Honeybun Cake

Once upon a time the hubs and I were married without kids. The pastor currently at our church was not a pastor yet but would travel to preach and Wade went with him a few times. The first time Wade went with him, I was being trying to be a good wife, and I baked a cake for them to take. They were driving to Alabama to a meeting. Story goes that the cake was gone before they arrived. There were full bellies and a proud husband….oh, and a recipe request. ;)

Honeybun Cake
Printable recipe here

1 box yellow cake mix (If gluten free, my favorite is King Arthur’s GF yellow cake mix.)
3/4 cup coconut oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla, divided
8 ounce sour cream
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
4 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix yellow cake mix, oil, eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and sour cream; pour into greased 9x13-inch cake pan. In a small bowl, mix brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle over cake; swirl with a fork all over. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes or until tested done with toothpick. For icing, mix confectioner’s sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and milk (may not need all the milk); pour over warm cake.

When you use your fork to swirl the brown sugar/cinnamon into the cake batter, it causes these yummy swirls of sweetness throughout.

It is so good. Granted, I am not calling this a healthy recipe with all that sugar, but it is a nice treat to have every once in a while. I rarely make desserts and our family are not “cake” people, but this is one cake we ALL love. It is easy and another one of those recipes I like to take to families when they are in need of a meal. My family likes it as a dessert but also to go with hot tea or coffee, like a coffeecake (basically telling you we eat it for breakfast).

Do you have a favorite dessert recipe that is your go-to or favorite for potlucks or to share with others? Tell me about it. I love to try new recipes. Share in the comments below or find us on Facebook!

Improving Your Prayer Life with Technology

One of the great things about the age of technology and smart phones is how it can be used to better your life. Fitness apps, Bible apps, bank apps, grocery list apps - it helps us to save time, money, and keep up with how we are doing physically AND spiritually.

An area of my life I have been burdened to work on for a while is my prayer life. I would pray every day and throughout the day. Walk the dog, I pray. Folding clothes, I pray. Drive down the road, I pray. However, I was and still am FAR from arriving at where I need to be in my prayer life, and I am convicted of it often. (I want to get that straight before anyone keeps reading!)

There were things I needed to pray for that I was forgetting and there were things I needed to include in my prayer life - like a time of praise and thanksgiving.

I Chronicles 23:30 "And to stand every morning to thank and praise the LORD, and likewise at even."

Hebrews 13:15 "By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, 

that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name."

Many more verses in God's Word talk about how we should praise and give thanks.

A couple of years ago I made this really nice and elaborate prayer journal.....but it just did not work for me. While getting ready about a month ago, I was thinking there should be an app where you can input the things you want to pray for daily and the things you want to pray for weekly.

Well, you may have heard "there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9) I searched for "prayer" in the app store and sure enough, many apps came up. Sadly, most were not meant for the Christian, but I waded through looking at characteristics and found one that had features similar to what I had in mind. It's called PrayerMate. It's available for FREE in the Google store and the iTunes store.

It's become one of my favorite apps in the last month. The app actually has everything I wanted and needed in an app plus some extra neat features I wanted to share.

When you download it, it comes set up with a few "categories" but everything is customizable. Here is a glimpse at my categories:

Within each category you can add "subjects." This can just be a list if you want. Such as in my "Fab Farmer 4," I have added my husband and two kids. (I am an English nerd who like alliteration, so please excuse me. Haha!)

There are only three items or "subjects" in this "session" as you see above. I want to pray for all three every day, so I have it set to three. If I had a list of say 18 items like I do for our Sunday school group members, then I know there is no way I can sincerely pray for all the families every day. For that group, I have chosen to pray for three items every time I go through my list.

Back to your subjects...if you want to get more detailed (and this is something I continued and still continue to customize over time), then you can add "notes" - things you want to remember to pray about for that subject.

See where it says, "Tap here to add notes..." - well, tap there! ;)

Type in what you want to add....

This is what the subject looks like when you are in edit mode.

Below is what Elizabeth's prayer page looks like finished.

The "notes" are in a slightly smaller font as you can see above.

So see that picture up there of my girl? Yep, you can add those too. I "stole" that from her Instagram account. I also used some of my friends on Facebook. I think it helps (at least it does me) to SEE the person when you are praying for them. I also accidentally discovered that if you do not delete the photo before uploading another for a subject then you can have more than one and it slowly scrolls through the pictures as you pray for that person or family. Pretty neat!

Other things you can change is the scheduling mode which is different from how many items you pray for in each category. This is how often you want to pray for each subject. So if I want to pray for my family daily, I can. If I want to pray for one person on a list daily but the rest on a different schedule, then I can. My husband and I have committed to pray for our Pastor and his family daily so I have it set them to come through my prayer session daily.

If you do not change the scheduling mode then it will be on "default" which means if you have 18 items and pray for three every session, then you will go through each subject every six days. For the families in my Sunday school group, I am praying for them at least once a week. In time, I may up this so I'm praying for them more than that, but I wanted to start at a point I knew I could handle.

Just like if you start reading the Bible for the first time (or after a long time of not reading), it is better to start slow, say 20 verses or one chapter and not try to read 5-10 chapters at a sitting. I have been praying for years, but with this improvement of my prayer life I am praying longer in one sitting.

Regarding scheduling, you can also set up a reminder to alert you when to pray.

When the reminder goes off and I open the app, this is what I see. (If I did not get to pray through my list then when I open the app it will be where I left off until the next day.)

It's an overview of what I will pray for that day. The little circles at the bottom shows where you are in the series of items. You just use your finger to swipe through as you pray.

That is a lot of screen shots to show you how I have been using the app. I start out with a "Praise to the Lord" category where I have added verses that are verses of praise I can pray to the Lord.

Next I go to my "Being What I Need to Be" where I pray through things concerning my spiritual life, my physical self (any health issues or whatever), my roles as a wife, mother, daughter, and friend, and then the ministries I am involved in at church. For each of those I can pray for areas I am weak and characteristics I want to strengthen.

If you noticed my "Temporary Requests" above, that is for things I have told friends I would pray for or things I want to pray for a short period (families who had a loved one die, people who are sick, etc). That is another area I have tried different ways to try to help me remember and many have failed, but so far this has been working great. :)

When you start using the app you will discover more features that I am not explaining in this post - things such as downloading prayers (I found a good one to use for our Pastor), attaching PDFs to subjects if there is something you want to remember while praying (an example could be a recent prayer letter from a missionary), import your phone contacts so you do not have to type it all up, font size, backup to Dropbox so you do not lose all the information you have added, etc.

I Timothy 2:5 "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

Prayer is one of the great things about our Christian life. Most of us (ME! ME! ME!) need to improve. I am thankful we can use technology to help us do this since it is such a part of our lives.

I have been using this app while walking the dog, getting ready, waiting at appointments, and relaxing on the sofa to name a few places. As I mentioned above, if you do not get through the whole session then it will stay where you left off until the next day.

Try out this app and see how it can help. If you have found an app that helps you in your prayer life then please share below in the comments or on our Facebook page. Let me know if you have any questions!