{ Happy Homemaker Monday - 02/03/2020 }

Good morning friends and welcome to our first Happy Homemaker Monday of February 2020.  How is that even possible, how are we already in February?

I try not to think about it too much, otherwise I will feel that my days are quickly slipping through my fingers.

Anyway, welcome back to my blog, and if you're new here, welcome.  I've been on a bit of a hiatus due to my health and trying to deal with both kids sick as well.  I'm finally feeling normal again, so I am hoping to jump back on to my blogging and with life in general.  I have a lot of plans and projects that I need or rather want to get done, and am really looking forward to them.

Right, let's get right into our Happy Homemaker Monday and take a look at what everyone is up to this week.

Have a blessed one!!!

♥♥The Weather♥♥
An absolutely gorgeous weekend, we hit over 80 degrees yesterday.  It brought back visions of Spring and Summer and really made me wish we were already well into those seasons.  Today?  Not as warm.  Tomorrow?  A winter storm and snow.  I am not making this stuff up, I couldn't even if I tried, the weather here really is that unstable. 

Monday - Mostly cloudy, 74
Tuesday - Partly cloudy/wind, 45
Wednesday - Snow, 35
Thursday - Mostly sunny, 39
Friday - Mostly Sunny, 45
Saturday - Mostly Sunny, 48
Sunday - Partly cloudy, 60


♥♥How I am feeling this morning♥♥
Quite well, thank goodness.  I am however a bit tired, it got so hot last night that both hubby and i spent most of the time, tossing and turning.  So, sleep was interrupted and not a restful as we would have wished.     


♥♥On my mind♥♥
I have a running list of what I need to clean in the house, as well as blog ideas.     


♥♥On the breakfast plate♥♥
I've had a cup of coffee with peppermint mocha creamer.  Not sure what I will eat for breakfast.  We have been eating a lot of crap lately and I've also had a bit too much soda, so I'm switching back to just water and also, going to watch what I eat and cut back a bit on junk.      


♥♥On my reading pile♥♥
Quiet a few new review books, but I'm currently reading Wolf.  It is so good.


♥♥On my tv♥♥
Yesterday afternoon, Curt and I finished our Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine.  It is such a bittersweet feeling when you're loving a series and it ends.

We need to find a new series to watch every night, and we have a few to pick from.

Supernatural
Star Trek:  Picard  (watched the first 2 episodes last night and we both loved it)
Mad About You Revival (Ok, so Curt and I used to watch Mad About You, the original series, every night before bed.  We loved the show and it was so sad when it ended.  We just found out that they brought it back at least for a season, can't wait to watch)
 

Me, I'll be watching my usual vlogs, as well as:

Anne with an E (Season 3)
Luna Nera
Call the Midwife (Season 9)
Turn
Thieves of the Wood



♥♥On the menu this week♥♥
I need to go grocery shopping on Friday, so will be working on the new meal plan sometime this week.

Monday - Roast Chicken, Garlic and Lemon Spaghetti, Salad
Tuesday - Hot and Spicy Lasagna, Garlic Bread
Wednesday - Teriyaki Steak, Rice
Thursday -  Portuguese Pork Chops and Potatoes, Steamed Broccoli
Friday -
Saturday -
Sunday -


♥♥From the camera♥♥
Some of my house plants are starting to come back to life, like my beautiful Polka Dot plant.  

♥♥Looking around the house♥♥
I want to give it a good clean, like a deep clean, wash the curtains and so on.  Now I know that sounds more like Spring Cleaning, and that will come in it's due time.  But, I do want to give the house good clean nonetheless, pull back furniture and vacuum etc.   


♥♥Chore I'm not looking forward to today, or this week♥♥
Washing all the dishes by hand.  Ok, hear me out.  You know I love washing dishes by hand but that is when I know I'll be doing it, and can keep it under control, so to speak.  Not when I've loaded a dishwasher, jam packed, and then the said dishwasher breaks.  Again!!!

Our thermal fuse has completely melted, so I've ordered a new one and it should arrive sometime today.  


♥♥To relax this week, I will♥♥
Read.  I've been making reading a part of my day.  My morning will usually be my devotional and Bible, and then an hour at night, is devoted to my fiction/review books.     


♥♥On my prayer list♥♥
The President, our country.
My mother in law and father in law.
My friend Courtney, she just recently lost her father.
My friend Stacey, dealing with a devastating disease.   


♥♥Devotional/Bible Verse♥♥
This is this morning's devotional reading, so I thought I would share with you all.

"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors."
Romans 8:12

As God's creatures, we are all debtors to him: to obey him with all our body, and soul, and strength. Having broken his commandments, as we all have, we are debtors to his justice, and we owe to him a vast amount which we are not able to pay. But of the Christian it can be said that he does not owe God's justice anything, for Christ has paid the debt his people owed; for this reason the believer owes the more to love. I am a debtor to God's grace and forgiving mercy; but I am no debtor to his justice, for he will never accuse me of a debt already paid. 

Christ said, "It is finished!" and by that he meant, that whatever his people owed was wiped away forever from the book of remembrance. Christ, to the uttermost, has satisfied divine justice; the account is settled; the handwriting is nailed to the cross; the receipt is given, and we are debtors to God's justice no longer. But then, because we are not debtors to our Lord in that sense, we become ten times more debtors to God than we should have been otherwise. Christian, pause and ponder for a moment. What a debtor thou art to divine sovereignty! How much thou owest to his disinterested love, for he gave his own Son that he might die for thee.

Consider how much you owe to his forgiving grace, that after ten thousand affronts he loves you as infinitely as ever. Consider what you owe to his power; how he has raised you from your death in sin; how he has preserved your spiritual life; how he has kept you from falling; and how, though a thousand enemies have beset your path, you have been able to hold on your way. Consider what you owe to his immutability. Though you have changed a thousand times, he has not changed once. Thou art as deep in debt as thou canst be to every attribute of God. To God thou owest thyself, and all thou hast--yield thyself as a living sacrifice, it is but thy reasonable service.

{ Weekend in Review }

It is just shy of 6pm, and the day is winding down.  Weekends seem to whiz by at turbo speed, lately.  You blink, it's Saturday morning, you blink again and it's Sunday evening. 

It is a glorious end to the weekend though, 80 degrees outside, beautiful blue skies, and I actually feel rested and well on my way to being 100%.  Thank the Lord.

Our greenhouse has been put on hold for the moment, it's almost complete but between us all getting sick and the storms we had come through this past week, we haven't been able to get anything else done.  We also took this weekend to relax because as you may know, when you live in a property with any kind of acreage, there is always and I mean always something to be done, so weekends are busy and oftentimes tiring.

Yesterday morning we took my car to get two new tires mounted.  It didn't take very long at it was very inexpensive which I was thrilled about.  I also got a very good deal on the tires since I got them through my brother at the dealership he works at.

While we waited for my car to be done, we popped over to the little thrift store in town and had a little nosey around.  I actually picked up 3 things, one of which I had been wanting to get for a while.

I have this love for breadboards, and anytime I find a cheap one, I get it.  I also have been wanting some sort of napkin holder and this one was only a dollar and I think fits perfectly with my decor in the dining room.

The last thing I got was a thermal coffee carafe.  It was just 2 dollars and is in new condition, so it came home with me.  I can't wait to get some fresh hot coffee in that carafe, for a cold morning. 

The other thing that we did once we got home, is get the first of the rustic shelves up on the kitchen wall.  There is one more shelf that will go up beneath it, but I need the metal brackets for it.

My idea is to fill the shelves with glass jars and since I want them all to match, I've been collecting my coffee jars for a a while, and will use those for some of my dried goods, chocolate chips etc.  The bottom shelf will have a few more jars too along with canned goods and some decorations as well.

I just love the look of rustic shelves, I like things to look old, dated and from a different time period, so these are not going to be painted at all, and will be left as is.

The only other thing we did this weekend, was go to a local butcher.  If you've been following me for a while, you may remember that when we were stationed in Arizona, we had a local butcher we bought all our meat from.  I would buy 60lbs at a time and stash it in my deep freezer, it would usually last us all month.

We have one or two butcher shops in our area, and my plan is to try them out and see which one is cheaper, and also has the best meat, and then start doing the monthly meat purchase as well.

The one we tried yesterday, we got their Bundlette package, which was $50 and came with:

2 lbs Bratwurst
2 lbs ground beef
3 lbs hamburger patties
2 lbs cubed steaks
4 lb bone in pork chops
1 lb house blend breakfast sausage

I will see how this goes, I'm thinking it will be about a week's worth of meals and honestly, I am not sure if it is worth it.  Obviously meat is always better from the butcher shop, no doubt about it, but if I can find cheaper elsewhere, I'll definitely try it.

But, I'll let you know what we thought of the meat and if we will buy it again or try a different a package.

And that my friends, is basically what my weekend was about.  Oh we did go to lunch with my brother and sister in law and had a good laugh, as we always do when we're together.

I am going to finish off this post, see if there is anything on TV that I want to watch, if not I'll be digging right back into my current book, which is so good, I can't wait to tell you all about it.  I'll tell you that it is definitely not my usual pick of books to read, but it is history centered and that was enough to get my attention.

Anyway, I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend.  I will see you all back here early morning, for our Happy Homemaker Monday :)

{ Groomed by Elizabeth Melendez Fisher Good - TLC Book Tour }

 

Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson (January 14, 2020)

Someone in your past sold you a false story about who you are and what you’re worth. It has been holding you back for too long. Take control of your future.

A staggering one out of three women in America was a victim of sexual abuse at some point in her childhood. No matter how many years it’s been, if that’s your story, those scars are probably still with you. But even if that’s not part of your story, this book is for you. Women today have been groomed for a lot more than just sex.

Using her own story of abuse, family tragedy, and rebellion, Elizabeth Melendez Fisher guides readers toward an understanding that grooming is oftentimes subtle, but it’s always life-altering. In GroomedFisher incorporates the language and lessons gained over the past decade working with sex trafficking victims and her work in ministry and counseling before that. She draws out five specific ways that women have been groomed, from physical appearance to spirituality to finances, and shows how those manipulative messages have affected the way we see our worth and how they’ve oftentimes stifled and limited us. From there Fisher offers readers a way to overcome their past, starting with the all-important but rarely explored idea of a selah, or a time of rest and reflection, and exploring active ways to forgive and move forward to a new level of freedom.

No one has to be defined by her past. No one has to live for her groomers. It’s time to take a look back at where we came from to escape the messages of our past and take control of our future.

‘In Groomed Elizabeth shares a raw, heart-wrenching story, digging deeply to save others–a vital education, a sad tale, and a miracle of truth. Stopping sex trafficking and helping young women thrive is only possible through the education this book provides. And, ultimately, the sad realization that it could have been any of us!’ –Dina Bair Maher, WGN-TV, Chicago, anchor/reporter

Purchase Links

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble | Thomas Nelson

ELIZABETH MELENDEZ FISHER GOOD is the CEO and Co-Founder of Selah Freedom and the Selah Way Foundation, which exist to end sexual abuse, exploitation, and sex trafficking. Her leadership has brought freedom to thousands of American children and young adults who have been rescued from sexual slavery, and she has helped educate millions on the topics of leadership, exploitation and sex trafficking. Learn more at FreewithE.com.

Connect with Elizabeth

Selah Freedom Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

My thoughts:
First and foremost, I have to say that I am not yet done reading this book. 

Usually by the time I do the book review, I've finished the book for you all, but this one is taking me quite a long time to read. 

It is a book that is not to be read in one go, at least in my opinion.  It is deep, it is thought provoking, it is going to dig deep into your soul and pull out some thoughts that may have you questioning everything you've thought true of yourself, your family, society and so on.

Elizabeth, takes us through what it is to be groomed.  Now when you hear the word groomed, you tend to have a connotation to that term that brings up vivid images or incest, sexual misconduct, trafficking and so on.  While that is all true, the author explains that from a very young age we are all groomed in a way, by those we trust, our parents, family and so forth, to be conditioned into thinking and acting a certain way.

About 10 years ago, something happened in my family.  My father had an affair.  From that affair came a child, and from that one decision and incident came a divorce.

All of a sudden, everything that I had been taught, made to believe, learned to trust, was ripped from me, and to this day I am left wondering if anything I was taught and lived through my childhood, means anything.  It's almost like all those things that you knew and believed in, are now lies. 

In a sense, after reading this book, I realized that I had been groomed from a very early age, into believing that family was everything, that a father and mother were faithful and truthful, that divorce was something that I lived through when I was 2 years old and would never have to live through again.

Groomed has opened up some very raw emotions for me, and this is why I am not yet quite finished with it.  Not that I don't find it interesting or helpful, but rather because it touches on a part of my soul that I don't much care to delve into, or rather, I'm still wading and pushing through, and there are hurts that I don't want to relive or think about.  But, with that said, I also know that this is going to be the one book that may just help me put all these thoughts and ideas back into place.

Elizabeth did a fantastic job in Groomed.

Thank you to TLC Tours and the publisher for providing me with a review copy of this book, in exchange for my honest review.

{ Forced hiatus }

Hello friends, it's been a while since I've sat down and actually put together a post.  I love chatting with you all, I love updating my blog and sharing my life with you.

But sometimes, life has other plans, and we are forced to take a small hiatus.

Truthfully, I haven't been very active either here, or Instagram. 

The sickness took hold of our house and made it's rounds.  I would love to say that we are all completely back to normal, but we are not.  I don't think we've ever had a cold last this long, for the most part it is gone, but we are left with this sinus, congestion kinda thing that is lingering and holding on for dear life.

I have had no energy or motivation for anything at all.  I am not a person that likes sitting around doing nothing, but that is exactly what I've done the past week and a half. 

The homemaking has been the minimum of minimum needed for our daily lives.  Basically, laundry, cooking and doing dishes.  My house is desperately needing a good deep clean.  I've disinfected everywhere, tidied up, but not really cleaned like I usually do, and it's driving me completely insane.

The only thing we've all been enjoying, is home cooked comfort food.  I've made plenty of soups and soups, bread and lunches that remind the kids, and I, of their childhood.  They're grown, they fix their own lunches and breakfast, but since we've all been sick, I've been using that as an excuse to love on them and pamper them as if they were still little.

Things like fish sticks and homemade macaroni and cheese have been a hit, along with tuna salad, grilled cheese sandwiches and even chicken nuggets.  Isn't it funny how when you're unwell, all you really want is comfort and especially food that takes you back in time.  It's not like it makes you better physically, but I think that mentally it helps, it's like going back to a safe place where your parents would take care of you and all responsibility feel on their shoulders and not yours.

This past weekend, we made huge progress on the greenhouse.  It is about 90% done now, but unfortunately we've had to take a break because of the rain we've been having, and also during the week Curt works and so we really only have the weekends to do what is needed.

I can't wait to show you all how it is looking.  It is already covered, just needs a few more touch ups here and there, and then I can finally start planting and growing.

In the meantime, I have been fighting this lack of energy and motivation, but I can tell you that today was the first day I woke up feeling more like myself.

I've already gone and fueled my car, picked up milk and eggs, got the dishes going and the kitchen clean, and a load of laundry in the washer as well.

Goodness, I miss being productive, it's been absolutely awful for me just laying around in bed.  I'm pretty sick of it, to be frank.

Anyway, just wanted to come in real quick and say hi, let you all know that I'm still around, just haven't been well, and really really REALLY hope that next week I'll be back to daily blogging.  I know I said I would this week, but I did not anticipate still being so poorly.

I hope you've all been doing well.

I'll see you soon.
xoxoxo

{ Happy Homemaker Monday - 01/27/2020 }

Good morning everyone, hope you've had a wonderful weekend.

I have to start by apologizing for the lack of posts lat week.  It was just not a good week for us, health wise.   I was sick along with my son, then my daughter got it as well, and at one point, all 3 of us were down with this cold.

We are slowly recovering, and I'm hoping that it will not return.  It was one of those colds that weren't too serious, no fevers or body aches or anything of the sort, but it did leave us all completely drained and devoid of energy or motivation for anything.

I am thankful that I'm on the mend, though my sinus is the one thing left bothering me.  So much so, that around 4pm yesterday I started developing a sinus headache, and I had family coming over for dinner.  I worked on the greenhouse with my husband, all day long then had to quickly zip into the house to fix dinner and dessert before the family arrived at 6pm.

By the time they were here and we sat down to dinner, I had the worst sinus headache, it felt like someone was squeezing my head tight, along with nausea and just all around unwell.  By the time they left, I took a motrin, a shower and lay down in bed, in tears with the pain.  Thank the Lord the headache is gone.

Anyway, that was a bit of a ramble, but really just wanted to explain why the lack of daily posts.  Hopefully this week will be better.

Now, let's get right into our Happy Homemaker Monday post.  I have to put mine up real quick, then get dressed and get Jasmine off to work.

Have a wonderful week friends.

♥♥The Weather♥♥
We had a gorgeous weekend, 70 degrees, blue skies, warm.  Woke up to 30 degrees this morning though.  Looks like the rest of the week, we are cooling down again.

Monday - Partly cloudy, 68
Tuesday - Showers and wind, 51
Wednesday - Sunny, 52
Thursday - Cloudy, 48
Friday - Mostly Sunny, 58
Saturday - Sunny, 66
Sunday - Mostly sunny, 72


♥♥How I am feeling this morning♥♥
Much better after that awful sinus headache, but I'm still congested.   


♥♥On my mind♥♥
All our plans for the house, project outside and so on.   


♥♥On the breakfast plate♥♥
I've had a cup of coffee with peppermint mocha creamer.  I will have some toast here shortly.    


♥♥On my reading pile♥♥
A Sister's Courage by Molly Green.
Morning and Evening Devotional by Charles Spurgeon
Book of John in the Bible


♥♥On my tv♥♥
Still catching up on shows, and have finished a few more. 

Turn
The Last Kingdom
Star Trek Picard
Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Also, I found on Youtube a really interesting show, for those that love all the going back in time with Ruth Goodman and so on.  Remember Victorian Pharmacy, Wartime Farm etc.

Well this time they are taking UK celebrities and popping them back in different time periods, for 24 hours.  You can watch the first and second episode on Youtube, it is already available.


Surviving a Day in the Victorian Era

Struggling at the Victorian Coach House


♥♥On the menu this week♥♥

Monday - Baked Ziti with Meat Sauce, Spinach Salad
Tuesday - Carne de Panela (Portuguese Beef Tips), Potatoes, Broccoli
Wednesday - Chicken Curry and Rice
Thursday -  Pork Ribs, Garlic Potatoes, Salad
Friday - Roast Chicken, Lemon Spaghetti
Saturday - Portuguese Pork and Potatoes
Sunday - Chicken Parmigiana with Egg Noodles


♥♥From the camera♥♥
My sweet boy and my latest crochet blanket.

♥♥Looking around the house♥♥
Thankfully it is clean, aside from the living room carpet needing some washing.  With the work we were doing on the greenhouse and Marley running around out in the dirt, there are paw prints spread out all over. 


♥♥Chore I'm not looking forward to today, or this week♥♥
Changing bed linens.  I love doing it, but today, I'm just not looking forward to it, I don't know why.  Oh and washing all my dishes from last night's dinner, I had to leave them in the sink because of the headache, and my dishwasher has decided to stop working.


♥♥To relax this week, I will♥♥
Read and crochet.  Also start planning my Spring Garden.   


♥♥On my prayer list♥♥
The President, our country.
For our colds to go away completely.
My mother in law Pat, she is having her final chemotherapy treatment on the 5th of February. 
My father in law still needs heart surgery. 


♥♥Devotional/Bible Verse♥♥

Romans 15:13

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”