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

It’s Not Too Late

For every tear there is a smile. For every death there is a new life. For every old memory there is a new one being made. For every laugh there is a cry. Are you making this day count? Are you doing everything you can to make memories or trying your hardest to bless? It’s not to late to start a new day right now.

Its almost 4 o’clock in the afternoon here and I’ve already blown it so many times. But I am still going to breath in, restart and move on with God’s mercy and grace. I am going to push through and continue to try my hardest to die to self and be a living sacrifice for my family. You can too.

Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassion’s fail not.
They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23

God bless!
~Lisa

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.

FOUND ON FACEBOOK
***SHARE OR “PIN” FOR LATER***

A Father and Daughter Relationship

 The story Unlighted Lamps by Sherwood Anderson is about a complicated relationship between a father and daughter. It is a relationship that relates and is similar to, many fathers and daughters relationships today.

In this story there is a hurting girl named Mary, who is used to her father’s hardness and cold attitude towards her.  She has never understood why he does not show any sign of affection for her. Mary is bitter from the past complacency and neglect from her father and will not break down the barriers built up around her.

To explain further how Mary feels an excerpt of the book reads: “The habitual silence of her father and the mystery concerning the unhappy married life of her father and mother… had made her own life a lonely one and had encouraged in her a rather dogged determination to in some way think her own way through the things of life she could not understand.”

 There are two sides to this problem, the man’s side and the woman’s side. For example men desire respect from the women in the house, women desire love and affection. When neither is given relationships despair. On one hand the daughter’s side of the story is one of lonely bitterness. On the other hand there is a side to the father’s story concerning his actions and reasons for such behavior.

This next sample from the book is an example of what many fathers might feel when confronting their older daughters.

“…he had remained silent because he had thought no words he could utter would express what he felt. There had been a defense for himself built up. ‘I told myself she [his wife] should have understood without words and I’ve been all my life telling myself the same thing about Mary. I’ve been a fool and a coward. I’ve always been silent because I’ve been afraid of expressing my self-like a blundering fool. I’ve been a fool and a coward.’” 

The father had had a rough past relationship with his wife and so thought his daughter too, was of the same mindset/personality as his wife and avoided her as well. Not to say all fathers have bad relationships with their wives and this results in a bad relationship with their daughters, but they are sometimes baffled or confused in how they should express themselves and after a period of time, give up trying.

In this case they are both at fault. The daughter should not give up trying to win the fathers affection. The father should push aside his past relationship and try communicating and caring tenderly for the being placed in his care. A father and daughters relationship is crucial to both people’s lives. The daughter’s especially. She needs to have her father’s manly support in her growing years. She needs his arms around her guiding and protecting her.  If there are no embraces, no words of encouragement, no protection, she will look for those qualities elsewhere.

The story in Unlighted Lamps does have a turning point in which the father and daughter are both willing to give in and embrace each other. Without the other knowing they both have released past bitterness and are ready to start a normal relationship.

At the conclusion of the story the father returns home from work desperately determined to resolve his broken relationship with Mary. Mary is awake waiting for her father’s return; all in vain. For as he reaches the front door he collapses from a heart attack and has passed within the minute. They were both too late. Mary and her father’s relationship never had a second chance. You see, we only have today. There is no tomorrow. Nothing can be foreseen. So make the moments count, live life like it is meant to be lived: in the moment, not in the past. Daughter, love and respect your father; father, love and devote yourself to your daughter. Make it a habit. You can start today by simply reading a bible verse together! Try it, try something.

Everyone enjoys a fitting reply;
it is wonderful to say the right thing at the right time!

Proverbs 15:23

~Lisa

OUR JOB!

We have a different kind of love for kids. We love the men in our life, yes! But children are a different story. God put a unique wire in us that lets us have a special type of love for our kids and baby brothers and sisters. Why are we always taking pictures of the babies in our lives more than anything else? Haha! Its just plain, simple, LOVE. How would you explain it? I just agree with this quote:
“We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
 ~Lisa

 

“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 may make to God.
Therefore, it is to be done gladly, if it is 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