How far would you go for a Biscuit? - A Dose of Encouragement

How far would you go for a Biscuit?


Would you go to the kitchen cupboard?

   Would you go to the corner shop?

      Would you go to the supermarket at the other side of your town?

                                            Probably yes!

On Saturday we went 45 mins by car to the other side of Belfast just to get a certain type of biscuit.  We went to Ikea for their Pepparkaka Ginger Thins.

(I'm just wondering if they would be willing to pay me for this great advertisement for their biscuits hmmm?)

Saturday was Fred's birthday and our son and daughter-in-law had invited us to come for a birthday meal and Suzie had promised Fred cake.

So by Friday I was wondering what else we were going to do before going to see them in Belfast.


I decided that this was a good opportunity to go to Ikea and stock up on their biscuits.


The first reason being that I can have 3 of these biscuits with a cup of coffee in the afternoon and not use up too many calories as opposed to the chocolate biscuits that Fred likes.  The second reason is that I love to dunk these biscuits in my coffee and the third reason was that we had run out of them at home a few months ago.

So really we were not driving all that distance just for the biscuits but using the opportunity to go a little bit out of our way when we were already going to Belfast.

This got me thinking!

We went out of our way for something I wanted, but how much do we actually go out of our way to do something for others?

We did something for someone just the previous week which took a couple of hours of our Saturday because we had to drive a distance again and we were happy that what we did had helped to make this other person happy.  But many times we can look on making an effort for others as taking up our time and energy when we should be thinking of things that others need help with or that would add a little joy to their lives.

It is so easy to go on each day with our lives and have them centre around us and God but not around others.  Yet Jesus set us a clear example of  how his days on earth were centred around God and others before himself.  Look at how tired Jesus was at various times.


I often think of the example King David showed of kindness

2 Samuel 9:1

Now David said, “Is there still anyone who is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

David went on to find Mephibosheth and when he was brought to David at the palace he was afraid not expecting David to show him kindness

but

2 Samuel 9:7 

So David said to him, “Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father’s sake, and will restore to you all the land of Saul your grandfather; and you shall eat bread at my table continually.”

Was David just returning kindness because Jonathan had been kind to him?
David and Jonathan had been good friends and Jonathan had been an honest, supportive friend who showed great loyalty to David and also respect to his father King Saul just as David had.

Whether it was only because of his friendship with Jonathan or because of his personal relationship with God we know he followed through on this statement of kindness.

What is the difference for us?

Well we have the instruction from Jesus himself when He was asked about the greatest commandment

Matthew 22:34-40

34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

What better reason to show love to someone than because it is what God wants of us.

What better way to show love to someone than to show kindness.

What better way to be able to share the love of Jesus and the message of salvation with others than to show kindness and be a friend who is proven to be trustworthy and dependable by their words and actions.

We drove home on Saturday night smiling and feeling very happy because we had spent a lovely evening with Daniel and Suzie,  but we also went home the previous week happy because we had put a smile on someone else's face and made her happy.

There should definitely be room in our lives for both of these types of days and for a lot more of them than there has been recently.

I am thankful that God wants us to help others.

Have you also noticed that in the helping of others our lives are enriched as well as theirs?

Why We Worship 12

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

Oh I have such a problem this week!

There are just too many verses in the Bible that I want to share because today I'm thinking about how good God is.

I will pick this one especially as I featured another one of them a few months ago in an earlier post Thankfulness, Goodness, Love.

When we think about this we probably tend to compare the goodness we see in the acts of others toward us or toward other people, with the Goodness of God.

But we really cannot do this as the goodness of God is perfection because He knows what is best for everyone and our goodness toward each other can never be perfect. 

Thankfully, because we learn from God then we can reflect some of His Goodness in the acts we do too.

                Thank you God!

     We see almost the identical sentiment spoken in    
                        

Psalm 100:5

For the Lord is good;His mercy is everlasting,And His truth endures to all generations.

            

and we can all shout together

How to Organise your DVD's

Or maybe I should say

How many Dvds can one Room have?

Now I know that some people buy Dvds watch them and then sell them on ebay.
I buy them on Amazon or ebay and we watch them but we do not generally get rid of them.
Most of them are kept, especially the boxsets and they are stored in The Office

So this was the first thing I tackled in Fred's Office.   

Firstly because he would not ever consent to sorting them.
Secondly because he would not have done it properly - ie. in an organised fashion, noting what collections were complete and which series or episodes we had watched.


We had a little notebook which the kids & I had started some years back trying to keep track of the Dvds we were watching, who was watching and where we have got to in each series etc.

You see our problem was that in a family of five who were not always together it was hard to keep track of what we could watch depending on who was there.  Then it was the combinations of the five of us and what some of us could watch after Fred had gone on to bed (the kids and I are night-birds but Fred is not).  After that it was which series and which episode so we could end up wasting a lot of time looking through to see which episodes had been watched or not.

Nice little notebook and we kept it up to date for quite some time but then the same as everything else we got lazy about it.

I had a look through the apps for my iPad and found a free collections app to try out.
BUT!!! It would only take one collection and if you wanted more collections then the paid version was required.
SO!!!
I took Dvds as my one collection and I started to put in my box sets but after filling in several of them and then trying to put in further details I found that the app just did not give me the flexibility I needed just for the more general info and definitely would not be able to go into the finer detail I would need for noting which series of each set had been watched, which series I still needed to get, which sets had not been started yet etc.

So I came to the decision that a 

Spreadsheet

 was the only way to go.

At first I was disappointed as I thought I would have preferred to have that info in an app and so be able to access it easily via the iPad anytime I was out shopping but on second thought I realised that this would not be a great advantage as I rarely buy Dvds in the shops but mostly online so the spreadsheet would be fine for checking for that.

Hence a lot of time this week was spent getting this set up and filled in and some sort of logical system and Colour Coding thought out to suit me.

Of course this is only one section of the spreadsheet as it is quite long, it is in Alphabetical order and this only shows from A - F so is about one one quarter of my list of box sets.

As you can see from the Key I am noting which

• series are still to be bought
• series are bought but still to be watched
• series are watched
• titles are started/ongoing
• titles are all bought and all watched
• titles are all bought but not started yet
• titles are not all bought and not started yet

I have also included the years of production and the initials of the members of the family who have watched them.

The only thing I think has not yet been included is exactly which episode was the last one watched in each of the incomplete Series.  That will simply be done by typing in the number of the last watched episode in the coloured cell of the correct series, and then can easily be changed each time.  Some of that info will come from the little notebook before I scrap the used pages and keep the rest of the notebook for something else and for some of them I will have to guess roughly and look at some episodes to see what I remember and don't remember.


UPDATE:
I think I have mentioned that I have the app "Things which has now been changed to "Things3" and it is even better for projects now as well as for lists so I am now thinking of putting this info into it as well.
However it did cost me money - it was the first app I ever got because my husband Fred insisted I did so as soon as he bought me my first iPad - and it is even more expensive now and so as I am always thinking of cost as well as best suiting my needs I would still recommend a spreadsheet for this.

Do you remember from my Not the Office!! Post just how bad the 2 bookcases with the Dvds were because they had so much else piled on top and in front of the Dvds and the Dvds were all mixed up?

Well if not here is a reminder

Now those two bookcases look like this

I am so pleased with them but Fred is not so pleased because some of the things I moved away have to be sorted out by him!!!

Now of course the inventory of these two bookcases has been made so much easier as well so a good few days work overall and I am very happy with the way things are going around here.

Do you have as many Dvds to keep in order?

Have you made a list of your collection in an app or spreadsheet?

I was going to miss the Butterflies - A Dose of Encouragement

When we lived in Belgium there was a strange type of bush that grew up high in the summertime at the front of our house.

So we never bothered to find out what type of bush this was.

Because we were renting the house the owner was responsible for the borders, shrubs and trees and all we had to do was cut the grass.

One day in July 2009
Fred and I were sitting in the house on our own when I saw a butterfly go past the front window.  Then just a few mins later I saw another one and then another and another.  I remarked to Fred that I had seen four of them and thought that was unusual.

Then when I saw another I walked over to the window to have a look to see if it was simply the same butterfly flying past different times or had we got a few hovering around.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw not one, not 5 but loads of butterflies all the same type sitting on that strange bush.  I called to Fred and we both opened the window and stepped out onto the balcony/veranda that stretched the length of the house.  We were able to stand there and see the butterflies close up and we counted 34 butterflies on that bush at the same time.

Fred went and got his camera and spent some time taking pictures of this awesome sight.

We stood for about 30 mins watching the butterflies as they fed on this bush, parts of which were showing the effects already.

We just stood and watched in amazement, not able to tear ourselves away from this beautiful sight.

How did all those butterflies know to appear at our bush on that one same day?

This was a day we will never forget, a unique day a quiet but awe inspiring day.

14 months later and we were in the throes of doing the inventory of our belongings in this house and organising to buy a house back in Northern Ireland.  The time had come to leave Belgium.

We had been back on a few different trips looking for a house and had fallen in love with one which had a lovely kitchen and Sun Room and nice bathrooms, almost the opposite to this one in Belgium.

At different times I would say about what I would miss about the house in Belgium but there were a lot of things I wouldn't miss.

One of the things I would miss was the fact that our house was in a lovely location enabling us to drive past the Tervuren Roundabout most days and that was a sight that put a smile on my face with it's beautiful fountain.

Another thing I was going to miss was the butterfly bush as I continued to call it even though by this time I had looked it up on Google and found out it was really called a "Buddlea".  I knew I was going to miss seeing the butterflies gathering there even though mostly we only saw a few at a time.  I have always loved butterflies and like things that are decorated with butterflies.

Along with all the friends we had made I knew that certain little things had made our 6 years in Belgium very happy and special to us and this simple bush was one of them.

Well in December of 2010 we left Belgium covered in snow and could hardly see what was left of the Buddlea bush which had been pruned back excessively and was practically hidden by the bush in front of it

We moved to Northern Ireland also covered in snow and were very busy moving in the week leading up to Christmas.     

The New year passed by and quite a few months also as we continued to get settled in.

We were going to miss the Butterflies!

Then one day we realised that a bush in our new front garden which had been rather scrawny looking when we arrived was now growing up tall, then a while later it started to flower and you can image our surprise and delight to discover that we had a Butterfly Bush at our new home.

We had even taken a family picture in front of the bush a few days after moving in not realising what it was.

Now we have never had 34 butterflies on this bush in Northern Ireland but in the past few summers we have regularly seen 5 or 6 at a time.  Maybe someday they will all come but because of our open location at the top of a hill we may never get a mass of butterflies like we did that day in Tervuren.

It is hard to move home and to move from one country to another.  It is hard to leave people & things behind

So thank you God that I don't have to say  "I miss the butterflies".

Who can say that God doesn't care about how we feel when we see that he gave us another Butterfly bush in our new home!

Why We Worship 11

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

Today I want to focus on the fact 

                  yes fact 

                              that

God is everywhere.   

He is OMNIPRESENT

This doesn't mean that part of God is in one place, 

                                             
                                                  another part in another place 

                                                               
                                                                         or another in a third place.  

It means that all of Him is present everywhere at the same time, not part of Him in different places.

So there is no-one like our God because no-one can be everywhere at all times.

God has told us that He reigns in Heaven and Earth,

What a consoling and exciting piece of knowledge for us to have.

We are never alone from God, He always hears our prayers, He is always there to comfort, guide and support us.

However,

this also means that no-one can hide from 
God 

                         
                              or that we can do anything behind His back 

                                            
                                              as everything is done in His presence so He sees and hears it all.

Jeremiah 23:24

Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.

Does this not thrill you to know for a fact that wherever you go, He is there?

5 Essential Items to make the Housework Easy PLUS a Bonus TIP

Yes I have   

                             5 things 

                                             that 

                                                      are essential 

for making the Housework as easy as possible in any room.

No matter what room, these 5 things will really make your jobs easier.

1.   STEAMER

 Since I bought my steamer I will not tackle a good cleaning without it

• windows
• floors
• tiles
• showers
• toilets
• baths

   these are just the main things I use my steamer on but not the only things.

Remember the fridge in the kitchen last month - yes I used the steamer to get the stain off the bottom of the fridge.   You are probably thinking  "Is she mad?" but if do then you haven't seen my fridge so click on over to  Is This the End of the Kitchen?

The flat attachment is great for a lot of areas but then there is also the nozzle attachment which means you can get steam into small areas and corners and along edges.

Plus most of the time you don't need to use any cleaners because the steam is such a great cleaner and what could be healthier than water and no chemicals.

Only one problem with my steamer  -  it's green, oh if only it were BLUE!

2.   VINEGAR



You only need to go on Pinterest to realise what a great item white vinegar is,  there are just so many uses for it  - but please remember you want brown vinegar
when it comes to chips (French fries)



Of course vinegar is even more powerful
                when it is combined with the next item















3.   BICARBONATE of SODA / BAKING SODA

This can be used with water to make a paste and is a great cleaning product.
Check it out in Pinterest and see the many suggestions there.

Or mix it with water and vinegar to have a sizzling cleaning experience.
Again check it out in Pinterest and see the many suggestions there.

Also have a look at a previous post where I gave a link to the 
Toilet Bombs















4.   SPRAY BOTTLE

Use the spray bottle with a mixture of water and vinegar to help clean loads of surfaces etc.
Check it out in Pinterest and see the many suggestions there.

Or mix water and vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to have a stronger cleaner.
Again check it out in Pinterest and see the many suggestions there.

A spray bottle is great because you can spray a little cleaner or spray, spray, spray for a bigger amount and much more easy to control that trying to pour something out.

The bottle in the picture is from a Tea Tree Oil product which I used while in Belgium because it was not harmful to the environment but unfortunately my husband was not too keen on the smell so I don't use the product now just use the bottle.

Of course it is cheaper to use the water and vinegar than to buy a that cleaner.




5.   TOOTHBRUSH

Well this is that little tool that can get into the smaller places, corners, along ridges, and can be used for a light brushing or a heavy scrubbing.


Then combine this with any or all of the above and what can escape your cleaning attack.

















These last 4 things are kept in a plastic container with a handle that is easy to grab and take with me to each room (pity the steamer can't fit in too!).

OK I bet you thought I was forgetting about the bonus TIP I mentioned 

in the title of this post.

No way would I forget something!         Okay just don't ask Fred how true that is PLEASE

The Bonus TIP

I keep a packet of Cleaning Wipes in various places especially the

• bathroom
• ensuite
• Guest Bedroom ensuite
• Back Toilet
• Utility Room
• Kitchen

Then when I am in any of these rooms I can do a quick wipe over before I leave the room.

For example 
I go to use the bathroom so before I leave it I just check if the wash hand basin is ok and if not I grab a wipe and a give it a quick wipe over and leave.

If there is a small spill or stickiness in the utility room or kitchen I can get a wipe out of the packet quickly and deal with it rather than let it wait until later or waiting for hot water and getting a cloth out and dirty for the small job.  Just wipe and go no need to dry off.

Maybe you have the same essential materials or maybe you have something else you feel you can't manage without - if so let us know.

I think I'm turning into my father! - A Dose of Encouragement

I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous:

          how can a girl turn into her father?

Well the thing is I can remember well the times years ago when my father would need to buy something new and we would get annoyed at his choices.

Basically because he hadn't made any new choices.

You see I remember the day my dad came in and showed me a new tie he had bought and I was very bewildered because I was sure that I had seen that same tie often; 

tied around his neck.

I was right he had simply gone out and got himself the exact same tie.

Why had he done that?

Well his response was that the other one had started to fray a little.

Yes, if the tie was fraying then it probably was time to pop it in the bin and maybe even a good reason to go buy another one but not to buy one the same surely.  However my father was very pleased that he had managed to get the same tie.


Then I remember the shoes he liked to buy, & the sweaters; practically the exact same each time. 

When he needed anything he liked to get the same as he had before.  

I'm sure it was a relief to my mum that he was not that interested in buying furniture for the house so she got to go pick that and we did not have something just like the previous one.

There was one main exception; he did not get the same car each time.   But I think that had more to do with the fact that he felt he didn't know as much about cars as my brother-in-law did, so he would take his advice on that issue.

So have you guessed it yet?

Why I say I'm turning into my father?

I love to wear slippers around the house.  

As soon as I get home I take off my shoes and on go the slippers. Due to the situation of where we live now and the fact that I am not working, I do spend a lot of time in the house so I have slippers on for many hours each day.


What have I discovered?

In the last 3 years since we moved to this area I have gone to the same shop and bought the same slippers on several occasions.  The last two times I bought two pairs at the same time.  I don't just mean the same style of slippers, or the same make of slippers; I mean the same make, style, pattern and colour (blue of course).

It actually started before we moved here, while we were still living in Belgium.
For the last few years there I had bought the same slippers each time (not the same as here though).  I just got to the stage where when I found a really comfortable pair of slippers at a reasonable price then why go looking for any others. 


And It's not only the slippers.

No it has now progressed to my shoes.  

I discovered a very comfortable pair of black shoes and loved them so much that when I saw them in cream I got a pair of those also.  Since then I have bought 2 more pairs in cream and two more in black.  Hence when I am not wearing my boots you will find me in these cream or black shoes.

Undoubtedly I am turning into my father.


There is one time when I wear a different type of shoe.
  
On Sundays going to church I wear a more dressy shoe and I do have a variety that I can wear.  But of course as you already know, as soon as I return home from church I won't have the shoes on.

    I'll be in my slippers. 


There is a white top that I just love to wear and have worn it for over 10 years.

This top has v neck short sleeves and has a butterfly design to one side which is made from little diamante things.  It has always been easy to wash and only recently have I found that it is not as easy to get stains out of as it used to be.  I have searched but cannot find the same top - of course I can't when it is so old. 

 I just wish that I had got 2 of these (or even 3) because I would wear it with almost anything.  


Do you not agree that I am turning into my father?


I mentioned this to my sister one evening a few weeks ago and she laughed at me, but then she did agree because she remembered being with me a few years ago when I actually did buy two of the same black top (I knew that it was going to be a good one as soon as I tried it on and I was right).

She also remembered that just that same afternoon I had complained when I was in the shoe shop (the one all those slippers had come from) because I could not see the same slippers and I am down to my last pair - why did I not buy more!

I am worried now that I am not going to be able to get those same ones again.

I suppose we all have to admit that some things are passed down to us from our parents; likes and dislikes, some habits, some distinguishing features, some attitudes.
Unfortunately we don't always get the good attitudes, habits, likes, or features.  
More often we tend to pick up the bad habits and attitudes.

Thankfully we can't pick up any bad habits from our Heavenly Father,

we don't witness Him having a bad attitude,

He has no ugly features for us to inherit. 

No, our Heavenly Father only has beauty to pass down to us,

grace, mercy and loving attitudes that we can learn from

and only good examples of good habits to set us like forgiving over and over again.

Thank you Father for your love and all the great attributes we see in you and in Jesus.  

Help us to focus on these and grow to be more like you day by day.

   Amen.

I want to be able to see that I am growing more like Jesus and my Heavenly Father in all parts of my life.

Do you?