A Homemakers Heart

A HOMEMAKERS HEART
Being a homemaker is a rare, rare gift. Don’t believe me? Have you ever been able to experience a young child learn something new and watch the revelation of it appear on their small face in a the form of a beautiful smile? Have you ever been able to watch the faces of your loved ones enjoy a food dish that you made out of love for them? Have you ever had a baking party in the kitchen with your sisters or enjoyed a conversation in the kitchen over a cup of coffee with your mom? Have you ever taught a school lesson to a child and listened to the benefits of your hard work when they read their first Dr. Seuss book to you? Have you ever experienced the joy you feel when your brother sneaks up and hugs you for being you? Have you ever teared up at the sight of your parents kissing and exchanging words of love to each other?Have you ever laughed and rolled in the grass while catching fireflys with your siblings? I have. I experience all this and more everyday because I am a homemaker. These little moments at home are what life is made for. Stop just living and really live! If you can’t recognize your calling as a homemaker as a joy then you are missing out on life. You’re missing out on the real reason of why you were gifted with the family that you have. Sure we all have our tough days at home. But that is not what’s important. What is important is that we grasp the gravity of our calling as homemakers. Only then will we know the true joy that Jesus wanted us to experience when he put us in our homes. 

~Lisa

“This Job Has Been Given To Me”

“This job has been given to ME to do. Therefore it is a gift. Therefore it is a privilege. Therefore it is an offering I make to God. Therefore it is to be done GLADLY if it is to be done for Him. Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God’s way. In this job, not in some other, God looks for faithfulness.”

– Elisabeth Elliot

Things Your Mother Should Have Told You

25 THINGS YOUR MOTHER SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU

1. Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

2. Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

3. Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

4. Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

5. To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

6. For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

7. Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.

8. Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!

9. Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

10. Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

11. Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

12. Reheating refrigerated bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

13. Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go. Cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

14. Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can’t see easily.

15. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

16. Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.

17. Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

18. Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and … guess what! … static is gone.

19. Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out. (Or spray the measuring cup or spoon with Pam before using)

20. Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

21. Re-opening envelopes
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.

22. Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair.

23. Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2′ with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

24. Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it ‘home,’ can’t digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

25. Dryer Filter
Even if you are very diligent about cleaning the lint filter in your dryer it still may be causing you a problem. If you use dryer sheets a waxy build up could be accumulating on the filter causing your dryer to over heat. The solution to this is to clean your filter with with a toothbrush and hot soapy water every 6 months.

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Dreaming About Married Life…

Don’t spend your discontent moments daydreaming about married life. It happens to all of us. We become discontent and harried and look out over that pile of dirty dishes and sigh about the day when you’ll be able to be supper on the table for the man of your dreams- when there’s a guy in your life who needs you, not just to change his diaper or feed him his applesauce.

But…sowing habits of discontentment has two negative results. First, it takes our sights off of the here and now, and sucks the industry and joy out of today’s service. Second, it becomes a part of our character and demeanor that is sure to hinder us later in life.

Remember, this is not the only “waiting” season you will ever have to endure should the Lord bless us with husbands some day, we may wait for job transfers, moving opportunities, a biblically functioning church, the blessing of children…in every season of waiting, our response should be to rely on Christ as the true source of our joy.

-Excerpt from Joyfully at Home by Jasmine Baucham

Your Kitchen~The Heart of Your Home

~The Kitchen Truly is the Heart of Home~
Everyone loves walking into the kitchen and finding something delicious or refreshing to eat. The most wonderful things are created in kitchens! Everyone walks in and out of the kitchen all day… (in my house at least) The kitchen is the most beautiful room in a house, why? Because so much goes on in there! Little tummies get fed, loved ones are blessed, lessons are learned, food is burned!  Therefore it is often the messiest and “hardest-to-keep-up” on room in the house. But don’t stress! Women always stress that there are dishes in the sink, syrup on the floor, play dough on the table ect. but what makes the kitchen the heart of the home is the heart of the manager (A.K.A you & your heart)! So if you spend all the day scurrying to keep up on the kitchen, making sure its clean and dishes are done, then you’ll miss out on all the joy that the kitchen produces when your heart is at peace. When you are at peace and just go with the flow then the cleaning and organization will fall into place in time. Do not ignore the cleaning of your kitchen, but just don’t fret and be frazzled about it all day!
Enjoy your Kitchen today ladies!

***Question*** What are your thoughts about your kitchen?