Friday, May 6, 2016

The Market

This weekend is the grand opening of The Market at the Dallas Farmer's Market. They completely renovated the indoor space formally known as Shed 2 & it now houses multiple restaurants & shopping spaces.
It's a really cool little spot & I'm always up for new places to eat!
Today I tried Cajun Tailgators.
Their Boudin Balls were full of flavor and a little spicy, very tasty!
I had to get ice cream at Cool Haus! This is one of our favorite food trucks & I was very excited to see them in a permanent location! They make ice cream sandwiches from their house made ice cream & cookies! Today I opted for my ice cream in a bowl because I wanted 2 scoops & adding cookies to that seemed ill advised ;) But don't let my restraint hold you back, they will totally make you a 2 scoop ice cream sandwich!
I got their Balsamic Fig Marscapone and their Dirty Mint. I love all things fig & this ice cream did not disappoint! And Dirty Mint is my new favorite ice cream! It is not a super sweet candied mint that you normally get from ice cream, instead you can see the tiny chopped up pieces of mint mixed in with the chocolate chips! It's like eating ice cream out in the garden, which is fitting at the Farmer's Market :)
I ate my ice cream outside and enjoyed the music :)
Then I wandered over to The Shed. In theory this is where the local farmer's would be selling their fruits & veggies for Dallas to enjoy. The new owners have new rules that only local farmers can sell at the Farmer's Market, which is great in theory. What it means in practice is there were 6 farmers with a table each of produce & the rest of The Shed was the baked goods/canned goods who used to have tables in Shed 2 & several people selling live plants. The days of walking through the Farmer's Market trying the fresh new produce, deciding what to bring home for dinner are gone. I truly hope these are just the pains of change & they can build it back up to what we grew up with. But for now, the Farmer's Market is a great place to go have lunch (truly, I love what they have done with The Market), but I need a new place to try unique produce.
However, I did meet the most informative Plumeria Farmer! We talked for probably 20 minutes about how to grow plumeria. I will be going back to see him!
As I was leaving I saw Vertical Life Farms posing their Tower Garden & thought it was a cute idea!
So my new Plumeria needed to pose as well :)
Let's keep visiting the Farmer's Market, and maybe more farmer's will see it as the place to be! And if you find yourself in need of a Plumeria, I've got a guy!

Bible Journaling

I recently started a journaling Bible. The best description I have heard for Bible journaling is we are creatively representing scripture :) So I wanted to share it with my creative readers who may see this as a creative outlet to worship!
You can check out Illustrated Faith if you want to learn more, and I also follow a couple Facebook groups dedicated to lifting each other up and sharing our pages as inspiration. Search Bible Journaling and DFW Bible Journaling if you are interested :)
The first page I journaled was for our Baby. Hubby traced my tattoo onto freezer paper, and then I  traced it onto the page.
I decided to get a Bible specifically for journaling with wide margins, but I have seen plenty of people use their every day Bible. It's completely up to you how you want to express your creativity to God.
I wanted to show you what supplies I used, from top to bottom:
Tombow calligraphy pen (made in Japan, ordered from Amazon) left a little shadowing on the back but no bleed through
Sakura Pigma Micron 03 almost no shadowing and no bleed through
Sharpie ultra fine tip completely bled through
A la Mode by Hampton Art Black ink pad no shadow & no bleed through.
This is my permissions page. Basically a reminder that this Bible is for worship and if it gets messy that is ok!
Romans 15:4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.
I chose these 3 words to put on the sides of my Bible based on Romans 15:4.
My Papa went to Heaven on April 1st. His favorite passage was Psalms 91. The last verse of Psalms 91 says, "With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation." That is a very fitting verse for my Papa! He was a Pentecostal preacher, and raised multiple generations in church! He also loved to garden, at the bottom I put his 2 favorites onions and tomatoes :) He also raised chickens, and loved to tell corny jokes! I may add one of his jokes to the page ;)
This has not been an easy year, but God is holding us through it! I am very glad to have been introduced to Bible journaling! It has been a very unique way to express my love, worship, and even grief.
Let me know if you are into journaling, or if you decide to give it a try :)