How to Create Awesome Children’s Bedrooms

Here is a free article on how to create wonderful bedrooms for your children.Bedrooms that are organised and easy to keep clean and tidy!

It is a pdf file. Creating Awesome Bedrooms

Enjoy!

Free Valentine Cards

Here are two different valentine cards that you can download, print out in colour and then laminate to GIVE AWAY.

Click on the image that you want to download. There are 6 images or cards to one A4 piece of paper.

Enjoy! and Happy Valentines!

Looking For A Healthly Master Salad Recipe?

2008 is the year for me to transform my eating habits! I am determined to adopt a permanent healthy lifestyle!

To tell you the truth about salad eating – I am so lazy that most of the time my salads are just sliced lettuce, grated carrot, chopped cucumber and tomato chunks! In fact that is what we have had with every meal this week.

The thing that I have to watch with my salad eating is the cheese. It is so easy to grate a whole pile of cheese and smother the top of the salad with it. I can’t trust myself with the cheese so I have to omit it from my salads.

Here is a Master Salad Recipe that you can adjust to your likes and dislikes.

For ONE serving (adjust for how many people you have to cook for)

100 grams cooked chicken cut into chunks (this is the protein bit – you can choose anything really – feta cheese, cottage cheese, salmon etc)

Vegetables – like 1 sliced spring onion, 1/4 cucumber cut into chunks, small wedge of cabbage thinly shredded goes nicely with the chicken – but you can choose whatever you have in the fridge

Herbs – roughly chopped mint goes great with chicken – but you could do anything like parsley with salmon or tuna.

DRESSING – this is where we can get into trouble and pour on heaps but this dressing is low in fat and you still get that creamy flavour.

For ONE serving

1/4 cup natural yogurt
1 tsp mayonaise
condiment – like 1/2 tsp grated root ginger OR 1/2 tsp seed mustard OR 1/4 -1/2 tsp curry powder etc according to your taste and what protein you used in your salad.

Mix the dressing through your salad ingredients.

To make this into a full meal (you already have the greens and the protein) all you need is a carbohydrate. Maybe you could have hot crusty bread OR hot potato (or kumara) chunks OR couscous OR rice OR pasta and mix them through (well maybe don’t mix the bread through the salad!)

Enjoy!!
p.s. The inspiration for this master recipe came from Carolyn Gibbson from Kiwi Kiss weight loss program and other health recipe books.

Rachel Larkin

Do You Find It Hard To Memorize Scripture?

I have come across an excellent resource that has helped me memorize Psalm 1 in 6 days (one verse a day).

It is a little ebook written by a man called Dr Andrew Davis. It is free!!!! – Here is the link where you can download it -An Approach to the Extended Memorization of Scripture By Dr Andrew Davis

He is encouraging Christians to memorize large chunks of Scripture instead of a verse here and a verse there. I hadn’t thought of it in this way before. But it is starting to make sense to me. Since I have memorized Psalm 1 I have been able to see the whole Psalm in context rather than just focusing on my favourite verses in the Psalm.

I am so encouraged with Dr Andrew Davis’ method on how to memorize large chunks of Scripture that I am now working on memorizing the entire book of James!!!!

I urge you to go to the ebook link and print it out and give memorizing and meditating on God’s Word a go.

Here is another great resource – the website is called Precept Austin , here is a link to the page on Memorizing Scripture – it is so full of excellent encouragement and insightful comment on the ins and outs of memorizing the Word. Memorizing His Word

Happy Memorizing
Rachel Larkin

Chocolat Spring Issue no.9 is OUT! / Free Ebook for Comments!!

Hi There,

The Spring Issue (No. 9) is out!!. You can download your FREE copy on this website – Click here for Issue 9

It is choc-filled with articles, recipes, funnies and quotes.

I would love to hear from some of you that are enjoying the magazine – please feel free to make a comment – I have a FREE Ebooklet available for all those who make a comment this week.

The book is all about El Roi – which is a Hebrew name for God, meaning The God Who Sees Me. While I was researching about El Roi for my ladies bible study I came across so many verses that spoke about God and how He has His eye on us and watches us. I decided to put them all into a little ebook with some extra comments. It is truly inspiring and really lifts the spirit. It is a platform to bring you into an atmosphere of praise and worship.

So talk away! -LEAVE A COMMENT FOR A FREE EBOOK!
Rachel Larkin

Chocolat Magazine Winter Issue

Hi there

The Winter Issue of the Chocolat magazine is now up on the website. Click here to go to the download page.

Enjoy!!!!

Rachel Larkin

My Great Homeschooling Ideas – Part One

I am going to share with you some of My Great Homeschooling Ideas. (Keep reading for the FREEBIE!)

Todays idea is very simple but can be very effective!

Its using the idea of playing cards and turning the concept into one that is fun and educational.

My boys LOVE Australian V8 Supercars. Did I say my boys LOVE it? Well that is an understatement – they REALLY REALLY LOVE them. So I thought that I would turn their passion and love of V8 Supercars into a set of cards (sort of like Baseball cards, I guess – not that I have seen what a Baseball card looks like!).

I found some pictures of the cars and the drivers on the internet along with information of the cars and drivers. I then measured a normal card from a pack of playing cards and created an Excel spreadsheet. I cut and pasted the pictures and information into Excel. I had the driver picture and information on one card and the car and car details on another.

I then printed them out onto normal A4 photocopy paper using colour ink. Then I laminated them and cut them out. They look fantastic.

The boys have worn them out! – They started out by playing a sort of matching game with them – matching the cars with the drivers – this was great for my begining reader!. My ‘maths’ minded boy started working out how old the drivers were from the date of birth information on them. They learned geography from the information about place of birth and where they are living now.

My boys are into making lists – the V8 Supercars Cards that I made, gave them great content for their lists. I keep finding paper everywhere with the names of the drivers and cars that they have written out – guess what that is – COPYWORK!!! yep that is copywork.

An amazing side effect is how they have learned about sponsorship and advertising – every car is signwritten with the sponsors name and slogan. There has been many a discussion on advertising and sponsorship. WOW – just from making a set of plain cards!

I have included them here as a pdf file so you can see what I am talking about. Click here for -v8 supercar 2007 cards

Now this idea has huge potential – you just need to spend some time thinking about the interests and hobbies of your children and see how you can incorporate it into a set of cards.

What about a set of cards about – animals? countries? sports people? flags? solar sysyem? cars?

The ideas are limitless.

Share your ideas with us – use the comments

Rachel Larkin

Chocolat Magazine Winter 2007

The latest issue of Chocolat is out!!!

You are able to access it on my Chocolat page -
Click Here

Enjoy

Rachel Larkin

Taking Time Out (over Easter)

I hope you all had an awesome Easter break. I certainly did!.

We decided to go away to Sandspit about one and a half hours north from Auckland (the major city in New Zealand). I am so glad that the weather forecast was wrong – it was amazingly sunny ALL weekend – a bit different from hail, rain and thunderstorms. Even in this day and age, we can’t out guess God – he decided to give us a gorgeous sunny long weekend.

We had no TV and no email – perfect! I only took the basics – books, books , books -Oh there was just enough room for some clothes and food! I had a mini – spiritual retreat – read about how I do this – it is a pdf file called -Taking Time to Pause – FREEBIE!

It was extremely benefical. You can read more about my spiritual retreat in the latest post of the Becoming Beautiful group – click the join button on the right hand side.

Well the countdown has began – only 5 sleeps until my duathlon and wouldn’t you know it – I have fallen ill with a cold virus. So not much training is going down. It is times like this that I have to remember that all things work together to those who love the Lord. I am still searching for the good in my cold

Have a great week!

Rachel Larkin