It's a little hard to believe 2024 is already over, but here we are. With Christmas already a month in the rear view mirror I've been thinking a lot about the 2025 garden as well as all the projects I'd jotted down for myself in my journal to take care of over the winter months. I know a lot of people use the new year as a jumping off point for all sorts of things, and recently I saw a comment "with 2025 they hit the ground running!" I read that and just had to laugh. At my age, if I hit the ground for any reason, I'm at least a week with extra visits to the hot tub and easy things for dinner, like soup or "check the freezer y'all, fix what you want". 😂 There will most certainly be no running, whatsoever.
I've started the year off a little slower than usual but there are several project on the go. So getting right into it:
Sitting: Finally, after an already long day of working on various projects. I told myself last spring that before I plant seeds again this spring, I'd tidy up the grow room, paint the floor & make my space more enjoyable to work in. My grow room is the south end of my laundry room that I converted last year and while spacious enough, it's kind of ugly. It has a concrete floor and the previous owners must have used that room for various projects that they didn't mind if they stained the concrete floor because it's very, very stained. My solution was a good cleaning and dark gray floor & porch paint. I'm about half way done with a couple of coats of paint and it already looks like a brand new floor.
Been busy with: A completely unplanned furniture flip. I bought this old dresser from a thrift store many years ago, knowing "some day" I'd strip it and see what kind of wood was under all that ugly paint. I knew it was solid wood because of how heavy it is but at the time I just quickly sanded & sealed the top and tossed on another coat of paint on the rest of it, and then put it into use in one of the kid's bedrooms. Getting the grow room cleared out & tidied up meant I needed to move some extra things in there and this was one of them. I'd already planned to turn this into a coffee bar eventually, but since I needed to move it I figured now is as good a time as any to strip it, and see what we've got. So far, things are looking promising! (In the first image, there's that nasty laundry room floor I mentioned).
Excited about: Garden plans. Regardless of what I said last week or 6 months ago, the garden plans tend to change all the time and I'm okay with that. I do still plan to keep things much easier this year but it seems like every time I turn around I find something else I'd like to try growing!
My garden is a rather compacted, wee plot of land behind and beside my house. There's a lot going on out there in such a small space so it's really helpful for me to plan it all out like this, before I ever plant anything. I have 3 new beds going in this year and I'll be tackling bed #6 (finally) with some sort of shade loving plants.
Thinking: Quite a lot about Titus 2, once again. The "Titus 2 woman" subject comes up rather often in the circles I'm in. Recently someone on social media made the comment that if older women in the church were took being a Titus 2 woman seriously, then there'd be no need for women's conferences (highly paraphrased, but that was the gist). Well, as you can imagine, many had thoughts. 😁 I know many older women in the church that take it very seriously, but that certainly doesn't stop women from enjoying their conferences. I don't think a lack of mature Christian women in the church is the reason women's conferences exist, but I do think (as long as they're teaching sound Biblical doctrine) they can certainly be a great encouragement to all women who are able to attend.
Some had thoughts about the whole Titus 2 Woman premise in the first place. To me it's very simple. Paul writing to Titus instructs him in the very specific qualifications of elders (chapt 1 verses 5-9) and then goes on to tell him why those elders must be qualified in these areas because of the sinfulness and deception that abounds - to be able to both encourage in sound doctrine and to refute those who try to pervert it. Moving on to Titus 2, Paul shifts and speaks of how we live our lives is proclaiming sound teaching. For mature Christian women particularly (verses 3-5), for young men (verses 6-8) and for slaves/servants (verses 9-10) and then exhorts all to remember the grace of God in what Christ did for all of us, and that should be more than enough to motivate all of us, elders, women, young men, servants to live a life that honors God and proclaims sound teaching. How we do that will of course look a little different based on our station in life but that we do it, is the entire point.
Wondering: how I lived until 60 years old and never knew you can actually make cream cheese at home with just... milk & lemon juice. Someone on social media posted that she was making cream cheese and suddenly I was reminded of a recipe I'd recently come across but hadn't tried yet. So, I decided to try it.
The recipe calls for whole milk and what I had was 2% so I went ahead anyway, and what I ended up with was... a cup of lovely cream cheese 😋 It was much easier than I expected it to be. Here's the recipe, along with a video. I did a quick cost breakdown and where I live if I bought a 2 liter (8+ cups) carton of whole milk at $5.44 I could make 2 cups of cream cheese for $2.72 each. Compared to a 250 gram (1 cup) of store bought cream cheese at $4.49. Clearly it's much less expensive to make it at home and I'll definitely be trying this again, and adding some lovely herbs or maybe even some berries.
Looking forward to: Winter being over so I can get to work outside! I'm a little grumpy if I can't be barefoot in my garden so our long winters are a challenge for me. It's a good time to stay busy with all sorts of indoor projects while I wait for the warmer weather.
If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel welcome to leave a comment.
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