Parenting Tips

There are no perfect parents out there, but if we keep our eyes on God, He will give us the strength and wisdom to be a better parent than we could be leaning on our own strength and wisdom.  I personally raised two children depending on my own strength and it was a huge failure.  Neither one of them are in jail or missing, but they are lost to the world (which keeps me on my knees in prayer) and without the grace of God,

Modest Clothing - Great Stuff!

 

I'm taking the opportunity to share with you a wonderful place to find great quality and beautiful modest clothing.  I stumbled across the site somewhere along my internet travels and decided to take a chance.  What a blessing it was to find Katie at Katie's Mercantile!  She is extremely personal and very helpful, taking time to respond to any

Sweet Stuffed Peppers

Last year I chopped up my abundance of sweet peppers and put them in the freezer.  They added beauty and great taste to almost every meal all winter long, however, I still was unable to use them all.  This year I decided that our family would eat more of them as stuffed peppers instead of slicing them into different meals and they are terrific cooked this way.  I've also heard that you can stuff them and freeze them too, so I'll be putting lots of them away in that manner for this coming winter.  I'm so glad to find different ways to use these tasty treats.

Sweet Stuffed Peppers

1 pound ground beef
1/2 cup uncooked long grain brown rice
1 cup water
6 sweet bell peppers (any color)
2 (8 oz) cans tomato sauce (I use spaghetti sauce)
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder (or cook 1/2 of a medium onion with your ground beef)
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning (or crumble your homegrown herbs of Basil and Oregano into it)
1 cup cheese of your choice...Cheddar, Colby Jack, Mozzarella etc.

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

• Cook the rice and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover, and cook 20 minutes.

• In a skillet over medium heat, cook the beef (and onion) until evenly browned.

• Remove and discard the tops, seeds, and membranes of the bell peppers. Arrange peppers in a baking dish with the hollowed sides facing upward. (Slice the bottoms of the peppers if necessary so that they will stand upright.) 

• In a bowl, mix the browned beef, cooked rice, 1 can tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Spoon an equal amount of the mixture into each hollowed pepper. Mix the remaining tomato sauce and Italian seasoning in a bowl, and pour over the stuffed peppers.  

• Bake 1 hour in the preheated oven, basting with sauce every 15 minutes, until the peppers are tender.  10 minutes before they are done, sprinkle cheese over their tops.

 I hope you enjoy! 
 


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Book Review: Do Hard Things

I first saw this book on the Vision Forum website and thought it might be interesting soI borrowed it from the library and never got around to reading it.....sound familiar?  A few weeks ago, we received the latest catalog from Christianbook.com.  We enjoy getting these because our daughter finds great reading material from these catalogs.  She reads at an adult level and it is impossible to stay one step ahead of her while safeguarding her and what she reads.  We look a lot to Vision Forum and a few other sources to give us a good foundation in what we choose to allow her to read.  This summer, she has entered two different reading programs and spends all of her extra time reading.  Upon getting this Christianbook catalog, she quickly began to make her list for us to look at on which books she would like to get.

When I saw that she had asked for this one, I wasn't sure she was old enough to read it.  Sure she is plenty capable of

Making an Amish Dress

 I'll give you a bit of history about this subject in order for you to grasp our familiarity with the Amish community.  We live next to six large, Old Order Amish communities.  We spend a lot of time with several different Amish families and have made some great friends.  Our daughters play together.  This picture is of our daughter (which explains the white tennis shoes) trying on one of their dresses.  She absolutely loves these dresses.  Trying to make one of these dresses isn't because we feel she needs to wear these dresses, however, they

Can you sleep when the wind blows?

Years ago, a farmer owned land along the Atlantic seacoast.  He constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were reluctant to work on farms along the Atlantic.  They dreaded the awful storms that raged across the Atlantic, wreaking havoc on the buildings and crops.  As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job, he received a steady stream of refusals.

Finally, a short, thin man, well past middle age, approached the farmer. 'Are you a good farm hand?' the farmer asked him. 'Well, I can sleep when the wind blows,' answered the little man.

Although puzzled by this answer, the farmer, desperate for help, hired him. The little man worked well around the farm, busy from dawn to dusk, and the farmer felt satisfied with the man's work. 

Then one night the wind howled loudly in from offshore.  Jumping out of bed, the farmer grabbed a lantern and rushed next door to the hired hand's sleeping quarters. He shook the little man and yelled, 'Get up! A storm is coming!  Tie things down before they blow away!'  The little man rolled over in bed and said firmly, 'No sir. I told you, I can sleep when the wind blows.'

Enraged by the response, the farmer was tempted to fire him on the spot. Instead, he hurried outside to prepare for the storm.  To his amazement, he discovered that all of the haystacks had been covered with tarpaulins.  The cows were in the barn, the chickens were in the coops, and the doors were barred.  The shutters were tightly secured. Everything was tied down. 

Nothing could blow away. The farmer then understood what his hired hand meant, so he returned to his bed to also sleep while  The wind blew. 

MORAL OF THIS STORY
When you're prepared, spiritually, mentally, and physically, you have nothing to fear. Can you sleep when the wind blows through your life?  The hired hand in the story was able to sleep because he had secured the farm against the storm.  We secure ourselves against the storms of life by grounding ourselves in the Word of God. 

We don't need to understand, we just need to hold  
His hand to have peace in the middle of storms.

This story is one that caught my attention a long time ago.  It's one of those that sticks in my mind when I try to take short cuts or procrastinate......I like my sleep, so things get put up and tied down, life is prepared for......prayers are prayed,  soft quiet moments are taken with my husband and children, we are grateful for the simpler things in life and we sleep very well.

Resurrection Day...Rejoice!!!

 

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner...

This powerful video can say more than my words could ever say on this Resurrection Day.  May we all truly remember His sacrifice, 

His gift of grace, 

His enduring love.