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Thanksgiving Morning Breakfast Quiche

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Every year, on Thanksgiving, families and friends await the special treats and favorite dishes that will meet them at the table of their Thanksgiving feasts.

As we prepare our hearts to celebrate one another and express our gratitude to God for our blessings, many of us are also busy in the kitchen, prepping the meal that our loved ones love the most.

If you are like me, though, you recognize a trend from the past. My family gets so excited about the evening or noontime meal that they wake up extremely early. They glare at me for about 20 minutes before they ask, “so what’s for breakfast?”

I look around, only to find that there is no room to place another meal, nor time to prepare one.

Have you ever found yourself in this place?

Well, I have a solution that is quick and easy.

Thanksgiving Morning Breakfast Quiche

Combined and Ready for the Oven

Traditionally, I cook the quiche all at one time.  If you are looking for a way to multitask as you prepare for Thanksgiving, you can prep many of the items, for this dish, the night before.  Just mix it together and pop it in the oven when you get up to start prepping for Thanksgiving Dinner.

Cooked and Ready to Eat
Cooked and Ready to Eat. Crunchy, the way that my family likes it

Your family will love it and you’ll find relief because you have saved time and fed your family, with ease.

You can also watch the video for more information.

Who is Building Your House?

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When you look around at the world that we live in, we see that there are a lot of things that you and I could be busy doing.  We want our homes, relationships, and careers to be full and satisfying, but there is something that I want to ask you.  Who is building your house?  

Psalm 127:1 Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who builds it; Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

Before you and I ever set foot on this earth, God had a plan for our lives.  He determined the year that we would be born and the year that our children would be born.  He decided who we would marry and the people we would be in relationship with.  He determined what our hands would be busy doing and the work that we would accomplish.  Still, He has given us the ability to walk in His will and purpose for Him, or not.

If you are like me, then you want for your home, relationships, and career to be blessed, but how did you answer the question above?  Who is building your house? 

Inviting God Into Your Life

You can want all of the things that you want, but God is the builder who has the plan of how your life should be established in order for it to work in a magnificent way.  Have you invited Him into every area of you life, or are there specific areas that He isn’t allowed to enter into? 

For some people the answer is yes, but for others, God is not welcome because control has not been given over to Him.  Which category do you fall in?

Is He welcome in your personal life?

Do you allow God to examine your thoughts and emotions?  Have you invited Him into the spaces of your mind that occupy you on a daily basis?  Do you share, with Him, your concerns and fears and allow Him to tell you how to overcome them?  Do you invite him into your choices? Before you take a drink, get a tattoo, purchase a car, or even watch a movie; do you allow Him to be in the process of your decisions?

Yes, He sees all that you do and think, but He is not going to over power you, so that you can be free.  He already sent Jesus to die on the cross for your mental and emotional freedom.  Have you accepted it?  Are you willing to turn away from the things that invite sickness, disease, and depression into your life?  Have you told your flesh “no” and the Lord “yes?” 

Has the Lord been invited into your marriage?

Did God get an invitation to your wedding?  After the wedding, was He allowed to stay and dwell there?  Or is your marriage a place where God is not welcome to interfere?  One way to tell this is if you find that you only talk to God about what your husband does, but you don’t listen to the Lord tell you what you have done and how to fix it.  Your ability to trust God in your marriage is a direct indicator of whether or not you have invited Him into it.  

If you want your marriage to work, it has to be built on a solid foundation and the Lord has to be the One that is giving out the orders. 

What about motherhood?  Have you given God permission to help you be a mother?

Frustration can set in, when a mother doesn’t have patience or is trying in her own strength to mother her children.  The reason why is that a mother is not the creator of her children.  Although she birthed them, she did not design them, so there are aspects of her children that she must learn to navigate and direct.  However, while you are learning to help and assist your children in life, have you sought God about what is best for them?

Have you told God that you want to be the type of mother that He designed you to be or are you just being the type of mother that you want to be?  You have to make a decision and it’s an important one.  You have to decide to be an instrument and vessel of God in the lives of your children.  They were given to you as a blessing, but you have to be willing to be a good stewart over what God has given you.  

Is it too much for you to ask God to give you patience and direction, so that you can be a mother that builds her children up and gives them wisdom?

Don’t forget about your career.

In the world, you and I are told that we can be whatever we want to be.  What we don’t normally hear is that we can and should be in the place and position that God has called us to.  We aren’t built up to be the type of women that God has designed us to be.  

Because of this lack of encouragement, it’s not hard to take the wheel of the career field and steer it in the direction of our liking.  Have you surrendered your dream to God, so that He could tell you which ones He cosigned on?  Have you stopped long enough to hear Him direct you?  Do you have too much noise playing in the background, so that you cannot hear Him?  You have to be intentional about not avoiding what is important.

Let the Lord build your house

God’s will and purpose for you is important.  You and I should want Him to be involved in our lives, in every way possible.  This cannot happen without an invitation.  

If you believe in Jesus, then you have already believed him for your salvation, but did you make him your Lord?  Are you giving him first place and rulership over every area of who you are and what you do?

You don’t want to be the person that is doing things without asking God to be with you.  You don’t want to find yourself in a place where you are struggling because you got into something that God did not call you to get into.  Now all things work together for our good, but you still have to go through, if you are disobedient.  

Allow the Lord to establish the framework for the buildings in your life, so that as you build, your labor will not be in vain.  

10 Quick and Thorough Cleaning Tips For A Saturday

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Happy Saturday!!! Its time to do a quick thorough cleaning so that you can enjoy the rest of your day…but first let me give you a few tips and encouragement…

 

Here are my top 10 tips for cleaning on a Saturday

There are so many ways that you can clean.  If you aren’t in the mood to do it or you have other things on your mind, it could be a long and boring process.

You could get sidetracked and be ineffective in you cleaning…no one wants that.

Over the years, I have observed my own cleaning habits and realized that there is a way to motivate myself and use these 10 tips to get it done, quickly and thoroughly…

Tip #1 Decide what you would like to do for the day

Since you are reading this, it can be assumed that you would like to or have to clean today.  However, I suspect that you don’t want to spend your entire day doing it.  So, what else would you like to do?  Maybe you would like to read a good book, spend sometime with family, go out for a nice meal, or even watch a good movie.

By knowing that you would like to do these other things today, you will motivate yourself to clean faster and get the job done.

Which leads to tip 2

Tip #2 Decide how you will reward yourself for cleaning thoroughly and quickly

Our human minds are generally motivated by some sort of reward, whether it be by a positive reward or negative reward.

Yes, I did say negative reward.  Let me explain…

When you give yourself something to encourage an activity, that is a positive reward.  For instance, you would like to read 20 books, so you decide that at the completion of reading those 20 books, you will give yourself a budget of $40 total or $2 per book that you read, to buy books. (I like reading and reading analogies.)

Then there is the negative rewards, which was probably the statement that placed a question mark over your head in the first place.  This means that you take something away in order to encourage a positive action or when you are doing something undesirable.  Using the same analogy above, the negative reward would be that for every book that you did not read, you would take away $2 from the overall book buying budget of $40.

The reason why I am suggesting this is that you will find that if you have a few things that you would like to do after you are finished cleaning.  If you have not met your own expectation, rewarding yourself in this way will help you to stay motivated.  You will either gain something or lose something based upon your cleaning actions.

Tip #3 How long will you clean?

It is important that you decide how long you will clean.  Give yourself a start time and an end time to get all of the cleaning done for the day.  Will you clean for 2 hours? What time will you start? What time will you end?

Remember, it’s Saturday and we should be spending time with family and/or friends, doing things that we enjoy.  If not, you should at least be spending sometime doing something that you enjoy.

Tip #4 Make a list of rooms that you will focus on

It is very unlikely that you can clean your entire house thoroughly and quickly in one day.  This is why you need to decide which rooms you will focus on cleaning thoroughly and which ones you will do a light cleaning.

You may decide that you will thoroughly clean your bathrooms today and then lightly clean your living room and dining room.

Write these things down and remember that the objective is to clean quickly and thoroughly.  The rooms that you lightly clean, like your living room, can be thoroughly cleaned on another day of the week.

Be sure to check off the rooms that you have cleaned as you do them.

Tip #5 What are your focal points for each room

Every room has a messy point where you normally drop things down.  It can even be a space that collects a lot of dirt, paper, or trinkets.  This should be one of your focal points for that particular room.  For those rooms that you are lightly cleaning, at least decide to tackle those focal points.

Tip #6 Clean in increments

This is a tip that I acquired from the Fly Lady over 10 years ago.  I hold on to this tip because I have found it very helpful.  Her tips are so helpful, you should check out her site.

Decide the increments that you will clean in.  I recommend using the 15 minute increments.  I use a stop watch and allow it to sound automatically.  You can use your phone, kitchen timer, or find an online timer.

When you are cleaning in increments, you give yourself time to focus and refocus on various tasks while cleaning.  You offer yourself a bit of adventure and stop yourself from getting board with the task.  You might even speed up,  knowing that you are supposed to be finished with a specific task in a certain amount of time.  You will also begin to notice how much you are getting done with each time that the alarm sounds.  This will also motivate you to continue.

Tip #7 Take breaks in between the cleaning increments

As I stated above, I recommend that you clean in 15 minute increments.  Do this three times and then when your alarm goes off the 4th time, on the 45 minute mark of the hour, take a break.  For more clarity, understand that if you start at 10am, you will clean until 10:15.  Once the alarm goes off, you will refocus.  Do that again at 10:15 and again at 10:30.  Once your alarm sounds at 10:45, give yourself a break.

At your break, sit down and do nothing.  Studies have shown that if you take 15-20 minutes to do nothing and rest, you will be thoroughly replenished and rejuvenated.

*Perhaps my word for the day should be thoroughly…*

Tip #8 Aim for clean not immaculate

This is a tip that I have had to tell myself over the years.  I clean my house all week-long and there are many times where I wonder why my husband seems to do it faster than I do.  I have learned from his wisdom and I want to share it with you.

Everyday is not a day to clean thoroughly to the point where the house is spotless and immaculate.  That being said, we are aiming for clean and that is a personal standard.  I am however saying that if today is not the day to focus on the kitchen, don’t begin to pull out the refrigerator and stove to clean behind them.

It’s Saturday, remember the plan back in Tip #1…that’s why I had you do it.

Tip #9 Play some music, watch a movie…

This tip is something that I highly encourage.  Although it says play some music or watch a movie, there are so many options for things that you can do to help you clean.

The purpose in doing this is so that you are not thinking about the mound of laundry that you are folding.  Who likes the repetition of grabbing, folding, and putting down?  I know I don’t.  However, I do like to do it while I am watching a movie, listening to an audiobook, watching a YouTube video, or listening to some music.

You will find that this tip will help you get your cleaning done quicker that you thought.

Tip #10 Try not to stress and have a little fun

I know that you just read that tip and wondered if you were still reading the same article.

Yes! I said it…you can clean and not stress.  You can also have a little fun while doing it.  See how long it takes you to do the tasks that you have set up.  Make it a game for yourself.  Enjoy the music or videos that you are listening to and watching.  As your house begins to look the way you want, smile and realize that you are doing a great job. Remember the rewards?  This is the time to remind yourself of them and to do your best.

Have a Happy Saturday!!!

My hope for you is that after reading this, you will be ready to tackle that Saturday cleaning, so that you can then have fun with your family and friends, read a great book, or go out to dinner.  I hope that you have found encouragement within this post.  As you apply the tips that I have given you, decide which ones you would like to tweak a little and which ones work best for you.  Come back another day and tell me how it went…

Until next time, Happy Saturday!