Jonah and the Whale (or BIG FISH)

Another Week, another open the book school assembly. I adore going into school every week and doing these bible story school assemblies.  I love the fun we have doing them, I love the greetings from the children that spot you arriving early "I love your assemblies", and I even love the fun we have organising props and costumes.  Hard work sometimes, yes, but oh so fun.

This week we were doing the story of Jonah and the Big Fish (or whale if you prefer).  Had an awesome friend from church who made us a boat which we will go on to use in other stories later.

But we also needed a big fish.  We had all sorts of suggestions, or ideas, but I knew what I wanted to do, I just didn't know if I could pull it off.  In the end it wasn't all that difficult.

I asked on our church email list if anyone had a beach shelter that I could borrow and managed to get one.  Then I pulled together every piece of blue fabric in my stash, a roll of masking tape, a roll of duct tape, scissors and a pair of eyes.  Oh, did I not mention the eyes?  heeheee.

I had some spare pieces of foam board from when I made the Tree for the story of the garden of Eden.  I drew around a small plate, and carefully cut two circles out of what was left of that foam board.  I drew smaller circles to one side of those larger circles, and coloured them in with black paint.  I popped those into my bag as well and set off for school.  We arrived earlier than usual, because I knew it would take time to set up.

I put the beach shelter up then began draping the pieces of blue fabric, over it, taping them at the edges where they met the shelter.  I started by using masking tape, but it soon became clear that small pieces of duct tape would work better and I switched.  

I drew the bits of fabric together at the back, then pulled them out to make a kind of fish tail shape.

I attached the eyes to the front with masking tape, hanging them from the top edge of the beach shelter.

And there you have it a big fish.  Well, kind of.  But it did allow for Jonah to deliver his lines from INSIDE the fish!

With another piece of blue fabric to be the sea, it all came together well!

Don't you just love the little details on the boat, like the anchor?  On the back of one of the sides of the boat it even says www.jonahwhalewatch.com!  AWESOME.

We have other stories and props featuring in the coming weeks, check back soon to see what else we have made.

Living Thankfully

Another week, another list.  Here we go then, in no particular order, On Sunday 5th February 2012 I am thankful for . . . . 

591.  hot lemon cold remedies.

592,  Being walking distance from  church so hubby can go down without having to take the car out in this weather.

593.  Hubby letting me use his laptop while I'm not feeling well, so I can get online from my position on the sofa.

594.  An  easy nation to make food for at tomorrow's leadership course.  Turkish food isn't difficult.

595.  Awesome opportunity to hear a Holocaust survivor tell of his experiences.

596.  All team members were able to be around for this weeks Open The Book.

597.  Good parent's evening for youngest (now at sixth form college) but OH MY WORD is it me, or are teachers getting ever younger?

598.  Eldest got back to his house safely after concerns that last night's "Get Out" (He's a stage management student) would be hampered by snow.

599.  Hubby's cousin was understanding about us not braving the snowy roads to go to her birthday party yesterday.

600.  Journaling

601.  Suggestions from a friend on facebook of how to make an ordinary pudding much better.  I shall take this recipe I used last week and swap the dates for dried apples.

602.  I can use vouchers to organise frugal date nights for me and hubby.

603.  Friends at church who provide supplies for us to make props for Open The Book.

604.  Having a valid bus pass that means I can get out and about, even though hubby has to have the car for work.

605.

If you wish to participate in blogging about your list of 1000 gifts or in Thankful Thursday, you can do so by clicking on the banners at the top of this post.

Frugal Date Nights

In the run up to Christmas I had seen lots of projects on Pinterest for 12 months of date night gifts.  I knew that 2012 has the potential to get busier than we are used to for both of us, and decided to do something along those lines as hubby's Christmas gift.

I knew paying for these dates was going to be an issue, so I used my head a bit and came up with some solutions.

First of all I raided my Tesco points.  For my American friends, let me explain.  Tesco is the supermarket where we do most of our grocery shopping.  They have a points scheme, so for every pound you spend you get a point onto your card.  You can then either use those points to buy things in store or save them up for deals.  Deals cover a wide range of things, but for our purposes, they cover a range of restaurant chains and cinemas.

So I placed an order for my Tesco points deals vouchers.  I can't share everything I ordered here, because my husband reads my blog and I want each date to be a surprise until he opens that envelope.  Vouchers are only valid for about 6 months, and I ordered ahead so I had time to finish the gift, so those only take us up to the middle of May.

I also decided that every other date should be at home, in order to further bring down the costs, and make the vouchers last longer.

First of all I put the envelopes together.  I printed out an invitation for each date (24 in all, 2 each month) at A5 size, trimmed them to close to the borders, and mounted them onto card.  Where vouchers were needed for the date, I also put those vouchers into each envelope.  I bought some nice gold envelopes from ebay and I found a basket that the envelopes would fit in nicely (thanks dad, it was one you gave us for Christmas the year before), and popped them in.  Wrapping it was a bit interesting but I managed.

Here are the invitations for the three envelopes that have been opened so far:

The next part of the plan is what makes it all work!  I use an online To Do list which also has an app that I use on my phone that syncs with the online service.  Astrid. I went into my Astrid account, and added To Do list items for every single date, right down to the fine details.  So for the Indian one you see above, I entered To Do list items for:

• making sure the table cloth was laundered
• getting the balti serving dishes out of storage
• setting the table
• arranging the menu 
• making sure I made time to get myself ready
• organising an Indian music play list on Spotify
• and so on

I put links into some of those To Do list items, so recipes were there, as was a how to page for a lotus flower napkin fold.  It truly is these to do list items that make the whole thing work!

Sorry for the quality of the photo, it was taken when the light wasn't good, with my phone.

The tablecloth is a piece of fabric I picked up years ago at a craft fair, each of those tiny flowers is embroidered.  I just hemmed the two ends and use it as a tablecloth.  The balti serving dishes I bought sometime last year from one of the local supermarkets and under the balti dishes is a food warmer.

I will continue to share some of the ideas as we move through the year.  Obviously once we get past May, some of the dates involve spending money to go out as the vouchers were not valid past then, but I am sure you will find inspiration from some of those ideas too.  Come back later in the year for more . . 

Made for Relationship

This article was written in April 2009 in response to something written by my friend Dana.  In that post she talked about the fact that we as Christians are all called to live in community, not just so we can impact the world, but for own betterment. Things have changed for me since this post was written and not only are my husband and I now in a small group again but we are leading it, and other situations mentioned have also changed, relationships are stronger in some ways. However I think the main point of this article still stands, We are a People Made For Relationship: 


 I quote: " As much as God works in us to transform us from the inside out, He gave us something more to refine us. He gave us each other. The community of Christ is meant to be a tool not only as the hands and feet of Christ to the world, but for the betterment of each other through shared lives, shared work, shared struggles and shared encouragement." 


She obviously had no idea how timely this post would be for me. 
I have really been struggling with the whole relationships issue over recent months. 
Because of various things that happened, hubby and I found ourselves still in the same church but not in a small group. We do go to a soaking group most weeks, but lets be honest, that involves maybe 15 - 20 minutes of relationship building and then the rest of the night is spent sleeping, (well not necessarily sleeping, but it's interaction direct with Father rather than with each other). I LOVE soaking, I adore it, but I need something more. I need relationship. 
I am not blaming anyone at our church for the situation in which we find ourselves, it is not down to people, it is down to circumstances that have arisen. 


Over the last couple of months I have begun to understand and to formulate in my head why this is so important to me, and why I am feeling so lost without it. I had already come to the realisation that a big part of it was about encouragement. I know one of the things I am called to do is to encourage people, I LOVE doing it, but unless you know people, unless you're aware of what's going on in their lives, that becomes a difficult thing to do well. I also was aware that I NEED encouragement. When I am facing struggles, when I am facing challenges, doubts, issues of sin even, I need encouragement, I need someone who sees what is happening in my life and says "Come on, you CAN DO IT!" 


Then, on Sunday morning, before I read Dana's post, I came to a further realisation about my need for relationship. 
On Sunday, we had baptisms. 5 people making that public declaration of their relationship with Jesus! AWESOME morning, absolutely amazing, and it made me cry! One of the things that happens at our church when a person gets baptised is that after they have been dunked in the water people pray for them publicly, or bring bible verses they believe god wants to speak to that person through, or pictures, visions, or other "words" from Father God. It's an incredible time as you listen to what God has in store for these people. 
I sat there and I cried, because I realised that another big thing about small groups, whether that be an organised group within your church, or whether it be just a group of people that you gather together yourself, is that you are able to speak into each others lives. 


 Before we left the group we were in before, the group that we were leading and needed to take a break from, that was one of the things we used to do a lot of, praying for each other and speaking into each others lives, what we believed Father God was saying and showing to us. 


 Dana explains it this way: " This does not mean that need to let all 1,600 members of my home church in on all my business all the time. It does mean that I have gathered around myself a few groups of people who know me and in spite of that, love me; whose counsel and advice I trust and cherish and most importantly; who love the Lord and want for all of us to be more like Him. It is these people that I can trust to honestly evaluate my words and my behaviours as Christ's ambassador. It is these people that I can trust to hold me up with Truth and not stroke my ears with pretty words. It is these people who sharpen me as I strive to live in community with people who are sometimes very unlike me." 


 So yes, those aren't just nice, sweet, "God wants to bless you with THIS . . . " type words. It was also a time where we were able to be honest with each other, where we were able to get a spiritual kick in the pants from people we trusted as we were honest with them and they were honest with us. 


 BUT that was the realisation of Sunday morning, that I am also missing out on the opportunity to have others whom I know and trust spiritually, speak into my life, and to do the same in return. 


 And all along I have known that WE ARE A PEOPLE WHO ARE MADE FOR RELATIONSHIPS, and women, even more so than men, we are made with this capacity to love and to share, and when that is not used, is not filled, we have a hole, something is missing. 


Yes, I DO have relationships online, that other people in the church might not have, but over the last few months, those have changed, those have drifted, and are not the same as they once were. So here I am. Totally acknowledging and agreeing with what Dana wrote. STILL desperate to be in close relationship with a small group of people. Willing to work on creating that for ourselves, (I have worked on getting the "visitor" areas of our home suitable for visitors over the past few weeks and discussed with hubby last night who we might invite for dinner over the coming weeks), but not really knowing where to start. 


I'll finish with a final quote from Dana's post: "We spend a great deal of time focusing on the fluffy, friendly part of our Christian relationships and while we do so, we rob ourselves of one of our most valuable earthly assets. Accountability among believers is not always comfortable, easy or fun, but it is certainly one of the most loving things we can do for each other. Building a person up doesn't merely consist of words that puff up and make us feel good. It includes cutting out the weaker parts so that the entire structure is more sound. It is sometimes painful, heartbreaking, backbreaking work. Who better to entrust it to than those whose hearts are grafted with our own into the heart of the Giver of Life?"

Sticky Toffee Pudding

A few weeks ago I shared my Gingerbread recipe on a linky party and someone asked if I had a Sticky Toffee Pudding recipe.  I didn't, so I had to go looking for one.

I looked at a lot of different recipes on a lot of different sites and settled on one from Nigella Lawson, for Easy Sticky Toffee Pudding, where you don't have to make the sauce separately but it all cooks together.  From my searching it seems that there are two key ingredients for a good sticky toffee pudding.  Dark brown sugar and dates.  Now I have plenty of dark brown sugar.  I have a favourite dark brown sugar, in fact I call it my secret weapon in my gingerbread recipe.  A molasses unrefined sugar.

But the dates I wasn't so sure about.  I'm not keen on dates, don't particularly like any of those darker dried fruits, although I am beginning to tolerate them in some recipes so I thought I would give it a go.

For 8 portions

Ingredients

FOR THE CAKE:

100g dark muscovado sugar

175g self-raising flour

125ml full-fat milk

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

50g unsalted butter, melted

200g chopped, rolled dates

FOR THE SAUCE:

200g dark muscovado sugar

Approx. 25g unsalted butter in little blobs

500ml boiling water

Preheat the oven to 190°C/gas mark 5 (375f for my American friends) and butter a 1 ½ litre capacity pudding dish.  I forgot to butter the dish.  I don't know if that had an effect on how the dish turned out, let's carry on and see.

 Weigh out your first 100g of the sugar

This particular sugar does have a tendency to harden when stored for a while , if yours is the same you might want to crumble it up between your fingers.

Add the self raising flour and mix together.

Measure out your milk, beat 1 egg into it and add the vanilla extract.  

Melt the first 50g of butter and add that to the milk mixture.

Add this milk mixture to the sugar and flour and mix with a wooden spoon. 

Fold in the Dates

Then scrape into the prepared pudding dish.

Take the 2nd lot of sugar and spread over the top of the pudding.  Take the 2nd lot of butter and in small pieces dot the top of the pudding.

Now take 500ml of boiling water.  YES, boiling water.  And pour it all over the pudding.  

Transfer that to the oven and bake for 45 minutes.  You may need 5 to 10 minutes longer.  The top of the pudding should be springy and spongy when it is cooked.  

I gave mine an extra 10 minutes, because I couldn't see how the top was because not all the sauce had sunk to the bottom.  In hindsight I think it would have been ready at the 45 minute mark.

Now this is what it is supposed to look like according to the Nigella website:

You can see there is virtually no sauce pooling on the top of hers at all.  Hmmmmm . . . . . 

Let's get a portion out and see . . . .

Well, it looks good, it is cooked through, and yummy and gooey.  For me, there are too many dates in it, but like I said, I don't usually like them.  I think if I served it with some cream or ice cream as Nigella suggests, I would eat more of it, but I did finish that small portion.  Got son to try it when he got home and he too thinks there are too many dates in, wishes I would make it without them though.

This is not the first time a recipe has ended up not quite looking the way it should.  Check out how I ended up making Lemon Surprise Dessert.

If you're after a more summery dessert, check out my other Nigella recipe, Pomegranate Ice Cream.

Hmmm, seems I am rather fond of desserts doesn't it?
Would anyone be interested in a series of traditional English puddings?  Any particular requests?