Bakin' stitchin' and a country drive...

 Hi everyone! 

How have you been? Are you enjoying the final month of the season, wherever you are across the globe? It's almost the end of winter here, and we've had a bumper harvest of tomatoes, rocket, spring onions, numerous herbs, cucumbers and radishes. I'm hoping we can harvest for a wee bit longer before it gets too hot again, but just this week the dreaded 'green vegetable bugs' have returned and that's always a quick marker to empty the tomato beds within a couple of weeks as they pretty much decimate them. 

No complaints though as the freezer has a bountiful supply of baby roma tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes for pasta dishes in spring and summer, and we still have plenty in the fridge for enjoying now, plus there's hubby's large and delicious Rouge de Marmande tomatoes which he grew for the first time this season and will become a winter regular in the raised beds. 

The other day I made a cous cous salad using tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions, radishes, and coriander (cilantro) fresh picked from the garden.

I completed the large strawberry cross stitch and am very happy with it, but have not yet made a decision on whether to lightly tea-dye it (for more of an aged look) or leave it as it is. 

Now I've begun a new cross stitch pattern that I work on in the evenings. It's a lovely floral duck design which would look nice on a decorative tea towel to hang on the oven door...again, it's just an idea and I'll wait until its complete before making a final decision. 

Baking has been high on the agenda recently, especially Fat Rascals, which were baked two times in a week as they are just the kind of baked treat hubby and I enjoy! There are many varied recipes online, but the one I chose was 'just right' and we shall stick with it...

For the first time in months my leg behaved and I was able to travel in the car for a fairly decent Sunday drive (180 klm round trip), and we celebrated with home-brewed iced coffees and Fat Rascals on the way. They really do make the perfect travelling brekky!

Our trip was up the Mingela Range to the tiny town of Mingela. The town has only a handful of residents, but was once a beautifully quaint country stop for those who lived there and the farmers around the area. Today there's an old pub, which is currently undergoing refurbishment and has camping facilities, but the rest of the town is what you can see in the photos below...

The train line going out west runs parallel to the main street, and just beside it we found a bower's nest under one of the bouganvillea trees...

Some other baking recently was a Lemon Kefir Pound Cake, as I had some excess kefir to use up. The recipe also had a lemon syrup drizzle, but I chose not to do that as I really didn't want it too sweet - just a simple, moist lemon pound cake to have with a morning tea cuppa. This is another recipe I'll be making over and over, and probably one day with the drizzle too...

It made a large loaf size cake so I sliced up half of it and froze the slices for quick treats. In fact I freeze quite a lot these days as it's nice to just pull something out of the freezer to have with cuppas or as a dessert, or to take on a drive. 

I enjoy grinding my own spelt grain to make flour for sourdough or regular breads, but I have begun using it for other baked items as well. I mostly use the Nourishing Traditions method of soaking the freshly ground flour in liquid (yoghurt or kefir or whey mostly) for 24-48 hours before adding other ingredients. Below is the most recent bake, with a flour/kefir mixture after 48 hours...

Then I added honey, eggs, vanilla, orange zest, baking soda and cranberries, with slivered almonds across the top. Baked in a loaf tin, this was soooooo good!! When the freshly ground grain is soaked this way, it gives you a beautifully soft texture when baked.

This was sliced, half of it frozen for another day, and the rest enjoyed with butter over three days. Delicious!

Next week I shall be returning to regular blogging, and will share some of my hopes for the future. 

God has been abundantly gracious in my life, and even though I'm still in the midst of treatment for this painful knee/leg injury and must be mindful of activity, He has stirred my creativity once more, and I am looking forward to working on some new things, whilst remaking some older projects. 

Recently I told my husband I was feeling quite obsolete, and he laughed. And when he laughs he makes me laugh! We chatted and he understood what was going on in my mind after such a long period of stepping away from a few of the things I loved (such as long Sunday drives, blogging, driving the car to visit the grandkids, sewing, doing my own grocery shop, visiting a friend)...and I was encouraged to simply do what makes me happy NOW, and use the gifts God gave me. Even if its just in a very small way. So the sewing room got a slow, deep clean this week, and that filled my heart with joy. 

God bless you dear ones, and if you've been feeling a bit obsolete too (hubby still laughs at that description) then take a step back and pray for encouragement to see the bigger picture, and focus on the things you CAN do, rather than what you cannot. It might bring joy...

Until next time,

PS: My Etsy Shop is always open, so please drop by if you are in the mood for something new to stitch.

CLICK HERE

Faith Hope Love - a gift...

 

Hello again, and welcome back...

Yes, it has surely been awhile since my last blog post. I had written back in May of taking a break for 4-6 weeks to focus on some health self-care, but more than 9 weeks have passed, and though I appreciated all the caring emails and Etsy messages asking how I was, I must apologise for not responding. 

I do not want this blog post to just focus on the continuing pain and treatment challenges of the past year since the accident with my knee, as it can be quite wearying being regularly asked "are you any better?", "how is your leg now?", or "what treatment are you having?" and not having the mental capacity to explain something that is ongoing and still being treated with various avenues - so I simply opted out of correspondance and blogging. Please forgive me if you are one of those precious women who reached out, and received no reply. ((hugs)) I even avoided discussing things with my daughters, and rather turned the conversation to their own lives and families, because to me they mattered far more. 

So let me offer a one-off reply today and then we'll move on to more enjoyable things. 

The past three months have been the worst with regards to pain and recovery. It turns out that I was given the wrong treatment by a number of different physiotherapists and more damage was done to my knee and surrounding ligaments over the course of these past twelve months. But they were simply following the guidelines for various 'singular' aspects of my injury and not the combined aspects, believing they were helping, so I hold nothing against them. 

Last week I began with a new physiotherapist, a woman with much experience, a woman who didn't just listen to me (such a blessing) but who connected the dots with all the areas of my knee which were injured in the accident, rather than honing in on just one. She's a gift from God to be sure. I am unable to sit in a car (as a driver or a passenger) and cannot travel even short distances anymore, so we are doing video appointments instead of 'in person' ones. Even in the past week of following her advice, I have some improvement, and though the road ahead is long, I have hope of finally recovering and getting back to my normal everyday life. The extensive nerve pain side of things is extremely difficult, and the treatment for that has thus failed, but I have faith this too will be resolved in time. 

I have read your comments and emails, and prayed for those of you who shared stories of your own mobility, joint and pain challenges, and the treatments which helped you. What surprised me was how different they all were, and how different my situation was to all of them as well. How very unique our bodies are, and that helped me realise that its okay to get second (and third and fourth) opinions if a treatment is not helping or is making the problem worse. Thank you for praying for me, and please be assured that I was praying for you too. What a gift it is to pray for others and know that we do not need to have all the facts about someone's situation for God knows it all. We just need to lift them before His throne and leave it all in His care. Blessed are we.

As I have been unable to stand for long, it was important to find a project that would take time and not need for me to be up and down in the sewing room (I do miss that though), so the best option was to begin a cross-stitch pattern. You know, it took me a month to choose one. ;-) I had decided a lovely strawberry themed pattern would be lovely hung near the kitchen and so I began looking online at paper patterns and PDF downloads. 

There were some lovely small ones, but my preference was a larger design that would take time, and that search took quite a while. Eventually I chose this one, and am loving it. This was my first time printing a large PDF cross-stitch pattern, and the 8 pages of the strawberry graph needed to be cut and aligned to give one very large sheet to work from. Initially my thought was to not buy another large pattern such as this again, but over the past six weeks in which I have been working on this, it has not been a problem at all. In fact I have purchased another cross-stitch pattern from the same designer to work on when I finish the strawberry one (though the next one is smaller and only 6 pages of graph). I may tea dye the strawberry cross-stitch when its finished, as I think it will suit a more 'aged' display when framed. 

Our garden is somewhat changed this winter. If you're new here, we live in the tropics where summer vegetables are grown in winter. I do a little in the garden each day, thankful that everything was planted months ago before my injury worsened, so it only needs watering and fortnightly fertilising, along with the joy of harvesting fresh tomatoes, herbs, spring onions, leeks, beans, cucumbers, snow peas, rocket, bok choy, lettuce, herbs and other greens. Our pomegranate tree has five good fruits on it, and more forming, so it has finally established itself after four years of nothing but a single fruit two years ago. 

My rock, other than Jesus, has been and always is, my precious husband. He works six days a week, and yet these past months has taken on some of my home duties in order to alleviate a bit of the regular homemaking work load that I love and miss. Small things, like doing the dishes after breakfast and making the bed before he leaves for work. Watering the vegetable gardens at dawn became his responsibility too, as well as picking up the groceries after I have ordered them online. Every extra thing he's done has been done with a heart full of love for me, and I have never felt so deeply treasured in all my life - which surprised me because his love has always been true and deep. 

Despite everything, I choose to laugh a lot, and smiling is natural because God made me to be 'glass half full' girl. Knowing that life is a gift not be taken for granted, as are the family our Father gave me, JOY overflows in my life every day. 

His Word is alive and as I read, He has given me more 'epiphanies' this year than ever before. I am always telling my husband, "Mark, listen to this..." and he also marvels at things hidden deep in Scripture than are too easily overlooked. Oh how exciting this is! 

You know, this past year is not one I would have chosen had I known in advance the level of pain and immobility that would progress with the passing of each month - BUT - I have learned things which would not have been learned any other way (I think) and for all these life lessons, sharp character edges smoothed, JOY increased, love expanded, spiritual insights, and confidence in pursuing a healing path and not giving up even now, it has been worth it. More than I could have imagined. 

No matter what God allows in life, do not let it rob you of growth, change, and hope. It's too easy to wallow when things are harder than you'd expect, to allow despair, complaining, impatience and other negative attitudes to infect your heart and mind...and by extension to spread into your relationships with loved ones, and even with God. It may be hard to be happy and hopeful if you're not naturally a positive person (my husband is like that) but God can do anything, so why not ask Him to change your perspective and to graciously highlight things in your life which bring  to mind the JOY your heart needs. ((hugs))

I'm sure this post is long enough for today. Now that I have updated you, it's a relief to move on with blogging again and focusing more on the everyday life of homemaking, regardless of the life season you or I are in, and on living this life to its fullest with JOY and hope in the Lord. 

God bless dear ones!! Let me know how YOU are okay? 

I have a gift for you before I sign off...

I first released this pattern in 2012, and I still use the table runner today as it's one of my favourites though it is a little worn out. I have long wanted to remake it, so that might happen soon. I'll share pics here if it does. May you be blessed as you make it for your own home or as a gift...and remember, have faith, hold on to hope, love God with all your heart, and show His love to those around you...

DOWNLOAD THE PATTERN HERE

Until next time,

PS: My Etsy Shop is always open, so please drop by if you are in the mood for something new to stitch.

CLICK HERE