Monthly Archives: May 2015

Kitchen Diary

QUICK AND EASY NACHOS

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The other night I wanted something quick and easy for tea, so I made a special version of nachos.
DSC_1450We had some of those grain chips – not brand name ones, just the ones from Aldi in the cupboard so I thought that I would use these instead of corn chips.

Ingredients:

  • mince cooked up with onions and tomatoes
  • lettuce – chopped up
  • grain chips
  • coleslaw  (left over from birthday party )
  • grated cheese
  • sour cream

We put the lettuce on the plates first then added the chips, on top of this went the mince, coleslaw, cheese and sour cream.

Now I know this probably isn’t really nachos, but it was absolutely delicious anyway.

 

 

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

Diaries of the Heart

SOME DAYS ARE DIAMONDS

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My husband asked me to check on the pigs the other morning as he wanted to get on with sowing our wheat and oat crop so that he could get it finished before the rain was due.

I trotted off down the paddock and the pigs were all where they were meant to be and the sow due to have piglets hadn’t so all was well in their piggy world.

On my walk back the to the paddock to see my husband I was just filled with joy. It was a diamond type of day.

You know the song :

Some days are diamonds, some days are stone

Well this was definitely a diamond day.

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The sun was shining, there was a cold breeze but it didn’t cool my joy. You know the type of day, when things start out good and everyone is happy.

Our 9 year old daughter had gotten out of bed and done her school work and practiced her piano before breakfast, and she was happy. She even offered me breakfast in bed, but I don’t like crumbs in the bed so said no thank you :-).

What a day to be alive, what a beautiful sunny diamond type of day. On these days I feel so blessed and just burst with this. I catg inside.

Not all days are like diamonds, sometimes we can have quite stony types of days, but  the diamond days so make up for the stony and of course there are plenty of scriptures that encourage us to give thanks even on the rough days.

Ephesians 5:20 Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Psalm 107:1 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever

This one is particularly good…

Colossians 3:15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.

 

 

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

 

 

Diaries of the Heart

SOMETHING TO CONTEMPLATE #2

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I am following the read the bible in a year plan with Donna over at Soul Survival and the following was one of my readings during the week.

John 8:2-12 Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say? This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear.

So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them,“He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”  And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.  Then those who heard it,being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.  When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her,  “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”

She said, “No one, Lord.”

And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

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Now I know that I have read this passage before, I don’t know how many times but it wasn’t until this morning that I actually READ IT.

This woman was caught in sin and the normal punishment was stoning. That sounds quite severe but it was how it happened back then.

They brought her to Jesus for judgement and he came back with the statement about those who are without sin casting the first stone.

Everyone went away and the woman was left with Jesus, no one was capable of throwing that stone because no one is without sin.

The only one capable of throwing that stone was Jesus. The only one who knew no sin and had the right to judge her and condemn her to stoning was Jesus.

But Jesus said to her “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

Makes me wonder what right I have to judge and condemn others around me.

Definitely something to contemplate…

 

 

You will find this post linked up at some of these wonderful blogs.

 

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS LINK PARTY

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS #33

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Hey there, how’s it going.  It is very cold as I am sitting here writing this. I think this day must be the coldest and dampest day so far and tomorrow is looking the same, but that’s okay because tomorrow is the first day of winter.

Again I wonder where the year is going .

I have had a good week although I have been tired, not too sure why, maybe a big weekend with family last week, has left me worn out, but it was so worth it.

I spent most of the week at home although we did go to our friends place for a sewing afternoon on Thursday. The girls probably only have another session left and they will be finished sewing their quilts. Then it will be the snipping of all the seams to come – they have made raggy quilts.

I managed to finish the dress for our daughter to wear to the Eisteddfod tomorrow and it looks great. I will post a photo next week with their results.

They are both excited, and I think a little nervous, but nerves are okay. We have had discussions about doing their best, and about how it isn’t all about winning and how they should react when they don’t win and that they should be happy when someone else wins and congratulate them. This is such a good character building exercise, and they have fun as well.

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Our piglets have been weaned and we are in the process of selling them. We have sold 13 already and we have 11 left to go.  Here is a picture of them in the wool shed enjoying a warm corner.

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We still have a heap down the paddock to butcher and we are hoping to get this done in a couple of weeks.

Our oldest son turned 20 on Friday so Saturday night we had a special birthday tea with a couple of his friends.They seemed to have a good time and spent most of the night watching DVD’s in our lounge. It is so nice that our son has such lovely Christian young men as friends.

Okay enough about us again.

Our top three posts this week were…

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Urgent Prayers Needed for Jakob Cooper – Accident Victim by Cheryl at Homespun Devotions

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4 Simple Ways to Add Scripture To Your Family’s Day by Kelsey at Kelsey M Ferguson

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Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t by Glenys at Selah Christian Musings

and my personal favourite is

thmb5561bb488489cCathy’s Corner Week 6 by Debbie at Bible Fun for Kids

Thank you to everyone who linked up. I had fun reading all your posts and as usual I laughed and I cried and I learnt some new things.

I hope you all had a chance to stop by and read something new and comment on someone else’s post. This is so encouraging for others.

Well as I have said the Eisteddfod is tomorrow so we will be out all day at that. Then on Tuesday night we have our Revelation Bible Study.

We might fit in another sewing afternoon as well this week as my friend is pretty busy for the rest of the month.

On Saturday afternoon we are going on a bus trip to visit sites in relation to a certain missionary who came to this area 150 years ago. Places we will visit are where he lived, his first churches, cemeteries. We thought that this would be interesting and part of our history studies.

Well I hope that you all have a good week and that you and your family will be blessed.

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.”’

Love to you all xxxx


Cake recipes

FIRST BIRTHDAY CAKE

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I had been given the honour, the privilege, the joy of making the birthday cake for our No 2 granddaughters first birthday and dedication day.DSC_1417I used my usual chocolate cake recipe.

Ingredients – THIS IS THE BASIC RECIPE BUT I DOUBLED THE AMOUNTS WHICH THEN ADDED TIME ON THE BAKING. IT TOOK ABOUT 1 HOUR TO COOK BUT I CHECKED IT AT 30 MINS AND TURNED IT AROUND AND CHECKED IT AGAIN AT 45 MINS.

  • 3 cups self raising flour
  • 2 cups raw sugar
  • pinch salt
  • 1/2 cup cocoa powder
  • 2 cups cold water
  • 10 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 cup raspberries

Mix dry ingredients, add raspberries and liquid. Mix all together and bake in a moderate oven for approximately 30 mins. Test with a skewer to see if done.

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I cooled the cake and then started decorating it.  No 2 daughter gave me a hand.

We iced the sides of the cake with chocolate ganache and the top we iced with green tinged white chocolate ganache. This is to give the impression of grass.

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No 2 daughter cutting the icing to make pickets

We used ready to roll icing to make a picket fence and placed this all around the sides of the cake.

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On the top we used ready to roll icing that we coloured with different colours.  We cut out flowers and placed them on the top of the cake.

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I bought some chocolate letters and used these to spell out happy birthday Miss M. In the pack there were some chocolate hearts and stars and we used them too.

We then added some silver balls to just add a bit of sparkle. Overall we thought it turned out just great.

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You may see me linked up at some of these amazing blogs.

 

 

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS LINK PARTY

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS #32

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Wow, here we are again another Good Morning Mondays. I find it hard to believe that we have been going for 32 weeks now. The year seems to be going so fast, it is almost half over.

Winter is definitely fast approaching and our week has been cold and damp. Even some of the chickens came onto the back veranda to get out of the rain.

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It was good lego playing weather though (after school was done).

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I have had a good week and I was out one afternoon with my husband and children and then again that night to our Revelation Bible Study.

Only my husband and I went this time and we really enjoyed it. We have spent the last few months doing an overall study of the book, now we are digging into the individual verses and chapters.

We didn’t have our sewing day this week, I just had a few things I needed to get done around the place before we went to our Son-in-law and daughters place for the weekend. We will get together this coming week and the girls will almost be finished their quilts. We will have to have a discussion about what we do next.

Our youngest granddaughter turned 1 this week and was dedicated on Sunday morning at church. We then had a bit of a luncheon, party to celebrate.

We headed up to their place after music lessons on Saturday and spent the night and helped get a few things ready. Our daughter and son-in-law had most of it done though, but it’s always great to be together.

DSC_1414Here is the birthday cake that No 2 daughter and I put together, go here if you want to see how we did it.

Here is grandpa with our youngest granddaughter. They had some lovely moments together.DSC_1424Here is our no 1 son and no 1 granddaughter having a cuddle. They get on so well.DSC_1423

Our daughter made the girls matching dresses and they looked just beautiful.
DSC_1427She even did the embroidery work (with an embroidery sewing machine) on the front herself. DSC_1431Here is the whole family.

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We had a lovely time together with their family and their church family and some other close friends.

Okay enough about us…

Our link up has been going great and growing each week. Unfortunately I can’t always get them read but please keep linking up because what I do read I really enjoy and I am sure that many others are benefiting from your posts.

Our top three this week were…thmb5559072b4d386How to dress when out and about by Jo at Stop…have a chat

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The Jesus Code: “Faith, Legacies & the Goodness of God” + LINKUP by Donna at Soul Survivalthmb5558ff1f0185f

Making a Cheap Chicken Coup by The Farmer’s Wife at Grace Garden and Homestead

If you didn’t get a chance to read these, pop over if you can. They are all quite different and all very educational and interesting.

Thank you everyone for linking up and taking the time to send me comments. I am so blessed by them and it makes my morning to wake up to them all.

We only have one week left until the Eisteddfod so we will be relaxing on the piano practice a bit and not pushing it so much.  We will have a sewing afternoon on Thursday and I would like to sew my daughter a new dress, but apart from that there isn’t much else on.

Our no 1 son turns 20 this week, so I will cook him something special for tea and a nice dessert.

I hope you all had a good week and that you will be blessed this coming week.

Let us be thankful for all that we have and prayerful for those in times of stress. Let us keep our eyes open to those around us and help out when God leads us too.

Blessings to you all my dear friends. xxx


Diaries of the Heart

JUST SAY THANK YOU…

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What do you say to someone when they compliment you??? Do you just say thank you and leave it at that.

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I was blessed to be able to make our granddaughters first birthday cake and my No 2 daughter was able to give me a hand. We had fun, and it wasn’t toooo much stress!!!!

As I was working on it I started to think about what people would think about it and I was convicted to make sure that I just said thank you and not say thank you and then go on about how it could have been better or neater or anything else that I could think of.

Maybe someone compliments us on how we look and we return that compliment with a “this old thing” or “I just couldn’t get my hair right this morning”.

See that’s what I seem to do, I pay back compliments with a negative. Really should I be doing this???

Well of course not, I should just accept the compliment and maybe even I could say that God has really blessed me and helped me do this or that.

What am I teaching our children?? Am I teaching them that when I tell they have done a great job, that I am really wanting them to think negatively and  feel that they could have done better.

I don’t want them thinking that I want them to just accept the compliment reward those people with a smile and be comforted to know that someone noticed how well they have done.

So next time when someone gives me a compliment I am just going to say thank you and leave it at that and hopefully that person will be blessed as well.

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Proverbs 15:23 A man has joy in an apt answer, And how delightful is a timely word!

 

Diaries of the Heart

MY HUSBAND’S TRUCK

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I wanted to share with you all how much God has blessed my husband these past few months.

My husband is what we call a “farming contractor”. That means that he travels all around our district working for farmers fixing and building things they can’t. Mostly he really enjoys his work and finds great pleasure in being able to fix something that someone else can’t.

He has, for the last 12 years had a twin cab Rodeo ute with a canopy on the back which has housed his tools.  This vehicle, for a fair while was also our family car taking us to church and town shopping. This Rodeo has done an amazing job and we have been really blessed by it, but the tools were all over the place and just not organised.

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At times this has been frustrating for my husband and of some difficulty when he can’t find things, unfortunately we didn’t have any money to buy him another vehicle.

One of our neighbours had this four wheel drive ute under some trees on his farm and our son bought it so that he could use the motor to replace the one in his ute (the vehicles are the same).

They then decided that it was too good a vehicle to just take the motor out and then trash the body so my husband decided that it would make a great work vehicle.  Our son bought this vehicle for $400.

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My husband with his ute, he has just finished putting in air bags so that the vehicle rides and carries the weight of his tools better.

It did sit here for quite a few months until we had enough cash to get a road worthy on it and there was very little work that needed to be done. It needed new windscreen wipers and some wiring fixing up and the spiders evicted and that was all.  This is quite amazing considering the 3 years it had sat under the trees at our neighbours place.

My husband bought the canopy at a clearing sale (farm sale) years ago and it has been sitting in the yard since we moved here about 5 years ago. It has canvas sides that roll back and brackets that take trays that slide in and out.

He has put everything in there and it looks great. It is all organised and in its place. It carries his generator and air compressor, he has a place to carry excess fuel, it is just fantastic.

It is so great to see him so excited about this vehicle and for no more than $700 he has gotten it on the road. This is amazing.

God cares about everything we do and everything we need, sometimes we just need to wait for Him to move and I suppose when you don’t have the money all you can do is wait, and guess what, it means even more then.

 

You may find me linked up at some of these amazing blogs

Aquaponics

AQUAPONICS UPDATE #4

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We are fast approaching winter and the weather has been damp and cold, but it is nice in the hot house where we have the aquaponics.

The sweet potatoes are going okay with the first ones better than the last ones.  We did have some die off so I have planted some more shoots and I also planted a whole sweet potato with shoots on it. I am looking forward to seeing how they go.  The potato I planted with the shoots hasn’t died back at all.

DSC_1378This is English spinach I think (I didn’t keep the packet – slack I know) and I pick off this about twice a week and it keeps coming back. It is very tasty sauteed with garlic and butter.DSC_1380We have planted some broccoli and cauliflower seeds and below is the broccoli. I planted over half a bed and the good thing about broccoli is that it grows side shoots, so once you’ve picked the main head you get the benefit of those extra bits.  That is why I planted more of these than the cauliflower.
DSC_1379With aquaponics you can’t harvest everything at the same time, you need to stagger harvesting and planting, otherwise it mucks the system up.

The tomato seeds that I planted weeks ago are still coming up.  Some came up and died off but there are about 3 decent looking plants. Here is one below.
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I have also planted some more spinach seeds and pat choi seeds in the same bed.

Below are the original capsicum plants that we put in last November. The leaves all drop off and then new shoots appear and then they flower. We haven’t actually gotten any fruit off them but we are still holding out.  The original tomatoes have finally died off and we might actually close this bed until we can get some more fish.
DSC_1384We still have fish in this milk vat and they are growing well, I still can’t get a decent photo, but this shows the water flowing and the air hose making bubbles  Air into the fish tanks is so important, without this air the fish die.DSC_1383No 2 daughter picked the last of our tomatoes and we have laid them on newspaper on top of the sump tank. I have left some red ones amongst them in the hope that they ripen. I go out each day or so and pick out the majority of the red ones and bring them inside to eat.
DSC_1385Well that is the latest on our aquaponics, we now have power installed properly and have decent lights so we can work in there at night.

We are working on getting some more fish, we need at least 100 more and at the moment my husband is thinking of sourcing trout.

Blessings

 

You may find this post linked up at some of these great blogs.

Diaries of the Heart

BEAUTIFUL BUT POISONOUS

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As I was getting breakfast this morning I gazed out our kitchen window and noticed the beautiful flowers that are growing on our Angels Trumpet Bush.DSC_1393[1]

They are just lovely but they are terribly poisonous, and may lead to death if ingested.

So as I was gazing there thinking about how beautiful the flowers were but how bad they were for us it got me thinking about things in the world.

Some things in this world are the same, beautiful, lovely but poisonous to our body and our soul.

I think we just need to turn on our televisions to see a lovely show or movie only to be bombarded by poisonous commercials selling things that will poison our hearts.

We only need to step into the stores to be bombarded with pornography and the likes.

2 Peter 2:18-19  For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.

The beautiful things in the world may seem right but if they take us from God and our relationship with him they are poisonous.

Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.

We need to keep connected to God, to be reading His word to stop ourselves being conformed to it.

Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Have you heard how to boil a frog (because a frog will just jump out of hot water). What you do is put the frog in a pot of cold water and let him swim around. Then you turn up the heat and slowly raise the temperature of the water until it is boiling hot. The frog has adjusted to the temperature as it was slowly heated and doesn’t realise that now he is boiling and then he is dead.

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This is what can happen to us, slowly, slowly we allow things into our lives, they become the norm, then we allow another thing and little by little we are overcome by the ways of the world.

We need to be aware and alert to what is happening around us, we need to check back with the word of God to see what He says about different issues.

Lets keep our eyes on Jesus who is the way the truth and the light.

Hebrews 12:2  looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

 

You may find me linked up at some of these great blogs