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It's Time

So, I think I'm as ready as I'll ever be to make the jump over to Word Press.  I'm hoping to have the switch done over the weekend and have my first post up on Word Press on Monday! 

Just to give you a little more incentive to stick with me as I change over, I have 2 great giveaways for widely popular e-books coming up the last week of July and the first week of August.  You definitely don't want to miss out on those!  So check back to www.liverenewed.com and you should see my new blog, and if you have any trouble viewing it please let me know so that I can fix the problems as soon as I can.  Thanks again for joining me on this journey!

Garden Update #3

We got back late Tuesday night after a great trip to visit great friends in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  It was so fun and relaxing to spend some time away from home, but I was worried that my garden would be suffering when I got back, since it had been neglected for almost a week - and a hot week, with little rain!

Well, imagine my surprise when I went out to water yesterday morning and found this:

A good sized zucchini!  I was so excited! I think my neighbor was laughing at me because of how much I was exclaiming over this one zucchini!

The zucchini plants have completely taken over my garden boxes in the back.  I had no idea that the plants would get as big as they are.  The are pretty much shading out the other plants in the box - the peas, carrots and peppers, which makes me sad.  But, if I can get some great zucchinis off of my two plants than it will be worth it and I have learned my lesson for next year to give the zucchini LOTS of room!

Also, I have some beautiful tomatoes and cherry tomatoes growing in my front garden.  Just waiting for them to ripen up! But my pepper plants don't seem to be doing so well.  They are still really small and no signs of any peppers yet.  We'll just have to wait and see what happens with them. 

I am learning so much in this first year of gardening.  I really need to write it all down so I can make sure I remember it all for next year.  So, please humor me - I'm going to take a moment to write all of things that I have learned and want to do differently next year.  Maybe you'll learn something from it too, maybe not. :)

What I've Learned in My First Year of Gardening

-My side garden bed next to my deck is not doing very well.  I don't think it gets nearly enough sun.  Either I won't plant there, or I'll try something else next year.  Maybe my zucchini plants would do well over there by themselves?  They would have more than enough space!

-I need to make sure to put a good fence around my lettuce and spinach plants next year so they don't get eaten by critters.  It's so sad to go out to check the garden and see that someone (really, something) other than your family has been enjoying your garden bounty.

-Don't over plant my garden boxes - and I need MUCH bigger boxes!  I just way over planted my garden box in the back, I was trying to get as much out of it as I could, but I didn't realize how much everything would grow and take over and shade out the other plants.  I need to pay better attention to the amount of room that the seed packets say that the plants need!

-I would like to greatly increase the amount of plants that I grow.  The most sugar snap peas that I ever harvested at once was 9, and usually it was more like 4 or 5.  While the peas were yummy to eat plain straight off the vine, I would love to have enough to actually use for a meal.  I didn't want to plant too many this year, but now I realize that I didn't plant nearly enough.

-Also, I want to greatly increase the overall size of my garden next year.  While this year has been great for a manageable amount of gardening, it really is not producing the amount of food that I would realistically need to feed my family and have leftovers for preserving.  I would love to double the size of my garden next year.  This will probably come in the form of many more garden boxes in the front of our house.  Hopefully hubs will be okay with a large front yard garden!

I think that's all for now.  I'm sure I'll think of more and continue to learn more as the gardening season goes on, and I'll be sure to share with you as I do.  I know, you can't wait!

Now, what should I do with that lovely zucchini?  Muffins?  Cookies? Or just sauteed in butter for dinner?  Yum!

The Value of Making Small Changes

Photo by Arkansas ShutterBug

Today I'm over at Keeper of the Home sharing about the value of taking baby steps, making small changes that add up to big overall change in your life.  Please stop by and check it out! 

Here's a little excerpt from the post:

If there's anything you should know about me, it's that I'm all about taking baby steps.  Most of the changes that we have made in our lives and around our home, have been made by making small changes that add up to much bigger overall change in our lives.

Sometimes I wish I was one of those people that dove head first into something and went all out, changing everything seemingly overnight, but that's just not really practical or possible for me and my family in this season of life.  I’m thinking that’s probably true for many of you too.

What holds us back from making really big, quick changes?

Head on over to Keeper of the Home to read the rest!

And we're leaving tomorrow morning to spend an extended weekend with some great friends we haven't seen in a while.  We're super excited to get away, have a little family vacation, and have a good time with great friends.  Not so excited about the 6+ hour road trip with two little ones, but it's all good! So, I'll be back next week as we get ready for the big move! Hope you all have a happy and safe 4th of July!

A Quick Note

You may have noticed that it's been a little quiet around here the past week or so.  One reason is that I have just been incredibly busy - lots of good stuff has been happening, like my son turning one last weekend, and my sister getting married this past weekend, and getting ready to go visit some great friends we haven't seen in a while this coming weekend.  It's all kept me pretty busy. 

But, besides business in my life, I've also been busy working on an upcoming change for this blog.  Sometime mid-July (I don't have an exact date nailed down yet), I'm going to be switching my blog over to Word Press.  This is going to allow me to expand and grow my blog, and I'm excited to see what the coming months will bring.

I will still have the same URL - www.liverenewed.com, and if you are a subscriber, and everything goes according to plan, you shouldn't have to do anything at all, you should continue to get my feeds as usual.  If you are a Blogger Follower, then I would really encourage you to subscribe because I don't think Word Press supports followers the way that Blogger does. 

So, it will probably continue to be a little quiet around here for the next few weeks.  I will still try to post once or twice a week, and I'll definitely let you know when the big move is going to take place.  I hope that you all will stick with me, I love that I have "gotten to know" some of you as readers, and I have great plans and great posts (at least I think so) planned for once the move is complete. 

I just wanted to say "Thanks!" to all of you who read Live Renewed.  It is such an awesome blessing to have such great readers, you are the reason that I sit down and write and work at this every day. I'm really looking forward to what this next season of blogging will bring!

A Letter for My Dad

In honor of Father's Day yesterday, I wrote a letter to my dad thanking him for the way that he shaped the woman that I am today.  This is really personal and important to me, but I wanted to share it on my blog because I think that it is that important.

I haven't written about it before, because it's obviously pretty hard for me to talk about, but my dad has stage 4 (terminal) prostate cancer.  He is doing pretty well right now, and although it's not imminent, we live with the reality that this disease will take him from this life here on earth to be with our Heavenly Father sooner than we would have expected.

Fathers are obviously hugely important in the lives of their children.  I believe that a Father's love and care cannot be replaced by anything else in this world. As I have reflected on the influence that my own father has had on my life, I am always drawn back to these seven simple, yet complex, sayings.  When I close my eyes, I can see and hear my dad saying these to me over and over during my growing up years.

So, I wanted to share those things, and tell my dad how important they were to me, and how much they, and he, mean to me, now that I am grown and have a family of my own. 

This is the letter I wrote for my dad:

My Dad is one of those people that has lots of sayings that he is known for, at least within our family. There were lots of saying and phrases that he would repeat to us over and over when we were growing up. He would even make up acronyms for things that were a little too long to say on their own. Sometimes I didn’t even really understand what he meant, and definitely didn’t usually get the meaning behind the words, but now that I am older, those sayings are coming back to me and I understand the wisdom and life lessons that my father was trying to teach us and instill in us from a young age. And I am so grateful and thankful that I have a father that was wise enough and patient enough to keep at us about these things, even when it seemed like we just didn’t get it, because he knew how important they were. I get it now, Dad, about time right? Thank you!

Important Life Lessons I Learned from my Dad:

1. CMGMGC – Catching My Girls Making Good Choices.
My dad would say this to us when he saw us making a positive choice in life. He was trying to teach us that we all have choices that we make every single day and we can either make positive choices that are good for ourselves and others, or we can make negative choices that hurt ourselves and others. He wanted to reward and support the positive choices that we made independently, to help to teach us about making good choices. There is so much value in understanding that we have a say, that we can make choices, in life. Choices about how we act and react, choices about how we choose to live our lives. We are not just bystanders on this road of life, we are active participants and we need to learn to choose wisely. Thanks for teaching me the power and importance of choice, Dad!

2. Garbage in, Garbage Out
I would always roll my eyes at this one, especially during my teenage years. Dad would say that what we watched and listened to and even read, were putting messages into our minds and hearts about life. And if those messages were garbage – inappropriate movies or shows on TV, music that had underlying messages of sex and promiscuity, materialism and power, and books or stories of good and evil where we were rooting for the evil over the good, that those things would be what we reaped in our lives. I really did not agree with him for a long time. I thought that I was strong enough to stand against the messages that media was sending. Now that I have my own children, I think I’m finally beginning to understand what he meant. I want to shelter them from the life-stealing messages that our culture promotes. I want them to seek truth and beauty, love and grace, peace and justice – and those things don’t come naturally to our lives unless we are actively seeking them in our lives. This leads to the next one too…

3. There is truly nothing more important in our lives than our relationship with Jesus.
This one was not so much a saying, but the way that my dad lived, and still lives, his life. He modeled this for us through his actions, and you know the saying – actions speak louder than words, right? I remember going to Cedar Point on a youth group trip and my dad was a chaperone. He brought his Bible along to read while we waited in line for the roller coasters. I was mortified. But now I understand that to him, there was nothing more important than spending time in the Word of God and he was going to take every opportunity, every free minute to do what was most important to him. And so, this one is like the opposite of garbage in, garbage out – if something is truly important to you, it needs to be reflected in how you actually live your life. It’s not enough to say that you follow God, that you love Jesus, you need to act like it, and it needs to be reflected in the things you say, and do, and watch, and listen to, and read, day in and day out.

4. You have to mean not to.
This one I never understood when I was growing up. It just didn’t make any sense to me. He would say this when we did something that was probably an accident, but maybe also could have been prevented – we would say, “I didn’t mean to.” And he would reply, “You have to mean not to.” Ugh – it was always so frustrating to me – What? What does that mean? Now I realize that he was trying to teach us about being intentional, about thinking ahead about not being impulsive. Sometimes things happen in life that we don’t have control over, but other times things happen and we say, “Oh, I didn’t really mean for, or want that, to happen.” But then we are not taking responsibility for our lives and our choices. If you want to avoid something in life that you have control over – you have to mean not to. You have to purpose and be intentional about avoiding it, and not just sit back and be the victim of your circumstances. We all have the ability to be proactive – now I get it, finally!

5. You’re my favorite (insert age) year old in the whole world.
My dad would say this, actually he still says it, to each of my sisters, and of course, we were different ages, so that was his way of telling us how important we were to him, how much he loved us, without singling out one of as a “favorite” or making us feel like he loves one of us more than the others. As a girl, it’s important to know that you are special and loved, especially by your father. I hope that I am able to let my kids know and feel how special and loved they are. Really, it’s so important to let all the important people in your life know how much they mean to you.

6. Find something that you love to do, and do it with all your mind, heart and strength.
Again, not something that he said, but something that he modeled through his life. If anyone has met my dad, they know he is a little crazy. Crazy about speed skating, crazy about recumbent bikes. He LOVES skating and riding his bike. And when he realized how much he loved those things, he poured his life into them. He learned, and researched, and practiced, and practiced some more, and keeps doing the things he loves. He taught me to how good it is to find pleasure in something that you love and to put everything you can into it (without going overboard, or crazy, of course.) ☺

7. The most important things in life aren’t things at all. 
When I was much younger, I had a little bit of a hard time understanding this one, but now it is the most important one to me. It took me a little while to really learn and understand it, but now it is as obvious and plain as day to me. The most important things in life are not things, but people. And I want to live my life in a way that reflects that this is true for me. People and relationship come before stuff, before any other things, always. Besides bikes and skates (see above), this is the way that my dad lives his life. Okay, just kidding about the bikes and skates. But really, those who know my dad, know how important people are to him. And he makes it a point to live like that, and I hope that I can follow in his footsteps that way.

All of these things my dad taught and instilled in me and my sister’s when we were growing up. We didn’t realize it at the time, but he was shaping the kind of women, the kind of people, that we would become. I really don’t know who I would be today if my dad had not begun teaching me these important life lessons at such a young age. And even though I would, often, roll my eyes at him, I now see how the things that he taught us, through sayings and acronyms and the way he lived his life, were so much more powerful and lasting than lecturing or yelling, or a “do as I say, not as I do” kind of teaching. And for that, I am, and will forever be, grateful. Thank you, Dad, for being my favorite Dad in the whole wide world. I LYMTSLI! ☺

Homemade Frozen Fruit "Ice Cream"!

It's getting hot out! Where I live in Indiana, we have been in the upper 80's and low 90's this week, so I know that means that other areas of the country are even hotter! I came across this idea, or "recipe" on Eat From Your Pantry, and thought that it sounded too good to be true - using frozen fruit to make ice cream.  How great is that?  And such a delicious and healthy treat for these hot summer afternoons!

The basic idea is to take a frozen banana and puree it in your food processor until it becomes creamy, kind of like ice cream.  I wasn't really sure it would work, but the first time I tried it, low and behold, I had a smooth, creamy, ice cream like treat that my kids couldn't get enough of.  And the only ingredient - One frozen banana!

I decided to branch out a bit, I tried adding some mixed frozen fruit, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, with the banana.  The result was not quite as creamy, more sorbet-like, but still really, really good.  I served it to my family when they were in town visiting and everyone couldn't believe that all it had in it was frozen fruit!

So, last week, I decided to try it the way Anjanette from Eat From Your Pantry did, with bananas and strawberries. It was so great I think it's going to be my main way of making this awesome summertime treat from now on.

Homemade Strawberry Banana Ice Cream in the food processor

The ingredients:
1-2 Frozen Bananas (cut into chunks)
Handful of frozen strawberries (cut into smaller chunks if they are whole)
splash of whole milk
(Obviously use more or less depending on how many people you are trying to serve - this was a great amount for me and my two small kids.)

 Cut your strawberries into small chunks, they didn't process so well like this!

Put banana(s) and strawberries in your food processor and blend together.  You have to let it process for a while.  It will seem at first like it's not going to get creamy, but when you get to that point, add a splash of milk, and keep going. 

W

When it looks like this, keep going! 

This is the end result that you are looking for, nice and creamy, just like ice cream! But without any added sweetener!

This stuff is seriously so good, you will want to make it every single day.  And you will feel great feeding it to your kids because only you know that it's made with just whole fruit, and is so good for them! It's a great way to use frozen bananas - put your bananas into the freezer whole, when they are a little on the over-ripe side, they are great to use in banana bread, smoothies, or like this!

Also, check out this post and some of the comments, there are tons more ideas for how to make "ice cream" this way.  I may have to try some of the other combinations soon, like peanut butter, chocolate and banana - Yum! 

Okay, my kids are waking up from their naps and now I really want to make this for them!

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