Hello, Ladies!
Oh, gracious. I am singing Springtime songs in my heart, but it is all white outside. Yes, it has snowed again and threatens to do more before the week is out.
Speaking of Springtime...My church does not officially observe Lent (40 day period filled with fasting, personal sacrifice and reflection prior to Easter). However, I have personally found that by devoting myself to personal meditation on the four Gospels and the life of our beloved Savior for these 40 days prior to this wonderful holiday, Easter has so much more meaning for me than if it suddenly comes upon me in life. Does that make sense?...I rush around in life and then ... boom..one day it is Easter, the most sacred holiday of the year, in my opinion. I like to prepare ahead of time with fasting, prayer, self-sacrifice. Okay, you get the point.
Well, here's a link for a Lenten Cleaning Schedule (spring cleaning with the object in mind of having the whole house fresh and sparkling for Easter!). I'm way behind on this, but am determined to get caught up!
Another link is to Alexandra's blog, Happy Heart at Home. It is a sweet poem, a kind of meditation to have in one's heart as we go about the business of taking care of our homes and loved ones.
Have a beautiful day!
Elizabeth (who is still yearning for Spring!)
Monday, March 30, 2009
Menu Planning Monday
Hello, Ladies!
Happy, happy Monday to you! I hope everyone is well and looking forward to the new week.
For those of you who are here for Menu Planning Monday, following are this weeks meals. For those who are just stopping by, be sure and check out Laurie's Organizing Junkie website for more menu plans!
Monday - Sloppy Joes, with whole wheat buns, slaw, and oranges & strawberries
Tuesday - Tuna Patties, hash browns and
Wednesday - Beans & Whole Wheat Cornbread, Greens
Thursday - Cucumber rolls (sushi), stir-fry veggies (when my camera works again, I will do a tutorial for sushi!)
Friday - Leftovers/Date Night
Have a great day!
Elizabeth
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Happy Sabbath
Hello, Ladies!
Happy Sabbath! Whew! I am so happy to be back to my old self again. That's one fun thing about being sick...It feels so good when it's over! However, now both of my children are sick, so I'm still at home! Thank you for the sweet comments.
I would like to ask you to please pray for my sweet friend, Beth, over at Aunties With Advice. She has been sick for weeks and was just diagnosed with pneumonia. She really needs prayer power. When you read this, please offer up a little prayer for Beth. Thank you so much!!
For my Sabbath message...I'd like to link you to a wonderful story about my favorite picture of Jesus Christ (above). Scroll down the page to the link, "Jesus, The Masterpiece", and read about how this wonderful woman was inspired to create this painting after suffering a Near-Death Experience.
Hope you have a wonderful Sabbath!
Elizabeth
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sick In Bed!
Have the flu this week. Will get back to posting and visiting blogs soon!Love,
Elizabeth
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Whole Wheat Pumpkin Bread
Hey, Ya'll!
I'm not much good today for anything but baking...Can't get my caboose in gear for the paperwork I ought to be doing. So, I've already made Oatmeal Cookies today. Now, I am making Whole Wheat Pumpkin Bread by utilizing the following recipe...No, canned pumpkin? No problem. You can used canned yams or cooked squash in equal amounts and it will still taste good!
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin or yams, or 1 cup cooked squash or sweet potatoes
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup hot water
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In a large bowl, beat oil and honey together. Add eggs, and mix well. Stir in pumpkin and vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and spices. Add baking soda to hot water, stir to mix, and then add to batter. Spread batter into a greased 9x5 inch loaf pan.
Bake for 55 to 60 minutes. Cool on wire rack for 1/2 hour before slicing.
I'm not much good today for anything but baking...Can't get my caboose in gear for the paperwork I ought to be doing. So, I've already made Oatmeal Cookies today. Now, I am making Whole Wheat Pumpkin Bread by utilizing the following recipe...No, canned pumpkin? No problem. You can used canned yams or cooked squash in equal amounts and it will still taste good!
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin or yams, or 1 cup cooked squash or sweet potatoes
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup hot water
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In a large bowl, beat oil and honey together. Add eggs, and mix well. Stir in pumpkin and vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and spices. Add baking soda to hot water, stir to mix, and then add to batter. Spread batter into a greased 9x5 inch loaf pan.
Bake for 55 to 60 minutes. Cool on wire rack for 1/2 hour before slicing.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Menu Planning Monday
I'm a little late getting this weeks menu posted. A lot is currently going on in the Gibson house. Anyway, I cooked a turkey over the weekend, so you will notice that some of my recipes are planned around lots of leftovers...Here is what I have so far...Monday - Turkey Enchiladas, salad and dessert
(I use whole wheat flour tortillas and green sauce!)
Tuesday - Lasagna Rolls, fruit salad and dessert
(we have these a fair amount because the children love them!)
Wednesday - Turkey/Veggie Soup, bread and salad
Thursday - Hoppin John, cabbage and sliced tomatoes.
Friday - Usually I have leftovers, but I want to share a link here for Beth's (Aunties with Advice) wonderful Potato Soup. I add some mozarella chees and chopped ham. This is to DIE for! Just had it last week.\
Have a great Monday!
Elizabeth
Friday -
Saturday, March 21, 2009
A Room of One's Own
What would you do if you were given one room in your house that was entirely yours? Not having to please anyone but yourself, not having to share it with anyone, what would you put inside of it?
I have just such a room. It is small in comparison with the other bedrooms, that is why no one else wants it. It use to belong to my son, but he outgrew it and we now have him downstairs in a much larger space. My husband has his eye on my daughter's soon-to-be old bedroom for an office. So, this one is just for me.
I have furnished it with a walnut-finished desk, equipped with shelves and a few nooks and crannies. I have polished it with my favorite wood polish and have placed upon all it's flat surfaces lovely lace and embroidery work that I have recently inherited. Upon these soft linens are shiny pastel pots, some ribbon be-decked, for my pens, pencils and markers. There are baskets for paperwork, odds & ends.
But this space really became mine when I put out for display pictures from my childhood, black & white photos of my sister and myself. I am displaying only the really young ones when I was most truly myself, from babyhood through about 3rd Grade. This is when the soul of me and my outside expression was exactly the same, before situations and people tried to change me and take me away from who I really was. I look in the eyes of my childhood self and I hear thoughts of poetry, fairies, classical music and God. This is the self I emulate today.
This room is for my creative self, the one who still, after all these many, many years, can forget all about being a middle-aged woman and yet know childish glee. Sometimes, on soft, summer nights, I can still almost hear the tinkling laughter of fairy voices in undisturbed, green places, like when I was a child. I can imagine wonderful things. My heart b.e.l.i.e.v.e.s. I feel the wonder of God like I did way back when I was practically a baby, when my heart longed for someone greater than myself and had unquestioning faith that somehow I was heard. That same girl longed mightily for everything that is beautiful in the world and she still exists, although hidden these many years.
Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty - that is all
ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
- Keats
Amusing, that one semi-empty room can set one's heart to flutter and inspire one to extrapolate.
I have also furnished this room with my mother's old rocker. It's creaky, but I love it. And a record player - yes, really! I have gathered together all my old records of classical music that I have saved over the years and here in this room I will play them while I work. There will be no moaning and sighing over my choices of old vs. new. I can just enjoy!
What will I do in this room? I will write, create, scrapbook and just BE...Hopefully, to the strains of Gershwin or Chopin and (definitely) Rachmaninoff.
I know that this is a luxury and it couldn't come at a better time.
I will eventually show you pictures, but my camera is still on the blink. So, just imagine a crazy, peaceful, aging women rocking away to beautiful piano music, surrounded by some things she loves. Imagine bliss!
Love,
Elizabeth
I have just such a room. It is small in comparison with the other bedrooms, that is why no one else wants it. It use to belong to my son, but he outgrew it and we now have him downstairs in a much larger space. My husband has his eye on my daughter's soon-to-be old bedroom for an office. So, this one is just for me.
I have furnished it with a walnut-finished desk, equipped with shelves and a few nooks and crannies. I have polished it with my favorite wood polish and have placed upon all it's flat surfaces lovely lace and embroidery work that I have recently inherited. Upon these soft linens are shiny pastel pots, some ribbon be-decked, for my pens, pencils and markers. There are baskets for paperwork, odds & ends.
But this space really became mine when I put out for display pictures from my childhood, black & white photos of my sister and myself. I am displaying only the really young ones when I was most truly myself, from babyhood through about 3rd Grade. This is when the soul of me and my outside expression was exactly the same, before situations and people tried to change me and take me away from who I really was. I look in the eyes of my childhood self and I hear thoughts of poetry, fairies, classical music and God. This is the self I emulate today.
This room is for my creative self, the one who still, after all these many, many years, can forget all about being a middle-aged woman and yet know childish glee. Sometimes, on soft, summer nights, I can still almost hear the tinkling laughter of fairy voices in undisturbed, green places, like when I was a child. I can imagine wonderful things. My heart b.e.l.i.e.v.e.s. I feel the wonder of God like I did way back when I was practically a baby, when my heart longed for someone greater than myself and had unquestioning faith that somehow I was heard. That same girl longed mightily for everything that is beautiful in the world and she still exists, although hidden these many years.
Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty - that is all
ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
- Keats
Amusing, that one semi-empty room can set one's heart to flutter and inspire one to extrapolate.
I have also furnished this room with my mother's old rocker. It's creaky, but I love it. And a record player - yes, really! I have gathered together all my old records of classical music that I have saved over the years and here in this room I will play them while I work. There will be no moaning and sighing over my choices of old vs. new. I can just enjoy!
What will I do in this room? I will write, create, scrapbook and just BE...Hopefully, to the strains of Gershwin or Chopin and (definitely) Rachmaninoff.
I know that this is a luxury and it couldn't come at a better time.
I will eventually show you pictures, but my camera is still on the blink. So, just imagine a crazy, peaceful, aging women rocking away to beautiful piano music, surrounded by some things she loves. Imagine bliss!
Love,
Elizabeth
Friday, March 20, 2009
Voices From The Past
Last week, I did a presentation on the Civil War for an assembly of our local elementary school's 5th Grade (they are studying American History this year). To prepare for this and my discussion about slavery, I pulled out my copy of "MY Folks Don't Want Me To Talk About Slavery", a compilation of slave narratives from the state of North Carolina. This was part of a larger endeaver, known as the "Federal Writers Project", in the 1930's, when then President Roosevelt employed out-of-work writers to go down into the South and record the experiences of elderly African Americans who had been born into slavery (the last living person who had been born into slavery died in the 1960's). The results were that over 1,000 narratives were recorded and stored in the Library of Congress for future posterity.
These frail voices forge a searing portrait of what it was like to be African American during slavery times. Although some slaves faired much better than others, none of them were allowed the rights of self-determination, to bear arms, to assemble or to buy and sell. These rules are what made up the Slave Code, which was of course designed to keep African Americans in bondage under the whites. Consequently, while each of these portraits is very different, they are yet all the same.
The brutality under which a slave lived depended mostly on whether they were a house servant, and therefore living in close proximity to their "masters", at times becoming like part of the family, or whether they were a field worker. Then this difference was magnified by the number of slaves who were on a property. The smaller the number, the more of a personal relationship was established with a family, and whether the master had an oversear for the slaves (poor white overseers were known for their brutality while keeping slaves "in line"), and whether or not "pattyrollers" (white patrollers whose job it was to make sure the Slave Code was being enforced) were allowed on the property. Pattyrollers were generally brutal.
"Marster had four overseers on the place, and they drove us from sunup till sunset. Some of the women plowed barefooted most all the time, and had to carry that row and keep up with the men, and then do their cooking at night. We hated to see the sun rise in slavery time, 'cause it meant another hard day; but then we was glad to see it go down." (Henry James Trentham, Age 92, Raleigh, NC)
Although some masters were just cruel, period, some were extremely lenient for the times. The lives of slaves living under the latter type situation were far different, as evidenced by the following...
"I was too small to work. They had me to do little things like feeding the chickens and minding the table sometimes; but I was too small to work. They didn't let children work much in them days till they were thirteen fourteen years old [on many plantations, slave children began working as young as 5 years of age]. We played base, cat, rolly hole, and a kind of baseball called 'round town. Marster would tell the children about Raw head and Bloody Bones and other things to scare us. He would call us to the barn to get apples and run and hide, and we would have a time finding him. He give the one who found him an apple...
Marster would not have an overseer. No sir, the slaves worked very much as they pleased...They loved him, though. I never saw a slave sold. he kept his slaves together. He didn't want to get rid of any of them. No slaves run away from Marster. They didn't have any excuse to do so, because whites and colored fared alike at Marster's. Marster loved his slaves and other white folks said he loved a n***** more than he did white folks..." (Isaac Johnson, age 82, Lillington, NC)
Contrast that with this story...
"I remembers seeing a heap of slave sales, with the n*****s in chains, and the speculators selling and buying them off. I also remembers seeing a drove of slaves with nothing on but a rag betwixt their legs being galloped around before the buyers. About the worst things that I ever see, though was a slave woman at Louisburg who had been sold off from her three-weeks-old baby, and was being marched to New Orleans.
"She had walked till she was give out, and she was weak enough to fall in the middle of the road. She was chained with twenty or thirty other slaves, and they stopped to rest in the shade of a big oak whilest the speculators et their dinner. The slaves ain't having no dinner. As I pass by, this woman begs me in God's name for a drink of water, and I gives it to her; I ain't never be so sorry for nobody.
"It was in the month of August, and the sun was bearing down hot when the slaves and their drivers leave the shade. They walk for a little piece, and this woman fall out. She dies there 'side of the road, and right there they buries her, cussing, they tells me, about losing money on her." (Josephine Smith, Age 94, Raleigh, NC).
Some people may wonder what is the benefit of reading these narratives. After all, slavery was a shameful period of time for our country and something about which most Americans might like to forget. However, I believe that American slaves did much of the back breaking labor it took to turn the wild place that was our country into farmlands and communities that could sustain this nation. It fills me with sadness when I think that we might turn a deaf ear to the fragile voices of these men and women, because they are so full of strength, perserverance, hope, humor and pain. They deserve to be heard.
Love,
Elizabeth
These frail voices forge a searing portrait of what it was like to be African American during slavery times. Although some slaves faired much better than others, none of them were allowed the rights of self-determination, to bear arms, to assemble or to buy and sell. These rules are what made up the Slave Code, which was of course designed to keep African Americans in bondage under the whites. Consequently, while each of these portraits is very different, they are yet all the same.
The brutality under which a slave lived depended mostly on whether they were a house servant, and therefore living in close proximity to their "masters", at times becoming like part of the family, or whether they were a field worker. Then this difference was magnified by the number of slaves who were on a property. The smaller the number, the more of a personal relationship was established with a family, and whether the master had an oversear for the slaves (poor white overseers were known for their brutality while keeping slaves "in line"), and whether or not "pattyrollers" (white patrollers whose job it was to make sure the Slave Code was being enforced) were allowed on the property. Pattyrollers were generally brutal.
"Marster had four overseers on the place, and they drove us from sunup till sunset. Some of the women plowed barefooted most all the time, and had to carry that row and keep up with the men, and then do their cooking at night. We hated to see the sun rise in slavery time, 'cause it meant another hard day; but then we was glad to see it go down." (Henry James Trentham, Age 92, Raleigh, NC)
Although some masters were just cruel, period, some were extremely lenient for the times. The lives of slaves living under the latter type situation were far different, as evidenced by the following...
"I was too small to work. They had me to do little things like feeding the chickens and minding the table sometimes; but I was too small to work. They didn't let children work much in them days till they were thirteen fourteen years old [on many plantations, slave children began working as young as 5 years of age]. We played base, cat, rolly hole, and a kind of baseball called 'round town. Marster would tell the children about Raw head and Bloody Bones and other things to scare us. He would call us to the barn to get apples and run and hide, and we would have a time finding him. He give the one who found him an apple...
Marster would not have an overseer. No sir, the slaves worked very much as they pleased...They loved him, though. I never saw a slave sold. he kept his slaves together. He didn't want to get rid of any of them. No slaves run away from Marster. They didn't have any excuse to do so, because whites and colored fared alike at Marster's. Marster loved his slaves and other white folks said he loved a n***** more than he did white folks..." (Isaac Johnson, age 82, Lillington, NC)
Contrast that with this story...
"I remembers seeing a heap of slave sales, with the n*****s in chains, and the speculators selling and buying them off. I also remembers seeing a drove of slaves with nothing on but a rag betwixt their legs being galloped around before the buyers. About the worst things that I ever see, though was a slave woman at Louisburg who had been sold off from her three-weeks-old baby, and was being marched to New Orleans.
"She had walked till she was give out, and she was weak enough to fall in the middle of the road. She was chained with twenty or thirty other slaves, and they stopped to rest in the shade of a big oak whilest the speculators et their dinner. The slaves ain't having no dinner. As I pass by, this woman begs me in God's name for a drink of water, and I gives it to her; I ain't never be so sorry for nobody.
"It was in the month of August, and the sun was bearing down hot when the slaves and their drivers leave the shade. They walk for a little piece, and this woman fall out. She dies there 'side of the road, and right there they buries her, cussing, they tells me, about losing money on her." (Josephine Smith, Age 94, Raleigh, NC).
Some people may wonder what is the benefit of reading these narratives. After all, slavery was a shameful period of time for our country and something about which most Americans might like to forget. However, I believe that American slaves did much of the back breaking labor it took to turn the wild place that was our country into farmlands and communities that could sustain this nation. It fills me with sadness when I think that we might turn a deaf ear to the fragile voices of these men and women, because they are so full of strength, perserverance, hope, humor and pain. They deserve to be heard.
Love,
Elizabeth
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