A Lovely Little Post of Thoughts and Festive Musings...

Hello lovely readers and happy Thursday to you!

Can you believe that Christmas is a mere two weeks away...?

I haven't been in the blog world too much of late...if read my post from a week or two ago, you will probably understand why!  {{smiles}}

My precious mother is finding this 7th pregnancy much more challenging and tiring, so I feel honoured to still be at home and able to help her where I can!

Thank you to each of you who are dilligently praying for her and our baby brother...your thoughts and prayers are truly appreciated!

How I long to meet this little one who is already loved and cherished by his family...

~

I thought I would share a little post of thoughts, happenings and various projects that I have been working on of late instead of the usual, Thursday Pearls...I had hoped to return to the blogosphere last week but alas!  The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity with more set to come!

In my absence, I have been working on completing a delightful little order for a sweet customer...can you guess what I have been creating?  Oh indeed...reindeer!

Oh, and I have a wonderfully festive tutorial planned for next week, sweet friends, so do stay posted!  If you like to sew and create, then you will love these darling fabric trees...

 

These patchwork fabric Christmas trees are also available on my Etsy shoppe...

My grandmother arrives late next week...she will spend Christmas with us and oh my!  

How much we have to complete before then!  Christmas crackers...we always love making our own...gifts for the girls...organising the final menu...what fun!

But our hope is to keep our Christmas celebrations Christ centred and simple so as to not lose the beauty of this time of year by stressing about trivial matters...a few years ago I shared a post on celebrating Christmas for real...would you perhaps like to read it...?  You can find my post here...

Christmas card making is something I just love, don't you...?

Each year we make a couple gift boxes for dear friends and family members, and I love popping a handmade Christmas card in each box of handmade and homemade goodies!

Simple and sweet...Christmas cards

This Monday coming we have a lovely Christmas brunch to look forward to...two dear friends and precious sisters in the Lord are hosting this little party for us and a few other young ladies, and I am sure it is going to so wonderful!

My dad has been away for a good few days now on a business trip, and is only expected home this coming Tuesday...of course we all miss him dearly, but we have tried to be productive in his absence...in the evenings we older girls have enjoyed watching Wives and Daughters which he got for us before he left!  Ah...how I love this BBC adaption!  So beautiful...

Cornflowers are blooming...aren't they beautiful...?  There is just something soft and romantic about them...{{happy sigh}}

In amongst daily happenings, the garden is growing and there is much preserving to be done too!  Cucumber pickles...summer squash bread...jam (made with berries from our neighbour!)...

Beth is lending a hand in the garden now as goodness!  There are just too many jobs to be done each day to keep the fresh produce coming in!  

Tomato Chilli Jam...oh so scrumptious...recipe can be found here...

And not to mention the watering...summer has arrived, and that means lots of hot weather!  

There is a terrible drought in our country at the moment, so would you perhaps pray that the Lord would see fit to send us some much needed rain?

Where we are, we have been fortunate to have more rain than most places in South Africa...and we are very thankful for that!

Gem Squash...

~

Well now, dear readers...I must be off to finish off some house cleaning...with guests coming to stay, it is always a good idea to use the opportunity to give our homes a little tidy up and a sort through...my task has been to clean windows, and we have those lovely windows that are made up of tiny individual panes...this means a bit of extra work, but how satisfying it is to stand back and admire your handiwork!

Blessings to you and much love...thank you for your continued friendship in the blog world...I appreciate each one of you sweet ladies!

Oh, and for those of you who followed Beautiful Girlhood on Facebook, I would like to let you know that I no longer have a page as I deactivated my personal profile...I dearly want to spend more time enjoying my home, family and writing my blog/reading blogs, so hopefully I can free up some time to do just this by not being on Facebook...  I hope you will continue to follow here, though!

With joy in Jesus!

...For the Love...

 ...Of summertime preserving...

Summer is upon us, dear friends!  And the arrival of this lovely sunny season means many happy and pleasurable hours spent in the kitchen, turning abundant blessings of fruit and vegetables into delicious, homemade preserves, pickles and chutneys for the rest of the year!

 Homemade Pickled Onions ~ November 2014

Preserving is a favourite pastime of mine...  I love the sweet, hot smell of boiling fruit permeating the house...the spicier combination of ingredients for fruit chutney...whole fruit boiling until just tender in a light sugar syrup to be stored away until wintertime...  Hmmm.... 

I feel a bit like Ma and her girls in those dear and treasured stories of their pioneer lives in the Little House series...

Apricot Chutney, December 2014

Often our entire day is spent in the kitchen, and we love it...  We work together as a team to reach a certain goal and this makes the process (and the end product) that much more enjoyable...

And homemade is always special, of course...  We love giving our preserves as gifts to dear friends and family members, particularly over the festive season.  There is something so satisfactory in the giving of something that took you time and effort to make, isn’t there...?

 Homemade strawberry jam made from our own organic strawberries ~ what a delight!

Whenever possible, I make pretty labels out of scraps of craft paper, or I simply use a whole dried chilli for our delicious tomato chilli jam or an orange slice to decorate a jar of marmalade, just to add that extra special touch...   

Do you enjoy preserving in your home?

How do you present your gifts of homemade goodies...?

~ Blessings ~

Loveliness Today ~ Strawberry Delight...

~ Homemade strawberry jam made from our own organic strawberries ~

Happy first of December, dear friends!

Learning The Art Of Preserving

Canned peaches, peach chutney and cucumber pickle.
It is a busy season out here in the Langkloof! Apples are ripening all over the countryside! It just so happens that the apple orchard right next door to the farm has apples ripening first. All we have to do is walk next door and pick apples for pies or for eating. We pick the blemished ones because the apple company cannot sell them anyway. We cut off the bad bits and enjoy a delicious snack of juicy apple straight from the tree! Talk about 0 food miles!
When we first arrived on the farm, it was apricot season! Once we had unpacked the essential things, we went straight to apricot jam making! We only made a few jars and so we are on the very last one which just about breaks my heart, because I haven’t ever tasted such good jam – if I do say so myself! Are you aware that most of the shop bought brands of apricot jam are in fact made with pumpkin?! We also made apricot chutney but I didn’t enjoy it that much! The rest of the family did, though!
We have just about finished the preserving of the peaches which came in about two weeks ago. We have more peaches coming though, this time from the farm. We got the other peaches from another local farmer.

I cannot wait for the figs to ripen because fig jam is a favourite in our household! We have lots of fig trees here so there will be plenty for all!
We have cucumbers coming from garden! My job is to make pickled cucumbers. I have made lots for both our families and we are meant to store them up for winter but...We are already on the second jar! It is so yummy on freshly baked bread with homemade cottage cheese...hmmm! Delicious!

Our bread recipe is from the book by Carla Emery called: ‘The Encyclopaedia Of Country Living.’ It really is good bread and very filling!
I also tried my hand at ginger beer making! We have a very good recipe from an old ‘Ideas’ magazine so I suggest you try it. Just a warning, once you start making it, your family won’t let you stop! My dad loves his ginger beer very much! That reminds me...I better make some more today!

GINGER BEER
(Makes 5 litres)
700ml Sugar
15ml Ground Ginger
1tsp Brewer’s Yeast
Raisins

Bring 2-and-a-half litres water to the boil in a large saucepan. Add the sugar and stir until it has dissolved. Remove from the heat. Add 2 litres of cold water to the saucepan and stir in the ground ginger. Allow the mixture to cool down until it is lukewarm, then pour 125ml of the liquid into a bowl or jug. Add the yeast and stir until dissolved. Stir into the rest of the liquid. Stir well, then use a jug and a funnel to pour the liquid into cleaned and sterilised bottles. Add 2 raisins to each bottle. Close the bottles tightly with a lid, leave at room temperature for about 24 hours, then place in the fridge. The ginger beer is ready to drink, preferably ice cold, once the raisins have floated to the top of the bottle. Enjoy!

Learning this art of preserving is a very enjoyable and rewarding experience. We have made quite a few flops. I can’t say our peach jam turned out very well! But we are trying and find it a lot of fun figuring out what we did wrong!
Have a blessed week!
Kelly-Anne