Hi there everyone, welcome back to Darling Downs Diaries and our Good Morning Mondays Link Up.

It’s been a good week all round. On Monday we started our “Daily Home Blessing Hour”.  After discussions with our No 1 daughter during their visit last week, we decided to give this a go. She had heard about it from a lady on Instagram.

So it basically means that every morning before school, for about an hour, we give the house a clean. So all the bathroom sinks, toilets and laundry get a clean each day, along with dusting and floors. I’ve broken the hour into 15 min sections. The first 15 mins is for bedroom tidy up and then the sinks and toilets and then the dusting and floors being the last 15 mins. I also broke our house into 2 zones, kitchen and lounge and hallway and bathrooms, and while our no 2 daughter and I do inside our no 2 son does the outside verandas.

This has gone really well, and it’s amazing now how easy it is to do, even after a week. The kitchen floor is mopped every morning and it is so nice to sit down in the evening to a tidy home. There will be times of deeper cleaning for windows and behind furniture but it won’t be this big huge weekly cleaning task that leaves us all grumpy. We also use it as a bit of a race to see who can get completed first, mostly it’s good fun.

It was my birthday on Monday and my wonderful family all clubbed together and bought me a cream separator. It came all the way from the Ukraine and it’s great.

The cream that came out was thick and creamy (haha) and was a wonderful addition to our chocolate self saucing pudding that we had for tea. I intend to turn the rest into butter but we may eat it before I get to it.

I’ve also been making sauce from a case of tomatoes from our no 1 daughter. Ours aren’t ripe yet and I really wanted to get some sauce put away so it was really a blessing. I got a heap of jars which should keep us going until next season.

I dried the skins as well and blended them up and this is a wonderful addition to soups and stews during the winter months.

Our new chickens are officially laying and we are getting a few eggs each day. They haven’t got any boxes yet so it sort of looks like an egg game in their pen.

I also managed to finish our no 2 daughters jumper this weekend and it was just in time for the cooler weather we’ve been having. This coming week will be quite warm so she won’t get to wear it again or a while, but the warm weather is good for the vegetables so that’s okay.
I’m now excited to get into our son-in-laws jumper, and hopefully get it done in a month or so, but we’ll see. Our granddaughters have birthdays in April and May and I would like to make them a quilt each and maybe some socks but we’ll see how we go.

Okay enough about us, onto our link up…

Our top three posts this week were…
Poverty in the 1800’s from The Legacy of Home  Dad’s Worksheets Review from An Island Family By Grace
Wordless Wednesday: The Crown from Bible Fun 4 Kids and More

Thanks everyone or stopping by and linking up, it’s always great to see what you have each week.

With the warmer weather coming there may be more tomatoes to deal with so that will be on the agenda this coming week. There will be school to do and our cleaning schedule to complete and piano practice.

As far as I know we are home all week and have a 70th birthday party next Saturday night. So a nice quiet week is on the agenda.

What’s been happening in your lives lately, I’d love to hear.

Also don’t forget our…This months topic is…

WHEN YOU’VE BEEN LET DOWN

Love to see you here if you get a chance

I hope you are all going good and I’m looking forward to hearing from you this week.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings my friends xxxx

You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.

Hey there everyone and welcome back to another Good Morning Mondays Link Up.

What a week we’ve had, has yours been good??

Our week started with a nights babysitting. We got to look after our delightful granddaughters while their parents and uncle went to pick something up. We had a lovely time together, they are such cuties.We then had our son-in-law and daughter with us for a couple of nights and that was great too. We had a really good time together and it’s always a bundle of laughs.  We eat, we talk, and we usually watch a movie together and have late nights, which is great but it’s nice to get back to a normal routine too.

We were all pretty tired once they’d left so we pushed through our piano practice but we have also been doing a bit of deeper cleaning and tidying up so it was good to get that done as well this week.

We even wrangled a trip to Port Fairy and fish and chips for tea one night. It was only a quick visit but it was very enjoyable and relaxing and a beautiful evening.Our weather hasn’t really been conducive to tomatoes ripening at the moment so it may be another month before we get any bulk tomatoes.  Where our daughter lives it is much warmer and she blessed us with a big bag of fresh tomatoes and zucchinis.Home grown fresh tomatoes are so much nicer than the bought ones.  Our celery has been going well but has now started to go to seed so our no 2 daughter went and picked me a basket full and I dried it overnight. It turned out really well and I’m pleased with the results.  I will do more this coming week and may also make some veggie powder to use as flavouring in soups and stews.

Last year I dehydrated tomato skins and I might use that and make a powdered stock mix.

On Sunday after church we went on a picnic which was lovely and we even did some kite flying, which the children really enjoyed. We’ve had these kites for ages but we just haven’t had the chance to try them.

Okay, onto our link up…

Our top three posts this week were… This Is Not Fair by Lisa Notes… An Invitation To Freedom by Purposeful and MeaningfulHow Do I Love You? 8 Ways To Demonstrate Love by Hope Prevails

I hope you got a chance to read these great posts and thank you everyone for stopping by and linking up.

I’m looking forward to a quieter week and a good routine, I haven’t got much else on that I know of at the moment.

As you can tell from the Wednesday Wisdom Search title I’ve been dealing with being let down and disappointed. God has been speaking to me about forgiveness even if I don’t have reconciliation. It’s been challenging for me but God is good and He will never let us down. Forgiveness is really important not just for our spiritual walk but our health as well.

I hope you get a chance to stop by and leave me a comment on our…

This months topic is…

WHEN YOU’VE BEEN LET DOWN

Love to see you here if you get a chance

I hope you are all going good and I’m looking forward to hearing from you this week.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings my friends xxxx

You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.

Hey there all, welcome back to another Monday and another link up.

As I sit here writing this I’m trying to remember what I did this past week but it’s all a bit of a blur. When you are home all day and there is nothing “exciting” happening time just seems to motor along.

This week we started Bible Study before breakfast.  We have been struggling with this for a while and we are too tired at nights to focus properly so my husband made the decision to go for 6:30 am studies. This involves our no 1 son as well before he leaves for work, when he is shearing they start at 7:30 am.We are following a calendar that takes a Character Quality each month and this month’s is Sensitivity. We are having some great conversations about the scriptures and it’s good to see the younger children opening up.

I must admit I am struggling with the early mornings but we just need to go to bed earlier, but that’s a struggle too (haha).

I’ve been making cream cheese and it’s going really well. It’s delicious on crackers and I’ve also made a cheesecake. Suffice to say it was delicious with the added mixed berries.
The children have been busy practicing their piano and we have been doing school.  We spent time weeding the veggie garden, I’m sure the weeds grow quicker than anything else, probably due to some lovely rain we had last weekend.

We’ve had some quite warm weather with one night not dropping down under 28 degrees. We don’t often run the air con all night but we did that night. Thankfully it cooled off a bit over the next couple of days and it is quite pleasant now.

Okay I haven’t much to report this week, so onto our link up…

Our top three posts were…All You have to Be Is Desperate by Living Our DaysDepression Era Chocolate CRAZY CAKE Recipe by Taylor Made HomesteadHomemade Yogurt the Easy Way by Oak Hill Homestead

Thank you everyone for stopping by and linking up. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes along this week.

I’ve got another quiet week, although we have two piano lessons because our music teacher had a wedding so we had to skip a lesson. So Monday morning is a town trip and then I’m home for the rest of the week.

It’s the usual school, gardening and house cleaning.

Also a reminder about our monthly link up…This months topic will be on…

WHEN YOU’VE BEEN LET DOWN.

I’m looking forward to getting back into these link ups and I hope to see you there on Wednesday.

I hope you are all going good and I’m looking forward to hearing from you this week.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings my friends xxxx

You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.

Hey all, it’s almost Monday again so welcome back to our weekly Good Morning Mondays Link Up.

You’ll see by my photos that it’s vegetable season here, actually most of the vegetables I’ve been processing have been from our son-in-law and daughter. They have an amazing vegetable garden and although they only live 2 hours north, they have much warmer weather than us during the summer, and much more consistent.

Actually I don’t always mind inconsistent weather because we usually get cooler weather every few days which, when it is really hot is a great relief.

Last weekend as I mentioned we went and visited our no 1 daughter and her family. We had a great time together, as usual and they blessed us with heaps of zucchinis and cucumbers. So I’ve been busy dehydrating.

I dehydrated some zucchini slices first to re-hydrate and BBQ later in the year, then I moved onto grated cucumber and zucchini. The plan with the cucumber is to use it in tzatziki and the zucchini will go into soups, stews and sometimes cakes.

I store these dried vegetables in jars and when I have excess I bag them and vacuum seal them. They store really well in the bags and I can put them in the cupboard for later.

I have an old blue bookcase in my kitchen that I use to store my jars on and I really like how colourful it is. This shelf makes me feel so productive, it’s great.Our no 2 son had been sick before we went and visited our son-in-law, daughter and family but we thought it was something he ate. Oops we were wrong, we spread the gastro germ. The grandchildren came down very quickly followed by their father and then finally their mum. Then my husband and myself. We all had it in varying degrees but it did knock us about for a couple of days. A few of us were spared, our 16 month old grandson and our no 2 daughter and no 1 son, hopefully they have missed out.

So it’s been a slower week around here, my husband only took a day off which was good, he is amazing and the children and I worked our way through some school and piano practice.

Friday we spent the day helping our friends cut up the meat that we butchered last week.  We had a great day and it’s so nice to spend time with like minded Christians, there’s always heaps to talk about.

So after our not so exciting week, I’d love to hear how yours was, what have you been up to???

Time for our top three…Outdoor Water Conservation & Irrigation by Taylor Made Homestead 52 Week Illustration Challenge – Can I really do this?!? by Mindie at The (mis) Adventures of a Born Again Farm GirlHow to Make Herbal Sleep Tea by Feathers in the Woods

Thank you to everyone who linked up this week. I was hoping to read a heap of posts but the gastro but paid to that unfortunately, so I’m sorry about that. I’m looking forward to seeing what you have for us this week and I will endeavour to read some more.

Some friends and I are doing a yearly scripture writing plan that Heidi St. John put together. I have been reminded how much God loves us and how much He does for us because of His love. There is nothing we can do to deserve His love, his Grace abounds over us. It’s awesome really.

I’m also so aware of how much He is in control of our lives and that He knows everything that is going on, nothing is hidden from Him. I can rest in the assurance that He’s got it all covered.

I’ve got a week at home coming up and it’s the usual, school, music, vegetables and gardening.

What’s on your agenda???

I hope you are all going good and I’m looking forward to hearing from you this week.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings my friends xxxx

You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.