A few weeks ago Miss Jess brought home a little cutting of a plant.  The little thing had 3 leaves and no root system, but it was lodged in a cup of soil and ready to start out.  Miss Jess left it on her dresser for a few days and didn’t mention she had it, but I found it when putting away clothes.  I put some water in it and set it in the kitchen window.

2 weeks later, we had doubled leaves!!  YAY!  Miss Jess was excited as can be to see her little plant growing.  4 weeks later, we have the plant above…with more leaves than before.

As I watched this little fledgling plant grow, it made me think of not only growing physically, but also growing in God.

Growing and blooming in the Lord is much like this little plant growing in the cup.  This little plant needs nutrients, water, and sunlight.  We need nutrients, water, which we get from the Bible and good solid preaching, and Sonlight, which is pretty obvious where it comes from.

Growing in the Lord also comes with growing pains.  We get where we are comfortable in our lives, or we get stuck in a rut and spin out.  We get festered in an area and need healing.  We get a sin boil that needs tended to.  It hurts, it gets inflamed, just like the real thing.

God the Great Physician takes care of the sin boil, taking away the sin and forgiving us.  He takes the infection and heals, making us whole again.  If He didn’t, we wouldn’t heal, we’d get more infected, and get sicker and sicker.  Just look at an unsaved person refusing God…how well do they look in their lives?

The Lord has worked on me as well, and I’ve had my own growing pains recently.  There’s been a lesson I needed to learn, and God put me in a position to learn it whether I really wanted to or not.  It hurt.  A lot.  But once the Lord tended to the infection in my heart that was winding its way through to other areas in my life, I feel a lot better.  The infection affected how I treated my family, how I handled things, etc.  With healing, I am better.  That sin boil is gone!

Growing pains come with being a child of God.  God wants us to look just like Jesus.  He’s crazy about His Son, and wants us to be like Him in all manners.  He will mold us, chisel away at us, take out what needs taking away, adding what needs added, in order for us to be more like Jesus.  It’s not always pleasant, but it’s worth it.

Much like watching this plant grow…

It is time again for the next segment of “This Handmade Life”!  (listens to the thunderous applause)

Today, we are doing Meatloaf Burgers.  I also like to think of them as budget stretchers.  You’ll see why in a minute.

I discovered this a year or so ago, when my hubby wanted meatloaf but the kids won’t touch it.  Go figure–kids not wanting something that the parents think is good…and budget friendly.  So, I tricked em.

I used the same fixings (minus the ketsup), and whipped up these burgers.

In a bowl, add in burger (I use something called “Boston Burger” from our local non-chain grocery store, which is a combination of beef and pork), crackers (or bread or oatmeal or whatever you have that will suffice as a filler–I’ve used all 3 mentioned and all of them turned out just fine), and 4 or 5 eggs (this is for 3 pounds of burger).

From there, I added in to this batch a spoon full of Spanish paprika.

A spoon full of dill weed.

A spoon full of ground rosemary.

Mix this all together, using a wooden spoon or your hands or whatever.  I prefer hands, as it’s easier to get all the ingredients mixed into the meat.

Break out a large frying pan and spray it down with pan spray or a bit of oil, as this will stick due to the crackers soaking up fats.  Brown them like you would regular hamburgers.

Serve like regular hamburgers, with all the ketsup, mustard, pickles, etc that you like!

I like doing these rather than full meat hamburgers, as with the cost of meat going up, and with kids to feed, one has to find a way to make the meat stretch a little farther.  By doing this, I can make a family package of meat, at $2.59 to $3.59 a pound depending on the type of ground meat,  stretch to last up to 2 meals instead of 1, with everyone able to have seconds at the first meal as well.  Pair this with a tater tot or veggie and you have a nice filling meal.

Enjoy!

Baby's 12 Mos Bloomer/Pantaloons/Diaper Cover

I enjoy making items for baby and toddlers–even tho my children are a bit older now, I like seeing the pieces come together, lined and stitched, to make adorable little items.  I wish I’d have known how to sew better back then!

Baby's Make a Joyful Noise Drop Waist Skirt

Girls' 18 Mos/2T Fall Harvest Pumpkins Twirly Skirt

Baby's 6-12 mos Peasant Top in Fall Leaves

Girls' Size 2 Easter Dress in Make a Joyful Noise and Dots

Follow any of the links and they’ll take you to our Etsy shop!  There’s lots more there, and making more as often as I can (I sew at night after all is done for the day).

I hope you enjoy these pieces as much as I’ve enjoyed making them!

It’s late at night and the house is quiet.  Not a creature is stirring, except for the little Blue Russian kitty.  The wind is blowing hard outside, up to 45 mph gusts that shake and rattle the house.

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

I had opportunity to spend some time this weekend endulging in some Waltons dvds, and noticed the ongoing theme of how mom (Olivia) and Grandma were home bodies and tended the home and the needs of the family.  They made home cooked meals, washed on a washboard (til John Boy worked his hiney off and bought mom a second hand wringer washer), made their dairy products with milk from their own cows, ironed clothes, made clothing on a treadle sewing machine and by hand, etc.  The 2 women stayed busy all day tending their home and family.  No going and gossiping with the local ladies, no chatting on a phone (or computer) all day long.

Ok, I know that the Waltons is a fictional series.  But there’s somethings that can be gleaned from even the fictional lives played out there.  We’re in a society that tells us women we have to go out and work 80 hours a week at a job we don’t like for a boss we hate and then come home and work on maybe throwing a take out meal together and sleeping.  We’re told to hold off on families, to limit the number of children we should have in order to keep climbing “the ladder”, and if we get pregnant, to abort that interfering child.  We’re told that we’re liberated, that we should wait until later to marry, but go ahead and test drive some men from our teen years on up til marriage.  Our society even tells us to go ahead and test drive a woman or two as well.  We’re told we need to be a size 6 or smaller, we just have to have all the latest fashions on the catwalk, and if we don’t look like an anorexic runway model, we’re too fat for any man out there.

What happened to the days of old?

I hate to say it, but not too awfully long ago, I was too of the mindset of this world.  I was one to hold down a full time job and a part time one as well to earn as much money as I could.  I didn’t NEED it, nor did I have dependents that needed me to earn.  I just WANTED it.  I also fell into the false theory of test driving the car before buying, only on a dating scale.  I bought into the feminist lie that you must go out with and even sleep with many in order to find that elusive “one”.  I bought hook, line, and sinker, every single lie of the world, that things make you happy, children are a burden, and work work work work and build the bank accounts first and foremost and make that an idol.

NO more!

Today, I am blessed.  I am able to stay at home, to cook home made, from scratch meals for my family.  They may not all like what’s fixed, but there’s hot food on the table.  I am blessed to have constant dirty dishes, as they show that I have food to eat and family to sit around my table and enjoy a meal.

I am blessed to be able to stay home.  I do not have the desire or drive to work multiple jobs and long drawn out hours away from home.  I can go days without leaving home if need be.  There’s plenty of work to be done around the house, it is in itself a full time job.  Sure the monitary pay is minimal to none, but the rewards are more than money can buy.

I am blessed to have the family around me.  Some days they drive me insane, and the thought of spending a nice relaxing vacation at the local psych unit has crossed my mind, but they are my family nonetheless.  Had I stuck with the mindset I had, I would not have them.

I am blessed to have a husband who doesn’t care that I am not a size 6 or below and am absolutely not anorexic.  I do not have to be a stick thin model for him.  I can have curves and padding, an imperfect non-airbrushed body that real women have.  He doesn’t expect me to be the epitome of fashion as well.  I don’t have to have high end clothing and 100 pairs of shoes to have what I need.  A simple dress and pair of shoes suffices.

We really need to look back behind us, to the women who came before us.  We’d do good to learn from the days gone by, from the Depression era when women had to stretch everything to make ends meet.  We need to learn to do more on our own, from cooking to sewing, to homemaking and being there for our families instead of out of our homes.  The lies of the feminist movement have taken so much from us, but we women don’t have to believe the lies.

I fear I’ve rattled on….  It’s late into the night and morning comes so soon…  You all have a blessed night and good morning to come!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm the smell of a fresh, made from scratch biscuit right out of the oven and buttered….mornings don’t get better than this!

I don’t know about you, but I was brought up on those canned nasty cheap biscuits that explode and fly across the room.  Can I hear an “eeeeewwwwww”?  Momma wasn’t much into baking, especially from scratch, but I had an aunt and cousin who showed me how rewarding (and tasty) it is.  Now, my family enjoys (well most of the time) the yummy hot from the oven breads and biscuits.

If you’d like to try out my “cloud” biscuits, which rise very well and make excellent monster sized very filling biscuits, keep reading!

First, grab yourself a good ol’ mixing bowl.  Doesn’t matter if it’s plastic, metal, wooden–whatever suits your fancy.   Then grab a heavy duty wooden spoon or a metal one that’ll hold up well.  No wimpy ones here!!  Locate a baking sheet of some kind.  I use my 16″ pizza pans and fill em up!  Then turn your oven on to 350 to 400 (your choice, I use both).

Then, put in at least 2 cups flour into your mixing bowl.  Add in a tablespoon sugar (yes, you read it, sugar), and a tablespoon of baking powder.  Add 2 tablespoons of fast acting dry yeast (I’m not sure how that translates to packets, as I buy mine in by the pounds at a Mennonite shop).  Then, I add in hot tap water, just enough to make a sticky dough (1 to 1 1/2 cups generally).  You will see foam from the yeast loving it some sugar…this is a good thing!  Then add a half cup of shortening (your choice of kind) into the mix and blend it up well.  The hot water helps tremendously in melting down the shortening or at least softening it up to make it easier to work with.

Turn this sticky mess out on to a very well floured surface.  I use my dishwasher top (it’s portable and has a butcher block top and a dough board I keep on it as well).  Add as much flour as you need to make this a firm and pliable dough, and knead 1o times, folding and pushing down each time.  The dough will rise as you do this.  Or at least mine does, and grows like I fed it miracle grow and steroids.

Pat out your dough, and grab whatever you want to use to cut out your biscuits.  I use anything from cookie cutters (I have given away numerous Christmas tree biscuits, angels, snowmen, etc), to glasses.  My favorite is a plastic tumbler about 4 inches in diameter.  I pat out my dough to about an inch thick, give or take.  Then I cut out as many biscuits as I can get out of the dough.  Whatever scraps are left at the end make a wonky biscuit and tastes just as good.

They will rise as you cut and place them on your baking sheet.  If your oven is warm or your kitchen is already warm, they’ll grow faster.

Place them in the oven and let them bake.  I allow a good 20 to 30 minutes due to the size.  I also place water in the bottom of the oven, usually in a cheap pie pan or bread pan or something that can hold a lot of water.  The moisture helps the baked goodies rise higher and nicer.  It works well with these yeast biscuits too!

When they are golden brown (as in the first picture), pull them out and butter them.  If they look like the picture directly above, they’re only half done.

My average biscuit runs around 3 to 4 inches in diameter with a 2 to 4 inch height.  No joke!!  One is a filler, especially when baptized with some homemade gravy (or the powdered mix–my favorites to make).  Pull these apart, jelly them up, cover em with syrup (like a pancake), make monsterous bacon/egg biscuits, etc–these will definitely fill you up!

This is definitely a goodie to learn how to make!

Once you get the basic recipe down, you can tweak it to make cinnamon raisin biscuits (think Hardee’s type), or any sweeter treat for a surprise!  My son helped make some over Christmas, and we iced them with chocolate frosting for a very delish breakfast.

Enjoy!

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Ah, I love this hymn….”It Is Well With My Soul”…  It is so..well..peaceful.

It is well, with my soul, It is well, it is well, with my soul. 

In all the turmoil that surrounds us, in our every day lives, this is an excellent reminder!

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ has regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul. 

Such peace in these words…  Christ shed His blood for me!  And for YOU too!  That someone would love me so much as to die for me and take my sins upon him, that brings much peace to the soul!

Won’t you today find the peace that only comes from Jesus?

Stop on by and join in!  We’d love to have you.

Experiencing the Grace of Jesus–The Israelites

Hi ya’ll!  Over at the Proverbs 3:5-6 bible study blog, we’re starting a study on Experiencing the Grace of Jesus.

This is a series started by Pastor Fryer at Independent Bible Baptist Church (our home church).  At Proverbs 3:5-6 Studies, we’re taking the IBBC Sunday Evening study series and going a little slower, and adding in more notes and such to go even farther in depth.

I hope you’ll join us over at Proverbs 3:5-6 Studies!

Not this chica!

A life like that would be a nightmare for us!

With 2.5 children, we’d have Mr. Michael and Mr. Kevin, but no Miss Jess.  The suburban home in the cul-de-sac would more than likely not be “home” without the hunting dog, john boat, storage shed full of fishing gear, the trapping equipment showing, and the clothes line taking up most of the back yard.  Many neighborhoods wouldn’t allow that.  Or the old red S-10 that’s been banged up and totalled out 2x (one by a drunk driver in front of our house in the middle of the night while we slept–it was very interesting when the police came at 2am to tell us about it and show us what happened) and smelling like animals expired in the truck bed under the topper.  Those would be the trapping lures.

No, life wouldn’t be right if it weren’t “abnormal”.

If we had a “normal” life, we wouldn’t have a 20 pound gray tabby girl named Heifer, who answers to “Moo”.  And, we wouldn’t have Miss Jess writing in her school work that her favorite pet is Heifer, with the teacher putting tons of question marks behind it.   Guess the school thinks we have a cow in the backyard or something.  We also wouldn’t have a rescued little Blue Russian kitten who has grown like a patch of weeds, who has an official name of “Shadow”, but will only answer to “Little Fart”.  Or “You Stupid Cat” (used only when she decides to purr and the rip roar through the house and climb the ceiling via curtains or blinds or us.)  Or, we wouldn’t have an indoor/outdoor kitty named Stripey, aka “the Flop” and “the Fuzzinator”.  She’s a beautifully loving Ragamuffin blend, extremely friendly and totally attached to the family, who was abandoned by the previous tenants to this house…similar to Shadow’s story (she was abandoned by neighbors a couple houses down when they moved away, and they left her INSIDE the house, and the home’s owners found her 3 days later and she shot outside and to our back yard…she’s been here ever since and is asleep on top of the couch).  Stripey is “the Flop” for her tendency to just flop over and demand attention anytime anywhere.  She is also our law enforcer in the yard and house…the Terminator at the kitty level.

Hubby has even concocted whole life stories for them.  He has Heifer as the gambling addict who’s also addicted to menthol lotion (think green Goldbond).  She’s been to Lotion’s Anonymous and feel off the wagon too many times.  Lately she’s been more diligent in her LA and not licked any Goldbond.  Stripey is her bookee, who is owed tons of money, and keeps a quarter and a knife on the porch.  (Not sure why the quarter’s out there, but the knife is a paring knife that seems to come in handy a lot outside).  From what hubby says, Stripey has been hired as the “hit cat” by Heifer’s gambling buddies, and the quarter is a down payment, and for the rest she’s come in and infiltrated the family and gained access to the most important thing in Heifer’s life–the food bowl.  Shadow has come to us for training for her upcoming role as the Russian 2 in another version of the Cats and Dogs movie.  She’s not allowed to have all the weapons yet tho, so she just uses her claws.  Heifer tries to get her to sit down to a hand of cards, Stripey teaches her the art of attack, and Shadow has perfected the cute look.

Would a normal house have that?

No…life here wouldn’t be right if it was “normal”.

Normal families probably don’t have children with pretend friends by the millions.  For us, they are the Uggs.  They have their own planet, with Ugg-mobiles, and pack the house daily.  We never see them but Mr. Michael has them as friends.  Miss Jess, not to be beaten by her older brother, has Ugg-ettes.

Ah…normalcy…not in this house!!!!