Listen HERE.
I found this via Girltalk. Rachel Barkey is terminally ill with cancer and has between 6 and 18 weeks left to live. Here is a video of her giving a speech which had me transfixed.
Wednesday 13 May 2009
Friday 8 May 2009
Nigella's Pomegranate Ice-cream
I have just whipped this up and it's in the freezer for later! The kids have licked the bowl clean!
NO-CHURN POMEGRANATE ICE CREAM
Serves 8
2 pomegranates (you will need an extra one if you want to decorate the ice-cream)
1 lime
1-1/2 cups/175g icing (powdered) sugar
2 cups /500 ml double cream
Juice the pomegranates and the lime, straining the juices into a bowl. (You will have approximately 3/4 cup of pomegranate juice.)
Add the icing sugar and whisk to dissolve.
Whisk the cream and keep whisking until soft peaks form in the pale pink cream.
Spoon and smooth the ice cream into a rigid plastic container with a tight-fitting lid and freeze for at least 4 hours or overnight.
Scatter with pomegranate seeds when you eat it.
P.S. It went down very well with the guests, too. :-)
Thursday 7 May 2009
Interesting sites, articles and encouragements.
Here goes -
The first is HERE if you are a former U.S citizen /ex-pat, and you would like some American food... fast! I often come across recipes which require ingredients which could only be purchased in the USA. The downside is the shipping costs. (I need to find out where I can purchase some A1 steak sauce for a recipe by the way! I might need to end up ordering it off here...but it is quite expensive!)
The second was prompted by a discussion long ago with a friend (You know who you are!) who likes the camping life, (and also because my husband and I were discussing a church camp-out) only a la American style, what with the CAMPFIRES and the BBQ....but obviously not the American weather. Cos we really like the weather here. Honest.
The next one is over HERE, where I discovered some pretty nifty kids projects using natural cleaning ingredients (which you might have in the house, and if you don't, I'm a new 'Soda-crystals' convert as it's got my burnt-on-food-in-pan problem sorted. This now happens frequently since No.4 came on the scene!)
The other night Ichthus held a resources evening in our church, which was surprisingly well-attended. (There are more people homeschooling in N.Ireland than I realised and it was really lovely to meet some of them. You realise you are not alone, and it's always good to compare notes!) Anyway, I purchased some charts from Doorposts. The first was a Blessing chart, then an 'If then' and a 'Brother offended' chart. We took an hour on Wednesday morning (we were all exhausted from the display the night before) and chatted about the content of all the charts. The kids faces lit up somewhat when we went through the 'Blessing Chart.' I really think I haven't been rewarding their good behaviour as much as I could (after all, God blesses us for our faithfulness and obedience) and this chart gives really practical ideas, such as rewarding diligence, cheerfulness, and kindness (especially when the parent observes a marked improvement in one of these areas) with things like an ice-cream for say, cheerfulness; special one-on-one time for the child with their parents, a chance to stay up a bit later than usual, and breakfast in bed ( yes,for the child!)among many of the suggestions! The eyes just got wider by the minute, believe me! The chart did mention that it is important to tell the child that he shouldn't desire just the reward, but the ultimate desire should be to please God. I think it will be fun to implement these ideas. Perhaps you could home in on one character trait a month, and reward accordingly if there is an obvious effort being made. Baby steps...
The main thing is that it might encourage more consistency in discipline on my part. For me, consistency is the most difficult hurdle I face, particularly when I'm tired.
Last but not least, I read (via Jess) an encouraging post on strong-willed individuals over at Steppin' Heavenward. Sometimes the blessings reveal themselves when we least expect them. Praise God for strong-willedness. It can be blessed and harnessed with lots of guidance and prayer for wisdom.
The first is HERE if you are a former U.S citizen /ex-pat, and you would like some American food... fast! I often come across recipes which require ingredients which could only be purchased in the USA. The downside is the shipping costs. (I need to find out where I can purchase some A1 steak sauce for a recipe by the way! I might need to end up ordering it off here...but it is quite expensive!)
The second was prompted by a discussion long ago with a friend (You know who you are!) who likes the camping life, (and also because my husband and I were discussing a church camp-out) only a la American style, what with the CAMPFIRES and the BBQ....but obviously not the American weather. Cos we really like the weather here. Honest.
The next one is over HERE, where I discovered some pretty nifty kids projects using natural cleaning ingredients (which you might have in the house, and if you don't, I'm a new 'Soda-crystals' convert as it's got my burnt-on-food-in-pan problem sorted. This now happens frequently since No.4 came on the scene!)
The other night Ichthus held a resources evening in our church, which was surprisingly well-attended. (There are more people homeschooling in N.Ireland than I realised and it was really lovely to meet some of them. You realise you are not alone, and it's always good to compare notes!) Anyway, I purchased some charts from Doorposts. The first was a Blessing chart, then an 'If then' and a 'Brother offended' chart. We took an hour on Wednesday morning (we were all exhausted from the display the night before) and chatted about the content of all the charts. The kids faces lit up somewhat when we went through the 'Blessing Chart.' I really think I haven't been rewarding their good behaviour as much as I could (after all, God blesses us for our faithfulness and obedience) and this chart gives really practical ideas, such as rewarding diligence, cheerfulness, and kindness (especially when the parent observes a marked improvement in one of these areas) with things like an ice-cream for say, cheerfulness; special one-on-one time for the child with their parents, a chance to stay up a bit later than usual, and breakfast in bed ( yes,for the child!)among many of the suggestions! The eyes just got wider by the minute, believe me! The chart did mention that it is important to tell the child that he shouldn't desire just the reward, but the ultimate desire should be to please God. I think it will be fun to implement these ideas. Perhaps you could home in on one character trait a month, and reward accordingly if there is an obvious effort being made. Baby steps...
The main thing is that it might encourage more consistency in discipline on my part. For me, consistency is the most difficult hurdle I face, particularly when I'm tired.
Last but not least, I read (via Jess) an encouraging post on strong-willed individuals over at Steppin' Heavenward. Sometimes the blessings reveal themselves when we least expect them. Praise God for strong-willedness. It can be blessed and harnessed with lots of guidance and prayer for wisdom.
3 weeks in...some ideas for improvement
* Increase family baking sessions.
* Library use - weekly visits.
* More creative art projects
* Increase outings/opportunities to meet with other h/ed families
* Encourage good penmanship and development of character by writing letters rather than emails
* Concentrate on handwriting over next month - spacing, height of capitals in comparison to lower-case, neatness, and focus.
* Expression in reading with J.
* More computer time for Mental Maths and less formal
* Upon completing Egypt project, encourage kids to compile a list of projects they would like to do themselves to encourage thinking 'outside the box' and autonomous learning
Over the past month, I made a huge discovery. They learn best when they are having fun and they are interested! I plan to home in on this more, without allowing them to become lazy, because there will always be times we need to know and learn things that we don't particularly want to! It still doesn't mean the learning of these things needs to be boring. There are ways and means, even if they learn in completely different ways.
* Library use - weekly visits.
* More creative art projects
* Increase outings/opportunities to meet with other h/ed families
* Encourage good penmanship and development of character by writing letters rather than emails
* Concentrate on handwriting over next month - spacing, height of capitals in comparison to lower-case, neatness, and focus.
* Expression in reading with J.
* More computer time for Mental Maths and less formal
* Upon completing Egypt project, encourage kids to compile a list of projects they would like to do themselves to encourage thinking 'outside the box' and autonomous learning
Over the past month, I made a huge discovery. They learn best when they are having fun and they are interested! I plan to home in on this more, without allowing them to become lazy, because there will always be times we need to know and learn things that we don't particularly want to! It still doesn't mean the learning of these things needs to be boring. There are ways and means, even if they learn in completely different ways.
Quotes of the week
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.Henry David Thoreau
It is a tragedy that, for most of us, school is not a place for deepening our sense of what we are gifted at or what we are committed to. If it were, think of the lasting changes it would have made.Peter Senge (with slight ammendment)
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