This blog is outta here!

The reason for the very sparse blog is that I have been working on www.urbanhills.org/blog and also setting up my own personal blogsite. Well now that Urban Hills Blog is live its now time to focus on my writing/photography. I am making the jump to wordpress.com and it has a little bit of a learning curve since I am using and ftp client for it. Needless to say I will go live in about 10 days!
Focus on the new blog/writing:
Illuminate Grace
Illuminate Creation
Illuminate Family
and my personal family stuff, which I am debating about keeping this site open for that alone.

The new blog will be threefold. Grace, Creation, Family. All three are near to my heart and I wish to illuminate God's glory and His path of rightousness for all. These will include photography, videos, theology and doctrine. My prayer is that this will expand to include other writers, vlogs and be a point of focus for clear illumination of Grace expounding on our mankind in the 21st century!

This Momentary Marriage

My next book inline to read is This Momentary Marriage by John Piper, I pretty much love all John Pipers' stuff so I am looking forward to this one. His website http://www.desiringgod.org/ has this to say:

There never has been a generation whose view of marriage is high enough. The chasm between the biblical vision of marriage and the common human vision is now, and has always been, gargantuan. Some cultures in history respect the importance and the permanence of marriage more than others. Some, like our own, have such low, casual, take-it-or-leave-it attitudes toward marriage as to make the biblical vision seem ludicrous to most people.
Reflecting on his forty years of matrimony, Piper explains:

Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God. It displays the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his people to the world in a way that no other event or institution does. Marriage, therefore, is not mainly about being in love. It’s mainly about telling the truth with our lives. And staying married is not about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant and putting the glory of Christ’s covenant-keeping love on display.
“If you are married, this is why,” says Piper. “If you hope to be, this should be your dream.”

Love it!! I encourage everyone to get a copy of this book!

~Tiffany

Southerland Photography!

Yay, I have kicked off a wordpress site dedicated to my photography of God's beauty, family, portraiture and the like.

http://southerlandphotography.wordpress.com/

Urban Hills Ladies!

Uh oh!! look who is having a night of trouble! :D

Its Italian Girls night at our house! Come on!

I Have A Dream...I Have A Vision...I Know A Hope...

I Have A Dream...I Have A Vision...I Know A Hope...

In honor of the 49,667,500 deaths that have occured since January 22, 1973. Please read this note for our world. Click the link above.

Busy Busy!

Wow, not sure where this holiday season went...I think moving in the middle of Thanksgiving has put me about a week behind where I actually need to be.
Christmas cards haven't gone out yet. Some of that is due in part to CVS messing up our print, we had a cute picture of us and a small picture of Snowball bunny for our Christmas mailer, well who puts the family pet larger than the family! I just didn't understand that. So needless to say no cards have gone out yet, so maybe I will just order New Years cards and send them out when I am on vacation next week. I hate being this stressed with meetings, events, church stuff, office stuff, shopping, decorating, meeting with family, seeing all the family and trying to get at least 4 hours of sleep a night. (We are lacking on the sleep issue.)
Maybe next year we can truly take a little time to have the cards done early, shopping done early and house decorated right after Thanksgiving. Its doubtful but hopefully doable.

Loving the Christmas Season!

It is finally cold in Dallas! I mean really cold. Today I woke up and it was 29 degrees with 20 mph winds. That IS cold. A few days ago I wore a t-shirt and shorts. Today I am bundled up like a little bear ready for hibernation. All this cold weather really gets me into the Christmas spirit! Its like the icing on the cake for a great season!

Our living room tree is finally up! Our gingerbread kitchen tree is finally up! Our mantle is finally decorated! Our bathroom is finally set up complete with Christmas decor! Whew!
Now I can focus on the never ending box mess we still have from moving. Not much is really in its place, but at least our kitchen, living room and guest bathroom are DONE! Now its time to slow it down and enjoy Christ's season.

One thing I love about Christmas besides amazing overpriced drinks at Starbucks is the music! Many of the Christmas songs are great worship ballads that have powerful stirring your soul qualities. I try to engage myself each season with a great time of worship.
I have finally found a way to channel all my favorites and some new ones on a "channel" via Pandora. Which totally makes my day at the office. I can listen to all of them all day long! Currently I am playing a few favorites!
My Christmas shoes mix:

• "I'm in Love with You" by: Joy Williams
  "Gloria" by: Watermark ** The whole CD is Amazing!**
• "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" Christy Nockels
• "Here with Us" by: Joy Williams
• "Prepare A Place" by: Michael W. Smith
• "Mary Did You Know?"
• "God is With Us" by: Christy Nockels
  "Whole World in His Hands" by: Christy Nockels
• "O Holy Night" Josh Groban
• "Josephs Lullaby" by: MercyMe
• "Messiah" by: Handel
  

That is just a few that stirr my heart, I hope you have some time to enjoy worshipping our Lord and Savior this Christmas season for it truly is Christ's season.
Time to slow down, serve others, join in gatherings of family and loved ones and worship our Lord. Take time to savor the season. The season of our Saviour.
For unto us, a child is born...
~Tiffany