Living My Dream

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Melinda

Living My Dream

I spent so many years longing to be married. I dreamed of what it would be like to have a family of my own. It was a glorious picture in my mind!

Then I got married.

Suddenly the dream was no longer glorious. My husband had a job that kept him away from home two weeks out of every month. I had a large house to clean and take care of; the daily tasks of cleaning, laundry, and organizing seemed never ending. Before too long, I had morning sickness and other normal pregnancy symptoms on top of everything else.

The dream had turned into reality. Daily chores and unending laundry piled up. I quickly became tired of having the same tasks everyday without any obvious way to measure progress. No matter how much time I spent doing dishes, washing laundry, cleaning the house, the exact same jobs needed to be completed the next day.

However, at one point, I realized that I truly am living my dream! I’m married to a wonderful man, I have a beautiful daughter, and I have my own home to care for.

In so many ways, my life is like that dream of previous years. Loving and being loved by Jason is just as beautiful as I imagined it to be. Jason is a wonderful picture of true love to me; he loves me (and demonstrates his love) even when I am unlovable. He is a good picture of self-sacrificial love by the way he serves me and he serves our family.

Part of my job involves caring for a sweet, little girl. I get to cuddle her and play with her as part of the tasks I do every day.

So yes, the dream I had before I got married was based in a bit of fairytale. My dream is now mixed with a big dose of reality. But honestly that makes the realization of my dream so much sweeter.

Now, I have new dreams. I have dreams for myself, for my husband, for our daughter, and for our family. I hope that just like the dreams of a husband and family these dreams will be perfected and purified as God works and moves in my family.

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Pinterest Project: Cleaning Hairbrushes

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Melinda

Pinterest Project Month

Carrie and I recently embarked on a project to clean our hairbrushes. They both had acquired a great deal of lint-like stuff on the bristles. Carrie’s hairbrush was so bad that it was actually difficult to brush our hair with it!

I did some quick searching online and found several methods of cleaning hairbrushes. We combined several of them with great results.

Before

Before

First, we pulled all the excess hair out of the brush.

Second, we filled the kitchen sink with warm water and a bit of shampoo. We let the brushes soak in the water for fifteen minutes.

After this first soak, I was very impressed with how much gunk came off my brush . . . impressed and disgusted. The water was turning a gray color!

Third, we filled the sink with warm water again, 1/2 cup of baking soda, and 10 drops of Thieves essential oil. Again we let it soak for fifteen minutes.

After

After

After this, more and more gunk and lint came off my hairbrush. My brush ended up being just as good as new. Carrie’s brush needed more attention because it had built up lint over a long period of time.

I would highly recommend doing this simple clean on your brush regularly to avoid the grimy, yucky buildup we had on our brushes.

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Twin Talk: Do Twins Run in Your Family?

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Melinda

Twin Talk photo TwinTalk_zps6ca6ec48.jpg
No, twins do not run in our family.

Incidentally, identical twins (almost) never run in families. Fraternal twins, on the other hand, can run in families. Fraternal twins can be passed down from a mother to her daughters.

Identical twins are, simply put, inexplicable. For whatever reason, one zygote splits into two. Then the babies grow as separate individuals.

There is only one other set of twins in our family. They were our great-great aunts, Aunt Annie and Aunt Emmie. We have one picture of the four of us together although Carrie and I were so young that we do not remember meeting them.

It is also a popular question to ask whether or not Carrie and I want to have twins ourselves. I won’t answer for Carrie, but I have mixed feelings on the issue. I have loved being a  twin, and I would love to have children who share a similar bond. On the other hand, I don’t want to be pregnant with twins. My mom has described twin pregnancy as being pretty much miserable.

So we’ll wait and see. If God blesses us with twins, then great! But if not, then I’m perfectly fine with that too.

Posted in Twin Talk | 3 Comments

Freezer Cooking: 10 Pounds of Chicken

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Melinda

Imagine for a moment that your husband had to take an out-of-state trip for three days. What to do while he’s gone?

It’s much too easy to sit, mope, and miss him, but that is hardly productive. So what to do?

Freezer cook, of course!

I found a 10 pound bag of chicken leg quarters at our local store for $3.49 . . . for the entire bag! I picked it up and stuck the whole bag in the freezer.

Of course, it would have been much smarter to divide the chicken quarters up into smaller packages. Then it would have been easy to pull out one bag at a time as I needed chicken for dinners.

But I didn’t. I stuck the whole ten pound bag in the freezer. All the chicken leg quarters froze into one solid chicken lump. In order to use the chicken, I was going to have to thaw the entire batch anyway. So I decided to go ahead and thaw all of it, cook it, and turn it into yummy meals to put back in the freezer.

I started out by putting a recipe of this Salsa Chicken in the crockpot to cook. It was a quick, easy way to start the day. Within five minutes, I felt like I’d already accomplished something as I put the lid on the crockpot and turned it on.

Next, I boiled the rest of the chicken. Once it was cooked, I let it cool so I wouldn’t burn my fingers while deboning it.

I put a pot of chicken broth on the stove using the bones from the chicken quarters. I also threw in some veggies that needed to be used up.

While the broth simmered away, I mixed up a batch of this No Cream Soup Hawaiian Haystacks and Chicken Tacos.

All three of these recipes are new to me, but I must admit that from the samples I took the Hawaiian Haystacks and Chicken Tacos will be quite yummy. The verdict is still out on the Salsa Chicken. I’m kinda thinking it will be a one time recipe.

Posted in Freezer Cooking | 1 Comment

Planning for Success

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Melinda

In theory, I have always liked lists. They make it so easy to gauge my progress on a task. At a glance, I can see what I need to accomplish . . . and I can enjoy a sense of satisfaction as I cross tasks off my to-do list.

Yet, I have a tendency to become stressed with lists too. Daily to-do lists seem to be to stringent. If I am unable to accomplish everything on the list, I get stressed. Basically, I need more flexibility with my list.

Enter a weekly to-do list.

I’m giving a weekly to-do list a try. It will hold me accountable to make progress on some big goals, and I will still be able to cross items off the list.

School

  • Read book Why Should You Believe in the Trinity? by Robert M. Bowman
  • Write three pages on research paper

Homemaking

With Renae

Personal

  • Exercise four days
  • Read Defending the Faith by Mary Jo Sharp

Posted in Homemaking | 1 Comment

Influential Books

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Melinda

Books have the power to stay with the reader. They can offer help and encouragement; they can criticize and convict.

I well remember the first book that had a great impact in my life. It seems like it was not too long after I was saved; I was probably around ten or eleven. I never came to a point of doubting my salvation, but I did begin to doubt how I could know and trust that what is contained in the Bible is true.

After all, couldn’t the stories and teachings of the Bible simply be fabrications of men?

This deeply troubled me as a new (and young!) believer. Fortunately, my mom was equipped to help me search out the answers to my soul-troubling questions. She pointed me in the direction of Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. It didn’t take much perusal of this book to calm my fearful heart and to instill in me a confidence that I can trust the Bible to be God’s faithful, truthful word.

In many ways, that one recommendation from mom changed my life forever. First, it gave me confidence from my early years as a believer that the Word of God is trustworthy. I have never to this day struggled to that same extent with wondering whether I can trust the Bible. Secondly, it laid the foundation for my pursuits later in life. I believe Evidence that Demands a Verdict started a hunger for knowing more and more about how to defend Christianity from a logical and historical point of view. It ultimately lead me to study Christian philosophy as an undergraduate and now to pursue a higher degree in Christian apologetics.

Yes, that one book changed the course of my life. Now when I face a question about Scripture that I do not know the answer to, I know enough from my studies to believe wholeheartedly that there is a reasonable answer. I may not know it, but there is an answer.

God’s word is sufficient; it is truthful and trustworthy.

What books have impacted you?

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This post is linked up to Mommy Mondays and Tending the Home Tuesdays. Please take a moment to head over to this blog hop and read some other posts that will encourage you in your role as mommy and homemaker.

Road to 31

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Guest Post – Weekly Meal Plan

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Carrie

I was excited when Rachel announced this series. I’m always looking for new ideas and inspiration for meal times. :-) As the week approached when I was planning to record each dinner I made for my family, God had a different plan. (I ended up spending the majority of that week on the road helping my sister and her husband move from California to Nebraska. :-) ) So this is a sample meal plan showcasing some of the typical fare you can find on our dinner table. :-)

Head over to Rachel’s blog for the menu plan and some yummy recipes. :-)

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Reminder About the Survey

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Melinda

If you didn’t take our survey last week, please take a few minutes to complete it this week. The feedback we received has been helpful as we plan for upcoming blog posts and series. We are working to write blog posts that will be beneficial to our readers based on what they would like to read/learn about.

We are working on a series about inexpensive, healthy eating as a result of a question posed to us on the survey last week. So be assured . . . if you have a question, we will do our best to answer it!

Click here to take survey

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Twin Talk: Is One of You the Evil Twin?

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Melinda

Twin Talk photo TwinTalk_zps6ca6ec48.jpg

In short, no.

This actually seems to be an issue many people are (jokingly) interested in. Perhaps it stems all the way back to Jacob and Esau. Of course, in that pair who exactly was the evil twin? Esau tried to kill Jacob, but Jacob deceived Esau and Laban. Of course, they were both good twins too. Esau forgave Jacob, and Jacob honored Laban through his hard work. So perhaps the moral to their story is there is no such thing as a good twin/evil twin syndrome.

With Carrie and me, there is no good twin/evil twin. Just like Jacob and Esau, we both have times of sinfulness and times of victory. But then again there’s nothing inherently special about that; it just means we’re human.

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We’re on Facebook!

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Melinda

Wholesome Womanhood is on facebook!

As we delve into the facebook world with our blog, we hope that it will provide a better, easier way to connect and interact with our readers. Please take the time to visit us on facebook; we would love to meet you over there.

We will be sharing links to great articles about motherhood, homeschooling, homemaking, and more. Look also for quotes that will be be an encouragement to you in your journey as a wife, mom, and homemaker.

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