Browsing the archives for the marriage monday tag.

Marriage Monday (with chicken pot pie)

Churchy, Domestic, Kids, Marriage

In this blog post I am participating in Marriage Mondays, and on Wednesday I’ll add this link to Living Well Wednesdays

It’s Marriage Monday again! Last week, my Good Morning Girls group was talking about something Courtney had said in a recent blog post. Essentially, that if you bump a cup full of water, water will come out (duh lol) but that it’s the same with our hearts! If you have a heart full of frustration (or anger or resentment etc), that’s what will come out when you hit a bump! So if we work every day to fill our hearts with love and joy, that’s what will come out! I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week and it makes so much sense!

We are all human so it’s easy to do things that annoy the people around us, and it’s easy to let ourselves be annoyed. This morning, it is -37 with the wind chill and though I know I saw him wear it home on Friday, Wee One #1 could not find his hat as he was getting ready for the school bus – this bumped my cup. If I was already frustrated, (perhaps with him constantly losing tupperware at school), frustration would have spilled out and he would have taken off for the bus with a cloud over him and a chilly head. Instead I told him that he needed to keep track of his things, especially necessary things like that, and I gave him a spare hat! Had I reacted angrily or meanly, I may have ruined his day and likely mine too because I’d spend the rest of it feeling guilty!

My husband and I went to bed at 3:30 this morning because dear, dear friends we only get to spend time with once a year were here. When we went to bed he said he’d like to get up at 7:30 when I do – it is 10 and he is still sleeping. This doesn’t really bump my cup at the moment, but when he gets up in a few hours annoyed that I was unable to get him out of bed when he asked me to, I will not respond with anger or resentment for being the one that gets up early. I’ll make him and coffee and tell him playfully not to be so grumpy. When his Eeyore cloud passes I’ll be very happy that I didn’t incite an argument just because he can’t get by on as little sleep as I can.

I have tired to live like this since I noticed myself not paying attention to my reactions a couple of years ago and of course every day I can get better and better at it. I’m human so I’ll never totally get it right, but as long as everyone around me knows that I am trying, and if I get it right more often than not, it’s a win!

My husband works from home – we are incredibly blessed to be able to say that!! That means we are together pretty well all day, everyday. We each have things in our days that do not involve the other so we’re not as connected at the hip as that may sound, but being around each other this much could be horrible if we were not mindful of what’s in our cups!!

I’m ending Marriage Mondays now with my husband’s favorite recipe form the previous week. Last week it was Chicken Pot Pie!

This version of Chicken Pot Pie is the short of shortcut my Granny would take and then never tell anyone about. She was up making muffins almost every day at 5am for her family, so she could take as many shortcuts as she needed to in my book!

Shortcut Chicken Pot Pies
Makes 6 individual 6″ pies

2 1/2 cups mixed frozen veggies
2 cups (or more) chopped cooked and seasoned chicken
2 cups thickened chicken stock or cream of chicken soup
2 cup Bisquick
1 cup milk
2 egg

Preheat your oven to 400. Thicken your chicken stock by taking a little and mixing it with about 1 tbsp or so of cornstarch, then add that back into the rest of the chicken stock. The original recipe calls for cream of chicken soup, I’ve also seen it done with a can of gravy (!) but my husband likes it best with thickened chicken stock. 🙂

Mix 1 cup of the Bisquick, 1/2 cup of the milk and 1 egg together and pour that into the bottom of your pie pans (of course you could also just use a big pie pan), and bake for about 15 minutes.

 

Meanwhile, stir the veggies, chicken and thickened chicken stock (or soup or gravy) together. Once the bottom crusts are ready, pour this mixture over them. I made little fork indentations in the bottom crusts because they puff up a bit. The mix the rest of the Bisquick, milk and remaining egg and pour over top the veggie and chicken mixture.

 
 

Cook this for another 25-35 minutes, till puffy and golden on top and voila! Amazingly simple chicken pot pie without rolling any pie crust at all!

 

The original recipe just puts the veggies and chicken mix directly into the pan(s) with no bottom crust, so you only use half the Bisquick, milk and eggs but then you sacrifice having a bottom crust so it’s less a pie and more a savory cobbler situation.

 

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Peace on Earth – December Challenge

Churchy, Domestic, Kids, Marriage

Wow. When I skip a few days or a week of blogging for real life, I tend to totally ignore it and carry on like it never happened, bu I’ve been absent for two whole weeks. It’s not life, it’s Christmas! I’ve been very dedicated to staying on task with my to do this year and it’s been going well, but I’m knitting every night, not blogging. So here I am, on track for my favorite holiday ever and back on track for blogging as well.

When I sat down to write this I was afraid that I was a week behind for Courtney’s December challenge – thankfully, I am right on time for the first in the series! The one thing she mentioned to do last week was light an extra large candle everyday and to make a note on the calendar that says ‘I Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.’ This passage has actually helped me quite a bit over the past couple of years so it’s familiar to me! As for the candle, I mentioned a few weeks ago that after the Making Your Home a Haven challenge was over, I kept on lighting my candle. I honestly feel that it has changed my attitude because I’m in the kitchen or in areas off the kitchen so much of the day and night that it catches my eye all the time, and at this point even when it’s not lit I still stop and take a moment.

The challenge for this week is to schedule a bubble bath. I’m not a bath sort of gal, but I will schedule an extra long pamper session for myself. My dear friend Lindsay, who I met in kindergarten and my still fairly new friend Jade who I met in January, always look their best and have really encouraged me to make the time to make that a priority if that’s important to me – and it really, really is. So far, so good. It is time consuming though, especially with my lifestyle (read: changing diapers, doing dishes, scrubbing corners, baking, etc) so time has to be taken every night to fix or change nail polish, take off make up, moisturize like you’d never think is necessary (‘your skin is thirsty May!’) and all that stuff. I have found that forcing myself to make time to ‘get pretty’ as I playfully call it, has helped me center myself too! I’m not really in that bathroom focusing on taking off my eyeliner or sugar scrubbing my knees and elbows – because really, what is there to think about? I’m in there letting my mind wander, thinking about the sort of things I’d never allow myself time to think about otherwise. You all know I’m a pretty thankful person as it is, but as I was changing my nail polish a few days ago, I thought about how amazing it is that I get to wake up everyday here in Canada and not in Haiti or Burma or somewhere I have never heard of that has equally scary situations going on. I think about how amazing it is that we have the cash for me to even have this ridiculous collection of nail polish or that I can somehow get away with wearing plastic jewelry at 30. I think about my babies and how none of them are technically babies at all anymore – about how healthy they all are!! Most of all though, I think about my husband and our marriage and I sigh. Not only are we still friends, but ever since we moved to the woods he’s gone above and beyond to make me fee happy here because he knows how much I miss Toronto.

Anyhoo, the second part of this challenge is to read about the birth of Jesus. You know, the whole reason December is a big deal in the first place? 😉 Matthew 1, 2 and Luke 1,2 are on my list to read and re-read this week. I am feeling much more churchy than usual, and I don’t know if it’s because of Christmas or if it’s just that He is using this time of year to make my heart feel three sizes too big for my chest, but it does. It really, really does.

*I just read this post over at Inspired to Action and stopped in my tracks because it’s exactly why I get up so early every morning for alone time. Some days I actually get all the way out of bed and read my Bible with a coffee. Some days I just read in bed, and some days I just lay there and think and steal an extra snuggle with my husband – always thankful for this life.*

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