NO 2 DAUGHTERS CHOCOLATE CRISPS

February 22, 2015 darling downs 14 Comments

No 2 daughter made some beautiful chocolate biscuits this afternoon so I thought I’d post them for you to try.

Here she is with the plateful she made. There aren’t that many left now!!!

Ingredients

100 grams dark chocolate, chopped coarsely
80 grams butter, chopped
1 cup caster sugar
1 egg, beaten lightly
1 cup plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
1/4 cup icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease and paper baking tray.

Measure out ingredients and put aside. Sift flour, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda together.

Melt chocolate and butter together on low heat and place in a bowl. Mix in the sifted flour mixture the caster sugar and the beaten egg. Stir until combined. Place mixture in fridge to set a little – about 15 minutes.

Take out mixture and roll into balls. Roll the balls into icing sugar and place on baking tray.

ENJOY!!!

PS: we doubled the recipe and it worked just fine.

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS LINK PARTY

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS #19

February 22, 2015 darling downs 35 Comments

Hi everyone, and welcome back to another Good Morning Mondays.

I hope you have all had a good week and a restful weekend and that you are all ready to start the new week with gusto!!!

Our week has been good and we have schooled and done piano – just the usual.

We went to our Revelation Bible Study on Tuesday night and we are all enjoying this and it is great for our younger children to learn to listen and sit still.

Wednesday night was Ash Wednesday and we went to church. We don’t usually do this but we have decided to this year and to teach the children about Lent and what it means. We don’t want them to see it as a time where we “give up” chocolate, but we want them to understand the lead up to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

We have instigated nightly bible readings with our No 2 daughter reading a Psalm and No 1 son reading a chapter of Proverbs. We usually read bible stories but have decided that the children are getting older and are ready for more.

We have also instigated a weekly prayer list and have asked them to choose who they want to pray for, our only stipulation is that there be Christians and non-Christians on that list. We want to get past the thank you Lord for our good day and onto a more meaningful prayer time.

Sometimes at tea time we are just tired and want the children to go to bed, but they are quick to remind us of our prayer time and who they are praying for.

The children did a great job with some cleaning during the week, so after No 2 daughter mopped the floor and it was drying I took them to our local park for some hot chips and a play on the swings. This park is in a small town about 12 kms away, our nearest shopping town is 40 kms.

This doesn’t happen very often so it was a treat for them and they had done a great job.

Unfortunately No 2 son was sick with gastro on Saturday morning so we had to cancel a visit from our No 1 daughter and family. I must admit I had a good cry over this, as we haven’t seen them since Christmas and they have been travelling around part of Australia and we were keen to get together with them.

My husband also decided that we couldn’t go to the 1 year old dedication and birthday party this afternoon in case we infected anyone else. This was very sad also but the right decision due to the amount of young children attending and we didn’t want anyone else to get sick.

This party was for the youngest son of our friends. He is number 8 and a real cutie. He has downs syndrome but he is such a blessing and we so wanted to show our support for them all. God doesn’t make mistakes and he has placed this beautiful little boy into a lovely home with supportive siblings and parents. If you have time I would love you to pray for him – let’s name him little J. Please pray also for his parents for wisdom in how they teach and train him.

So there has been good and sad this week. I spent most of Saturday feeling sorry for myself and then Saturday night feeling bad about that. I guess I had a pity party – and I am definitely not proud of the fact, I really needed to build a bridge and get over it.

Our youngest two children made me these beautiful cards for my birthday and they made me feel so loved. It is amazing how forgiving and loving they are, I am really blessed to be their mother.

My husband has put in a special prayer request and asks that if you have time to prayer for the following:

Sunday night starts the week of the Melbourne Bible Blitz for the Gideons International in Australia. They will spend the week handing out Bibles at the universities in Melbourne and going around the hospitals, doctors surgeries, police academy, prisons, and on street witnessing. Their hope is to hand out 200,000 scriptures (Proverbs, Psalms and New Testament in one) and 18 tonnes of Bibles.

My husband and No 1 son will spend from Sunday afternoon until Wednesday evening in Melbourne (300 kms away) handing out, witnessing and transporting scriptures.

Please pray for open hearts and minds as they do this and please pray for all attending to be kept safe and well.

Thank you.

Okay, enough about us.

Here are our top 3 posts this week…

Meal Plan and A Homemaking Routine Update by Jayne at Tiny Toadstool Cottage

Too Much Stuff by Latisha at Ask Latisha

Living on His Income a book review by Laura at Harvest Lane Cottage

My personal favourite this week is…Grocery No Spend Challenge by Taylor Made Ranch

Imagine not going grocery shopping for a whole month. Pop over and have a look at this post if you want to see how it goes.

I want you all to know that I find it very hard to pick a favourite post each week. I would love to be able to feature you all.

Congratulations to everyone for being featured and thank you to all of you who took the time and linked up.

I hope you are all learning as much as I am. I am so blessed by you all and the relationship that we are building.

This week coming up is looking at being cooler (we had a hot weekend) so I will be very motivated to get heaps done (and praying that none of the rest of us get sick).

We have a Lenten church service on Wednesday and hopefully a sewing day with my friend. We have had to cancel the last two due to them being sick, hopefully it won’t be us this week. We will also be catching up with our daughter and family sometime soon and we are all looking forward to that.

I have been challenged this week to allow my younger two children to do more and take on more responsibilities. It is amazing what they can do and how they respond with praise.

So I pray that you all will have a blessed week and I want to encourage you all to keep on keeping on and stay close to God, and He will guide you.

Blessings.

An InLinkz Link-up

Kitchen Diary

CRUMBED SNAPPER WITH VEG

February 22, 2015 darling downs 22 Comments

Last week a friend of ours went sea fishing and caught a few fish and very kindly donated 3 snappers to us. We haven’t eaten snapper before so I took the advice of an expert fisher friend and used Panko crumbs to coat them.

No 1 son filleted them for me, which was kind of him, and he does it better than me.

Here are the beautiful fillets for us to eat. Three fish are just enough for our family of 5.

Here are the ingredients. First a bowl of plain flour seasoned with salt and pepper then a couple of eggs whisked together and then the Panko crumbs for the final coat.First you dip the fish in the flour, tap of any excess. Then dip it into the egg and then coat in the crumbs.

I find it best to let them sit in the fridge for a little while to harden up a bit.

Then I fried them in my fry pan with a little olive oil.

We served our fish with our own boiled potatoes and BBQ zucchini and tomatoes and my daughter made some tzatziki. Ours is a very easy version, just plain yoghurt and grated cucumber and some salt and pepper and some vegetable stock.

This is probably our favourite summer meal. It is easy for my husband to cook on the BBQ and it saves getting the kitchen hot. Sometimes instead of fish we have home made sausages or hamburgers or some lovely steak from our cross bred highland cattle.

What’s on your table this week for tea??? I’d love some new ideas.

Diaries of the Heart

LEAD FROM THE FRONT

February 22, 2015 darling downs 18 Comments

The other night my husband and I were watching a World War 2 movie.

It was about a Lieutenant Colonel who brought together two groups of men. One group were a bunch of misfits and the other a well trained, disciplined group.

The Lieutenant Colonel had unorthodox methods in getting the two groups to get on and this mainly meant that the two groups had to come together to support each other, basically they had to realise they were on the same side.

When they were sent on missions the Colonel went with them, he never delegated his leadership to anybody else. He delegated duties but he went with the men, in front to lead them himself.

As I was watching this movie I thought that this man knew what he was on about.

He didn’t stay behind to wait and see what happened he led the men as he was meant to and the men respected him and would have died for him.

As parents this is also what we are meant to do, we are meant to lead our children and husbands are meant to lead their families in life. Fathers cannot delegate the duty to any one else, it is his job to lead. He delegates jobs and missions to his wife and children but he is always to stand out the front.

If his family see him leading from the front and not pushing them from behind they will respect him and love him, even if he has to discipline them.

Now I am sure that Fathers are sometimes leading what seems to look like a bunch of misfits, but if we do it God’s way we will always be different to the world.

Too often today Dad is not present to lead his family, he sometimes doesn’t want to or won’t take up his leadership role. Sometimes it is because we wives have already taken over the position and won’t let it go. We need to be so careful that we are in submission to our husband, supporting him in his role and not taking over.

Let us pray to God and ask for ways to encourage our husbands to take on his role and to lead his family from the front.

When our husband is in his right position and we are supporting him (not from behind but beside) our families will be blessed.

Ephesians 6:1-4 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

This post is linked up at…

Word Filled Wednesday

Diaries of the Heart

HOW COULD YOU NOT BELIEVE

February 22, 2015 darling downs 29 Comments

If you have read my aquaponics update you would know that our yabbies have had babies.

Below is a photo of the eggs on the yabby. It is quite amazing how this happens and I have never seen this before. We have over 40 yabbies in our tanks helping to keep the tanks clean and providing us with the odd meal or two.

Here is a photo of the babies hatched but still on the mother. They look a bit like maggots but are exactly like a big yabby except smaller.

I tried to get a photo of our baby yabbies but they were just too small. Below is a picture of a bit bigger one, and this is exactly how the small ones look. The small ones are the size of two pin heads but look exactly like the one below.

Now the point of this post isn’t to educate you on our yabbies – but if it does that’s okay.

This post is to remind us of the awesomeness of God’s creation. Even as a Christian, brought up in a Christian home and educated in God’s creation, I am still mystified and awe inspired by how God created things.

In Genesis it states that God said… and it was created. He just spoke, just think about that, all he did was speak and it was created.

How can anyone think that this just happened, or came out of a big bang or dragged itself out of a slime pit.

How can anyone NOT be a believer, just because of this.

Revelation 4:11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible

PS: This is just the yabby I am talking about there are heaps more things just on our little farm that prove to me that God created everything.

This post is linked up at…

Word Filled Wednesday

Diaries of the Heart

REDEEMED BY THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB

February 15, 2015 darling downs 26 Comments

I decided late last year that I wanted to do more bible readings in 2015 and I thought I would connect with Donna Reidland over at Soul Survival and do the readings with her through her daily plan.

So far so good, I have been enjoying reading through with her and then reading her commentary. It has been a blessing and I have felt focused on the scripture instead of trying to do it by myself.

I’m up to Exodus now and the children of Israel have left Egypt, gone through the Red Sea and are now in the wilderness near Mt Sinai.

So Moses was up the mount communing with God and Aaron and the people were at their camp. Moses was gone just too long and they started to grumble and complain. They asked Aaron to make a god for them so Aaron took all their gold and melted it and made a calf for them to worship.

Now God was so angry with them that he was going to wipe them off the face of the earth, but Moses pleaded with him to spare them and God did. Moses went down the mountain and called all the followers of God to himself and the rest – well you can imagine, it didn’t go too well for them.

I suppose what I have been thinking with this is that God was angry. He wasn’t just upset – he was angry and was going to wipe them away. He didn’t say Oh dear, look at that, they missed you Moses, come here and I’ll comfort you all. He said you are a stiff-necked people and you are going to suffer the consequences of your behaviour – hence the wandering around in the desert instead of enjoying the promised land.

Exodus 32:9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people!”.

God was angry because the people who He had brought out of slavery, who He was going to lead to the promised land had strayed and were worshiping another god.

Aren’t we the same, aren’t we always complaining about the way things are going, aren’t we worshiping other gods. We may not even realise that we are, but do we put sport over church on a Sunday. Do we watch too much TV when we should be with our family doing devotions. Do we care too much about how we look and how we feel???

These are the gods that we worship, the gods of sport, and I feel the biggest one, the god of self.

Then He sent his son Jesus, to die for us and to be the last sacrifice. Now God sees us through Jesus.

Ephesians 1:7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.

I love that chorus:

I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb, saved from sin and I know I am. All my sins are taken away, Praise the Lord

I feel we should think more about falling on our faces and worshiping a God so great and so mighty that He could wipe us off the face of the earth with one word, but also a God who loved us so much that he sent His only Son to die for us, that our sins would be forgiven.

Let us remember how big and strong and MIGHTY our God is, let us have a reverence for Him and all that He is and has done.

This is just what I have been thinking about my Bible readings at the moment.

Blessings.

This post is linked up at…

Woman to Woman Word Filled Wednesday

Diaries of the Heart, Homeschooling Diary

NO EXCUSES…

February 15, 2015 darling downs 28 Comments

I’ve been reading on different blogs about the “one” word for 2015 that God had given and I didn’t really have one or really think I needed one (no offence to those who do).

But guess what – I had a revelation and I think God gave me a nudge and gave me a new phrase for 2015…

“NO EXCUSES”

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how to get my little ones, (9 and 7 years old) excited to sit and do school. Well guess what the revelation was – it’s my problem, not theirs.

I have been expecting them to work hard at their work, while I work hard at my work. We are not working together but we are working separately.

I am feeling pretty remorseful and guilty and somewhat shameful about sharing this.

I finally got it, the reason they aren’t excited is because I’m not excited to teach them.

Now I love having my children home, I always have and I always will, but I have gotten slack in the teaching stakes.

I’m pathetic really, so I believe the “no excuses” is God’s way of saying no more.

I’m tired, I didn’t sleep well – NO EXCUSE
I’ve got cooking to do – NO EXCUSE
I need to clean up – NO EXCUSE
I need to do the washing – NO EXCUSE

I’m sure if I think harder I could come up with heaps more, but these few are bad enough :-(.

So I’ve decided to get up earlier, spend time in God’s word, do some exercise, do some blogging and be ready to start the day when the children get up.

I’ve also decided to put aside the other things that I feel “NEED” doing and leave that till we’ve finished school.

It’s worked this past week and I pray that I can continue being excited to school my children and have that passion wear off on them.

Do you have a passion to school your children??? What ways do you stay excited??? Any advice will be gratefully accepted.

This post is linked up at…

Woman to Woman Word Filled Wednesday

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS LINK PARTY

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS #18

February 15, 2015 darling downs 40 Comments

Welcome back to another Good Morning Mondays Link up. (even though I am writing this on Sunday night)

As I am sitting here my husband is on our front verandah picking a tune on his banjo that we got him for Christmas. It was very warm today and now with the evening advancing the heat has passed and the storm clouds are rolling by and the breeze has cooled off.

It is a lovely evening and I enjoy listening to him trying to work out how to play it. It proves that you are never too old to learn either in the physical or the spiritual. An hour ago he was practicing the accordian with our youngest son. ( I was going to take a photo of them but he was in his pajamas and he wouldn’t have been impressed with that photo being seen by too many).

My husband has a great ear for music and so do our children (which frustrates their music teacher). Graeme can pick up his accordian and play any tune he knows, this is a real gift. We are so blessed that the children have inherited this trait from him, but we still continue to teach them to read music so they have the benefits of both.

This week has been good and warm (I’m not complaining) and the vegetables are growing. We have had some rain too which is always a blessing. Below is a picture of our driveway and the puddles.

I really find it great to sit and listen to the rain on the roof and feel the cool air coming through the window while I work inside.

We haven’t really done anything too exciting this week, we have done school and piano and I finished the quilt I was working on. It has been too long in the making, now I just have to send it off. I will post pictures once my friend has received it.

This week we have our Revelation bible study and Ash Wednesday service. We have a 50th birthday party on Friday night and a 1 year old birthday and dedication party on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully in there somewhere we will catch up with our daughter and family when they return from their trip. Oh and it’s my birthday on Friday too.

I hope your past week has been good and you achieved all you wanted to.

That’s about all from me so onto our link up.

Our three top posts this week were…

A Clean House is a Sign of a Good Life by Jayne at Tiny Toadstool Cottage

Homemade Bread-Making Shortcuts by Taylor Made Ranch

Reasons we Fail as Homemakers by The Farmer’s Wife at Growing In His Grace

My favourite for the week was…

Jumping on the Bandwagon by Chris at So Much At Home

If you haven’t had time to look at these, just click on the title and pop over you will be really blessed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who took the time to link up. To those of you who have been linking up for ages, and to those of you who have just started I am so blessed that you take the time.

I have been challenged this past week with finding an excitement with our schooling and I want to pass that onto you all. If you don’t homeschool that’s fine, I suppose it is more about being there when our kids are around.

Blessings to you all this week, may you see the hand of God in your lives.

An InLinkz Link-up

Aquaponics

AQUAPONICS UPDATE #2

February 15, 2015 darling downs 8 Comments

Well it’s time for another Aquaponics Update and I have been busy taking photos.

The system seems to be working better now and our little fish are growing well, although it is hard to get photos of them (sorry).

OUR BIG BIG NEWS IS…. OUR YABBIES HAVE HAD BABIES

BEFORE

AFTER

If you look really closely you can see the babies, there were some in the bottom of their tank but they are so small. If you are interested in more information about yabbies click here.

Below is a photo of some of the lettuces and they are growing and staying healthy. The drum with the small fish in them is feeding directly into this bed which might explain why they look so good.

Here is a beetroot plant, you can just see the new green leaf just beginning to grow at the bottom.

We already have about 10 larger fish that friends caught for us and you can see their outlines below. I am sorry the photo isn’t really great as it’s hard to see them.

In our sump tank we have some yabbies and an eel. The eel normally lives in the pipe but you can see his tail sticking out near the brick.

Here is a close up of the yabbies in with the eel.

We planted some larger tomato plants when we first started and they have just been hanging on. Now the tops have died off but we noticed a new shoot on this one.

This is the Seasol product that we add to the beds, it is a seaweed based mineral and is meant to help until the fish manure output increases. My husband isn’t sure whether it works or not.

Here is my eggplant bravely stuggling on, it is flowering now, but it hasn’t grown much.

The latest addition has been to sow seeds straight into the beds. Below are some squash seeds that have come up and they seem to be growing well.

Here is another one, I think this is a cucumber. It is fascinating to watch the seeds come up and I find this quite amazing and very exciting.

I have just finished sewing two beds with more seeds. I put in a variety of tomatoes, cucumbers, rocket, dwarf beans, coriander, silverbeet and capsicum. I am looking forward to seeing how many actually come up and then how many keep growing.

Well that’s about it for this post and I will do another update when the seedlings start coming up.

Blessings!!

This post is linked up at Old-Fashioned Friday

Aquaponics, Vegetable Planting Diary

MY SWEET POTATO

February 14, 2015 darling downs 24 Comments

After seeing a youtube video about sprouting sweet potatoes we have had four of them sitting on our window sill.

It isn’t warm enough where we live to grow sweet potatoes outside, but we have decided to give them a go in the aquaponics system because it will be under hot house plastic in a month or so and hence being grown in a warmer environment.

Below is a photo of them in my preserving jars on our kitchen window sill. They have been there since before Christmas and are now sprouting really well. They have 3 toothpicks in each one which suspends them in the jar.

Gentle Joy Homemaker did hers a bit differently but when we did them like this they went rotten, but I am going to try them again this way. Pop over and have a look here at how she does it.

Here is the most productive sweet potato on the window sill (my favourite). The shoots that have come from under the water level have already grown roots and I am going to break them off and plant them in the aquaponic beds.

You can see the roots in the photo below.

I broke them off and kept the roots intact.

They are now planted in the grow beds and I planted them quite deeply.
I am going to break off the shoots that aren’t below water and place them in a jar of water to develop roots and then plant them out.

I don’t have enough words to explain how excited we are with this. It has been a great, successful experiment.

I have become quite attached to my little potatoes too.

This post is linked up with Old-Fashioned Friday

Darling Downs Diaries

Monthly Archives: February 2015

NO 2 DAUGHTERS CHOCOLATE CRISPS

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS #19

CRUMBED SNAPPER WITH VEG

LEAD FROM THE FRONT

HOW COULD YOU NOT BELIEVE

REDEEMED BY THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB

NO EXCUSES…

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS #18

AQUAPONICS UPDATE #2

MY SWEET POTATO

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