Life in Alphabet - B

is for baking. Such a yummy word! I love to bake! I even have a blog page dedicated to my love of baking (it includes general cooking as well, but baking is my first love).

As much as I love baking, I don't do lots of it. And why is that? Time, energy, the heat of an oven warming on an already hot day and the biggest reason? There's only myself, Big Spring and Little Spring living here in the house, which means we are the ones that eat the baking... all by ourselves. It's delicious - I must say - so we can't resist! It's not good for our waist lines. So, I don't do baking as often as I'd like. Poor Big Spring. When I actually do some baking, it's usually to take somewhere so he misses out on the pleasure (unless I'm feeling generous and leave him some to try!).

On our trip to the States for Christmas 2010, I received a wonderful surprise from my aunty... her mom's (my grandma's) recipe tin. Filled with so many delights! I'm slowly getting through many of her recipes, both main meals and baking. One of my most favourite, easiest, absolutely mouthwatering recipes is Grandma Ellie's Brownies. So I could share these recipes with all her (Grandma Ellie's) descendents, I transcribed the recipe tin into a recipe book and send it out to all the women of the family. It was so nice to share the treasure of her tin with them!

I love this photo as it captures 2 things I treasure dearly... the bowl is a mixing bowl that was my Nana's (Dad's mum) and the recipe book in the back ground is the one I mentioned creating above - filled with Grandma Ellie's recipes

Are you playing along too with "Life in Alphabet"? Don't forget to paste your link to your post in my comments section below so I can read it!

Life in Alphabet - A

is for Amy. Since starting my new look blog, I haven't mentioned her name, to protect her privacy, but I thought for this one post, I would make an exception. On the spur of the moment, I decided to post my "Life in Alphabet." With 'Little Spring' being such a big part of my life, how could I go passed using her name for the letter "A?" Amy was, and is, such a huge answer to prayer. I can't believe that she's been in my life coming up to 3 years in August. Actually, she's been in our lives much longer than that... since November 2008 when we found out we were pregnant with our beautiful daughter (although we didn't know she was our beautiful daughter until she was placed in my arms seconds after she was born!).

Of course, Amy has her moments (currently going through the 'Terrible Twos' you hear so much about!) and she has such a streak of stubbornness (I have NO idea where she gets that from (says I with tongue-in-cheek!), but I love that feeling when I look at her and my heart skips a beat and I get butterflies in my stomach because of the rush of love in a moment.

I love that I always miss her when she's sleeping. When she's sleeping, that's my time to take a nap, catch up on things I need to do, or spend time doing something I want to do for myself. But, I still miss her when she sleeps. So quiet, calm, content, I just want to pick her up and cuddle her and squeeze her tight while rocking in our special glider chair that was bought before she was born to nurse her in and is now used for cuddles, comfort, prayers before bed and reading stories together.

I love her creativity. For Christmas, she got an easel and a paint set. She also got some stencils and more paint from her family in Victoria. She absolutely loves painting and constantly asks to paint! I don't know why I bother dressing her in the morning... instead of putting a smock on her to protect her clothes, Cairns weather makes it easy to just strip her down to her nappy and let her paint to her heart's content... on the paper... on her arms... on her legs... on her nappy... and even on the puppy were were dog-sitting while its owners were on holidays. Oh, did I mention she likes painting the floor and doors as well!? Thank goodness Crayola products all wash off so very easily!

I love the new words she tries constantly now. My favourite is "cuggles, mummy". (Translation: "Cuddles, Mummy.") Every day she surprises me with new words she knows, that I didn't know she knew!

I love how she loves to pray. And bless Mummy and Daddy at night, before bed (and anyone else who's in the house at the time!).

I love her love of music! She always asks for music to play. Depending on the beat, she'll start dancing to the music. She's got quite a rhythm! She loves a broad range of music... from Playschool to rock!

I could go on and on about the things I love about my little angel... but I'll stop here and just share these precious 'few' things with you!

What's not to love about this gorgeous girl, with the huge smile that always appears when a camera does... ready to take a picture!

I'd love to follow your "Life in Alphabet" too, so if you'd like to play along, please paste your link to your post in my comments section below and I'll be sure to read!

PS FYI - the letter at the beginning of the post was done by me in the MyMemories software program I was given. Don't forget that you have a chance to win a copy for yourself, so be sure to enter here. I promise that it's all legit and there's no catch... purely an opportunity to get a free copy of a great software program that was given to me for free to review and giveaway.

New Year "My Memories" GIVEAWAY!

Happy New Year everyone! Yep, you read write in the title, I'm hosting a "My Memories" giveaway! Stay tuned for details later in this post!

I've only just gotten into scrap booking in the last couple of months and have been enjoying it. However, I LOVE designing things on the computer so when I received an email from My Memories, asking me to trial their software, I jumped at the chance and am so glad I did. My Memories is a digital software program that you can use to either create your own scrap booking page from scratch, or use one of their many, many templates to capture your photo memories. And My Memories Suite isn't limited to just scrap booking... you can create cards, calendars, photo books, even videos!

My first project I experimented with using the My Memories Software was something fitting for wrapping up the year:

I created this from scratch, just playing around with many of the options available. It was very quickly done, but I wanted to make something I could use to show you an example of what can be done. You can imagine how much more can be done if you spend much more time on your creation!

Below is what I did with one of the templates, which of course was even quicker because all I had to do was slot in the photos and add the writing and not muck around with designs. I would have created a collage of Christmas 2011, but we didn't take many photos, so used photos from Christmas 2010, definitely a favourite Christmas memory while we spent time with my family in the States.

So, as I said, I'm hosting a My Memories giveaway. The prize is the My Memories Suite (full version) which one lucky winner will receive, completely free of charge (worth $39.97 US)!

To enter the My Memories Suite software giveaway, please fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Good Luck!

A Christmas Gift With a Twist

This year for Christmas, I decided to give Big Spring a gift with a difference. I got the idea from the blog "find joy in the journey" and could hardly wait for Christmas Eve to come so he could open it up. I was somewhat nervous, however, as I wasn't sure he would be as excited about it as I was. But, I needn't have worried... Big Spring LOVED it! So, what was this gift? I guess you could call it our Activity Box:


In this box, contains an envelope for each month of the year. Each envelope contains a pre-planned activity for us to do. Big Spring isn't allowed to open each envelope until the beginning of the relevant month. I let him open up January's envelope early, but you won't find out what the activity is until after the event and I blog about it!

There was one extra envelope in the box, which held 'instructions' on what the box contained and how to 'use' it:

The envelope contained a calendar, representing booking in our date for each activity, written instructions, explaining the box and a block of chocolate, in case Big Spring felt a bit ripped off for not having received something tangible for Christmas that he could use straight away (he also got a wallet from Little Spring, but still!).

My plan will be to scrap book about each date night, so we have a collection of our (hopefully!) memorable dates throughout the year... and possibly beyond if this concept takes off as a yearly tradition!

I also plan to blog about each event, so stay tuned for each of those!

An Orphan's Lunch

As I mentioned in my previous post, we were hosting an 'orphan's' lunch for people from church who had no family here in Cairns to spend Christmas with, like us. The day was a huge HIT! Everyone had so much fun and we ate some very delicious food! Here's how the day looked:

We had church in the morning, where we spent our time celebrating the birth of Jesus with great passion.

Little Spring and I came home to get the final preparations done for our big lunch and Big Spring headed up to the Tablelands for a Christmas service at Atherton.

The table was set and ready (actually, it was set and ready on Christmas Eve morning - for those of you who know me, I'm overly organised sometimes!):


So I had plenty of time for finishing touches to the house (cleaning etc) and making Mum's German Potato Salad (a tradition each Christmas) before everyone arrived.

While waiting for Big Spring to get home, we ate plenty of cheese, dips, crackers and other Christmas treats. When Big Spring arrived, the feast started and the 3 couples and 1 single lady who came to join the Springs for Christmas laughed and had a wonderful time and ate until we could barely eat anymore.


At this point we'd only had main course, not dessert, so to give our stomachs time to make room for dessert, we opened our Kris Kringle presents. Always fun!

Then the feast continued... pumpkin pie (made by me!), pecan pie (made by another American!), pavlova, fruit salad, fruit danishes (affectionately nick-named dessert pizzas by the group because that's what they looked like - pizzas!) and my Rudolph buttersnaps.... sooo much food!
Once we let dessert settle, we headed out to the pool for the rest of the afternoon to relax and enjoy the fine weather. Later in the evening, everyone gradually went home. We collapsed on the couch, exhausted, but happy and very satisfied!

We're looking forward to hosting another 'orphan's Christmas next year!

I pray that you and your family/friends had a wonderful, relaxing Christmas.

(Sorry that there weren't more photos, but I was too busy enjoying myself to remember to take photos, except the group ones at the table!)

Christmas

(Image credit)

Christmas is just around the corner. As it seems to each year, it has really crept up on me! It is certainly going to be a new experience for us this year. It's the first time that we aren't going to be around extended family. Every other year, either we've travelled to them, or they've travelled to us. Instead, Big Spring has church commitments (being a pastor, that's not surprising, with Christmas being one of the main seasons on the Church calendar!), so we aren't able to travel to them. And with us being up in Cairns, it's a long way to travel for them, and would be leaving behind other family members, so it's understandable. So, what will our Christmas look like?

Christmas Eve:
We'll be attending (or leading, in Big Spring's case) a 7pm service at church. We'll then head home for a quiet family night of opening up our Christmas presents (a tradition with my family that I had growing up, that now works well with Big Spring being a pastor!).

Christmas Day:
Church in the morning again. This time at 8am. Big Spring then heads up to his second congregation in the Tablelands for an 11am service. He'll hopefully be home by 1pm, when we are hosting an 'orphan' Christmas Day lunch... there are a number of people in our congregation that don't have family up here to share Christmas with, like us, so we decided to host lunch for those people. It should be a heap of fun! We'll have a Kris Kringle and lots of yummy food and drink. It's certainly going to be very different from having Christmas with our family. Instead we'll be celebrating with our Church family, who are just as important!

What family traditions do you have at Christmas? I'd love to hear how you celebrate!

My prayer for you and your family this Christmas season is that while you celebrate the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, you have time to stop and reflect. Christmas can get so busy; so many presents to buy, big Christmas lunches to cater for, dealing with a influx of family members living in close quarters with you, or you them: it's easy to forget why we have Christmas. So, try to remember to stop, breathe and remember the first Christmas.

Wishing you the comfort of His love, the joy of His salvation and the peace of His presence.

(image credit)

... "You will be with child and give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus..." (Luke 1:31)

Just for a little bit fun, find the Springs singing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" dressed up as elves... I'm sure you'll have a good laugh... just click on this link.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I'm up to my old tricks of getting quiet on here! And why is that? I've been very busy with:

- interstate travel
- dinners, brunches and other catch ups with parishioners
- a root canal
- my Avon business starting to really boom/bloom and turning more into a business than a hobby
- dealing with the "Terrible Twos" of my 'angel' Little Spring!
- the build up to Christmas and all that entails
- helping friends move house

I'm sure one could forgive me for being silent on my blog!

So, our recent interstate trip actually included 2 different States. Firstly, we flew into Melbourne for Big Spring's sister's wedding

Sisters-in-Law

A beautiful, relaxed family!

The newly married couple and our niece & nephew

The Spring family, minus Little Spring, who was having a nap

The Happily Married Couple!

We then flew off to Adelaide to see Big Spring's best mate be ordained into the Lutheran Church of Australia... hard to believe that Big Spring was in the same position a year ago! Wow, how time flies!

The new pastors of the LCA for 2011

Big Spring and his best mate, Jade (Jade doesn't look proud at all, does he?!)

Little Spring and her friend, Trinity (Jade's daughter)

Jade's proud family (the youngest is Kohen, our newest godchild!)