LOVE this kitchen:

Photo by deVOL Kitchens - Discover traditional kitchen design ideas

Photo by deVOL Kitchens 

Photo by deVOL Kitchens - Search traditional kitchen pictures

http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/70420606?utm_source=Houzz&utm_campaign=u3493&utm_medium=email&utm_content=gallery19

Cool rugs on Houzz

Contemporary Outdoor Rugs by Port Washington Furniture & Accessories Safavieh

Mediterranean Outdoor Rugs by Port Washington Furniture & Accessories Safavieh

Contemporary Outdoor Rugs by Port Washington Furniture & Accessories Safavieh

Books read 2015

• Michael Vey #5 **
• Michael Vey #4 ***
• Michael Vey #3 ***
• Michael Vey #2 ***
• Michael Vey #1 **
• Achieving Your Life's Mission
• Go Set a Watchman *
• A Boy Back from Heaven **
• Love at Home ***
• Amazed by Grace ***
• What Good Men Do ****
• The Healing Code ***
• The China Study ****
• A Lady of Quality **
• Essentialism ***
• Outliers **
• The Four Doors **
• Act in Doctrine ****
• The Husband Whisperer ***
• All the Light We Cannot See ****
• The House of the Lord: Talmage ***
• Rock-Solid Relationships ****
• One Thousand Gifts ***

love this kitchen.

Kitchen by Salt Lake City Interior Designers & Decorators Studio McGee
I may have finally found what colors I would like for my kitchen.

Quotes from Love at Home: Insights from the Lives of Latter-day Prophets

Bruce R. McConkie taught that the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement are the three pillars of eternity. Similarly, most marriages have their "three pillars" - a creation, a fall, and an atonement. The "creation" is the beginning of the relationship... But inevitably most marriages experience a "fall" - trials, adversity, challenges, and even fits of disenchantment.... When a husband and wife utilize Christ's gifts, and thereby become like Him because they live committed to Him, then the "atonement" stage of the marriage is realized. Their trials are less devastating, their love is more mature, and their unity is assured. They begin to see fewer flaws in their spouse, they are more forgiving of weaknesses, they are less prone to frustration, and the joy of the journey becomes surprisingly grand.

Marital partners begin as friends. And yet tragically, too many end their friendship when they begin their marriage. Among Latter-day Saints, such should never be the case. However, with the hustle and bustle of day-to-day living - getting an education, raising a family, earning an income, serving in the Church, maintaining a household, and running children from event to event - too many place their marriage on the back burner. Everything seems to get nurtured except the friendship that, prior to marriage, we did everything in our power to cultivate. Husbands and wives must place their marriage before any other earthly relationship or temporal thing. Ultimately, it must come before their relationship with other family members, before work, before leisure activities, before a calling; it must be second only to one's relationship with God. The neglected plant dies. And the neglected friendship does too.

We have been warned against the things of this world . . . But exactly what are the things of the world? An easy and infallible test has been given us in the well-known maxim "You can have anything in this world for money." If a thing is of this world, you can have it for money; if you cannot have it for money, it does not belong to this world. --Hugh Nibley

Quotes from Amazed by Grace

He rarely moves the mountains in front of us, but He always helps us climb them.

Women who have been endowed in the temple have as much access to priesthood power for their own lives as do ordained men.

Jesus Christ endured and completed His eternal, infinite Atonement so that you and I could change.

Clayton Christensen: We often view repentance as a slow process. It isn't. Change is instantaneous. It is not changing that takes so much time.

At the heart of becoming disciples is doing what we promise to do every time we partake of the Sacrament - which is to "always remember" the Lord. This means remembering Him when we choose what media we're willing to expose our spirits to. It means remembering Him in how we spend our time and when choosing between a steady diet of pop culture or the word of God.

True disciples are armed with righteousness, meaning with both deliverance and divine protection, and with the power of God in great glory. This means that, as disciples, imperfect though we still are, we can ask for more energy, more revelation, more patience, more self-discipline, more hope, more love, more healing, more happiness. We can ask for miracles, for freedom from pain, and for the desire to forgive. We can ask for more faith and for help in becoming better disciples.

Spencer W. Kimball: I can see no good reason why the Lord would open doors that we are not prepared to enter.

Cicero: I am more interested in the long hereafter than in the brief present.

The China Study

Just finished this book and loved loved loved it. It's a great study on how a healthy, plant-based diet can help either prevent or help and heal cases of cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and many other diseases.
Some of the dozens and dozens of quotes I liked:

Why are Americans succumbing to heart disease in the 60s and 70s when much of the world is relatively unaffected? Quite simply, it was a case of death by food. The cultures that have lower heart disease rates eat less saturated fat and animal protein and more whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

Average calorie intake was 30% higher among the least active Chinese than among average American's, yet body weight was 20% lower. What is their secret?

One of the strongest predictors of  Western diseases was blood cholesterol. Professor Denis Burkitt said: "Even though fiber is not digested, it is vital for good health. It pulls water from the body into the intestines to keep things moving along. Undigested fibers, also gather up nasty chemicals that find their way into our intestines and that might be carcinogenic. If we don't consume enough fiber, we are susceptible to constipation-based diseases. These include large bowel cancer, diverticulitis, hemorrhoids, and varicose veins."

To understand diabetes: Normal metabolism goes like this:
1. We eat food
2. The food is digested and the carbohydrate part is broken down into simple sugars, much of which is glucose.
3. Glucose (blood sugar) enters the blood, and insulin is produced by the pancreas, manages its transport and distribution around the body.
4. Insulin, acting like an usher, opens doors for glucose into different cells for a variety of purposes. Some of the glucose is converted to short-term energy for immediate cell use, and some is stored as long-term energy (fat) for later use.

As a person develops diabetes, this metabolic process collapses. Type 1 cannot produce adequate insulin because the insulin-producing cells of their pancreas have been destroyed. Type 2 can produce insulin, but the insulin doesn't do its job. This is called insulin resistance, which means that once the insulin starts 'giving orders' to dispatch the blood sugar, the body doesn't pay attention. The insulin is rendered ineffective,and the blood sugar is not metabolized properly.

While it's true that a family history of breast cancer can increase your risk of getting it, studies show that about 3% of all cases are due to your genes. High levels of estrogen are the cause of much of it, so why don't we look at the reasons for these high levels? Animal-based diets are shown to increase the levels of estrogen.
For prostate cancer, there is a positive association for some measure of dairy products and prostate cancer. Our diet can determine how much of "supercharged D" is produced and how it works. Animal protein that we consume has the tendency to block the production of S.charged D. leaving the body with low levels of this vitamin in the blood. If these low levels persist, prostate cancer can result. Persistently high intakes of calcium create an environment where supercharged D declines, thus adding to the problem.

Multiple Sclerosis: 95% of patients on low-saturated fat diets in the earlier stages of the disease remained only mildly disabled for approximately 30 years. 5% of the patients died. In contrast, 80% of the patients with early stage MS who consume the higher saturated fat diet died of MS. Animal protein diets increase the acid load in the body, which means that our blood and tissues become more acidic. The body does not like this acidic environment and begins to fight it. In order to neutralize the acid, the body uses calcium which acts as a very effective base. This calcium, however, must come from somewhere. It ends up being pulled from the bones, and the calcium loss weakens them, putting them at greater risk for fracture and osteoporosis.
After 7 years of observations, women with the highest ratio of animal protein to plant protein had 3.7 times more bone fractures than the women with the lowest ration. During this time, the women with the high ration lost bone almost four times as fast the the women with the lowest ratio.

Eight principles of food and health:
1. Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
2. Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health.
3. There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants.
4. Genes do not determine disease on their own. Genes function only by being activated, or expressed, and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed.
5. Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.
6. The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages (before diagnosis) can also halt or reverse disease in its later stages (after diagnosis.)
7. Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support health across the board.
8. Good nutrition creates health in all areas of our existence. All parts are interconnected.