The year of...

Every year the United Nations declares it to "the International Year of ___ (fill in the blank)."  A year to raise awareness and celebrate particular causes.

This year it's the International Year of Small Island Developing States and the International Year of Family Farming AND the International Year of Crystallography.

Since starting this blog, I've given each year a designation as well. 

2009 was the Year of Optimism and the Year of the Garden.
2010 was the Year of the Roast.
2011 was the Year of Five New Things.
2012 was the Year of Praying for my Friends.
And 2013...well, 2013 didn't get a name.  Maybe it was the Year of the Strawberry Meringue Stack.

Plans for 2014 are still forming and settling into place.  Some of the goals for the year include:-
1.  The Daily Bible Reading plan.
2.  Memorising the whole of Philippians.  (Yes!  You read it first here.)
3.  Learning how to use a slow cooker.  Once the weather cools down I will be calling for your best slow cooker recipes.  Get them ready.

And there's a handful of plans and ideas brewing, not yet Internet ready.  So there is to be no naming of the year as yet.  That will perhaps come later.

That said, twelve days into the year, I find I have five books other than the Bible on the go at the moment.  Two on the go is abnormal for me.  I'm not quite sure what's going on here.  Short concentration span?  And not two days after Deb's post on hot cross buns I found myself at a friend's house eating one.  With real butter.  It was delicious.  I'd barely dusted off the fruit mince pie crumbs.

So maybe it will be the Year of Outrageousness...in my own mild mannered way.  Time will tell.

And peeling off the wrapping on 2013

I still think my theory holds true.  Well, it does for me, anyway.  The first six months of the year are all about energy, getting new things off the ground, having a go.  The second half of the year is the business end of the year - getting stuff done but not trying anything new because it is the end of winter moving into the time of the year when the calendar is overladen.  And so here I am at the start of the year, full of energy - amazing what a few days of laying on the sofa reading a very good book at every possible opportunity (and even stealing a few of the impossible moments) straight after Christmas will do for you - and ready to try some new things.  This is what I'm looking forward to for the year ahead.

Letter writing
This little storm has been brewing for a while.  I do like letter writing very much.  I like writing to friends and I like writing to people who do their job well to say thank you.  I had two little bursts of letter writing last year (and I received some very lovely mail in return) and have decided that this year I want to write one letter a month.  It may end up being more.  But I don't want it to be less.  It is such a relaxing and lovely thing to do.  And it will mean keeping up good Bible reading and good general reading...nothing good in, nothing good out.   And I shall return regularly to Ally's amazing pictorial post about letter writing and the other lovely Ali's post about letter writing for inspiration - just gorgeous.

Bible reading
Going to try out a near relative of my old favourite reading plan.  This year I am going for daily Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs.  This plan will get me through the lot once in the year.  I decided to throw in daily time in the Proverbs after studying this book for six months in a Bible study group during 2012. 

Practising the principles of How to Really Love Your Child

Lots of eye contact - and not just when we are staring them down because we are cross, but lots and lots of warm, happy eye contact.

Lots of physical touch - and Ross Campbell gives a lot of time to the subject of appropriateness in this department and how appropriateness changes as a child gets older.
Lots of focussed attention - not the "I'm half listening to you and half writing my blog post" sort of attention...ahem...

S'pose I better try a bit harder with the cooking...
I got a cooking magazine and have earmarked three new recipes to try this week...jumping in boots and all before I get to the middle of the year and the "getting stuff done and not trying anything new" thing kicks in.  One thing I really want to achieve this year is one of these...



Taken from here.

Not necessarily this one exactly...I am imagining strawberries rather than raspberries.  I'll keep you posted.

And there is one more thing. 
It may or may not have something to do with this.


Taken from here

But I'll talk about that another day, lest it is sounding too much like a New Year's resolution.

2012 - The Year of Praying for my Friends

Are you over New Year's resolutions?  Be of good courage.  I made a resolution either at the beginning of 2009 or 2010 to get a shelf up in our guest bathroom.  And here it is...done at the beginning of 2012.

Sometimes New Year's resolutions just need to be looked upon as long term goals!  And be helped along by a husband for the drilling bits...ie. for most of the project except taking the plastic off the kit and painting it!!

2011 was supposed to be The Year of Five New Things.  I think when I settled on that theme for the year I had in mind bold new ventures to keep my synapses well connected (you know...learning a new musical instrument, mastering a foreign language, reading a well written book every week...) and other bold new ventures to keep my conversation at dinner parties scintillating (going on safari and camping in those beautiful, almost-a-house tents with sumptuous dinners by candlelight on the savannah) to avoid dining out on last year's decade's stories.  Even stories from two or THREE decades ago...

Well, I can't really vouch for the synapses but I will say that it is lucky I don't attend very many dinner parties because after "new thing #1" alongside the stuff of normal life, I just didn't have time or head space to take on "new things 2,3,4 and 5."  And growing a pot of thyme on my kitchen window sill, whilst new, doesn't really seem sufficiently grand to rate a mention...

I gave 2011 the wrong title.  It should have been The Year of the New Normal.  It was my first year of having both boys in school full time - the first year of what I imagine will be the norm for years to come.  And while I genuinely love the idea of keeping a lazy diary in order to be free to act upon the spontaneous moments, I know that if I kept a lazy diary I would in fact be very ill disciplined.  So the days and weeks were filled with volunteering at school (including that P&C role), reading the Bible with other women, running Bible studies, teaching Scripture and Sunday School, doing the preparation for each of those things and keeping house and home in between times.  Busy...but it was flexible enough to cope with injured or sick children at home from school and for moments when the spontaneous had to take precedence over the organised.

And I am anticipating that this year will be more of the same.  But in the enthusiasm of a new year, I do have a few new plans to replace the shelf project.

In 2012 I plan to...

Get some reading glasses.  The fine print has become too fine.  All through 2011 I have been heard to say over and over again, "I really must get myself some reading glasses," - said with a tone of slight despair.  It's happening.  On Christmas day I was struggling to read some fine print at the Christmas dinner table and picked up a pair of glasses that belongs to one of my sisters to see just how these glasses work.  They were way too strong and just made the print blurry in a different way.  Another sister got me a pair of her glasses (her first ever prescription glasses) and WOW!  They were like magic.  On the first day of school I will be lining up at the optometrist's shop ready for my own pair of magic eyes.

Widen my repetoire of evening meals and the repetoire of my family's tastebuds.  We seem to have been rotating around pasta (bolognese and lasagne mostly), teriakyi chicken and rice, burritos and meat/chicken/fish and salad/veg for the last year.  Desperately needing some expansion there.  And during the winter months I cook in bulk (two or three kilos of pasta sauce, curry or casserole at a time) and this year I would also like to explore doing some trading with friends - swapping portions of my frozen bulk cooking for theirs, again to explore some different tastes.  Local friends, let me know if you are in.

Approach my Bible reading differently.  As previously posted, I am going to study the Prophets hard during the first half of the year - the part of the year when I have more enthusiasm and energy - and then use the second half of the year to do the first half of my old faithful Bible reading plan to get through the first half of the Old Testamant (most of it other than the Prophets), the New Testament and the Psalms once. 

Add to the thyme on the window sill.  With a pot of basil and a pot of mint.

And pray for a dear friend of mine and her dear family every single day of 2012.  Because ones close to my heart are travelling to Kiribati to do development work there for a year.  And I have promised to pray for them each day this year. 

And that is why I have called 2012 "The Year of  Praying for my Friends" - because "The Year of Thyme, Mint and Basil on my Kitchen Window Sill" sounds perfectly ridiculous.

  

Happy New Year.

Forget Biodiversity! 2010 is the Year of...

...the Roast.

Some people seem to think that cooking a roast is the easiest meal to prepare under the sun. I can roast meat. Especially lamb. And I can sort of roast vegetables, although the potatoes aren't necessarily cooked all the way through every time. Timing the vegies is tricky. And getting all the vegies AND the meat cooked and ready to be eaten at the same time...well, that's quite a feat. I CAN make gravy. Real gravy using the pan juices, a little flour and a few secret ingredients. I used to make the gravy every Sunday when I was growing up. Problem is, when I was making the gravy back then I wasn't responsible for the rest of the roast dinner. Just the gravy. And then there is one more thing. It's not just the meat and the vegies and the gravy. It's then getting myself to the dinner table with the roast looking like it was a breeze. No stress.

Roasts are such an economical way to feed guests. I've just got to master this skill.

2010 is The Year of the Roast.

I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, feel free to give me ALL your favourite tips. I want to know EVERYTHING.

The Year of the Garden

Mary, Mary quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

Just before the beginning of the year I had dinner with a friend currently living and working in England and we designated 2009 The Year of Optimism.

In other quarters however I had already declared 2009 to be The Year of the Garden. We moved into our home here at the beginning of 2008. It is in a really beautiful setting but the actual garden is, well...

"Garden" is probably a bit generous. "Yard" would be better.

I just couldn't get to it last year. So I decided this year would be the year. Rather rashly (or maybe for reasons of accountability/motivation to actually do something about it) I announced far and wide that I would get working on garden this year. (And I REALLY need to do something about it now that I have mentioned it here! Not that I going to be bullied by my own blog!!)

So here is the baseline.

The yard is an "L" shape. This is the base of the "L" - with the washing line in the corner.


Then, standing halfway along the upright of the "L", looking back down to the corner where the washing line is you have the boys' trampoline.


Turn the other way and you get a wonderful paved area, which currently features, among other things, a stack of empty pots that moved with us from our last house.

I need to confess at this point that I am no gardener. We brought empty pots with us because all the plants that had once been in them were dead...and there was no point shifting dead plants to our new home! You will start to get a picture of the challenges that lay ahead.

And then for the grand finale, the empty patch, just crying out for a garden.


Now there are three major challenges for me. One is to overcome my gardening ineptitude. The second is that I will be working on a tight budget. The third and biggest challenge is that there are lots of gum trees all around the perimeter of the yard and although you can't see it, there is one just to the right of this empty patch. And I would be reasonably confident that there are certain things that will not grow under a gum tree.

So that is the baseline. This is The Year of the Garden. And it is only the end of May. I haven't even missed Spring for 2009. Where there is still Spring to come there is hope.

I'll keep you posted...and no doubt I'll be asking for some advice along the way.

Oh, by the way, the United Nations has actually designated2009 the International Year of Astronomy.

The Year of Optimism

I was introduced to the world of blogs about 18 months ago. A dear friend keeps a blog about her quilting adventures and achievements. She let me have a peek one day and I have read it ever since. Other blogs followed…

And I must say, I have benefitted a great deal from blog lurking. For one who threads a needle about once a year I can now keep my end up in a conversation about quilting! Elsewhere I have been encouraged to start reading again – something more substantial than recipe and parenting books – and I find that my sleeping brain is awakening! I have been inspired to rekindle a habit lost in the mists of babies - of starting the day reading the Bible and praying before the other members of our household get up, which for me is the best way to start the day. I have learned a good principle that in times of upheaval, life needs to be simplified and the two priorities to maintain in addition to coping with the cause of the upheaval are nurturing one's family (which basically equates to having good, simple food on the table and clothes to wear) and nurturing one's soul (which for me means keeping up those times in God's Word and in prayer.) Many other things can be put aside for a season. Even blogging, I suppose!

Inspired by my blog reading, I have been musing about keeping a blog on and off during the last year. More recently, I found myself reading the occasional HOW TO BLOG article. One memorable article stated that in order to maintain a successful blog one must:-

Read a wide collection of blogs.

Well, I read a few.

Be an active reader of blogs and therefore be an active member of the blogging community. That means leaving comments on others' blogs. Lots of comments. And they need to be well thought out, well written comments – not just a quick sentence here or there.
Well, I leave the occasional comment. And I guess a couple of them were well thought out.

Post an entry on your blog every day. And the large majority of your posts must be significant – not just humorous one-liners. And it goes without saying that each post must be well written.
Well, good writing is fine with me. But every day? Sorry – that counts me out. Frequently? Yes. Everyday? Nope. And so I put the blogging idea aside.

Just before New Year I had dinner with a friend on her annual trip home from England for three weeks of summer weather and catching up with friends. As we talked over dinner, we both decided that 2009 should be designated "The Year of Optimism" and such a year would be characterised by actually doing some of those "one day I might…" things and maybe even taking some risks. For my friend, risk taking is at the mountain climbing end of the spectrum. Now as you know, I am at the chess end of the spectrum but because I am not that keen on chess, my first risk-taking adventure in this year of optimism, from the safety of my desk and with no mountain in sight, is this blog. Welcome to "The Key to the Door."