Seasons of life - where are you?

It's half term again and we are well into exam season in our house.  Which means that the summer is just beginning and it's time to change our schedule.

Word of the month - May - Cheneycraft blog

Summer is a much more relaxed affair around here.  As I only work term time, I am home with boys so we can get things done in more time.

This year though is somewhat different, which I'll explain in a bit.

I haven't updated the blog since February and in the meantime I have been looking at where I am in life and what is important to me.  I purchased the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle  which although is American based, is a great set of resources, offered for a limited amount of time at a great price.

Ultimate homemaking bundle 2016

Several of the eBooks on offer focused on organisation and making life simple, so I have working through these.  When I started he blog I wanted to share my crafting activities but also how I manage to fit everything in around a busy family life inspired by my faith. What I have realized is our family life has changed and the season we were in when I started is not where we are now.

I used to write the blog while the boys took their bath on a Sunday evening as we prepared for the week ahead.  Well they are grown teenagers now (and they will both be men by the end of the year!) and so that time I had carved out no longer exists.  What I have realized, however, is that I fit everything because I work term-time.  So some things slide during school time and then I tackle them, head on, when I get the luxury (and I fully appreciate how fortunate I am to work this way!) of long days at home to get things done.

My dawning realization has been that I need to embrace this and blog during my down time and not add to the pressures of my working weeks.  The boys are both off to university soon, one this year and one next year, so I only have the pleasure of their company for another 16 months (not thinking about this too much!!).  I want to make the most of that time and not be too busy filling up the day that I can't play Call of Duty (and I am under tuition for this!) when my youngest son wants to share his time with me or to be able to discuss what culinary needs the eldest will have at university later this year and work through his recipe repertoire.

Chocolate Meringue

My intention, therefore, is I might blog two or three times a week when I am home and then just occasionally during term time.  You are never far from my thoughts dear blog readers but I want to be present in my boys lives while I can and create memories and then as a by-product of this I will have more to write about.  Win-win I think.  I want to share more with you about I how achieve what I achieve, which is how I am wired (I took the Myers-Briggs personality test and I am a defender and the enneagram (pronounced any gram) test which showed I'm a helper (most mums are) and loyalist).

I'm off to plan the summer, high level plans only we ant room to be spontaneous, but this year is slightly different.  As I said I work term time but as the boys have officially finished college this week and just have exams and year 2 preparation classes to attend, we can go away on holiday before the schools break up.  SO, I'm splitting my summer break up and taking three weeks in July, then going to back to work (we have a project that benefits from me being in the office) and having the end of August and beginning of summer off.

Summer Planner - Cheneycraft blog

The Bible passage that has come up for today really ties in well with my personality test findings:

Rejoice with those who rejoice; 

mourn with those who mourn.

Romans 12:15 NIV

Our prayer as a family this week is for those who find the break from school routine hard, may they find peace in the time off.  We pray that those who are still studying will have the concentration they need and God's presence with them in their exams.

Take time to smell the flowers, hug the children, splash in puddles and play games (even if that's Call of Duty on the playstation).  The time with children passes oh so quickly.

Flowers in the garden - cheneycraft blog

With God's blessings, from my family to yours,


Jo x

For the love of crafting!

February whizzed past and I kept thinking I'll just finish these few jobs and write my blog post tomorrow and as you can tell tomorrow never came.  However February has been full of crafting opportunities for me so I have lots to share with you.

Word of the month - March = Spring

Our monthly family drop in session on the first Saturday in the month at church goes from strength to strength.  February we used God's love for us as the theme and the crafts on offer were:

• A Love print made from finger painting spots over the page, masking off the word LOVE to leave a white space.
• A heart arrow, using the glue gun, which caused great excitement, to stick a heart abnd a feather to each end of a straw.
• A sun-catcher heart with words from Romans 5:8 written around the outside.
• A paper aeroplane to colour in.
• A hanging heart decoration made from 3 double sided (or 6 single sided) hearts stapled together.

Valentines day was during half term, so made small gifts for the boys and included Jacob's in his packing for his skiing trip to Switzerland.  The mouse shape was created from a heart folded in two and tail is a lolly pop.

A mouse for Valentine's day

During half term we had our film and craft morning at church and had over 100 people attend.  We made note holders with pompoms stuck on a peg and trees from hand prints and hand plants growing out of a plant pot (not shown).

Half term crafting

I also kept up with my Christmas card making and added some more to my stash, ready for writing later in the year. I loved the vintage images I picked up in a sale pack form The Range.

Christmas Cards -Rudolph Day jobs

First Saturday in March fell as the day before Mothering Sunday, so the them for Craft at drop in was Mother's.  The crafts included the handprint tree for those who hadn't made one in half term, a teapot gift bag containing two teabags (so Mum could have tea for two!) and two gorgeous animal pictures showing mummies and babies, put together using paper piecing from templates.

Mothering Sunday crafts

For a Mothering Sunday gift I had a quiet house all to myself while the family were elsewhere.  Josh went to Norway for the weekend with friends and to meet up with the family and scout he spent the summer with.  Andy and Jacob managed to get themselves on tele while watching Andy Murray in the Davis Cup (well I saw them as I knew where they were sitting!).  So I took the time to make some cards for my Mum, one for Mothering Sunday (as wasn't seeing her until the Monday) and her birthday card, which is later this month.  Safe in the knowledge that she doesn't use the computer I've included them below (normally I wait until an event so as not to spoil the surprise!).  Don't tell her but these came from another pack I found on sale in The Range.

Mothering Sunday cards

I'll update you on choose a university for Josh and how the Spring Cleaning challenge is going in upcoming posts.

The Bible verse for this week is reminder that through Christ, who died for us, that healing comes.  For us as Church this is quite timely as we are finding out about the Healing on the Streets movement.  It also reminds me of the healing I received at last year's Spring Harvest event for my painful shoulder, which although very occasionally still hurts, it not nearly as painful or frequent as it was.  Actually when the pain returns it often reminds me that I am trying to rely on my own strength and not God's, who has provided my healing. 

then know this, you and all the people of Israel: 

It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, 

whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, 

that this man stands before you healed. 

Salvation is found in no one else, 

for there is no other name under heaven 

given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

Acts 4:10,12 NIV

Our prayer as a family this week continues to be for all those displaced by war or famine, who find themselves in a foreign country just trying to survive.  We pray that our country and other around us will reach out in love and accept these people, while working to make their homelands a safe place for them to return to in the future.  

We have only just celebrated Christmas, when we remember that Christ was not born at home but in a town far from his parent's home and in a stable, who then fled to a foreign land as a refugee.  Our faith is based on this history, can we so easily forget this when the inconvenience to our lives comes knocking on the door.

With God's blessings from my family to yours,

Jo x

Strictly Family Time

How is your January going?

Last weekend Josh and I were "using" our Christmas present and went to watch Strictly Come Dancing Tour in Birmingham.  It was a great day out, with a meal before the show and drinks in the interval, all at our own table in the hospitality area.

Waiting for Strictly Come Dancing:The Tour to begin

Following the Home challenge on A bowl full of lemons I have cleaned and organised the kitchen, pantry cupboards and dining room and this week I'm starting on the "launch pad", the area that holds everything we need to get out the door in the morning.  We've had an area for this for a while but as the boys have grown and the bags they carry get heavier it needs to be transformed, so watch this space for next week's update.

At church we are running the Parentalk:The teenage years course from care for the family which is a fantastic time to meet with other parents of teenagers and share stories and for those who come before the teenage years have started to pass on our hints and tips.  It has been great to hear from everyone that we are going through similar experiences and that as parents, we are not alone.  It is not a church or Bible based course and can reach out to all parents of teenagers, whatever their faith (or none).

This year I am trying to use my slow cooker more and to prepare meals for it ahead of time.  I found a great spreadsheet already set up on excel that enables you to enter your recipes and then it creates your shopping list for you.  It is designed to create the whole week's menu but I just use it for evening meals as I already have a list for everything else I buy weekly.  This means that instead of using the rows for each meal, I can use them for each week in the month and work out what I need to buy to create my slow cooker meals.  We still plan the whole month using post it notes, so we can see what we have planned and change our mind.

A month of menu plans

It's a work in progress as I make sure I have included all of the meals we might use each week, but it will enable me to spend one weekend a month preparing slow cooker meals to pop in the freezer and then I just have to take them out as I need them the day before.  This is food I had to prepare this month, which actually looked very similar when I worked out what could be frozen ahead of time and what I had forgotten to buy!!

Cook ahead slow cooker preparation

I have started on my Christmas cards for this year in my crafting sessions.  My aim is to make 7 per month plus a bigger session in the summer holidays.  Hopefully I will stay on track better this year and not need to make quite so many in November!

Our prayer as a family this week is for all families with teenagers, that as parents we will listen to our teenagers and respond to their needs and that as teenagers they will understand that parents just want the best for them and are struggling to adapt to their changing children.

The Bible verse selected for this week is a great reminder at the end of January, that even if we have not kept the resolutions we made for the New Year, our God is forgiving and gives us a fresh start in His love:

You, Lord, are forgiving and good, 

abounding in love to all who call to you.

Psalm 86:5 NIV

With God's blessing for me family to yours,

Jo x