Homemade Granola Bars

A friend of mine shared this recipe a few weeks ago and they are soooo good, we braved the heat from the oven to make them again. Let me know if you enjoy them!

1 cup honey
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup butter (you can use 1 cup of butter instead of the pb but the flavor is better with the 1/2 cup of each)
1 tsp vanilla
Cream together in large bowl.

Mix in:
4 1/2 cups oats
1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or whatever kind you use for baking)
1 tsp baking soda

Once these are mixed you can add in any nuts, dried fruits or chocolate you want up to 2 cups

Press well into a 9x13 pan (the recipe says to lightly grease it, but I don't). Bake @ 325 for 20 to 30 min or until edges are golden brown. Cool for 10 minutes before you cut it and then let it cool completely before removing (if you can wait that long).

Add in ideas:
I use chocolate chips, flax seeds and raisins. You can also try almonds, walnuts, peanuts, chia seeds, cranberries, blueberries, m&m's and those are just off the top of my head. Use what you have!

My next thing to try is making these with coconut oil instead of butter. I'll let you know how they taste! Enjoy!

Mexi-Casserole Recipe

I put this together last night and it was sooooo easy, I had to share. Oh, and it was family tested and approved! :D

1- whole chicken breast (both halves), cut in chucks, any size you like, and sauted in olive oil until cooked
2- 15 oz cans of black beans
24 oz jar of Pace medium chunky salsa
8 oz can of green chilies
2 cups of cheddar or Mexican blend cheese, grated
about 4 large handfuls of tortilla chips, crushed

Cut chicken and let it cook while you prep the rest of the meal. Crush enough chips to cover bottom of 9x13 glass dish. Mix beans, chilies and salsa in a large bowl and pour out over chips. Place chicken over bean mixture and top with cheese. Place in oven at 350 until cheese is melted, about 15 minutes. Top with sour cream or plain yogurt and enjoy! :D

Let  me know what variations you come up with and tell me what your family thinks!

Good Stewardship in the Home Part 3

This is Part 3 of 3 where we have been talking about stewardship in the home. In Part 1, we talked about Stewardship of our time; using the time we have to train up our children. In Part 2, we talked about that great buzz word, frugality and how to apply the principle of frugality in more ways then just saving money.

This time we are talking about being good stewards of our gifts, whatever those maybe. Each of us has at least one gift that God gave us to be used in serving others.Each one is different and so the application will be different too. I just chose the first few that came to mind to use as examples.

For some of us, our gift is hospitality. If you find your front door is always open and people calling and coming over for a chat, this is probably you. The great thing about a gift is that the only way to waste it is not to use it. In other words, you can only waste it, if you hide it or making excuses for not putting it to use. If you love to entertain, find ways to make it happen. It maybe have dinner for different families in your church once a week. It maybe having a craft day or a quilt day at your home. If you are willing to be used, God knows your gift and He is looking for people willing to be used to minister to the needy and hurting.

If your gift is encouragement, you can find just as many ways to exercise this gift. If you are someone who is always looking for a way to make someone else feel better, this is probably your gift. You could make a list of people to write little notes to, those who are in nursing homes or hospitals are great choices to start. Or how about birthday cards? Or goody plates for public servants at Christmas? Or meals for a new mother or someone recently home from the hospital? Use these are a spring board for more ideas.

If you are gifted as a teacher, look for chances to instruct other ladies in what you know best. Look for young ladies (and their mothers too) you can share your knowledge of homemaking with and do it! Write a blog about an area where you have knowledge to share.Write articles for magazines, in print or online.

Ask God to show you ways to use your gifts and don't forget to involve your children in service. When they are young, they can help you minister in your area(s) of gifting. And as they get older, watch them and help them discover where they are gifted and show them how to use their gifts too!


If this series has encouraged you, please feel free to leave me a comment. If you have questions, or if there is an area you think should be discussed as a later part of this series, please let me know that too!

Blessings, dear friends!

If you missed the first two posts in the series, you can click on the links below to find them.
Good Stewardship in the Home Part 1
Good Stewardship in the Home Part 2

A Truly Great Resource

For those of you who have not found their site yet, I wanted to take a moment and recommend Vision Forum to you. They are a great resource for any family regardless of whether or not you have children or how young they may be.

This summer we listened to their Family Strategies messages. They provided a must needed practical boot camp for parents to make wise and informed decisions about their families goals and future. The church today too often neglects to equip parents by teaching on practical subjects, like parenting and how to deal with everyday life situations. Doug and Beall do this in a fun and informative way, while providing plenty of examples of how you can make these strategies work in your family.

They also have a wonderful collection of Christian books, some you can't find any where else. Some of my personal favorites are:

Beloved Bride

Killer Angel

The Family

In addition to books, they have videos, CD's and MP3's, all designed to encourage your family to press on and fight the good fight of faith.

So head on over and see all the wonderful resources they have to offer! :D

Adoption

~No Longer An Orphan~

I read this story for the first time last night. They are family to a very dear friend of mine and I wanted to share this story with you in the hopes that you will pray for this family as they are trying to bring these sweet little one home to love and care for them.

I am so blessed to be an adopted daughter of the King and I pray that God will soon bring these little ones to their home too.

Good Stewardship in the Home part 2: Use it Up, Wear it Out...

In the first post of this series, Good Stewardship in the Home, we talked about using our time and talents in raising our children.

This time we are going to talk a little bit about stewardship of time and finances, which takes us to one of the biggest buzz words in the blog world: frugality.

Frugality, to me can be summed up in these words from an old New England proverb: Use it up, Wear it Out, Make Do or Do Without. It is a mindset that says, I will find a way to make the most of what I have and wear a smile too.

An hundred years ago, no one had to tell a housewife to be frugal. Frugality was a part of life, very survival for some. You used what you had, you made do or you simply lived without. When was the last time we reused something rather than buy new? When did we do without something rather than going to the nearest store and buying something new? We are so used to consuming that we have forgotten the roots of frugality. We feel like we are being frugal by only spending $20 on a $100 sweater. We forget that sometimes we could do without the new sweater. Now I'm not saying that you didn't get a great deal and only you know if you really needed that sweater, but my point is that some times frugality means you make do with what you already have. And let's face it, dear friends, we have plenty!

 For those of you who maybe short on ideas of how to practically make this a part of your lifestyle, here are just a few ideas to get you started thinking:

Re-purpose those old towels as burp rags, cut up old blankets and make dolly blankets, turn old pillowcases into nightgowns, old button up shirts into dresses/jumpers.

Find ways to use less disposable products: try cloth diapers (or be really brave and make your own), cloth menstrual pads, sandwich bags, even something as simple as using a hanky instead of tissues.

Some times frugality also means we do without. Our grandmothers did without almost every modern convenience we take for granted, all while raising several more children. For example of what this might look like, my dishwasher broke today. Now I could call someone to repair it and spend the money or I may decide that I really don't need it and wash my dishes by hand. I did it growing up, I have the skills, there is nothing stopping me from taking this as a sign and saving not only the money on the repair bill but also all that hot water that won't have to be heated to clean my dishes, which I could do in less than half the time. There things we can do without. Does it make it easier to not have to wash dishes by hand with three little ones under foot? Yes. Can I live without it? Also yes!


Now if you are looking for ways to save money on groceries or diapers or find freebies of various kinds, there are many great articles already written and I don't need to re-write them. My favorite site for those kinds of posts is Money Saving Mom but there are plenty of others. Just do a quick search and you'll see what I mean.

What I thought I would do instead is share a few posts that I have really enjoyed recently, that share a little different take on frugality. 

This one speaks for itself, 3 Ways You Can Save Money Without Changing Your Spending.  Anything that saves you money, without having to spend any, is a blessing!

For a bit of historical perspective and encouragement, I love this one, Despairing over Household Allowance. Sometimes we get tunnel vision, thinking we live in such difficult times but you can see examples all throughout history of women dealing with similar or even worse economic situations and smiling through it!

Of course, the best place to find DIY projects and new ways to reuse and re-purpose what you already have, is Pinterest. If you haven't found this gem yet, you'll thank me later. :D You can find my pins here.

A little bit of time spent deciding what things you need to change in your home to make these kinds of adjustments, and a little research on how to make it happen, will go a long way to making a great difference in how you run your home. 

Just remember that what ever you do to use it up, wear it out, make do or do without, is for a purpose. The more frugal we are with our resources, the better stewards we are being of what we have and the more we will have to use for what God would have us to use it for. We are not good stewards if we use frugality as a means to waste resources or spoil ourselves. We do it to serve the Lord and others. This is probably the most important part in living a frugal lifestyle. Know why you are being frugal. If you are doing it because everyone else is doing it, chances are you will just waste your time and money on something else. You must have a goal, a vision for what to do with every excess you have. You must have a plan to reinvest it in something of real worth. Otherwise you could find yourself, when the Master returns, with only one talent and no excuse. Let's be stewards with a plan for maximizing our investments for the best possible return.

And the winners are...

Congratulations to Erin, Debi and Cassandra! Your free codes are on their way to your email.

Thanks everyone for entering!

Just in case you were wondering...all winners were chosen  and posted by Rafflecopter via Random.org.

New Deadline for Christmas Card Giveaway!

In case you tried to enter the Christmas Card giveaway and couldn't, we had a miscommunication with the site and it is now fixed. I added an extra day just in case you missed out because of this, meaning that the giveaway will now end Midnight November 1 EST. You still can enter to win here.

I'm so sorry if this caused you trouble!

Good Stewardship in the Home, Part 1

This is something that has been on my heart for a while. As wives and mothers, we are sometimes swept away with the minutiae of the home; dishes, diapers, baths, floors, etc... and we forget to be good stewards in what we do. We ask, "Is this a good use of our time?" instead of, "Is this the best use of our time?"

There are many ways we can exemplify good stewardship as Christian women. Matthew 25 is all about preparation and stewardship; first, the story of the wise and foolish virgins. Some who are ready, having bought ahead in preparation for the arrival of the Bridegroom and some that didn't think past the moment and the excitement of the future to actually plan ahead for it. And then the parable of the Talents, where Jesus instructs us to use whatever we are given to invest, looking forward to the time in which we will have to give an answer for what we did with what we were given. Every one has something different that God has given them and expects them to use wisely. For some, God  have them money and they will be responsible to God for how and where they spend it. For others it is freedom, and God will expect to have it used for His service and not frittered away.

We as wives and mothers are held responsible for how we and our children spend our time; whether we invest it in kingdom work or whether we squander it on harmful or even "just" silly things.

We are responsible for our resources; making sure our pennies count, to maximize the funds our husbands give us in trust.

We are responsible for using our gifts; hospitality, mercy, teaching. It does not matter whether we have little or much, we need to use it. Invest it. Make sure we are getting a return on what we are putting in.

We need to ask ourselves daily; what am I investing in? And what kind of return can I look for from this? Can I invest in something that will bring me a greater return? Can I increase my return by investing more in this? Our lives must be active. We can not afford to be passive about how we spend our time or our talents.

Today I want to pose some questions to think about. Are we being active participants in life? Are we evaluating our days with the thought of making the most of it, in the light of our Master?

We can not be passive about how we direct our children day in and day out. Because we know that guaranteed, if we don't direct them in the way in which they should go, someone else will. And when God asks us what we did with the children (talents) He gave us, we can't sit back and say, "Well, I was afraid to invest them" or "I invested in the best education and a great church with an on fire Sunday School/Youth Group for them". The buck stops with you. God holds you responsible. And if we are not constantly evaluating how we spend our time, talent and resources, they will be gone before we know it and so will our children.

A little here, a little there...

I have been pondering ways to save a little money in the grocery department. I know, I hear you...use coupons. Okay, I do, but I buy natural, organic, bulk, make-from-scratch kind of stuff and these are not normal coupon items. Now I will use them for treats, toiletries and diapers but that is about all I find useful in the coupon world on a regular basis.

Another idea often suggested is that you stock up on items that will last when you find a good deal, but often I find that I have done my shopping for the month when I find such deals, meaning that there is no more budget for such things. And today it hit me: I should set aside an amount each month for just such items. (For those of you who have been doing this for a while, tune me out but if you are like me and this is a new revelation, feel free to read on...)

So say you have a month budget of $500 for your family. And you find you can make it on just $450 each month. Then you can take that extra $50 and save it for the time cans of peas are $.50 or when you find toothpaste for $.75 a tube. Or maybe you decide you'd like to buy a side of beef each year, well then that money will come in handy when you need to pay the butcher.

You may only have $20 space in your budget but don't despair, that $20 a month becomes $240 in a year and once you start stocking up at cheaper prices, you can take the money that you would have spent on those items and add them to your stock up budget! Soon you'll be ahead of the game.

Anyone have an ideas they want to share about stocking up? I'd love more tips!