Summer Beauty: A Call to Keep Company

How can so much beauty exist all around us? Every season has it's own beauty; each one unique, calling us to draw up close and to enter fully. 

Could it be that summer's vibrant colors and shapes and textures, are created just for us to enjoy? Calling us to pause our busyness, lean in close, and to be filled. When what we see is so beautiful, it slows us. And refreshes us in the deepest ways. And it's hard to pull away.

Maybe all of this beauty is primarily meant to call us to lean in close. To Him, our Creator, the One who loves us and longs for our love, for our company.

Do we pause long enough to hear His whispers ... 

Come to Me.

Keep company with Me.

There is beauty all around, calling us.

Calling us to intentionally slow our pace.

To keep company with a Person.

A Person who desires to walk with us, and work with us, and wants to live His life through us. A Person who died for us, and who rose for us to know Him. He is longing for us to depend on Him, trust Him, live freely and lightly with Him.

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion?

Come to Me. Get away with Me and you'll recover your life.

I'll show you how to take a real rest.

Walk with Me and work with Me - watch how I do it.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with Me 

and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

(Matthew 11:28-30 MSG)

Above all else this summer, may we pause and listen to His Word, His gifts of beauty, and open our eyes and our hearts to all the ways that He wants to give us rest and grace. 

A June Collection: Memories, Little Blessings, and Zucchini Muffins

How do you capture this beautiful month that flew by so quickly? It may be a favorite month, though it seems that I have multiple favorite months. I love the spring months, and June is a month of beauty in our gardens and our yard, and brings with it a bit of a slower pace than the month of May. It's a time to slow down, and to soak in the beauty around us.

One of the many blessings of this month was celebrating birthday #82 for my precious hubby at a daughter's beautiful lake view home (thanks, Amy!). It's hard to believe that #82 and #76 belong to us! Each year and each day are a gift, and I am looking forward to enjoying each moment of our life together at this season of life that we are in together. My husband is the dearest one on this earth to me, and I am grateful for God's gift to me in him. We will celebrate 55 years later this summer!

Another thing I'm really grateful for this month is that we completed a huge project ... a complete clean-up and re-organization of our storage room on our lower level. New shelving, many trips to Good Will, and lots of memories that we discovered along the way. It took us several months to complete this big project, even bigger than we imagined as we have not moved for 44 years. There was a lot to go through. We have no plans of moving anywhere soon, but just needed to go through the boxes and boxes of things no longer used or needed.

Here are a few more glimpses of what the month of June held ...

The flowers, many of them perennials, in our deck planter boxes have given us much joy! We have been especially surprised by the poppies that my husband planted last fall ... they have spread and the beautiful flowers are so vibrant throughout the planter boxes. 

It's always fun to bring some of the beauty of the outdoors to our indoor living. I could not resist the coffee mug purchase (above) from Kirklands. Though I already have multiple coffee mugs, this one is giving me joy each morning this spring/summer season.

Our zucchini plants grew so very fast this month, and began producing earlier than we even expected. I was happy to have lots of zucchini to make our favorite muffin recipe: Zucchini Muffins. They are so moist and delicious, and I was able to put quite a few dozen in our freezer for the days/weeks ahead. You can click here to read a previous post that has a link to view the recipe that I use.

We finished off the month with a weekend trip to McCook to visit one of our daughters and her family. It was a big treat to spend time together (thanks, Carrie!), and also to watch our youngest granddaughter (14 years old already!) in her last softball tournament of the season. Such fun to cheer them on to 1st place in the tournament! 

A Collection: Sabbath Rest, In the Kitchen, and July 4th Memories

One of my favorites ... a little collection, a quick glimpse of a few of the many things that have given me joy recently. Life goes by quickly, and it is good to pause and to thank Him for His gifts to us ... 

The books pictured above have been capturing my mind lately, the bottom two I read in May and June, and currently I'm reading The Rest of God. It's quite evident that I am drawn to books on rest, on Sabbath Rest,  and on cultivating a Sabbath heart these past few months. So much to learn, and I am thankful. My husband and I are continuing to intentionally set aside a day or two each week, and pockets of time within the rest of the days of the week, for life-giving rest and soul-feeding. This is needed even in our retirement years, as we continually have a lot on our minds! 

A few great quotes from The Rest of God:

Without rest, we miss the rest of God: 

the rest He invites us to enter more fully 

so that we might know Him more deeply. 

 Be still and know that I am God. 

Psalm 46:10

Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness.

It is a day we enter, but just as much a way we see. 

Click here for more thoughts on rest in a recent post.

My kitchen has been filled with more baked goods than usual this past week as we are preparing for some special family days coming up soon! Pictured above are delicious Sourdough Blueberry Muffins. 

Also, I made two kinds of bar cookies, my favorite ones to make during  summertime. I probably have been baking these at least once each summer for quite a few years now. We love these Blueberry Bars, and S'mores Bars.

It's always a joy to use my sourdough starter each week for bread, and this Classic Sourdough Bread is my favorite. I make it most every week, and here's my most recent one! My preferred way to bake it is in my oval-shaped dutch oven. So delicious ...

And this digital scrapbook page that I completed this past week captures some of the joys from our first full week of July ... our beautiful growing veggie garden, the first grilled meal on our new grill on July 4th, some time with our granddaughter Ali on her 17th birthday, and time with daughters three days in a row at grandson Cruz's baseball tournament over 4th of July weekend!

Much to thank God for, and most of all, for His faithful love and presence through all the things of life, the good and the hard. Our greatest gift: His presence with us, each day all the year through!

Digital Scrapbooking: Memories from May and June

May and June held some significant events for us, and what better way to preserve them, and also share them, than through digital scrapbooking! And such a treat for me to scrapbook a few pages again, after a much longer break than I had thought. I started up again after about a six-month break, with these memories ...

We traveled to our daughter Cristy & Mark's home near Dallas the very end of April to see granddaughter Brianna in a school play (she did amazing!), and then again the end of May we made a quick three-day trip to TX again! This time it was because our oldest granddaughter Abigail & her husband were there with their sweet 16 month-old daughter (our great-grandbaby)!! And because they live in Japan and were just back very briefly for a wedding, how could we resist seeing them?! We had to squeeze the trip in between several severe thunderstorms with tornado warnings, and were so very grateful that God blessed us with this trip to spend time with family.

Back home we enjoyed a relaxing, fun month of June, caring for our yard and gardens, and also celebrating Father's Day together.

And a most significant event took place on June 23rd ... my dear hubby turned 80!! How can it be that that number belongs to us now? Together with my birthday coming up in Sept. when I turn 75, we call this calendar year our 75/80 year! We have much to be thankful for, and look forward to celebrating our birthdays together with our family in July!

Note for those who ask how I create these pages: About fourteen years ago I switched from paper scrapbooking to digital scrapbooking, and took some online lessons from Digital Scrapper to learn how to digital scrapbook using Adobe Photoshop Elements. (I currently have the Adobe Photoshop Elements 2022 version).) You can also click here for some great tutorials on the Digital Project Life website - this is probably a quicker way to learn than the site that I used eleven years ago. I recommend using these tutorials. Most of the page templates and digital products that I use are purchased from Digital Project Life. Also, besides being able to share my completed pages online, I also print them out at home in 8x8 inch size to fit in the albums that I purchase from Michael's, Hobby Lobby, or Amazon. (Added Note in 2025: It was a lengthy process for me to learn how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements, but I do love it! A simpler way to create pages like this would be to use one of the multiple companies online where you can create your pages and then pay for them to print out your scrapbook. One of our daughters uses Mixbook for her scrapbooks.)

In the Kitchen: Favorite Zucchini Recipes

 

Here we are in the last few days of August, and I need to finish this post that I collected photos for about a month ago! The days fly by so fast, and summer is nearing an end. Our veggie garden produced a lot of zucchini during the month of July especially. And I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite zucchini recipes.

Zucchini Muffins ... pictured above. I make these most every summer; a moist delicious muffin. Click here to read this post from last summer, which contains the link to find this recipe online. Or, you can find this recipe under my "Our Family Recipes" page tab here on my Pursuing Heart blog.

A brand new recipe that I tried in July is pictured above ... Chicken Zucchini Casserole. We both loved it, and will be making it again in the future. Click here for the recipe.

Pictured above is another new zucchini recipe that I made this summer for the first time ... Zucchini Patties. So very good! Click here for the recipe.

BBQ Chicken Bowl (pictured above), is one of my favorite rice bowl recipes. The recipe calls for one zucchini, sliced, which is another main dish to use zucchini in. We really love this recipe. Click here for a previous post of mine featuring this recipe, including a few step-by-step photos to make it.

Grilled Hawaiian Chicken Teriyaki Bowls is another delicious recipe using zucchini. Click here for the recipe.

And next, two of my favorite bar cookie recipes using zucchini! The first one, to the left in photo above, is Zucchini Brownies. You'll find the recipe in this previous post ... click here. I make this recipe each summer.

And a new one this summer is pictured to the right above, Carrot and Zucchini Bars with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting ... so very delicious! You can find the recipe by clicking here.

Banana-Zucchini Bread is another favorite ... click here for a previous post with this recipe linked to it. 

You can see our two zucchini plants in the trellis area in the center of our garden. During the peak of the zucchini season during July, I was picking about one zucchini per day for awhile! 

Photo above shows one day's picking ... two zucchini, along with five cucumbers. So much beauty during the summer season! And thanks for reading through my post featuring some of my favorite zucchini recipes.

A Collection: A Summer Heart Check, More Digital Scrapbooking, and Summertime Reading

Do you need to pull aside periodically (often?) as I do, to take care of your heart? Whatever the season is, there are just some days when I just need to push the pause button. Maybe even for the whole day. In our retirement life, pausing for a whole day can actually happen. In other seasons of life, it needed to be for a shorter time. I also remember well when our kids were little, my husband would routinely give me an "evening off". Time to pay extra close attention to my heart. Those times were life-saving for me. 

And these times of pausing continue to be life-saving for me. I recently had such a day. It was at the start of a new week, and I had lots (unending) things to do. But I knew ... I needed to choose the better. Time to pause, just sit and spend extended time with Jesus, time to let Him care for my heart. My heart is completely connected with everything I do. And I desperately need to have my heart watered and cared for. Even day-by-day, and even moment-by-moment. And sometimes I need to pause for extended life-giving watering of His love and grace. 

I am so thankful for His love and grace. Always available as we soak up His Words of Truth, as we choose silence and quiet above the noise, and as we open our hearts completely to Him. Maybe your heart is calling for the same at the end of this month of June. 

More Digital Scrapbooking ...

What would we do without photos? I'm so very thankful for photos to help us hold memories close! It was a joy to have our granddaughter Abigail and Addison here from Japan for a visit the first part of April. And ... to be able to  meet and hold our very first great-grandbaby in our arms! Lily was three months old at the time they were in our home. Here are two of the five digital scrapbook pages I put together recently of their brief visit with us, including some four generation photos! The time went by too quickly; I am thankful for these photos that helped us to capture that treasured time together.

Summertime Reading

Whatever the season, it's a treat to read good books. I love to be continually reading an inspirational book, one that I can learn and grow from. And, also, I love to have a fiction book to relax with. My choice is most often a historical fiction book, where besides reading an engaging story/plot, I also can be learning of another time period from the past.

One of the two fiction books I've been reading this month is Judah's Wife, this one set in Biblical times. It was a great choice! I've been reading through the Bible chronologically, and recently completed the Old Testament. I did some extra reading about the "400 Silent Years" between the Old and New Testaments before continuing on with the chronological reading of the New Testament. I also was quite pleased to find a fiction book to read, as well, giving great insight into that time period that we usually hear so little about. From the book's back cover: "To be silent would be to deny their God. To defy would bring the wrath of the king. The miraculous story of the courageous Maccabees is told through the eyes of Judah's wife, who learns that love requires courage ... and sacrifice."

(NOTE: the beautiful setting for the photo above was at the home of one of our daughters, near McCook, NE. We recently spent 10 days there caring for their home and animals while they were on vacation. The perfect place to relax with a good book! (Thanks, Carrie, for the fun of being at your & Tyler's beautiful place!)

Three Summer Bar Cookie Recipes

Summer is not a time for a lot of baking for me, but there are some things that I do love to bake even when the temps are hot. I recently made three different bar cookie recipes for a family gathering, and thought I'd share them here!

Blueberry Bars

These bar cookies have been a favorite of mine to make during the summer for quite some time. It has kind of become a habit. I must make these sometime during each summer, and this summer was no exception! The blueberries are such a fun ingredient to a summer bar cookie.

Click here for the recipe that I first shared back in the summer of 2014.

S'mores Bars

A few years ago I added another favorite summer bar cookie recipe to my collection, and have made it each year since then. You have to taste it to believe how delicious it is ... a taste of s'mores cooked over the campfire!

Click here to find this amazing cookie bar recipe.

Zucchini Brownies

And this summer I have added another favorite! Even more fun as we have zucchini growing in our garden this summer. We love these brownies, topped off with a wonderful cream cheese frosting.

Click here for the Zucchini Bar recipe.

And click here for the Cream Cheese Frosting recipe.

At our recent family get-together, two of our sweet granddaughters asked me for a few of these recipes. They both love to bake! So, this blog post is written and dedicated to Ali (15), and Eva (10) ... and this is also my way of sharing the recipes with them! It's such a treat for me to share recipes with my granddaughters!

Our Summer Veggie Garden

A veggie garden changes everyday; you can almost watch the growth happen. And also, it happens so very quietly ... a spring garden turns so silently and so quickly into a summer garden. 

The first two photos (above) were taken on July 1st. My hubby and I just love our garden ... isn't it beautiful? This is our seventh year to be planting in this 10x30 foot spot on the west side of our house, up a bit on a little hill. It makes for a perfect view from our living room windows. 

It has grown quickly! Click here for a photo taken of the same spot just a bit over a month ago, on May 30th. And click here for another photo taken on June 20th, about two weeks ago. So amazing to see the growth!

What we thought were bush beans (labeled as such on the seed package) turned out to be pole beans. We purchased a little trellis fence for the beans to vine up on. The photo above was taken one week ago, on June 27th. The beans are in the foreground in the photo. We also are trying to contain the cucumber plants a bit with another little trellis fence (behind the beans). The cucumbers always really get carried away and try to take over the whole garden, it seems.

The cucumber plants are in the foreground in the photo above, with the green bean plants behind. (Photo taken July 1st.)

And here's a close-up photo of the green beans plants, July 1st.

We have two tomato plants this year, as they always produce so bountifully. This year we purchased bigger tomato cages, and got them in place just in time! The plants are growing fast!

So far we've been enjoy radishes, leaf lettuce, and romaine lettuce. The photo above shows a row shared by carrots and romaine.

At the north end of our garden is a border trellis which I love! We've tried planting several different things here over the years. And it's so great to have it looking beautiful this year again, as the past few years the rabbits have nibbled off what we planted. Our small electric garden fence has taken care of that problem this year. A bit later this summer these Hyacinth Bean plants should bear delicate rose-purple flowers.

Some of these photos are already outdated, as there has been significant growth even since these photos were taken 4 days ago. It is a joy to watch our veggie garden grow. 

BBQ Ranch Grilled Chicken & Veggie Bowls

This recipe post is an update of a previous one posted a few years ago (click here) ... and this recipe is absolutely delicious! It has been awhile since I have made it, and after having it again recently, I wonder why I have waited so long to prepare this dish again. It is listed as one of my favorite recipes on my "Our Family Recipes" page here on the blog.

There are several steps to preparing this dish, but the time spent is well worth it. First step is to prepare the rice and beans. (This would also make a good side dish to go along with other main dishes.)

Next you'll want to prepare the chicken breast to refrigerate for at least 20 minutes before grilling, basting it with Hidden Valley Honey BBQ Ranch Dressing. It's worth the purchase of this tasty dressing just to use with this recipe.

While the chicken is basting in the refrigerator, you'll grill the sliced zucchini and red pepper in a grill basket. You can also grill the corn-on-cob, or can choose to prepare frozen corn.

While the chicken breast is grilling, you slice up the avocodo. When all is prepared, spoon the cooked rice into bowls. Top with the sliced, cooked chicken, zucchini & bell peppers, corn, and avocado. Drizzle more of the dressing on top, and add some fresh cilantro, if desired. 

Click here for the recipe ingredients, for detailed instructions, and to print the recipe. You'll also see some beautiful photos of this dish! (Thanks to "Tastes Better from Scratch" blog for sharing this delicious recipe!)

An update from a previous recipe post.

Near the End of Summer and the Start of a New School Year: Stand Firm

Our focus

at the start of a new season,

a new school year,

or wherever we find ourselves ...

Stand firm. Let nothing move you.

Always give yourselves fully

to the work of the Lord,

because you know that your labor

in the Lord is not in vain.

(I Cor. 15:58)

Our focus is not the fruit;

our focus is the standing,

in the depending on God alone.

In the depending solely, completely

on Him to produce the fruit;

on giving ourselves fully to

whatever He places in front of us.

"We stand firm because our identity is secure: we keep standing because the outcome and fruit are His alone to produce. ... Keep standing, keep serving, keep working diligently unto the Lord." (Ruth Chou Simons)

Yes, I am the Vine; 

you are the branches.

Those who remain in Me,

and I in them,

will produce much fruit.

For apart from Me,

you can do nothing.

(John 15:5)

(Sharing thoughts from my journal at the start of a new school year of ministry with Cru, serving and loving middle and high school students, introducing them to the greatest love they can ever know ... to Jesus. The fruit comes from God alone as we live and work in Him ... no matter what God has called you or me to do.)

Photo above: taken of a page of the beautiful and inspiring Gracelaced book by Ruth Chou Simons.