What fun we had in December baking, eating and gifting an assortment of delicious treats. We used some tried and true recipes and made a few new ones as well. I thought I’d share a couple websites that were super helpful to me, just in case you need some Christmas baking ideas.

This year, in addition to our usual baking and gifting, we also made up trays for some migrant workers who are stuck here in Ontario due to Covid-19. They should have been headed home in October and November. We decided to make cards, print out the Christmas story from Luke, add some tracts with the gospel and pack trays full of sweets to show that we care. With the extra baking, I needed some inspiration. This Delish slideshow had many fun ideas.

We made Star Linzer Cookies, my husband’s favourite! They’re beautiful and oh, so good! Then there are my kids’ favourite – magic cookie bar. My sister-in-law loves the chocolate peanut butter marshmallow squares and I whipped up my mom’s favourite whipped shortbread recipe. Chocolate macaroons are also so easy to make.

While we didn’t make sugar cookies this year, we did try a new gingerbread recipe from our Gather ‘Round Christmas unit. You can’t forget the gingerbread; men, lights, stars…gingerbread everything. I have often just bought the premade bags of icing for convenience, however, my kids often have a tough time piping it out. This year I used a sugar cookie icing recipe with disposable icing bags and it was perfect. Some icing bags were more liquid and others we did a bit stiffer so we could outline or fill in with ease.

Sugar Cookie (or Gingerbread Cookie) Icing

3 cups of powdered sugar
2-4 tablespoons of milk
2 tablespoons of corn syrup

The peanut brittle recipe from Fine Cooking was delicious. I made two batches, the first using light corn syrup and the second using golden corn syrup. I think the second batch I was also a little off in my temperatures. The first batch was perfect and the second was just good. Recipe here.

My next recipe suggestion is also from Fine Cooking. It’s the most delicious, smooth and creamy fudge I’ve ever made. I used this recipe but then added a few drops of mint extract. It’s a 10 for sure!

Growing up, one of my favourite things was our family Christmas Eve party with the all-you-can-eat baking trays. I think the Christmas baking tradition continues.

The post Christmas Baking Ideas appeared first on Beautiful Calling.

My daughter loves pie. She’s 13 and she decided to try make pie from scratch on her own during the Covid lockdown this spring. She used Barefoot Contessa’s blueberry pie recipe. Her first pie turned out really great. Some, since then, have been better than others as she tweaks recipes and plays around.

Blueberry, cherry, peach…ah, the pie.

This summer she also got the recipe from her friend’s mother for the lasagna she enjoys eating at their house. She did a wonderful job making it and our family enjoyed eating it.

My husband is an excellent cook and I do a fair amount of home-baking for our family.

When the older two were little, they liked to dump and mix ingredients…and of course lick the beater and eat the finished product. To my disappointment, as they got older, neither showed an inclination to graduate from the lick and taste.

It’s been fun (and delicious!) watching her unexpectedly blossom a bit in the kitchen.

The post My Daughter Makes Pie appeared first on Beautiful Calling.

A picture is worth 1000 words?

Maybe.

If you were to look at most of the pictures that I email to friends or post online, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that my children are always happy and that we are always doing wonderfully fun and adventurous things; that our life is organized and only beauty-filled.

Now we do have a lot of fun and we often do adventurous things; many times my children are happy and getting along. I do like organization and life is beautiful! Most of the time my house is pretty tidy, too.

But my life is also full of hard things. It’s full of things that make me very very tired both physically and spiritually. Though my youngest is nine, my life is still full of poopie diapers and spaghetti hand marks everywhere. My life is very much like yours; full of wonder and wonderful moments along with the many moments that don’t make it out into the public eye.

But I wouldn’t trade it, this beautiful, messy, and sometimes chaotic life that the Lord has given me, for anything! My children, and all they entail, bring me great joy as the I try raise them for Him and He sanctifies me in the process.

The Lord is my constant companion on this journey and it is His faithfulness that keeps me faithful.

It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

Pictures:

• Lovely flowers and delicious pie at the beautiful outdoor reception for my brother and new sister-in-law.

• Fun mail day as we organize and prep for the upcoming homeschool year. Bible, arguing well and drawing comics are some of what we will learn this year.

• The watermelon my daughter grew. Actually three grew but my (special needs) son threw one over the fence so now we only have two. Our cantaloupe also grew quite well despite the guessing in the garden fiasco!

• My daughter doodling a picture of me she snapped, as we hang out in the Emergency Room again!

• The inevitable piles of laundry to be folded after our recent camping trip.

The post Beauty, Chaos and Faithfulness appeared first on Beautiful Calling.

Every day is an adventure, but some days an extra special adventure comes along.

I’ve been wanting to go turbo tubing down the Grand River for a few years and this year we finally did it; my dad, my oldest two and Isaac.

I struggled with the decision of whether to bring Isaac with us on this particular adventure.

You know, he’s my special guy; non-verbal, severe intellectual disability, physical delays, and ADHD. He loves to be outside, he loves water and I was pretty sure he would have a blast, if I could get him to stay in the boat, that is.

The route is Glen Morris to Paris; a beautiful, scenic 11km stretch of water with 7 easy rapids. Grand River Rafting offers tethering so Isaac could have his boat tethered behind mine since he’s unable to paddle. I decided to take the risk and let him come along.

I’m so glad I brought him!

We tried giving him a paddle at the start, not because he could actually paddle but just for the experience of it, but he tried hitting people so he lost his paddling privileges.

I had brought along his two favourite foam blocks because they float and two small water guns, one to use and an extra for when he loses the first one.

He spent the first few minutes of the trip tipping himself out of the boat into the shallow water. It was rather tricky getting him back in and we were both soaked but it was warm out and we were in bathing suits so that wasn’t an issue really. Finally he settled in and enjoyed the tow, shooting me with his water gun and shooting anyone else in range.

My crazy boy enjoyed soaking his head or kicking his feet in the water, sometimes doing both at once. He kept himself busy and entertained.

Then the inevitable happened. He was so close to falling out so many times but at this point he leaned too far over the back and fell in.

Under the water he went and came up looking shocked. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react but, after seeing me laugh, he laughed too.

I left him float, bob and swim along with us in the gentle current for a while before hauling him back in the boat.

I think he’s part fish.

After the first set of rapids, he started squealing and clapping every time he saw us approaching whitewater. The rapids are so gentle you could hardly call them whitewater but they were perfect for him! Enough bouncing and bobbing but still gentle enough that I didn’t have to worry about him falling out. I did need to remind him to keep his head in the boat while going down them though.

The website says that it’s a 2-4 hour paddle depending on paddling and river flow rates. It ended up taking us just under 5 hours, including our lunch stop on an island en route.

It really was a perfect day. We all had so much fun.

My Plan for Next Time:

• 2 Towels in a dry bag. We used neither and I wouldn’t take them next time.
• Sunscreen. We didn’t use it after the initial application. I’d probably just take the face stick next time.
• A couple floating blocks and two small water guns for Isaac’s entertainment. Definite hit!
• Too many bottles of water. One per person would have been enough plus maybe one extra. It wasn’t super hot though.
• Baggies for keys, and my phone.
• Baby wipes.
• Lunch: sandwiches, nanaimo bars, cookies and watermelon. Enough, not too much and nothing overly bulky. Actually, I did pack too many sandwiches.
• We all wore sandals/water shoes; a definite must. The river and shores are very rocky.
• Next time I would be sure to take a small bailing can. Isaac and I both ended up with a lot of water in our boats!
• The turbo tube boats don’t have much extra room. You’re storing your items at your feet so you don’t want to take much and it will get wet. You will get water in your boat!

The post Our Grand River Rafting Trip appeared first on Beautiful Calling.

In our yard, some things grow in containers on the deck and a few others grow in big planters. A strawberry hanging basket provided us with delicious fruit to snack on, and after three years, a pretty good raspberry patch thrives over along the fence.

We also have a raised garden bed that measures about 4 ft by 25 ft or so and a couple feet high. Planting a combination of seeds and nursery seedlings, this year’s garden was sure to be a thriving success. Carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, lettuce and radishes; so carefully making furrows, planting seeds and watering them. I also planted a couple squash plants, a few watermelons, cantaloupe and a pumpkin from nursery plants.

After planting day, the next few days were spent chasing Isaac out of the garden. You’ll remember that he enjoyed laying in the garden before it was planted for the season. What a huge mistake on my part, I see in hindsight, allowing him do that. Flinging handfuls of soil from one end to the other also brought him great joy, though it dispersed my seeds in a very haphazard way. Brainstorming, I pounded in stakes and stapled up chicken wire, sure that the problem was solved. Apparently chicken wire doesn’t deter Isaac; it barely slowed him down. Giving a tug on the wire, out popped the staples and Isaac scrambled up into the garden to enjoy himself.

Aside from having Isaac in the garden, and the fact that now the seeds were all over in the garden, I also couldn’t weed because as things sprouted, I had no idea what was what. So, my garden became a growing mystery. I told my husband that whatever (if anything!) we get from it will simply be a bonus.

Fast forward a few months and now that things are growing pretty well, he isn’t interested in being in the garden, which is great. All the plants are thriving, weeds and vegetables alike. The plants have reached the stage where I can differentiate between them so the weeding can begin.

It’s comical to find tomato plants planted in areas where they were not planted. There is a cantaloupe plant growing over by green zucchini, quite a ways away from it’s initial planting place. I actually didn’t know what it was until just recently, comparing the plant in the wrong spot to the plant in it’s proper spot and then it’s identity became clear. Out of the three rows of carrots, only three straggly carrots survived. I can’t help but laugh. Nothing is growing where I expected it to be!

Life with Isaac is interesting and I am interested to see what will actually come from this garden. It’s a guessing in the garden game for sure!

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Today is an overcast Thursday; warm, but not humid or hot, thankfully. It’s the perfect go-for-a-walk-day. Well, I actually have one child who believes that every day is a go-for-a-walk-day, which is untrue but we go regardless.

So I sliced up cheese and kielbasa then put them into containers. I tucked them into a bag with a sleeve of crackers and off we went.

Our first trail we only walked down a bit. It’s a lovely wooded trail with a bridge over a little waterfall. But with the overcast weather, the imminent rain and the leafy, wooded area, there were too many mosquitoes. After about 20 minutes, we decided to take a short drive to another trail that was less close and closed in.

This wider, more breezy trail has picnic tables along the route; the perfect place for our picnic snack, which we started with. Then we headed off on walk number two.

This walk involved eating a few wild mulberries, a few more wild raspberries and a even more Pennsylvania blackberries.

We had walked this trail earlier this week with a friend. She introduced me to an app called PlantSnap, which is so neat for identifying plants and trees. You snap a picture (above) and it tells you what it is. Just look at this screenshot below. It’s the result from the picture I took. Neat, huh? You can also read more about the plant or tree by scrolling down.

It was around this time then it started to rain. Thankfully, rain doesn’t particularly bother my kids. It doesn’t bother ducks either. We found a mama duck and her five tiny fluff ball babies. They were so sweet. We hurried along though, we certainly didn’t want to worry the mama.

We were also able to spot a great big frog, throw some rocks and then we came upon this. It’s a turtle nest protection box. So neat. Previously we have found turtle eggs that had hatched in the sand. This area seemed rather rocky to me but maybe it’s a different type of turtle. We will have to look it up.

I love that there are so many wonderful places that are fairly close to us that we are able to enjoy, explore and learn about nature.

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We have one of those Cedar Summit playhouse sets in our backyard. The kids have loved it but a year or two years ago John started talking about an actual fort in a tree. I guess time just goes by and I never really set out to act on it.

My dad and brother came over yesterday and teamed up with John to build it. About 8ft square with a tree in the middle, John is pretty pleased. While I love that he’s learning and involved, I do get nervous when he operates the saw.

Each time he turns the saw on, I’m certain he is going to cut off his hand or finger. But we finished the project with all limbs and digits accounted for.

Using random rope from in our shed, some pallet boards, and grandpa’s knot-tying knowledge, they also made a pretty decent rope ladder. John drilled holes in each slat, slid it on the rope and tied a knot underneath. The steps are a little too far apart now that the rope has stretched out but he’s getting pretty good climbing up and down it. It’s perfect for pulling up after he’s climbed up into the fort too, then no one can follow him up.

Grandpa also gave John a little pulley. That was the first thing John did once the platform was up; get that pulley system with bucket rigged up. It will be essential in getting books, blankets and snacks up and down to his fort.

The railing is now up since it’s actually pretty high up. It looks good. We also ordered him a hammock chair for him to sit in up there and be comfortable while he reads or listens to his audio stories. Or Adventures in Odyssey. He listens to that a lot!

Building a tree fort; what a day!

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The other day my daughter went picking at a berry farm with her friend and brought home some very ripe strawberries! They’re beautiful, red and so fragrant.

One of the first things I think about when looking at a basket of berries is hot milk cake with, of course, whipped cream and said berries.

Hot Milk Cake Recipe

What You’ll Need:

4 eggs, 2 cups of sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup of milk, 2 cups of flour, 2 tsp of baking powder

What You’ll Do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. In a bowl beat together eggs and sugar

3. In a pot, on low, heat butter and milk

4. In yet another bowl (yes, lots of dishes!), mix your baking powder and flour

5. Add the hot milk, alternately, with the flour to the eggs/sugar, beginning and ending with the milk

6. Pour onto a large sheet pan lined with parchment paper

7. Bake for about 30 minutes

8. Cool, dice, and top with berries and whipped cream

It was from my husband that I stole this recipe. He mostly enjoys cooking but occasionally he dabbles in baking. Sometimes he writes at ebabble.net about it.

The post Hot Milk Cake and Strawberries appeared first on Beautiful Calling.

This year our strawberry patch is simply a hanging basket. It hangs off the railing on the deck outside my bedroom. I have to admit I’m pleasantly surprised at the number of berries that have come off this plant so far and even more shocked at how deliciously sweet they are.

Our previous strawberry patch was a 4 x 4 plot in the back corner of our yard. I’m not sure if it was the ants that seem to reside in that area or the fact that it only got mid morning sun because the fence and the lilac tree blocked the hot afternoon sun, but, either way, the strawberry plants did not do well. Despite the enriching soil and peat moss I added, the plants were producing few berries and those that did ripen were ant-nibbled.

Anyway, back to my hanging basket. I’ve noticed that a few berries have some nibbles out of them. My son, who also likes to eat berries, asked me what was snacking on our berries?

I haven’t seen any ants but there are bees and wasps are around so I suggested to him that perhaps they were flying by and having a taste.

The very next morning I noticed some flapping out our patio door. I stepped out onto the deck and peeked around the basket and lo, and behold, there was a robin perched on the edge of the planter flapping madly to keep his balance, and picking up my berries.

The robin was more surprised to see me than I was to see her and off she flew.

I shared my new-found discovery with my son and patted myself on the back for having solved the mystery of our strawberry thief.

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Pondering Life in the Garden

With the COVID-19, the world has become a different place. Some areas are harder hit than others with the virus, or with the lockdown restrictions. We live in Southern Ontario, Canada. Our area has had a fair number of cases, many deaths and some pretty strict lockdowns. The restriction I’m having the hardest time with is that all our green spaces, parks and trails and closed. I miss the trails. Walking is almost as essential to my youngest as breathing is; it’s also my sanity saver. We are still walking on sidewalks and such, but it’s just not the same.

Other than that, our day to day lives haven’t changed much. Isaac sure misses his morning at our local school, C & J are still working towards the end of our homeschooling year. My husband is still going to work each day. The kids do Sunday School on Zoom each week, we watch our church services on Livesteam. I’m still never caught up on laundry. Yep, some things are different and many things are still the same.

I read this verse the other day.

Luke 6:35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

He is kind unto the unthankful. That hit me! It’s amazing. I want to be thankful. I am told to give thanks in everything (1Thessalonians 5:18). I try to be thankful. But I know I’m not there, I am not truly a thankful person, only working towards it. Yet, He is kind anyway. He is so good!

So this week I’m thankful for:

• my husband’s job
• health
• my bible
• forgiveness
• homeschooling
• technology

and a few of my favorite things this week

– something old – Slugs and Bugs
Now there are some fun albums; singing about tractors, ninjas, Jesus and more. We’ve enjoyed these for a few years and though my oldest (13) isn’t into them so much any more, she will sing and dance along for the benefit of my youngest.

– something new – Buddy Davis
So we’ve been enjoying the special videos and activities on Answers in Genesis Canada during the COVID-19 quarantine. There’s also a lot of interesting things on Answers in Genesis Kids too. We watched an interesting series on Dinosaurs (we watched the kids track videos) and while we were watching those, we met Buddy Davis, who sang some songs on the show. We enjoyed his songs: Billions of Dead Things, The Woodpecker, Genesis 1:27, It’s Designed To Do and more.

– something old – Chicken Pot Pie
While chicken pot pie is old, this was a new recipe I tried. It has a lot of butter which is probably why the filling is so tasty! Ina Garten always has great recipes. So good!

– something new – French Breakfast Puffs
A beautiful lady, Mrs. Hochstedler, the mom of a good friend growing up, gave me a copy of her family’s cookbook. I’ve been enjoying trying new recipes during our quarantine. They’re a delicious, special breakfast (or anytime!) treat that I’ve been making once a week.

Feel free to share what you’re thankful for or your something new or old with me!

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