Menu Madness: Fall Favorites

The mister and I had a busy week.  I ended up doing a bit of subbing and he was keeping busy working on our vehicles (have I mentioned how thankful I am for his being willing and able to do that sort of stuff?  I am!).  Our house was a wreck, and I was not anticipating being home on Saturday, my regular "catch up" day.  I had planned to do this housework on Thursday but was then called in to sub in the preschool.  This left Friday morning to do our cleaning and baking...before noon.  We got a lot accomplished working together, and our home smelled wonderful.  While the different things were baking, we would work on the next recipe, or clean for a bit.

In those short four hours, we...

Change to Menu Madness

Instead of posting my week's menu before I try the recipes, I am going to try and start posting a few tried-and-true recipes that I tried from the previous week.  I think this will allow for more flexibility on my end, and allow you to know ahead of time that we have tried this, and whether or not we liked it.  I will say that there is seldom a time when we don't like something we eat.  What can I say?  my mister and I really enjoy eating.

Update on life

We are so thankful the season of cool breezes, comfy pj pants and hoodies, pumpkins, falling leaves, hot drinks, candy corn, browns and oranges is here.  We love fall.  I sit here sipping my hot chocolate after already having a cup of hot tea while doing my Bible study reading.  This season welcomes warm thoughts, and I love celebrating it with my husband.  Before marriage, we celebrated these things apart, and so this year, celebrating together has been a welcome change.  We are in love, and love the time we have together.

Menu Madness

Last week had many successes (I took a few more pictures this week).  I am thankful for a patient husband who is willing to be the guinea pig to my new recipes.  This week has me trying a new ingredient...sweet potatoes.  Growing up, we really didn't ever eat sweet potatoes.  I can count on one hand the times I remember having sweet potatoes and they were always in a delicious, yet extra sugary casserole.  I think this scared me, leading me to believe that they were a very bitter root that need all the help it could get.  I posted on facebook asking for people's favorite recipes using sweet potatoes and got an overwhelmingly positive response.  They were cheaper then potatoes this week at Aldis and it is my understanding that they are by far more nutritious.  I am very eager to experiment.

So hear you have it...this week's menu.

Meal Madness

Don't you just love rainy days?  I know I do.  I had an abundance of dishes to wash and other housework to do, and there is something wonderful about staying indoors when there is a cool drizzle going on outside.

Last week had some adjustments made, so you may see some repeats from last week.

What are your fall favorites?

Planning to make this deliciousness this week, found over at the Budget Savvy Diva blog.

Menu Madness

I am thankful for health...and medication!  This week has had me a bit under the weather.  I mentioned before learning that I was not feeling well due to allergies.  I had been working on that when I woke up Tuesday morning with a scratchy throat.  This progressed into a stuffy nose, dry eyes, and intense pain with the breathing.  As I told my mister, "I used to think a stuffy nose was the worse thing ever, then I thought it was the hardship to get a deep breath (experienced with the allergies), and now both of those seem so small compared to both of those, with pain in the chest whenever you took a breath or exhaled".  Long story short, I was at the doctor's getting tested for tuberculosis (a common thing when working with children), and I mentioned this to the doctor.  Come to find out, my enjoying the gorgeous weather was simply making my allergies exponentially worse.

Lessons in Life: Trust

For anyone who knows me (the Mrs.), you know that I am a worry wort at heart.  I will go to the extent of creating something in my head that will cause worry.  I have known for a long time that this is wrong, but recently, God has been working in my heart that in fact, this is sin.  I hate that word.  In my worry, I am sinning against God.  All praise due to Him, He has been working in my heart in life in a way that has driven me to work on it.  That is what makes this conviction different.

Worry is a sin, because it means I am not trusting Him.

I don't have to tell you that we live in a scary, sinful world.  You read/watch news for five minutes, and you will see that our world is rotten.  For a worrying person (and others, I am sure), that is very scary.  Even though we do not have news, and I rarely actually look up news, it still causes worry.  I can lay in bed at night not sleeping in fear of someone breaking into our home and hurting my husband, and then taking me captive.  As I write this, it sounds silly, I know.  But I will tell you (as some will fully understand), it is very real, and very scary.  I can create scenarios in my mind that will cause such intense worry.

The Lord began to work in my heart convicting me of the lack of trust I had in Him.  In church (around the time of conviction), Pastor quoted Isaiah 26:3

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

That was it.  I was done allowing myself to worry.  This became my verse in fighting against worry.  Here was a promise I had from God that HE would keep me in perfect peace (something I rarely experienced because worry had taken over my life).  This perfect peace comes from a trust in Him.

I have been replacing the worry in my life with quoting this verse as I trust in Him as my rock.  This has helped in my created worries, but then God provided a real life situation where our little family has been forced to place our trust in Him if we have any desire to not worry.

The mister and I were talking about this, in temptation to worry, when we had to realize:  we had been provided an opportunity to put trust into practice with a real life situation.  If we ask Him to take over, and allow Him to do so, He will draw us to Himself and prove Himself worthy of our trust (yet again) in ways we never would have experienced, were we not in this situation.

This causes us to fix our eyes on Jesus, and praise Him for His goodness as He ever so gently works in our hearts in this situation.  We serve a God who works with us where we are at, and provides opportunities where we get to change our head knowledge over to practical heart knowledge.

It is with humility though that we confess, this is much easier to say (and type), then to believe this.  We don't know what will happen, but we do know that:

1. He is God
2. He is good
3. He will teach us

and if we allow Him, He will change us.  He will strengthen our trust in Him.  We are trusting in Him to work in and through us, as He changes my heart from worrying to trusting. 

How has God practically helped you learn trust in Him?  Comment below.

Here is a funny clip of the famous "trust fall".  Aren't you thankful God is ever present and always willing to pick us up after we fall?

the continuing of life

This week has been a bit slower, and that has been wonderful.  I have been trying to work hard first to get our home picked up, to then be able to relax.  Last week was so busy, and we just felt it got the better of us.  Here are a few things going on in our lives...

Happy Birthday!

Let me start out with telling you that I have come to the realization that birthdays are such fun to plan for your spouse.  I have been thinking about my husbands birthday and planning it since before we were married.  Plans changed many times over, but that's okay.  The end result was a celebration to remember, as his birthday as a married man!

My sweet husband had his birthday on August 28th!  I am thankful for the many years the Lord has blessed this man with.  As a baby, there were some scary times due to his health.  This causes me to be all the more grateful to have him now.  Needless to say, he is healthy now!