Spa Night

Remember Spa Night from last year? I brought it back again to close out finals week for our college girls. Our girls enjoyed relaxing and having fun together. 

Manicure Station

We used the kitchen table for manicures. I bought a plastic table cloth and found some super cute paper place mats at Hobby Lobby (they were in the summer section, not the party section).  

I used a serving tower to display the nail polish and laid out polish remover, cotton balls, clippers, and nail files. I bought a special base coat and top coat for a gel manicure hack I read about here. 

I also created prints for each station. These prints are available for you to download. Look for the link at the end of this post.
Pedicure Station

We used the living room for pedicures. Two vinyl tablecloths covered the floor for protection. I placed the foot baths on top of the tablecloths.

On the coffee table I placed polish remover, cotton balls, scented foot soak, a Satin Hands Set, and lotion.

We removed our polish, soaked our feet, and used the Satin hands to scrub and soften our feet. Then back to the manicure station for polish! 

Facial Station

Facials were super simple, but lots of fun. I bought a clay mask and a pack of washcloths for facials. Each washcloth was ran under water, wrung out, rolled, and placed in a crockpot on low. By the time we did facials the washcloths were nice and steamy.

Note: I did move the temperature from low to warm at some point, but I don’t remember exactly how long I left it on low. 

Snack Station

I fail you here because I don’t have pictures. For snacks we had: a veggie tray, mini quiche, Mississippi mud cake, chex mix, and Spa Water.

How to Make Spa Water

1 cucumber

2 small lemons

2 pitchers

Thinly slice the lemon and cucumber.  Place an even amount of sliced cucumber and lemon in each pitcher. Fill the pitchers with water and allow them to chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour before the party. 

Host Your Own

Want to host your own Spa Night? I encourage you to keep things simple. You will be surprised how the simple things make the biggest impact like a fun table cloth, place mats, and prints I designed myself. Another way I kept things simple was by buying my snacks and asking others for help. All I did was go into the grocery store and buy mini quiche and a veggie tray.

I also encourage you to borrow and ask for freebies. I borrowed all of the foot baths from friends. My Mary Kay consultant donated the Satin Hands Set. I used many  items I already had at home: serving trays, bowls, vinyl table cloths, hand towels, bath salt, crockpot, polish, nail clippers, etc.  By borrowing and asking for donations I was able to keep my cost to a minimum.

Click here to use my prints at your own Spa Night

 

Recently

Weddinging It

Last weekend my honey and I were in a wedding together. We have known the groom’s family for some time now. They sort of adopted us (okay so we totally adopted them). The groom’s parents also serve as leaders in our college ministry. We love this family and were blessed to share in their joy! So here are some highlights from the wedding:

Mentor Date

My honey and I both have college students that we meet with weekly and mentor. Our typical mentor night is Tuesday night. This past Tuesday we had free tickets to Kirk Cameron’s movie Unstoppable. So we invited our mentee’s over for dinner and then took them to see the movie in downtown Ft. Worth. Here are some pics we took!

 Design Time

I have been spending a lot of my time playing with different design things. I love creating scripture art. When I was in college I put scripture everywhere. Somewhere along the way I decided it needed to look pretty, so I would hand draw scriptures on plain white notecards. More recently I have moved my scripture art to the digital realm. I want to share a scripture art that I created recently for one of my college girls. I pray that it reminds you who God is and what He has done and that He never changes! 

 

Love One Another

Last week I was at youth camp. As most of you know my small group girls graduated from high school this year, so it was their last year of camp. A post full of pictures is coming later this week!

Today, I want to talk to you about what God taught me at camp. Often I struggle as I walk into youth camp. It takes so much preparation at work to be gone an entire week. I barely see my husband before camp. This year, was different. This year I was so excited to be at camp and hang out with my girls. My prayer as I walked into camp was that I would be intentional with them in the short time that I had.

I thought I walked into camp with an open heart, ready to serve, speak truth, and love on my small group girls. But you see there was this small little blackness that started to spread. That blackness was anger & bitterness. For the past few months I have struggled to love one individual in particular. The details are not necessary, but my actions toward this person were mostly cold and never trusting. I had been praying and asking God to teach me something and on Wednesday night He did.

Before the speaker ever went on the stage I battled the Lord during our time of worship. The Lord was calling me to repentance, He was exposing my sin. I HATED it. I wanted to run away. I did my best to rationalize it. But the Lord would not let me go. My mind raced with verses on love "love one another, love your enemy, if you don't love the brethren you don't love me." Over and over again they kept coming to mind. God wouldn't even let me stand up and sing. When the speaker began to talk on love, I knew the Lord refused to let me go. He wanted me to deal with my sin. He wanted me to love everyone, not just those I thought deserved my love.

At the end of the service, I climbed over the bleachers and went to the prayer room. I knew they needed me to counsel others, but I just couldn't. I needed to deal with my sin NOW. If I didn't I might not do it at all. I got down on my knees, opened my journal, and started confessing my sin to the Lord. Repent means to turn around and walk the other way, from your sin and toward Jesus. I knew that I could not stop at confession, but I needed to change the way I viewed that person. For me, that meant repeating scripture every time I even saw that person or thought about them. I realized that I had trained my mind to think negative thoughts toward that person. So I began to repeat scripture and the word love, over and over again in my mind.

As I write this, my heart is still struggling to love that person. It is a daily battle. It involves daily walking in my need for Jesus. I know I cannot love on my own. If left to myself my heart would be full of bitterness.  In Jesus I am called to walk in love and forgiveness. So daily I am seeking Him to help me love. To help me change my perspective of that person. To forgive, let go, and seek love.

I must ask you to consider your heart. Are you loving one another? I am struggling to, but asking the Lord to help me in the midst of my sin. To help me love the brethren. I cannot walk in a manner worthy of Jesus and hate my brother or sister in Christ.

We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. 1 John 4:19-21

Ambassadors of Grace

Welcome to part three of my series on grace. Today we are going to talk about being Ambassadors of Grace.

I often find myself in need of grace. I look at myself and realize that I fail. I fail at life pretty much every moment of every day. And in that I know that I need grace. I need God’s saving grace in my life to mold me and change me into the new creature He says that I am. I am unable to do it on my own. I need Him to do it.

However, I am not very quick to give grace. When it comes to others, I am quick to criticize and judge. I am quick to think negatively of others.

Gratefully the Lord has placed some special people in my life that have taught me about living as an ambassador of grace. First is my best friend Elizabeth. The Lord gave her to me as a lifelong friend at the age of 4 (she was three). Elizabeth embodies grace and mercy. She will forgive anyone no matter how many times they have hurt her. As her friend it has often made me defensive of her. 

Then there is my husband. He often views people with a lens of grace. He has the ability to give people a second chance when I am ready to write them off forever. And I have learned, that often he is right. I have learned to listen to his wisdom and perception of others.

The Lord has used these two people to teach me a very hard lesson (that I am still learning mind you). That lesson is how to walk as an ambassador of grace. I once heard someone describe it as being a grace dispenser. As someone who has received grace for the Father, I should in turn dispense grace to others (especially those who are my brothers and sister in Christ). You see, I don’t come by grace naturally. It is something the Lord has needed to grow in me.

So how do we become ambassadors of grace?

We seek God and walk in His Spirit. True grace can only be found in God. To walk in grace, I must be walking in God. I must be abiding in Him as I see taught in John 15.  Often those times I don’t want to even consider giving someone a second chance, I am living in my flesh. The flesh is what Paul calls the “old man” or the “old self”. To give grace to others, I need to be in the Spirit (as in the Holy Spirit). I can only do this when I am abiding in Jesus.

We realize that nice and grace are not the same. For some reason many of us have equated “being nice” with grace. I am sorry, but these are just not the same thing. Often being an ambassador of grace means doing the hard thing. Sometimes it involves speaking the truth in love. Walking in grace is not always warm and fuzzy and rarely involves roses and bunnies. Sometimes it hurts.

We move beyond ourselves. Phil 2:3 tells us that we should regard one another as more important than ourselves. As we seek to be ambassadors of grace we must consider others before ourselves.

We speak the Gospel. The Gospel itself is grace. We cannot be ambassadors of grace without speaking the Gospel to those around us. 

Being an ambassador of grace is not an option. If you are a believer, then showing grace to others is apart of your identity. It is something that was first given to us and that we should in turn extend to those around us. I encourage you to consider those around you and ask whether or not you are dispensing the grace that was first given to you. 

Walking In Grace: Me, Myself, and I

Last week, we defined grace. This week I want to talk about living out grace with myself.

That may seem odd to you, but the Lord has put several women in my path recently that struggle to show grace to themselves. And I will be honest, I struggle with it too. My name is Ashlee, and I am a perfectionist. This means I have very high standards, this means I am very hard on myself. Even today as an adult verbal discipline is the hardest for me to receive. It crushes my heart for someone to tell me they are disappointed in me. And then I beat myself up about it.

 As I look at the young women God has placed in my life, I see they struggle with the same thing. I do not think this is something women struggle with alone, but it is definitely something the women God has placed around me struggle with. So how do we learn to walk in grace with ourselves?

Walking in Grace with Myself is NOT:

A free ride to live however I want. I see this often with believers my age, they think that because of God's grace they get a free pass to live whatever life they want. I have some bad news for them, this is not what the Word of God tells us. God is very clear in His standard for our lives. His standard is holiness. Peter reminds us of this in 1 Peter 1:15-16 “But like the Hole One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY FOR I AM HOLY”” Walking in grace here looks like me walking in obedience to who God has called me to be, while realizing I can only be that because of what He has already done for me. There is a dependence that I need here on God. Only by abiding in Him, do I have the ability to be who He calls me to be.

Seeking the approval of man over God. Yep, I am one of those people pleasers. I was a suck up in high school. I was that girl who did extra credit when she had a 4.0 GPA. Sick, I know. I continue to struggle with pleasing others, but this year God is reminding me heavily of Galatians 1:10 “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still striving to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.”  When God first brought this verse to my attention it grabbed me. It shook me. It reminded me that I am to strive to please God, because I am His bondservant. It also contrasted the stark reality in my life that I often care too much of what others say of me and too little about who God has already said that I am in Him. To walk in grace with myself, means I seek the approval of God alone.

Self Abasement. My Bible Study girls and I are studying Colossians. And it is AWESOME. As we have studied, this word self-abasement (Col 2:18) stuck out to me. When I looked it up in the Greek, I was surprised. Self-abasement is a lowliness of mind, specifically in Colossians it refers to a false humility. When I understood what this meant, a light came on for me. I have several people in my life who belittle themselves. Now, God calls us to be humble, but this belittling is not a Christ-like humility.  It is a belittling that sees one's self as less than and loses sight of Jesus' death on the cross. For me to walk in grace with myself has nothing to do with a false sense of humility, but has everything to do with trusting Who God says I am in Him (See Col 2 & Eph 2 for more on this). It means I do not walk around beating myself up or punishing myself. It means I submit myself as a bondservant of the Lord, not myself.

 

Learning to walk in grace with myself, is something I continue to struggle with. But when I do I must change my perspective by remembering what I see in Scripture. This is the only way that our view of ourself changes. I must view myself on God's terms. For me it's important to remember what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10, by God's grace I am what I am. Everytime we struggle, we must return to the Word and see the Truth again. To help us cling to this verse today. I made this for you!

 

 

Spa Night Printables

I mentioned on Monday that I used scripture around our host home during Spa Night. Today I would like to share some of this signs I created for each station. At most stations there were two signs. One gave directions, the other was scripture that pointed them to think beyond the physical action at that station.

You will notice I used the same style throughout each sign. I printed the scriptures as 8.5X11 and the instructions as 4x6 and 5x7. Next time I would do all of the direction signs as 5x7 so they are easier to read.

Invitation:

This is the invitation I created for my girls. I used this on the Facebook invite I created. It also dawned on me that in the future I could simply text the girls the invitation.

Welcome Sign:
I created this sign to greet the girls when they arrived.

Pedicures:
For Pedicures I created this sign to give instructions to the girls because I could not be everywhere at the same time. I put this sign on the fireplace in the living room. Next to it I sat a basket full of foot scrubs, lotions, foot fizzies, and various foot scrubbing tools.

 I chose this scripture to remind the girls that the most important place their feet go is where they take the gospel. I don’t necessarily mean a foreign country or a mission trip. The gospel goes with us everywhere we go. And we are either living it out or we are denying it with our words and actions. I pray that my girls will know that beautiful feet are those who take the gospel with them as they are going. Beautiful feet speak faith, hope, love, and truth into the places they go everyday and the not so normal places they might go on a mission trip. Painted nails may seemingly make our feet look good, but beautiful feet are those who take the gospel with them.

Manicures:
Here is another directional sign I created. This time for manicures. I sat this sign on the table in between the nail polish platter and the Satin Hands Set.

I chose this scripture so my girls would consider whether or not their hands were really clean. As they scrubbed their hands and painted their nails I wanted them to remember that the Lord is serious about those who enter into His presence and that we need to constantly check our hearts and our hands to see if they are clean spiritually.

Facials:
Then we had facials. I sat the directional sign next to the sink. Next to the sign was a basket with the facial supplies in it.

I pray that when my girls saw this scripture they would be reminded to seek God’s face. Often as ladies we spend much time in front of the mirror considering how we look, but I wonder how often as believers we seek God and His face as we go about our everyday life.

 

I posted this on Monday, but wanted you to see it again. This was the main verse I spoke on when I gathered the girls at the end of the night. I pray that it is a blessing to you and reminds you that your beauty lies within a heart submitted to the Lord.

Disclaimer: These printables were created by me. The blue linen background is free to download here. Please do not republish my work without giving me credit. I encourage you to use them personally, but they should not be sold for any reason.