Did It Snow Last Night? HooooYahhh!

The bad news...Deep snow last night.

The good news...very little wind, hence no blizzard.

The better news...we're done snow blowing...

at least for another 24 hours.

The Voice of the Angels

I like reading the Christmas story in the Bible. And while the focus is and should be on the birth of Christ, I am always a bit in awe when I read about the angels who appeared to Zacharias, Mary, Joseph and finally to the shepherds.

I don't know if it is the same angel appearing to each. But the angel that appeared to Zacharias (to announce the birth of John the Baptist) and to Mary is Gabriel. There are only four verses in the Bible that mention the name of the angel Gabriel. Two in Daniel (Dan. 8:16 and 9:21). And two in Luke.

In Luke 1:19 Gabriel speaks to Zacharias and said, "I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news."

I don't know about you, but I am a bit in awe of those words, "stands in the presence of God". It would seem to me that if I were in the presence of God I most assuredly would be flat on my face. But this Gabriel stands! This must be one special angel, an important angel. And he was sent to speak to those who would first experience the Christ.

It would seem to me that things must have been abuzz in heaven at this point! Gabriel was announcing to key players on earth that the Son of God, The One Who Created All Things (John 1:1-5) was going to leave heaven to enter into mankind and become one of us (John 1:14). The promised Messiah that the prophets had watched and waited for over the centuries and centuries was now coming into His own creation to undo what Satan had done (1 John 3:8 ...last part of the verse).

We know that the angels have watched the history of man and we know that they long to see the redemption completed to its end (1 Peter 1:12 - last half of the verse). It was a long time waiting. And then! Gabriel, the angel who stands in the presence of God, is sent! To bring good news of great joy (Luke 2:10-14). Ahhh, the Focus IS on Christ!

Every Home Has a Junk Drawer

I had to smile when I saw that Paula (of A Latte Quilts) and I both spent yesterday tidying. Her pantry is neat, neat, neat. She accomplished much more than I for my task was simply to clean out the "junk drawer".

I think every home has a junk drawer. The junk drawer is the catch-all. In our house this drawer holds Pizza Hut coupons, stamps from the grocery store, recipes clipped from magazines, rubber bands, paper clips, stray clothes pins, calculator, scissors, recipe cards, etc. You get the picture. (Just in case you are junk-drawer-deprived, I'm providing a photo of Mine! Before and After!)

So here's my Tip for The Day. The key step in cleaning out a cupboard, a drawer, or a fridge, is to first dump everything. Get that thing Empty! In this instance I used a large, flat plastic container and tossed Everything into it. Look at that clean drawer! It's lovely, lovely, lovely! Sort of a minimalist look, wouldn't you say?

The next step is to place back into the drawer (the cupboard, the fridge, etc) ONLY those items that you intend to keep there. Everything else is sorted and put where it should have been put in the first place. (Most of it can be pitched into File #13). I used small baskets, retrieved from elsewhere in the house, as dividers to hold various junky items. They're perfect for this task.

The tall stack of clipped recipes? I found a dozen that were keepers. I must have been exceedingly hungry when I first ripped them from my magazines. (There's no point in hanging onto a recipe by some New York chef that calls for twelve kinds of cheese, three kinds of fresh seafood, and herbs that have names I can't even pronounce. What was I thinking?)

Now I need to tackle my sock drawer!

The Forecast for Christmas is COLD

It is Cold! Not as cold as it could be, but it is cold! I've lived here for all but three years of my life so I know that last night's low of -7 degrees F is not unusual. We will experience at least twenty below sometime during the winter and this year it looks as if we're going to have that kind of extreme cold somewhere around Christmas. That does not thrill me. (The record low for Iowa is 47 below zero, experienced February 3, 1996. Brrrrr!)

I grew up in a an uninsulated house that was constructed in the 1920s. My dad spent days every fall trying to weatherize our home by applying sheets of translucent fiber-reinforced glass cloth (photo swiped from the internet--my apologies) to the outside of the windows, using thin strips of wood nailed to the window frame to hold it in place. He often spent entire winter days in the crawl space under the house trying to thaw water pipes that had frozen, this in spite of the fact that we had kept the kitchen faucet dripping and the doors under the sink open overnight. (I'm not even going to talk about the perpetual mouse population!)

We had two heat sources -- the cookstove in the kitchen and an oil burner in the corner of the dining room. The cookstove was a dual unit. The right half of the stove had gas burners. The left half was a wood burner. The oven could be heated by either. We kids knew how to start a fire in the kitchen stove with some crumpled newspaper and a handful of corn cobs. Once the flame got roaring, we'd add smaller pieces of wood, then larger. My brothers had the task of daily bringing in bushel baskets of corn cobs from the "cob house", a rather large shed in which corn cobs were stored after the corn shelling. They also carried in the wood from the wood pile. This stove kept the kitchen toasty enough, but during the night the fire would eventually burn itself out.

The oil burner in the dining room had two vertical cylindrical units housed within an outer frame. During the night the flames would be turned down to a bare tip of blue fire. This form of "energy conservation" was actually "budget conservation" at our house. By morning the house would be frigid and we would rush to hover near the oil burner while we dressed, first warming one side, then turning to warm the other, sometimes standing so close to the stove that any small movement would put us in contact with the hot metal of the door vents.

One Christmas my aunt made five flannel shirts, one for each of us siblings. My brothers got the snazzy red flannel. Mine was a green plaid and initially I was disappointed that mine was not red. My disappointment disappeared when I donned that flannel shirt and realized how warm it was. It became a favorite. (Thanks, Aunt Anna).

Now we live in a well-insulated home with central air and a high efficiency furnace. Still....I dislike cold. And my heart goes out to those in the New England states who have lost power due to the ice storms.

I'll Never Make it on My Own!

A recent lesson to my ladies was on 'imputation'. If you find that a strange word, you can read my previous post here (and you will understand who my ladies are as well.)

In teaching this group of ladies (some new faces, some old faces) I repeatedly take them to John 6:37-40. (you can put your cursor on the verses to read them....isn't that cool!!!)

There is a surety in these verses. And the surety is in what Jesus does, and not in what we do. In John 6:37 we read that it is the Father who gives us (those who are among the redeemed) to Christ. In verse 39 Jesus reassures us that of all those that the Father gives to the Son, not a single one will be lost. Jesus affirms this in verse 40 by stating that He Himself "will raise him up on the last day".

That surety, that sureness, that assuredness is repeated in John 10:28, 29 where Jesus promises that no one can take His own away from Him, neither from His hand nor from the Father's hand. As believers, we rest in the assurance that it is God who does the saving...we do not. Indeed, we cannot. It is His work, not ours. Paul explains it in Ephesians 2:10 by telling us that we are His workmanship. It is God working in us, not us working in us.

If I count on my own good works, I'll never get there. I can't. I'll never get "good enough". But if it is God working in me that gives me spiritual life, eternal life, then I can be reassured that God will complete what he has begun. You can read that in Philippians 1:6. And that, as they say, is Good News!!

Hand Quilting is One Block at a Time

I posted earlier about the shirt quilt that I am currently hand-quilting. Hand-quilting is something that I do only when we are watching TV. But my hand-quilting projects come along slowly because we don't watch an awful lot of television anymore. (There's not a lot on there that we can abide watching!) Now and then we check out the news and once in awhile we will sit down long enough to watch one of the "old movie" channels.

Here are a couple photos of my current project. The pattern is taken from an antique quilt I once saw on eBay (a perfect place to view vintage quilts!). It was a simple matter to do the math and create the blocks. The secret, of course, is meticulous measuring and piecing. (And, no, I'm sorry, I no longer have the pattern either in my head or on paper.)

You can read more about my quilts here. And don't forget, you can click on images for a closer view.

Now...it's time for me to get moving...I have numerous things on my "to-do" list today!

Today's Sweet Adventure With Sourdough Bread

I was a tad slow with the camera today. These sweet rolls are the result of today's experiment with sourdough and as you can see one is already missing! (This may not be lemon meringue pie but these rolls did score me a few points with Hubby!)

Last evening I took the bowl of sourdough starter out of the fridge. Placed a cup of the starter in a separate glass bowl and added a cup (more or less) of white flour and a fourth cup of water to make a thick batter that is called a "sponge". The sponge needs time to ferment so the bowl sat on the counter overnight while the sourdough did its work.

In the meanwhile, the starter (the bowl that I just took out of the fridge) needed to be fed. So I stirred in a fourth cup each of flour and water and placed that bowl back in the fridge to be used another day.

This morning I added other ingredients to the sponge to make bread dough just as I did last time (read here).

When the dough was kneaded and had risen once, I punched it down and made a small loaf of bread (sorry, no photo) and these sweet rolls. I was too lazy to go through the whole cinnamon roll routine so I experimented and this is the fortuitous result. First, I patted the dough into a thin layer about 10 inches square. I spread a layer of sour cream (you could brush with sweet cream or butter for that matter) and sprinkled on some sugar and cinnamon. I folded the dough over itself in thirds. One third towards the middle.Then he opposite side over the first third. Sorta like a three-layer roll. I cut this roll in four pieces and placed the four pieces in an 8-inch square baking dish and sprinkled it again with sugar and cinnamon. Let it rise one more time. Then baked it about 20 minutes at 400 degrees F. (I really can't remember how long! Sigh!)

Some leftover frosting in the freezer from a previous baking was just enough to glaze the tops when they came out of the oven. Since I did not use butter (although you certainly may) the frosting adds just a bit of extra richness.

Tip of the Day - Leftover powdered sugar frosting freezes well. Even small amounts are sometimes just what you need to sweeten up a bit of baking.

And today's Scripture? John 6:33-35