It's my Friends Birthday

You are a humble beloved servant of the most High God and I just wanted to say I love you and you are His blessing to me .  Your support and encouragement mean the world to me and I pray that you have a blessed day today

May God bless you
May He watch over you.
May God shine His face toward you
May God show you favor.
May God be favorably disposed toward you
May He grant you peace
Numbers 6:23-26

In celebration of Paul's birthday I thought I would share a few favourite pictures with you

Blessings to you my friend

Treasured Moments 5

Do you find yourself falling into a pattern of daily grind, skipping the 'fun' activities because you don't have time or lack energy?Do creative arts, nature walks, drama, read aloud or spontaneous acts seem only a distant dream in your life?
Yet these Treasured Moments shared with loved ones uplift us, nurture our soul, remind us of the beauty and joy in our lives.
We want Treasured Moments for ourselves, for our children, for our families but how can we make it happen?
... Commitment ... Encouragement ... Support ... Ideas ... Plans.

I invite you to join us every Saturday and share your plans and ideas, your targets and goals and your stories ... your 'Treasured Moments'. In this way we may inspire one another, encourage ourselves and start achieving our dreams. Hosted by Erin at Seven Little Australians and Counting

My Treasured Moments this week are:

1. Discovering 31 Days to Clean Challenge Having a Martha House the Mary Way by Sarah Mae. I am really looking forward to starting this challenge today.

2. On Monday my friend Mrs K came over with her children and helped around the place.  They gave fresh meaning to many hands make light work.  I felt so blessed.

3. Watching Sir N enjoy learning to sew on his sewing project.  (keep an eye out for this blog post to come)

4. Discovering that the Elsie Dinsmore series I am collecting is on special at ChristianBook.com and being able to complete my collection:  $48 for 19 books!

5. Receiving a bunch of flowers from a girlfriend and then she took me out for some fellowship and lunch.

6. Watching the rain soak the garden.  I love the sound of rain.

7. I am eagerly anticipating starting Healthy Lifestyle by Careforce LifeKeys.  My sister did this course two years ago and I have been wanting to attend it.  Our church will be starting it next weekend. I did Women to Women about 8 years ago.  I remember coming away encouraged and healed.


To join in you are welcome to add your post on Seven Little Australians and Counting using the Mr. Linky form (please link to the individual post) and include a link back to Erins post. If you haven't a blog we would still love to hear your voice, just leave your stories in the comments.

Blessings

Crystal Growing

Crystal growing is a long process.  We started this project in August and only this past week have we seen our crystals in detail.  So if you want to grow crystals be prepared to grow patience!

Here is our photo journal of growing crystals.

Rain water, and crystal growing kit.

Weighing the crystal formula to be mixed in water.

Adding the powder to the water and then mixing well.

Adding the stones to the base for the crystals to grow on.

Pouring the crystal growing mix into the container over the stones.

Adding some extra crystal growing powder this is the seed the crystals grow from.

From here the crystal bath was put in a warm room on a shelf not to be disturbed.  And the wait began.

After a week - no crystals

After two weeks I was a little upset and about to throw out the mix when .....

After a few more days of patiently waiting I took the lid off the crystal bath.  This turned out to be key as now evaporation of the fluid could take place at a faster rate and we could actually see crystals growing.

Once all the water had evaporated we touched the crystals
and were surprised that they were rock hard.

A few days after all the water had dried
It wasn't as pretty but still interesting.

We took a few crystals and had a look under the microscope.  That was fun :)  More about microscopes in a later post.

Looking at crystals

Crystals through the eye piece of the microscope. 

Have you grown crystals with your children ?

Blessings