Another Valentine's Contest Entry

The Valentine's contest is over and I must say, you girls have blessed me tremendously. Wow! When God first laid the desire upon my heart to do this, I had no idea how fun and encouraging it would be to read all the entries as they came in. Each one of you that participated was used by God to bless someone else and brighten their day. My prayer is that as you spent your time showing love to others, you, in turn, were encouraged and blessed. There are so many wonderful entries that it's going to be very hard to narrow it down to three. Stay tuned as we're hoping to post the three finalists sometime before Saturday.

It's been a busy day with work, teaching, and a doctor's appointment. I'm completely wiped out and just want to crawl into bed and sleep for a long time. My brain isn't giving me any profound things to write, so you guys will just have to wait until later. Not that I ever have anything profound to say anyway...

I did want to share another entry I received for the contest as it was so sweet. Knowing first hand how long making noodles from scratch can take, I appreciated this entry for the time and effort I know it took. Without any further ado, here it is.

"I had been trying to think what to give my secret sister for Valentine’s Day. She’s a wife and mother of four and is struggling financially. I thought about a restaurant gift card--quick and easy, little thought and effort. The more I thought about it, though, the more I decided against it. Why not just make them a homemade meal for dinner? So I did.

On Friday, my sisters and I made a batch of cherry cookies. I couldn’t find my heart shaped cookie cutter, so I cut a few in hearts.
Then I made a batch of homemade bread.
For the main dish, I made homemade chicken noodle soup. First step: rolling out the dough. This picture shows only 1/3 of the dough--I made a lot because it’s easier to get them thinner this way. It also means sore muscles the next day. :-)
Then I sliced the noodles. After stacking them on each other with lots of flour, I cut them again.
I repeated this entire process three times. Here’s my heart shaped mound of noodles.
I brought about a gallon of chicken broth/water to a boil. I carefully dropped in the noodles.
Sunday morning, I packaged everything up. I wrote her a note on the back of the heart. Cookies are in the foil, and the soup’s in the Tupperware. I sure hope they enjoyed it! I had lots of fun making it--and sampling it, of course!"