Psalm 23

The Lord is my home,
A place of security and love;
I shall always belong.

He leads me up mountains looking out over all that He has made,
He calls me to a place of rest and stillness with Him, in Him -
He fills my tank,
I can run once more along the paths He sets before me.

Even though things are not always straight forward, do not turn out well, and there is pain and hurt,
I can lean; enveloped and surrounded by His love,
love which takes away all the fear in my soul,
love that wraps around and heals the hurts in the depths of me,
love that reminds me that I am never alone.

He celebrates me with everyone watching,
His eyes are always on me and never leave me,
He will never be ashamed of me.
The abundance of His love overwhelms me,
There is nothing I will ever lack.

Only goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life!
There is nothing now or ever that can separate me from the One who loves me,
I will dwell with Him forever.

Women

It is awesome being a woman! I just spent a good hour and a half with 3 of the most precious and lovely woman sharing breakfast and talking and I am struck by how good it is to be a woman, but also how good it is to be loved and known by other women. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of deep friends I have, women I trust and love and whom I can share anything with. It's special and not everyone has it and so I want to say thank you - thank you to the women who walk with me, who talk with me, who pray with and for me, who dance with me, who cry with me, who encourage me to be the woman I was created to be, who understand me, who are honest with me and who love me even knowing the depths of my insecurities and failings - I am a better person because of you!

Croissants, glorious croissants - Part 1

So, I'm going to be a snob for a moment...baking from French recipes and by that I mean recipes written in French is so much more awesome than the plain english ones, especially when baking things like croissants. I bought a fantastic patisserie book when I was in Belgium at the beginning of the year and this is my first dip into it.

Let me tell you my story with croissants. I've never thought about making croissants until a couple of weeks ago. I just didn't think it was possible to be honest. I've always imagined it to be one of those gourmet patisserie things that only bakers with millions of years of experience and a degree in culinary arts should attempt, definitely not to be attempted at home, and then...

[I have to backtrack a little bit here quickly - my delightful boyfriend is gluten intolerant and so I've been experimenting with leaving the realms of gluten and well known cake flours for a variety of little known flours (well, little known to me at least) such as: potato flour, rice flour, tapioca flour, corn flour, soy flour, quinoa etc.]

It's quite daunting, but I'm always up for a challenge and so am slowly embracing them. So, as I was baking the other night, I started wondering about puff pastry, because there is no such gluten free substance to be found, so I started pondering how hard it would be to make and so I started research.
It turns out firstly, that it does not look so hard to make, once you've gotten the hang of the techniques and the folding and making layers with the butter and pastry, and to my delight as I was investigating this, I stumbled across a recipe for croissants and to my disbelief it looked feasible!

So, here I am, about to start my first batch of croissants! I decided to start with gluten-filled croissants, so as to get the hang of the techniques and a feel for consistencies and then I'll move on to the gluten-free croissants, something that my delightful boyfriend (db) will be particularly excited about. :)

I'm BLOGGGGING again

So, I have now created a second blog, a Master's blog, a blog on the work and research that I'm doing, Gaby's thoughts on RE and Rural Electrification but since starting writing that blog I have this insatiable desire to write and write and write and some of the things that I want to write are not really going to fit into that blog, so I'm going to resurrect this blog for those purposes, which I'm quite excited about. So, if any of you haven't given up on this blog as a has been, you are about to be in for a treat :)
I'm thinking that this blog is now going to consist of things that I'm doing and interested in - envisaging sections on baking, gluten-free baking, crafty things like knitting and sewing and photos, my heart things - thoughts and ponderings on life, love, community and God.
I'm excited, I hope you are too!

Take me out to the ballgame

A few pics from the game, and yes they do actually all sing that song at the game with the weird organ music

Sleepy in Seattle... and others

This is in a toyshop in Seattle, pretty convincing, don't you think

Colleen and Sarah arrive!

And even more fun times roll in! Happily enough, Sarah and Colleen arrived almost a week early, so their host family was not quite ready to have them yet and so, YAY, I got to pseudo host them in the girls house (Amy's house) , which was really SUCH a treat, getting to spend almost 24 hours a day with these two was fantastic! I found it especially fun to get to know Colleen, Sarah's mom, more, as Sarah is a good friend of mine and becoming an even better one. Oh right, I should probably explain who these people are. Colleen and Sarah are from my church, Christ Church in Kenilworth and are also here for the conference, which actually starts today, how exciting, but anyway...

So I'll slot in some picture of what we've been up to: blueberry picking, with Rene and the 3 of us, doing some random downtown sightseeing, going to the farmers market, and as you can see in some of the photos, a couple from our church, who originally lived in Tacoma, took us out for a sunset on the bay in their boat. SO much fun, we drank coffee and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets, while sharing travel stories and random american accent incidents. One great thing that Colleen, Sarah and I share is an awe for is American trucks, and by that I mean bakkies, obviously! It seems that every truck you see is larger than the last one. Even this m becomorning, I saw the biggest one yet, with the most manic lights, it looked like a kid's toys that had gone wrong, weird! Hence, the pose with the truck, I'm considering changing professions toe a truck presenter cheerleader pom pom type, you know! Ok, maybe not!




One of the most spectacular things about Tacoma is Mount Ranier! This mountain is 7 times higher than Table mountain, but is freestanding, ie. there is no mountain range that surrounds it, so typically you can look up from anywhere in Tacoma and see this majestic, always snow-covered mountain towering above everything. For those of you who have been following this blog from its beginnings, you will remember my snow moments when I was here last time, those were all on Mount Rainier, for a recap, look at the post, Snowy in the Snow.

Anyway, things are fantastic here, sending all of you lots of love, see the pseudo kiss below!