I know I have been a bit MIA lately. The past few nights I have been tired and haven't wanted to sit down and think too hard. I figured it would be better to wait until the morning so my post would be better. Then yesterday morning my plan was to drop Hazel at school and go to the gym and come home and write at least one of my posts that I have been wanting to write (yes, I have plans for several in my head and photos), however I was asked by the parent/child class teacher to help out since her assistant was on vacation and the substitute she was suppose to have had a child get sick in the car on the way to school. Needless to say, I stepped in and stayed at school for the morning. So here I am today. Later today it will be time for Sharing Saturday, but for now, I'll explain why I was a bit MIA last week.
You may remember from last year that I am the leader of the Stewardship Ministries Committee at my church. We kicked off our month long campaign on Sunday. Our theme this year is Joining HIM in Giving. You can see the logo I made above. Our goal this month is to focus on four gifts God has given each of us each week. This past Sunday it was the Gift of Life. This Sunday it will be the Gift of Time. Then the other two Sundays are the Gifts of Talent and Treasure. Similar to last year we also served the coffee on Sunday after the service. In honor of this we got the idea to make stewardship fortune cookies to serve. I have to say making fortune cookies is not as hard as I thought, but it does take a bit of practice. I made all the fortune cookies last Friday. I used a recipe I found on All Recipes. I liked this recipe because it did not have any ingredients I do not keep on hand (one recipe had instant tea), it had butter so they wouldn't stick, and it seemed easy. I did make one substitution. I took out the almond extract (as I know there are young children with nut allergies at church and I didn't want one of them grabbing one and having a reaction) and doubled the amount of vanilla extract.
My committee helped with the fortunes. After a lot of discussion and thought we decided to mention the gift or gifts used to do each action. Here are some examples of our fortunes.
God
gave us the gift of Life, honor this gift by sending a card to someone on the
prayer list.
God
gave us the gift of Life, honor that gift by planting a tree.
God
gave us the gift of Time, give with your time by serving coffee one Sunday at
church.
God
gave us the gift of Treasure, honor this by donating to Heifer.
God
gave us the gift of Talents, give your gift by singing in the choir.
Now the process of making fortune cookies is relatively easy. There is definitely a few things you need to know. Spread the batter really thin and once out of the oven, work quickly!
In the collage above I am showing you how thick my batter was. In the recipe it said it should be like pancake batter, and mine was thicker. I may have beat the egg whites too long, I guess. Really spread the batter thin and only do a few on a tray. Take them out just when the edges start to brown. Take one onto a board and put in the fortune. Fold it in half and then fold the semicircle in half to make the shape of the fortune cookie. It helps to stick them into a muffin pan to cool. As they cool the cookies harden and keep the shape they are in. I think this would be really neat as a favor at a party or for a child's class election campaign. I know I was a bit afraid of it, but found it was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
And I should add they were a huge hit!! Everyone loved them. I will definitely be making these again.
Now one of my favorite types of days is where you do not have to worry about getting somewhere by a certain time, so when you open your garage door and see a turkey, you can take the time to try to see it and get a picture of it--oh, and of course try to feed it. Yesterday was one of those days and yes, when I opened my garage door there was a turkey right there. Hazel and I tried to get a good look at it, but it ran away. We left it some cracked corn, but it was a few houses away by then and I do not think it came back.
Then today after I picked Hazel up from school, we ran to AC Moore for some craft supplies and stopped at KMart for some plants. It was unusually warm here in Massachusetts (20 degrees higher than average) so we spent the afternoon outside. Hazel could not wait to plant some flowers.
We bought an English daisy and three six-packs of pansies. We also bought some lettuce, sugar snap peas, basil and some tomato plants (which we will keep inside for another couple of months).
Doing the Gardener Dance
Hazel planted the pansies with a little help from me, but actually did most of it herself!
We decided to plant some in a pot on the front steps and some around a tree in the front. Then Hazel also planted some in her garden (my old garden that we are letting her play in). I planted the vegetables there as well since Daddy hasn't dug me my new garden yet.
While planting in the back we had a sure sign of spring. Our ducks returned. They came up looking for food, but when we moved to get them some, they flew back in the water.
We threw some of the cracked corn into the water for them. Then after dinner I looked out and saw two males. Now we had this problem last year. Some other male comes and attacks the female trying to mate with her. Her mate does his best to chase him away, but it can takes days until he leaves them alone. Anyway, I went out to see what was going on. The extra male flew away, but he started flying circles as I kept seeing him come back. I think he was checking to see if I was gone yet. Then he landed back in the water and went after the female. She kept trying to hide in the tunnel (the creek goes underground on our property), but he followed her. Her mate chased him out and down the creek by the bend where their nest is. She came out and I stood very still waiting to make sure she was safe. She must have decided I was safer than the water, because she came up and sat about 7 feet from me. I stayed for awhile and then slowly moved far around her to check on the males. The attacking male flew away and her mate same down to where she was and came up. They stayed there for quite some time. It looked like she was sleeping some of the time and he was guarding her.
The last time I looked out, they were gone--I'm guessing back to their nest. All I cared about was they were safe and she was not being attacked/raped. (I know it is natural for ducks, but I don't think the female should be attacked when she doesn't want to be with him and she is happy with her mate.) So that was our duck drama and our fun day outside! Tonight the rain will come and bring the temperatures down again, but at least we got one day outside in the warmth.
