Building a Library

Its been about three years since we stuffed a van cab with a handful of boxes, dropped them off at curbside checkin and flew to Seattle to find an apartment, buy a car and start new jobs in a few days. Out of those few boxes, 2 were full of books. After 3 years, we have gone from a couple hundred books to 1287. The number is probably 70 higher, but I didn't count each volume of our 1953 Encyclopedia Britannica, Tyndale commentaries, and Calvin commentaries as separate books in the catalog.

Being 30 plus weeks pregnant, I decided it was the perfect time to channel my organizational energy into cataloging our growing library. I kept it pretty simple to start by using Excel to record the title, author, year, awards, and category. Wyatt has grand ambitions to now alphabetize the books in each category.

The majority of our books fell into Christian (537 books) and Childrens (349 books) categories. I plan to further refine these later into subcategories. Our oldest book is an 1879 New Devotional and Explanatory Pictorial Family Bible. Wyatt acquired it for $25 at a Half Price Books using a 50% off coupon. I found an 1884 book titled Historical Records Concerning Jesus the "Christ" Messiah at a Woodinville library book sale. I will pick up anything older than 100 years just to have it as a piece of history. We do buy new books too, the most recent a Father's Day present for Wyatt entitled, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (2011) by Michael Horton.

The most prolific author we have is Dr. Seuss with 27 entries. Wyatt thought it would be one of his favorite theologians, which I guess if you count Calvin's commentaries as separate books he would win with 30 books. Other authors with more than 10 books include Graeme Base, F.F. Bruce, Eric Carle, C.S. Lewis, John Piper, Plato, R.C. Sproul, and B.B. Warfield. We also 32 Bibles, so you could say God is our most prolific author.

We had 41 duplicates, so I may be selling some on Ebay to free up bookshelf space. Having gone through them all, the duplicate buying should decrease since my memory is pretty solid, ha! Right now we have bookcases scattered throughout our home. We have dreams to have a dedicated library someday when we are homeowners.

Thought for the Day: You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me. ~C.S. Lewis

Avocado Smoothies and Asian Spareribs

Summer is the perfect time to do some simple cooking with the help of kitchen appliances. I ended with two extra racks of ribs after making oven roasted bbq pork ribs for father's day, so I searched for an easy recipe on Crockpot 365 blog and found this recipe. Since I already had some kalbi sauce in the fridge I substituted it for the sauce she uses. The jalapenos added a really nice amount of heat and the ribs were really tender and delicious!

Wyatt and I were craving bubble tea the other day and reminiscing about the amazing Joy Yee's tea in Chicago's chinatown. I loved riding the El down to Chinatown with some girlfriends on the weekend to get my favorite avocado bubble tea at Penang. It then dawned on me I could make this at home. We actually would make bubble tea at home in Chicago, but I never have made the avocado. I bought bubble tea straws and tapioca pearls at wonderful new Uwajimaya in Bellevue.


Slow Cooked Asian Pork Spareribs

2 racks spareribs
1/2 cup kalbi sauce
2 jalapeno peppers

1. Add all ingredients to slow cooker and cook on low for 8 hours.
2. Turn ribs over half way through cooking.


Avocado Smoothie

1 ripe avocado
1 cup milk
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
3 Tbs Honey
4 ice cubes

1. Scoop out avocado into blender and combine with all ingredients until smooth.
2. Add more or less ice depending on preferred consistency.