Garden update and Messy Church

With the onset of Autumn, I thought I would give a round up of all the work we have completed in the garden this summer.

Flowers growing up the fence

The fence is completed, the patio has seen barbecue action on several sunny days and has now been joined by a decking area, which makes a great sun trap for pre dinner drinks! It also has a storage bench, which doubles as a serving area down the middle.

Ready for the BBQ

space to catch the sun

We also decided that some shelves would be good for storing items while we are cooking and keeping temptation out of the way while waiting to serve the food.  So Andy has built a "cupboard" ready for shelves to be added next summer.

The vegetable patch has provided us with some food this year and a very good learning experience for next year.  We might even give more room for the vegetables next year, but we are waiting to install the summer house first to get a feel for how the bottom of the garden will work.  The strawberry patch has self-propagated and from the initial four plants we were given, we now have a full patch ready for next summer.

vegetable patch ready for winter

strawberry patch

Andy has cleared the patio ready to put his newly learnt deck building skills in action in the spring, so here is the before shot now.  Come the spring we shouldn't have such a big step out into the garden and down onto the new patch, which can just be seen taking shape below.

deck in waiting

We have been enjoying a new feature of the fence now that the hanging baskets have come down.  We have replaced them with lanterns, for an evening glow.

Candles in the fence

This week I have helped to lead my first messy church service.  We have been looking at the book of Joshua this month, and we had chapter 7 for this week.  We asked the children to act out the Bible reading, while we showed images from the lego bible.  We then made Achan's tent out of cream crackers and icing and hid our sweetie treasure inside.  I also found a wonderful story cube to make as a reminder of the story on the Calvary Kids website.

We also found time to have friends over for dinner on Friday evening and I made a Nigella Spanish Chicken recipe for the main course, followed a family favourite, Chocolate Mint Torte from a pampered chef recipe.  It is quick and easy to prepare but looks impressive.  Using a chocolate fudge brownie mix for the cake base, a tub of cream cheese, a tub of double cream and 300g of mint chocolate.  We always find it best the second day, which for a Friday evening meal meant making it Thursday to give it time to set.

Mint Chocolate Torte

This week's bible verse is about how our faith grows:

You know that you learn to endure

by having your faith tested.

James 1:3 (CEV)

Our prayer as a family is for all those who find themselves is testing circumstances, that they will remember God is with them and that through God "all things are possible" even when it appears impossible.  We pray that we will remember to achieve tasks through God's strength and not to try to "go it alone".

With God's blessings from my family to yours,

Jo x