New Adventure

Over a year ago, I discovered a thing called Bible journaling. When you dig into God’s word and artistically write/draw/paint the things He points out to you in a way that is meaningful to you! I discovered Shanna Noel’s blog and assorted posts and tags and Facebook groups full of incredible art and journaling that people had done in their Bibles, and I fell. in. LOVE. I have always loved Bibles, taking lots of notes, writing, being artsy, trying new media, etc. But, the overarching fatal flaw, I was too scared to mess up that I never got started. I got nervous. I’m a perfectionist, so my thought was if I start doing this, maybe there should be a system. Like, what if I highlighted all the names of God in this color and all the main ideas in this color? But then, what if I only have 6 different colors of highlighters that don’t bleed through my Bible pages, and I pick the WRONG 6 CATEGORIES to use for each color?!?!?! That would be HORRIBLE! A waste of time, a waste of highlighter ink, a waste of a beautiful, perfect Bible?! *I think you can hear the anxiety in my head.* I have episodes like this ALL THE TIME, but usually they stay in my head because they either (1) don’t seem that weird to me because I’m me and I’m used to it, (2) people would think I was crazy if I tried to explain, (3) people would understand where I was coming from, but if they understand it’s because they’re perfectionists like me who wouldn’t be able to provide any helpful insight because they would have the same overwhelming anxietal (not sure if that’s a real word – don’t really care! 🙂 ) thoughts with no solution.. on and on. You get the point.

Fast forward a year later:
I’m scrollin’ Facebook like I do every day, and I pass this post. Totally caught my attention for the words first, then when I saw the highlighted Bible. BOOM. Passion reignited.

Now, because I’m not very good at staying in the timeline very well when I write, let’s flashback again really quickly.. I was totally drawn into all the posts I had seen about Bible journaling, but a lot of them were works of ART. Totally gorgeous. An incredible way to connect to Scripture. Totally intimidating and not something I felt capable of doing. Nice to look at, but not my style.

Ok, fastforward again (or should I say present time?) This girl (Soul Scripts / Jordan) was totally my style. She has a system of how/what she highlights, but isn’t obsessively married to it where it gets overwhelming to highlight anything. Her pages are colorful, full of notes and reiterations, arrows and connectors between verses and thoughts, bold lettering, traceable thought processes, and an obvious yearning to relate the Scriptures back to her own life! I was in love all over again. First with Bible journaling, and second with Jordan’s style of accomplishing it!

So, I started looking up hashtags and blogs and YouTube videos. After having my flame of excitement for this beautiful art relit, I stumbled across this video that really gave me peace about actually pursuing this venture. Lauren from the Thinking Closet (in the video I just linked!!) has her opening pages of her Bible set up to be “permissions pages” as she calls them. They state what this Bible is for: entering into God’s presence, trying new mediums, asking the hard questions, sloppy handwriting, etc. And what this Bible is not for: neat, tidy thoughts, impressing others, fear of failure, etc. WHAT!!! How brilliant is she?! Totally what I needed to feel set free to be able to explore my Bible and my dormant artistic talents!

I discovered Kristin Schmucker Shop and I ordered a new Bible and some non-bleed highlighters and told myself there was no turning back now! (Mind you, this was after continuous self-banter of whether or not I REALLY needed another Bible, if I should ask the hubs if it was ok if I bought this new Bible and totally explained myself fully, and decided just in case he looked at me like I had gone bonkers for wanting to buy ANOTHER Bible, I went ahead and ordered it without even telling him 😳 haha *It’s ok; he saw me using it last night, asked if I bought a new Bible, and laughed when I explained it all to him. He thinks I’m crazy.*)

Onwards! Although I have not yet made my permissions pages, they are at the top of my Bible journaling priority list. I am so, so excited about this new adventure and that I get to bring you all along with me!! The featured image on this page is my first exploration into Bible journaling, and I am so pleased. It’s a pretty simple page, and the process was MUCH easier than I expected! Yay! I used some watered down acrylic paints to paint the page, and I wrote part of the verse I underlined (Is. 41:10) in silver sharpie along the side. All of the text is still easily readable and there’s even some room on the right-hand side of the column to take some more notes in the future! 😍

Please comment if you have any more questions I didn’t answer! I’m so excited to start this with all of you!

Our Family is Growing!!

A couple days before I left for Florida to visit my family for Christmas, my husband and I found out that I am pregnant again!!! I have always loved the idea of my kids being close in age and that after I had the first I’d just keep going. Well, it seems we will be joining the 2 under 2 club!! Baby #2 is due August 9, and I couldn’t be more excited!! I definitely get nervous when I stop and think about the fact that Paul will probably be walking and running around by the time my belly is huge, and I am feeling constantly exhausted. It’s also easy to get nervous about being a stay at home mom and trying to get any grocery shopping done, errands run, or me time in with TWO of them. But the overarching emotion is joy. I want a big family, and I know children are a blessing. God always provides just what we need, so even when I start to get nervous I just sit back and let the Spirit remind me that He has a plan, and He is good.

This is an exciting new adventure, and I am so pumped!

Snowzilla!

As many of you probably already know, we had a huge snow storm this weekend! It started Friday around noon and did not stop snowing until late Saturday night. Baby P and I were already home, so once hubby was dismissed from work and made it home, we settled in for the long haul. Lots of netflix, puzzles, computer games, and rest. The featured photo on this post was taken on Saturday afternoon sometime when it had been snowing for hours. It actually covered those cars almost completely by the time it finally stopped; only a sliver of the car windows were still visible from our house. However, it was dark outside by the time the snow stopped, so I did not get an updated photo.

I am from Florida, so no matter how many winters I have lived in Northern VA it’s still cool to me to see snow. And I’ve definitely never seen this much snow at one time!! Now that it is Sunday we finally decided since the snow stopped falling it was time to take baby P out to see his first snow!!

P’s first snow!

Knee deep!!

Making snow angels!

Hubby’s eyes were closed in every picture I got of the 2 of them.

A Little Secret

For about a week, I was craaaaving a chocolate cake. A little strange for me cause I’m usually MUCH more of a cookie girl. 😉 But alas, I really wanted a cake. But not just any cake! I wanted my Grannie’s chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Mind you, I live about 966 miles away from my Grannie.

So, I went for the next best thing. I went to the store and bought a cake mix and some icing. I had no idea what kind of cake mix, but the only one I found resembling chocolate was “Devil’s Food”, so I took my chances deciding the “wrong” kind of chocolate (if there is such a thing as a WRONG kind of CHOCOLATE?!) is better than no chocolate at all. I grabbed my items, checked out, and left.

Well, since I had to make it myself I tried to follow my Grannie’s directions. Now, Grannie is a pretty straight-forward gal. I followed the directions exactly… except? Except for the water.

Every time you make a cake with Grannie, she ALWAYS reminds you of the “little secret” that you have to remember. What is the secret that could make such a big difference??

Trade the water for orange juice.

Is your mind blown? A little confused? I was the first time she told me this little secret. At that time, I was a little kid and did not like orange juice, so I was appalled and a little offended that my beloved Grannie would dare ruin a cake, nonetheless a CHOCOLATE cake by putting orange juice in it. I thought she was crazy and had gone off the deep end.

She hadn’t. She found the little secret that makes the flavor really pop. As Grannie assured me over and over, you can’t taste the flavor of the orange juice once the cake is baked, but you CAN notice the difference in how much more moist this delectable dessert is when you remember the little secret and trade your water for orange juice. 😋

New Beginnings

I have dreamed about having a blog for years. I have started blogs, posted twice, and given up. I have started blogs, posted three times, and forgotten they existed. I have started blogs, decided I had nothing good to say/wasn’t worthy/would only fail, and quit on myself. I am glad to say, I am completely different and exactly the same today as I was then.

Maybe that was a little too confusing, please let me explain myself.
I am the same hypersensitive, unorganized girl I was when I started all those other blogs. I am nervous that I will not remember to post, that people won’t be as interested as I am in what I have to say, and that I will not be as successful with this blog as I want to be. That would be the exactly the same. The prouder part of that previous statement for me? You guessed it… completely different. I have been pushed, changed, challenged, and molded. I have grown up, gotten married, had a son, failed at businesses, failed at classes, been overwhelmed, and overall learned that the true failure is the person who gives up and doesn’t allow themselves the second chance of getting back up and learning how to stand strong.

With all that being said, I have opened myself up to you with my nervous ticks and my fears, but I also exhibit to you my strength as I say that I am starting this blog, posting, and ACTUALLY SHARING IT WITH THE PUBLIC THIS TIME (< that part didn’t usually happen with my previous blogs because I was too scared). I have actually had this domain and blog for a couple months sitting in cyberspace waiting for me to gather enough courage to set it up, write something, and actually share it with the public. [[Sorry, blog; but, look! I’m finally sharing you! 😜]]

Most of you reading this probably already know me, because most challenging ventures usually start with the support of your friends and family; so let me start by saying I am so incredibly blessed to have people surrounding me cheering me on whatever path I decide to take. You are all rockstars. But as with any new beginning, I should start by introducing myself…

Hi, I am Rebecca Dorosh! I am 23, been married for 3 chaotic years (anyone who’s been married knows why that’s chaotic, haha), and have 1 beautiful baby boy! I am a Christian and strongly believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. I stay at home with my sweet baby P, take part-time classes working toward my Bachelor’s degree, and work from home with an incredible company called It Works Global! I am currently residing in Northern Virginia. This blog is my adventures, and I am so excited to bring you along those adventures with me!! Stay tuned for more about me, my blog, my business, my family, and all this crazy mompreneur has to offer!