I Tweaked My Recipe For Triple Chocolate Cake & It Turned Out Yummy. The Better ? I Present To You Today Is This, "Are You Willing For God To Tweak Your Life?" I Am And He Is.

I tried to re-position this picture several times and it seems to want to be located here. Maybe because I am talking about creativity. My Mother made this quilt while she was pregnant with me. Creativity does flow in my family bloodline. Guess where that blood line originated from? God, is the answer to that.

I decided to bake yesterday and I pulled out my recipe for Triple Chocolate Cake. I knew I needed a few items so I went in search of them while shopping yesterday. Well, to my amazement I only skimmed over the recipe and thought I only needed pudding. I noticed that there was a Mounds and Almond Joy flavored instant pudding so I thought to myself why not try this and see how it turns out. I purchased the Almond Joy flavor and then I decided to get my favorite brand of cake mix, Duncan Hines Devil's Food flavor too. Well this recipe calls for Betty Crocker Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mix. What does a creative creator do, they are willing to experiment and improvise and that is exactly what I did and now I will make this recipe with my new version. I just love when Holy Spirit prompts me to use the creativity already inside of  me. I will have to go back to the store to pick up some more pudding for I think it is being discontinued :(
I followed the recipe for the most part I just changed the cake mix and the pudding it called for. Let me tell you that it is delicious, it really is.If you like almonds and coconut you will enjoy this update to the recipe. In the pudding mix there are tiny pieces of almond and coconut. I think I found a winner. What prompted me to try this pudding, My Mother likes coconut and she will be coming to visit me so I thought I would try it and freeze a nice piece of it for when she comes to visit. Of course, I will share it with others too. Maybe take some to a neighbor and then to work also. What good is releasing the creativity that is inside of you and just keeping it to yourself? I have been making scarves again lately and a few greeting cards too. I created some for specific people. I let them have a choice in the scarves I created and two out of three selected the very one Holy Spirit prompted me to use color wise in the creating of their very scarf. Now, the third one was accurate too but when presented with a choice the person liked two so they received two. I handcrafted a greeting card for a fellow co-worker along with making another card and for some reason I let them choose the card they liked. Sure enough, they selected the card I custom made just for them. Each time, I silently thank Holy Spirit and I remind Him how amazing He truly is for knowing just what to select when creating. Each time I present to someone Holy Spirit prompted me to make I silently chuckle to myself and a slight smile appears on my face. It overwhelms me at times to think of His goodness, kindness and the creativity built inside of me too. I have been searching for a yarn that actually has pom poms within the pattern and guess what? I found a few yesterday. I was shopping at Old Time Pottery. I actually went in to get a credit since a lamp I purchased less then 30 days ago went on sale for $5.00 off the purchase price. I was browsing the store and stumbled on a small section of yarn. Their prices were so consumer friendly, really. Like $1.39 for a few really nice yarns and only $2.99 for the pom pom style yarns. I, of course, added to scarves I already made the fun pom pom yarns and I just sit back after creating and say to myself, "That really does add to that scarf. Thank you Holy Spirit for guiding me in an indirect way that is." You see, the store policy is that you cannot return and purchase again the same item. This is how it was explained to me...I could bring in the lamp and return it and then I would have to go and get another lamp from the floor inventory and purchase that one and not keep the lamp I liked when I purchased it to begin with. Is that not a crazy store policy? It makes no sense to me. So, you see, the leading of Holy Spirit was the intent to go to that store to see if I could seek a store credit for an already purchased lamp but while I was there I browsed the store to stumble upon this yarn. I was thinking to myself I would seek the credit adjustment as I checked out the items I was going to purchase. Had I known in the beginning of the store visit that the credit was not available I would not have browsed the store.
Another example of a good outcome of tweaking something. I just made a fresh pot of coffee and this is the combo I used, I mixed equal parts of Candy Cane flavored coffee and Chocolate Raspberry Decaf coffee. Yummy is the word to describe the combo. A little jolt of caffeine from Candy Cane balanced with Decaf from Chocolate Raspberry. Where do I mainly purchase my flavored coffee? I find some great flavors at TJ Maxx, Marshall's, and Ross. I do not drink large amounts of coffee so coffee can last a good period of time for me. I store it in my freezer when not using it.
OK, onto better things. Lately, Holy Spirit has prompted me to fast. It is in the fasting that there is breakthrough. It is usually easy for me to pray in the spirit and lately it seemed to be a bit of a struggle. I would start off and then stray from that, seems like I would get distracted. Well, with a few days of fasting I had breakthrough. It just flowed again. I love the fresh insights Holy Spirit gives to you when fasting. I have been writing for 19 or so years now. It all started out with journal writing and this past week I was prompted to seek out a journal of mine and I did. I looked through it and was prompted to seek out another journal and I did. I was pleasantly surprised the day I began to read it. I read it on 1/16/2015 and the actual journal entry was dated 1/15/1996. That is so Holy Spirit inspired that again it caused me to smile because He already knew what I wrote almost 20 years ago would touch my heart so many years later. I do not keep my journals out to reference them. I had to seek out where I stored them to get them. The first journal I pulled out was the journal in which dear friends of mine encouraged me to teach a segment at a youth retreat they were having at their church. I remember purchasing that very journal and what I taught the children that day. I taught them how to listen to Holy Spirit and write down what He was speaking to them. I explained to them about writing in a journal and going into nature outside to hear from Him. The children kept coming in after that exercise and began to share with us what Holy Spirit was speaking to them. Part of my new journal was for each of them to write their name on the very first page of my new journal and their age too. I told them that every time I opened up that journal I would pray for them and that is what I do. Even the other day, I prayed for them when I opened it up. The date of that journal entry was 4/28/1996. I am double blessed for my daughter is on that list too. You know, they were teenagers, pre-teen and even adults too that signed the journal entry. Age does not matter when it comes to praying for people. People of all ages tend to like when someone will pray for them. So, what are you willing to let God tweak in your life so you can advance in what you are called to do in your very life? That is the question I present to you today.

These are the recently updated scarves I made. Notice the quilt in the background? My Mother created that when she was pregnant with me. I recently received it from her. I love it and I love her also.