Our Anniversary

May 10th is not only Mother's day, but also our anniversary!

Douglas and I have been married for 23 wonderful and exciting years.
I thought you would all enjoy a "portrait" of the past 23 years.


Douglas and I were married on May 10th 1986.
Even though we were both unsaved at the time it is amazing and wonderful how the Lord brought us together.

Our first anniversary!

I love you!!!!!

Enjoy the rest of the pictures!

And They Two Shall be One Flesh

This past Monday I was asked to write a guest post for a dear blogging friend who has a great burden for married couples. Michelle from By His Grace and for His Glory has done a month long series on the subject of Marriage and I would like to encourage all of you to visit her blog and to read the other three posts. They were a great blessing and I am sure will greatly bless and encourage you.

I asked Michelle if it was okay to post here what I had written for her and she said that would be great

And They Two Shall be One Flesh

My name is Kathy and I am wife to my wonderful husband Doug. We will soon be celebrating our 23rd wedding Anniversary We have been blessed with eight children ages 20- 2years old. We are a home schooling family and have home schooled for the past 13 years.

My husband and I were saved in 1992. Since then our lives have changed miraculously.

The Lord has done a great work in our marriage so I thought I would share a few things that I have learned along the way.

In the book of Genesis we read that God created Adam and Eve. We read that Eve was taken from Adams rib and Adam states that she is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh.

Do you know that we are also created for our husbands? God prepared us for the exact man that he has chosen for us

Ephesians Chapter 5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh..

We are no longer single before God but we become one with our spouse.

In Ephesians 5:21-32 the bible compares marriage between a man and a women as a picture of the lord Jesus marrying His Bride the church and the type of relationship that we are to have with our husbands.

When we unite in matrimony, when we say those vows before God we promise that this union is for life.

Ecclesiastes Chapter 5 * 4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. * 5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

When we make a vow before God we are to stand by that vow. Todays view of marriage is “If I do not like how things are going I can just throw in the towel and quit”. This is not Gods plan at all. When I finally realized this in my marriage it was a great turning point.

I thought I would share a little testimony from my life since my daughter said that this might be a blessing to someone out there who might be struggling in their marriage.

****************

Before my husband and I were saved our marriage was very different. We followed the philosophy of the world. I should say that I did. My husband was from a divorced home and this was something that he had decided that he never wanted for his own life. I on the other hand had come from a home where my parents remained married.

I must say I was young and so foolish. I did not love my husband as I should and I was very selfish. I wanted things my way and I was difficult to please. If my husband and I got into an argument I foolishly thought that the best thing was for us to just separate and get a divorce. The way of thinking by most people in todays world.

After we were saved for a couple of years the Lord really began working in my heart and life and in my husband’s. I started to learn what a God Honoring marriage was suppose to be like and I knew that I had to make some changes in my life.

One afternoon my husband and I had a disagreement. I was upset and my emotions finally took over. I was ready to say those terrible words again “if you do not like it here you can just leave” Instead the Holy Spirit got a hold my heart and I realized what I was about to say. I quickly changed my words to this - “If you do not like it here that is just too bad. The Bible says that you are stuck with me ” My husband just looked at me, I think in shock. This is when I finally realized that I made this commitment and it was for life

As I share this testimony it is in hopes of encouraging anyone who is struggling to see that God has a greater plan and that through His grace we can have a marriage that is heaven here on earth.

In our church we have a yearly couples retreat I love attending these. My husband and I have learned a lot about having a God honoring marriage. I would encourage all of you to take advantage of such retreats it will strengthen your marriage and your home.

Did you know that marriage can be a part of heaven here on earth?

Here are a few things that I have learned that have really been a great blessing to our marriage.

Share terms of endearments, My husband loves to call me his Sweet Gal :)

Love your man- We need to stop looking through dark color glasses and start looking for the good.

Pray for your Husband! ( I daily pray that the Lord will use my husband in a mighty way to bring Glory to His Holy Name!) (I added this one here. I forgot to write this in my post for Michelle:) this one is the most important !

Be his helpmeet- There can be great satisfaction in helping your man :)

Make him his favorite meal.

When he comes home give him a great big hug and a big smooch and tell him how much you missed him
(Just as a side note our children love to see Daddy and Mommy being affectionate with each other)

Listen to him and make him feel important to you.

Talk some love talk. You know, tell him how handsome he is, tell him how strong he is and what a good provider he is. When I look at my husband in this way things really sweeten up in our relationship. How very blessed we are to have that special someone in our lives to share life with.

As I began to allow the Lord to work in my life he also began working in my husbands life.

Through these past 23 years together things have grown sweeter as we grew closer in our walk with the Lord.

May you all be blessed as you walk together with your spouse in the newness of life.

God Bless, Kathy

I hope that you will hope on over to Michelle's Blog I am sure you will truly enjoy the other posts.

I Need Thee Every Hour

 I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord;
no tender voice like thine can peace afford.

 I need thee every hour; stay thou nearby;
temptations lose their power when thou art nigh.


I need thee every hour, in joy or pain;
come quickly and abide, or life is vain.

I need thee every hour; teach me thy will;
and thy rich promises in me fulfill.

I need thee every hour, most Holy One;
O make me thine indeed, thou blessed Son.

****

I need thee, O I need thee;every hour I need thee;
O bless me now, my Savior, I come to thee.

Garden Time!

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day so my son Brandon helped out and tilled the garden for us to get our summer vegetable garden started!

This year we have decided to make the garden a lot bigger. We will have to till some more when the rain stops.

Sunday night we placed our peas in a bowl of water and soaked them over night. Monday morning my husband and I were able to plant 5 rows of peas. I am planning on planting 5 more when the rain stops hopefully in a few days!

I have never planted peas before so I am excited and I am praying that they will do really well this year.

Other things we will be planting this year are lettuce, summer squash, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, yellow stringbeans, butternut squash. We are even going to try some herbs basil, parsley, thyme, oregano.

I think we will need to really enlarge the garden! :)

I get so excited in Spring time. I love to see all of the fresh new growth of the leaves and flowers.

(Last years garden!)

If you have never planted a garden before I would encourage you to give it a try.
This really is frugality at its best!

God Bless, Kathy

Trusting in My God!

Psalm 9:9-10
The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.

During my devotions this morning I came upon this passage of scripture that was a great comfort to me.

Last week on Thursday afternoon I received a phone call from my husband telling me that he had just been laid off from his job. As the feeling of panic gripped my heart I tried to say words of comfort to my husband.

As the weekend came the Lord had calmed my soul and reminded me that I was to trust in him.

We have heard a lot on the news about so many people being laid off. We have heard about the recession that we have been going through. We have heard about how the government was going to try to fix all of these problems. But you know I always knew down deep inside that our God is in control.

This is not a new thing for us that we are going through. In 1993 when I was eight months pregnant with my 3rd child my husband was laid off. We were new Christians. Saved not even a year. We did fear and wonder how we would ever be able to go through such a great trial.

God did some miraculous things during that time. We never missed a mortgage payment. We never missed a meal. All of our bills were paid and on the very week that I was due to deliver the Lord provided my husband with a job that put us on the insurance the day he walked into the shop and I gave birth to our beautiful son Collin. All bills paid.

We serve a wonderful God.

It is easy to go back to our flesh and to try to figure out what are we going to do to get through this but this time I want to see what my great God will do to get us through this!

I want to give him all of the Praise!

This week our church is having a revival meeting. I had determined last week even before we knew that my husband had been laid off that I was going to go to every meeting at the night services. It is running from Sunday through Thursday. Having little ones makes this a great challenge but I knew that I needed to be there.

Last night the message really spoke to my heart. It spoke about being separate. The Lord has been speaking to my heart about this for a while now and I really want to please him. I am looking forward to the next few precious evenings of some good preaching and some words from my God.

I think of that song often "Count Your Blessings Name Them One By One" How we have so much to thank our God for!

I want to encourage all of you that are maybe having the same struggles that we are having or maybe some other type of struggle and right now you are going through the valley. Keep your eyes on the Lord! He promises to never leave us or forsake us!

May God richly bless you all! Kathy

Proverbs 3:5&6
Trust in the Lord with all of thine heart; and
learn not unto thine own understanding.
In all of thy ways acknowledge him,
and He shall direct thy Paths!

Frugal Friday!

Here is my Frugal Idea this week.

Spring is in the air and I am looking forward to hanging clothes on the clothes line again.

Of course hanging them out does save on the electricity but what if you do not like how the clothes feel when they come off the line?

Well a dear friend of mine gave me a great tip.

If you want your clothes to feel softer when you take them off the line especially the towels :)
just throw them in the dryer for about 10- 15 mins than put them out on the line. This works wonderful. The towels are softer from the drying time in the dryer and they smell spring fresh from being on the line.




Have a great day and enjoy the Spring weather ! :)

God Bless, Kathy
Check out some other Frugal ideas at Life as Mom Frugal Friday

Super Saving Saturday!

Well last week I shopped for two weeks again so this week I only needed to get the deals!

I have read a lot about stockpiling so I have been trying to do this a little at a time.

So here is how I did this week.

I shopped at our local Shoprite. I do not do my majority of grocery shopping here but I usually pickup the items that are at a great buy especially if there are some great coupons to go with them! :)

Red Bliss Potatoes 5lbs reg price $2.49 ,on sale for &1.99

4-Secret Flawless Deodorant reg price $4.29 each, sale price $3.99 each
used 4/2.00 mfg coupons and received $6.00 in store coupons for next shopping order

6- Boxes of Kellogg's Cereal 2.99 each on sale for 3/$4.00
used 3 $1.00/2 mfg coupons

2- Reynolds foil reg. price $3.49 each on sale for $2.49 each
used 2 $1.00 mfg coupons

4- Shoprite Zip Freezer Bags 15 Ct reg price $ 1.84 each sale price $.92 each

2-Scotch Brite Scrub Sponge 3 ct $3.29 each on sale for $1.99 each
used 1.00/2 mfg coupon

1-Chock Full o' nuts coffee reg 2.99 on sale for 1.99 ( my sweet husband needed this :)

3-Dannon Lite and Fit yogurt 6 pack reg $3.29 each on sale for $1.69 each (I had a rain check for these) used 3 - 1.00 mfg coupons (these came out to .69 cents each making each yogurt only .12 cents each :)

I also had $5.96 in store coupons

Grand total before sale and coupons : $71.37
Total after coupons and sale : $ 23.75
I saved $ 47.62 dollars !!!

And I have $6.00 store coupons for the next trip!

I am still learning the ropes but I am enjoying the savings !

Menu Monday

Dinner:
Lasagna, salad, butterhorn rolls (home made) Chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake !

Rebecca's Birthday cake :)

Oven fried chicken, fries, butterhorn rolls, apple sauce, peas
Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn, quick yeast bread, apple sauce
Pancakes
Shepard pie, corn bread

Lunch:
Sandwiches, fruit
chicken nuggets, yogurt, fruit
bagels, cream cheese, fruit
sandwiches, fruit
hot dogs, pickles

Breakfast:
Cereal, Bananas
bagels, with cream cheese
oatmeal
cereal
coffee cake

Snacks:
cheese sticks
yogurt
apples
bananas
cinn. rolls. (purchased these last week on sale for .49 cents at Aldis)
thin wheat crackers with peanut butter

Check out "I'm an Organizing Junkie Menu Monday"
Check out my blog In My Mothers Garden

Happy 20th Birthday Rebecca!

Our oldest Daughter is turning 20 today!


How times flies by!

I know that we hear that saying often but it is so true.

Rebecca has grown into a lovely young lady. She has a heart for God and a sweet and warm spirit.

Our prayer that God will use her in a mighty way to glorify Him!

Happy Birthday Rebecca!

Love your Family!


You can check Rebecca's Blog Here !

Losing Weight Part 3

In this post I thought I would mention a great site that I found Spark recipe.

You can read my other two posts Here, and Here

This site can be a great help in our quest to eat healthier and to lose some weight.

Having a family of ten and trying to save money we end up cooking most of our food from scratch. So how do I figure out the calories, fat, fiber in my recipes.

Most recipes do not have this information :)

At Spark Recipe you can enter all of the ingredients and enter the serving size and it will give you the information for your recipe.

They also have over 131,000 recipes to chose from that are lower in fat and calories.

This site has been a great help to us. My homemade bread that we make from whole wheat grain is pretty high in calories. So for now I am eating some wheat bread from the store that is light.

I know that I am getting more nutrition from the whole wheat bread that I am making, but I thought for a while I would try to reduce my calories to help me lose weight.

So far I have lost 8 pounds. This is quite exciting. It has taken me a while but I feel good and hopefully I will continue to lose.

The most important thing though that I need to do to lose weight I feel is trusting the Lord to help me to continue to eat right.

Praise the Lord for all of his love for us.

God Bless, Kathy

Menu Monday

Dinner:
Chicken Kieve, Couscous, corn, corn bread, Salad
Pasta, Butter horn rolls, Salad
Beef Roast, Mashed potatoes, corn bread, peas, fried apples
Ham, roasted potatoes, corn, baked beans, salad
Pancakes, bacon
Homemade donuts. (Rebecca's Birthday Request)

Lunch:
Sandwiches, fruit
chicken nuggets, yogurt, fruit
chocolate chip muffins (home made)
sandwiches, fruit
hotdogs, pickles

Breakfast:
Cereal, Bananas
bagels, with cream cheese
oatmeal
cereal
coffee cake

Snacks:
cheese sticks
yogurt
apples
bananas
grapes
thin wheat crackers with peanut butter
Check out "I'm an Organizing Junkie Menu Monday"

Saving Saturday!

This week I did not have to go grocery shopping! At least not for a full weeks worth.

Last week I decided to write up two weeks of menu's and I shopped for two weeks.

It was so nice not to have to go to Aldi's and do the weekly shopping.

I thought I would try this out this month and see how we would fair for two weeks on one shopping trip.

So far everything seems to be working out very good!

I actually could not believe my bill last week for two weeks was very reasonable which left a little over for a few extras that I picked up this week.

Since I had a little extra this week I was able to go to a couple of local stores and snatch a few good deals.

Here they are.

At Target this week I was able to buy :

2 Lysol Neutra Air Kits On sale for $5.99 each
Used 2/5.00 mfg coupons and they came out to .99 cents each!
2 Pepperidge Farm Gold fish $ 1.79 each
Used 2/ 1.00 Target coupons paid .79 cents each
2 Nestle Tall house cookies refrig. dough on sale for 2.39 each
Used 2/ 1.00 mfg coupons paid 1.39 each (a treat!) We never buy these!

(Cookies in the oven Great Excitement! )

I also shopped at our Local Stop and Shop grocery store

I was able to buy 4/ Healthy Ones Deli meat

Reg price 3.49
Sale price 3.00
Used 4/ .75 cent coupons which where doubled.
I paid $1.50 each !

The Lord is so good!

Keep looking for those great deals! God Bless, Kathy @ In My Mothers Garden
Go to Money Saving Moms and check out some other great deals!

Spring Cleaning ( Kitchen Oven)

Today I decided to clean the Kitchen Stove.

First I pulled out the oven and this is what was underneath. Not too bad. Considering I seem to have to do this often.

That was a quick clean not to hard :)

Next I cleaned the outside of the stove.

I then placed the stove back and ran the self cleaning for 2 hours!
Praise the Lord for self Cleaning!

The oven went from dirty to nice and clean :)



You may think that by looking at it did not look to bad but in the 22 years that I have been married I have learned that keeping up with things makes it much easier to keep clean then to wait until it is really dirty which will take me twice the time to clean.

Happy Cleaning! :)
Visit Crystal and Biblical Womanhood to see what other woman are cleaning this week.
God Bless, Kathy In My Mothers Garden

Losing Weight Part 2

Today I was reading my son a book it told the story about the tortoise and the hare.

We all know that story right. The hare was always in a rush and wanted everything to happen fast. You know quick results. The tortoise was not in such a rush and by his perseverance he completed the race and won the victory!

I have been on many diets that are like this. Eat only meat and protein and lose weight fast or eat only bland tasteless food and lose weight fast. These diets have never lasted.

Sure they produced some quick weight lost but the results did not last. As soon as I returned to eating normal food on came the pounds.

In my last post I spoke about" The Weigh Down Diet" which really is not a diet it is a new way of life changing the way that you feed your body with the food that you have so you can slowly lose the weight and keep it off.

(Again I just wanted to strongly state that I do not agree with the author of this book in her religious beliefs)

When I last lost weight with this program it took me a while to lose the twenty pounds. I felt good and not deprived.

Well this time I thought I would add a little more to my eating or should I say less. I decided to start eating some food that is lower in fat or calories. Not tasteless but just better for me.

I found this great website called "Spark People". I really like this site.

It helps you to keep track of your calories, fats, protein, and fiber intake. I am using it as a tool to help me with my weight loss.

I love that I can go to the site and look up certain foods and see what their calories really are or I can also enter an item that I purchased and fill in all of the info for that item. I just click add to my food for that day and it keeps count of all of the calories that I have eaten and helps me to see what I am actually eating in a day and maybe where I need to cut back a bit.

The best part about this program is that it is Free! It is wonderful. I had thought of joining Weight Watchers but we really do not have the extra money right now so this program is really helping me.

In my next post I will write about another great site that has been a help to me in my quest to lose some weight.

God Bless, Kathy

Spring Cleaning ( Dresser Drawers)

Well I have been over to Crystals Blog at Biblical Womanhood and she is running a series about Spring Cleaning so I thought I would post about some of the cleaning projects that I have been doing around our home.

With ten people living in our home there is always something that needs extra attention.

While I was lying in my bed last night I began thinking about the boys dressers! They seem to always be in disarray.

My four year old Caleb loves to dress himself so into his drawers he goes and rummages through every drawer until he finds just the right outfit. Here is the results after he is finished!

What a mess!

After about a 30 mins I had the drawers back in order. I removed some of the clothes.
I realized that he had way to much which added to the mess.

So much better!

Now that the warm weather is coming a warm 40 degrees :) I am really itching for Spring!
So getting our Spring Cleaning started sounds good to me! Happy Cleaning!
Check out Crystals Blog Biblical Womanhood and see what others are taking on!

God Bless, Kathy In My Mothers Garden

Menu Monday

Dinner:
Roast, mashed potatoes, salad, applesauce, home made butterhorn rolls
Pasta, Butter horn rolls, Salad
Orange Chicken, white rice
Kielbasa, Potatoes, corn, corn Bread, fried apples
Pancakes, bacon
Pizza

Lunch:
Sandwiches, fruit
chicken nuggets, yogurt, fruit
chocolate chip muffins (home made)
sandwiches, fruit
hotdogs, pickles

Breakfast:
Cereal, Bananas
bagels, with cream cheese
oatmeal
cereal
french toast

Snacks:
cheese sticks
yogurt
apples
bananas
grapes
thin wheat crackers with peanut butter
Check out "I'm an Organizing Junkie Menu Monday"

New Years Resolution!

New Years Resolutions. Its that time of the year.

In January I decided that I wanted to read my Bible through this year and to lose weight!

Well my last post I spoke about my devotional that I have been using. You can read it here if you missed it.

So I will talk about what I am doing to try to lose some weight.

About a year after I had my fifth child I decided that I really wanted to lose weight so I began to pray about it because I knew that it would be so hard to do in my own strength.

The Lord led me to this book "The Weigh Down Diet" I began to read it and it had many things that really made a lot of sense.

I prayed and asked the Lord to help me and I began my weight loss.

Some of the things that the book spoke about was cutting back on my portions. Sounds simple right? It was hard for me. I was brought up to always eat what was on my plate.

Of course if the food tasted really good I did not really want to stop.

After eating this new way for a while it became easier and I lost 20 pounds. I was so excited!

I was feeling so much better but as you can guess I did not only have five children so I shortly became pregnant again. :) Sadly my old eating habits came right back and on came the pounds again.

Three children later now and I have decided that it is time to try to lose the extra weight again.

Here is one of my strategies that I am using. I will post again to share some other things that I am trying to do to help me lose some weight.

I realized that I needed to change my way of eating but one of the things that I had liked about "Weigh down" was that I was still eating my normal food just a lot less of it. Changing the way that I thought about food really made the difference.

In the "Weigh down program" I was taught a little more on how my body worked and how it used the food that I feed it.

God created us to feel hunger, when I needed to be feed. God also created us to know when enough was enough you know that " I am full feeling". Many of us ignore that feeling or we eat so fast that we have over eaten before that feeling of "I have had enough" signals us to stop eating.

By reducing the amount I eat I am also reducing the amount of calories I am consuming, and the amount of fat.

I also am trying to take a small plate to serve my food on. This helps a lot. I feel like my plate is full.

I am really trying to be in tune with my body while I am eating. Listening to that feeling that I am satisfied so I need to stop no matter how much is still on my plate. One thing that the author spoke about was eating what I liked on my plate the most first. So I adopted a motto for my self.

"Eat the Best and Leave the rest "

This has really helped me. If I want dessert after I would try to plan for that leaving myself still a little hungry.

I would really recommend this book it gave me a lot of good insight and ideas.

Now with that said I must also state that aside from this book I do not believe or agree with the author on other issues that she is dealing with.

As with any thing I took the information that was useful and discarded the rest.

In my next post I will share some other things that I am doing to make changes and to help me lose some weight.


God Bless, Kathy

Making Yogurt Stretch!

Hi, I wanted to share how I try to make our Yogurt stretch. Now I know that there are some of you who probably make your own yogurt I have not gotten that far yet, but with 8 children who all love yogurt I needed a way to make it stretch and to make it tasty at the same time.

My daughter Rebecca and I have been trying to lower our calories and exercising in an effort to lose some unwanted pounds. :) I have purchased some low fat lite yogurt and of course the children all want some.

I usually do the majority of my shopping at our local Aldi's . They have a 32 oz plain or vanilla yogurt which they sell for $1.59. That is pretty good.

So what I thought I would try was to take one of the low fat yogurts with fruit and to put about a tablespoon or so in each serving of the Aldi's yogurt and mix. My children love this. It helps me to stretch that yogurt and to keep every one happy at the same time . :)

Do you have any ideas. I would love to hear them. God Bless, Kathy

Daily Devotions

("Girl Reading" by Charles Edward Perugini, 1878)

A Dear Friend of mine blessed me this Christmas with a devotional to use to help me read through the entire Bible this year. I am really enjoying this devotion so I thought I would share it with all of you.

A Heart Devoted is the name of the book.

Every day it has a little devotion written to women to encourage us in our daily walk with the Lord.

I love these little devotions. They have really encouraged me. It always seems to be about something I am going through that day and it just comforts my soul. It is a blessing to know that other women have the same struggles. And they share their wisdom on how the Lord has worked in their hearts.

I hope to share some of the things in the week that God speaks to me about.

May God Bless you as you serve Him,
Kathy