Grab a Broom Lord!

One of my favorite Christian authors is Karon Phillips Goodman. I have most of her books, not only because she makes me laugh while teaching me valuable lessons....but she's also written these books in a way that I don't need to worry about starting it and then having to stop and loosing focus.

The chapters are small so that you can quickly read through an entire one before having to set it down to do dishes, or help the kids or fix dinner.

I got this one last year before we left Idaho and since then life has been crazy busy, I haven't had a chance for much and then lately with my obsession with King Henry and all that history it hasn't helped either.
But while cleaning out my bookshelf today I found it again and I breathed a sigh of relief, I want to read it and I need to read it right now. I don't know why, but I feel that at times the Lord will give us a little nudge in a certain direction for our own good.

So right off the bat I read this:

I've done it, though, and I bet you have, too- tried to "get better" before going to God. I'll just clean up this one mess and then I won't be so unpresentable, we think. And God says "Huh?" The sooner she come to Me, the sooner I can help her." We have it all backward! It's not about getting better to go to God; it's about going to God to get better.

WOW! Ain't that the truth???? These words just hit me like a ton of bricks, how many times have I used the excuse that I can't really devote myself completely to the bible or to the church or to God himself because I don't feel like I'm as spiritually connected as some are?

What a waste of time, to sit here and let precious moments with the Lord go by because I was too busy worrying that I wasn't perfect, that I had to somehow fix my life and my problems before approaching the Lord. Fearing that He would turn away or think less of me for not being as together and organized as some. Problem is that we forget that we are who He wants us to be.

"We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works" - Ephesians 2:20 NIV

Let's face it, He wants to help, He wants to be there waiting for us to ask for comfort or guidance, He doesn't expect us to be perfect or self sufficient.....He has no limits, He has no set amount of forgiveness or a allotment of blessings we're allowed. Boy does it feel good to remember that, it truly opens your mind and your heart to so much more.


I'm sure you've noticed the template is different yet again. I really enjoyed my beach one but for some reason Mr Linky was just not working with it and I feel awful having to tell my readers to get another browser just to participate in the Slow Cooking Thursday.

This one will have to stay for a while, I don't have the time right now to be constantly changing it.....hope it's ok with you all.

Life is busy, there's just so much going on right now, I sometimes wonder if the roller coaster will ever stop so that I can get out and at the very least take a breather.

I know I've been neglecting my blog visits but I'm hoping to catch up on all of them tonight, the minute I start seeing my bloglines unread posts over 100, I literally want to run for cover or just mark all as read. But I don't....so could you stop writing for a while? Just until I catch up? No???? Oh well, it was worth a try :)

I'm getting ready to go pick up Jasmine at school so this one has to be cut short. So Happy Spring everyone and here you go, this is something I saw at one of my favorite blogs "Cherry Hill Cottage". Tell me this is not the cutest thing ever???

Bird Nest Cake

Slow Cooking Thursday!

All my slow cooking recipes are now online and starting today, I will add all the recipes shared weekly to my online del.icio.us site too. So if you're wanting to find ALL the slow cooked recipes that have been shared since the first SLOW COOKING THURSDAY, here is the link for you.

Don't forget to add your name to Mr Linky and a link back to your SCT post so others can come by and see your recipe too.

I guess there are still problems with Mr Linky so I've switched to this template for now to make it easier.

SLOW COOKED HAM

Ingredients:

2 cups light brown sugar, packed
1 6-8 lb cured, bone-in ham
fresh or canned pineapple slices, optional

Make-Ahead Preparation:

Spread about three-fourths of the brown sugar on the bottom of your crockpot. Place the ham flat side down into the crockpot on top of the brown sugar. (You might have to trim it a little to make it fit.)

Using your hands, rub the remaining brown sugar onto the ham. If desired, cover with pineapples slices.

Cover, and cook on low for 8 hours.

CHEESY POTATOES EUPHORIA

2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
8 med. potatoes (2 lbs) scrubbed and sliced
8 oz. cream cheese (cut in 1 in. cubes)
4 scallions finely chopped

In one small bowl combine scallions and garlic. In another small bowl combine salt and pepper.

In greased crock, layer 1/4 potatoes.

Sprinkle with 1/4 tsp salt and pepper and top with 1/3 cream cheese, then 1/3 scallion/garlic mix.

Make a second layer of 1/4 potatoes, sprinkle with 1/4 tsp. salt and pepper. Top with 1/2 remaining cheese and scallion/garlic mix. Repeat with third layer of potatoes, sprinkle with 1/4 tsp. salt and pepper, top with remaining cheese and scallion/garlic mix. Make final layer of potatoes and sprinkle with remaining salt and pepper.

Cover, cook on high for 3 hrs. Stir to distribute melted cheese, cover and cook for about an hour longer. Stir well to mash slightly and serve.


Cowboy Beans - School in 'R Home
Apricot and Pear Glazed Pork - MJPuzzlemom
Sweet and Spicy Salmon - Crockpot Lady
Green Bean Casserole - My Little Corner of the World

Sidebar HTML Tutorial!

One of the things a lot of you asked about was my sidebar, how did I get the different color block around the menus etc.

It's really simple and once you see how easy it is I'm sure you will all start experimenting too.

Remember the template I gave you the other day?

Scroll down to the code that looks like this:

.side {
padding: 5px;
margin: 5px;
font-size: x-small;
BACKGROUND-color: #ffffff; border: solid 2px #b8707b;
color: #54556c;
text-align: justify;
line-height: 140%;
}

See the code that is highlighted???? The first part is going to be the background color of your block, in this case #ffffff which is white. The next line is the border around it, that will determine the color of that.
The following line color: is what color the text will be in that box. Go ahead and experiment with that to get the colors you want.



One other thing you can do is the heading for the sidebar menus.

.sideheader {
padding: 3px;
margin-top: 4px;
margin-bottom: 4px;
font-family: Mariah;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: large;
color: #b8707b;
text-align: center;
line-height: 140%;
}


See how the heading is in a different font now??? All you need to do is download the fonts you like, there's tons of free fonts out there. Here's some to get you started, 1001 Free Fonts, SimplytheBest and DaFont. Download the font you like, install it into your Windows/Fonts folder and then you can use it.

All you need to do is insert the name of the font in the code font-family: Mariah; I changed mine to Anglican Text above and you can see the difference.


If you want to add a graphic, first find the one you like, make sure you have the URL for it, then go down to your sidebar links and above each menu you enter the image code.....here's an example:

Click on the image to make it bigger.........the code is highlighted for you.


And there's how it looks, I used a graphic from Country Clipart.

Hope this helped a bit, like I said already, I'm no expert but what I've learned I did on my own through trial and error :) Can't wait to see what you guys come up with.

Absolutely Incredible Kids!

The sweet Mari over at "My Little Corner of the World" is having a really cute meme today.

She wants us to show our incredible kids, you've seen mine so many times but I never get tired of showing them off :)

Here are my sweeties.


Jasmine is about to turn 9 next month, she's smart and funny and can be the most lovable child you'll ever meet. She also has a bad temper, to match that fiery red hair of hers LOL

Nicholas is our miracle baby, after 2 miscarriages he came along and has since then been the light of mommy and daddy's eyes and big sister too. He's a very smart little boy and he's turning 5 next month and starting kindergarten this year.

Sunny Tuesday!

It's such a nice day out, it's sunny with just a little breeze.

Come on in and sit with me for a bit, let me tell you what's been going on here.


Last night I watched a bit of The Bachelor premiere....why? Why do I even bother trying to watch it, it's just disgusting to me what some of the girls will do for attention, I caught about 10 minutes of it and as luck would have it, it was at the point where one of the girls slips her underwear to the Bachelor. How disgusting and how gross is that???? No shame at all!

I did enjoy the Dancing with the Stars premiere, the guys were pretty good, I'm already loving Jason and Mario and I can't wait to see the ladies in action today.


Speaking of tv and shows, this weekend I bought August Rush. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is my all time favorite actor so I knew I would enjoy this movie. It was so sweet and Curt caught about half of it with me and loved it too.

And speaking of JRM, the new season of The Tudors premieres on Showtime this March 30th, but guess what???? If you go online to this link, you can watch the first episode and OH.MY.GOODNESS is it ever good, I am so excited for the new season.



I'm glad some of you enjoyed the small tips I shared yesterday about templates, I'll share more soon. Jill asked me if there is a place I go to get the color codes, I use my graphics program to get the color I like and the code BUT if you go here, you can find all the ones you want, there's actually a couple of places online for it, I like using this one too, it has so many great colors.

I'm sure some of you have noticed that I've been sharing a lot of recipes lately, I hope you're not getting annoyed with the constant recipes posted, I just love cooking and I love having an archive of everything I make online. I'll share another today for the Mushroom Beef Stroganoff I made last night....YUM and then tonight I'm making Shepherds pie and everyone knows how to make that so I don't think you need my recipe.

You know I still have some of those Breakfast Delights and I think I'm going to just give them away or dump them or whatever, they are so good but such a temptation ..... definitely a recipe to make back in South Africa where there's lots of us to eat LOL



On to something more serious and sad, I'm sure by now a lot of you have watched the news and heard about the pilot we lost this weekend.

Lt. David J. Mitchell, 26 years old, was out on a training mission with his instructor when his F-16 went down over the mountains. This happened friday at noon and we didn't know if he was ok or not, the search teams were only able to get to the area early saturday and that's when they found his body. It's such a sad thing, he had just gotten to this base back in November and was going through his 8 month training to become a pilot.

Being in the military you have this huge sense of community and solidarity and when something like this happens on a base, everyone feels it, not just the airmen but the families too.

My heart goes out to his family and to his friends and to everyone here at Luke AFB. Please say a prayer for this young man.


I don't know what's going on in bloggy land, I've sort of been out of the loop while doing taxes and getting tickets and all this crazy stuff to go home.

I'll be coming by to visit you all later today, just hope you have some coffee and a snack maybe, a little slice of cake or a cookie?

Have a great day everyone, God Bless,