's working on stuff, I'm going to sit here and write up a bunch of blog posts catching up on what I've been up to lately. Since I don't have other things to distract me here.
So anyway, something I've been wanting to show y'all, are some pictures I took on campus at MSU a couple of weeks ago. It was one of the first really pretty days of spring, and I took a walk around the neighborhood and MSU.


This is the footbridge that leads into campus if you're walking from downtown.


I love, love, love this tree. Every year I say I'm going t take pictures of it and I'm so glad I finally did it this year.








I hope y'all are enjoying the lovely spring weather as much as I am.