Priorities and Goals

Over the past week, I have been doing some major internal reflection.  I have been thinking about what is most important to me, in the form of a top 10 list.  I would like to challenge all my readers to do the same if you haven’t already. 

Write down 10 (or more) things that take the most priority in your life.  I didn’t worry about putting them in order at that time, I just brain-stormed for things I enjoy, things that make me feel fulfilled, and how I would spend my day if I could spend it however I wanted to.  You can also include things that you feel the world around you is pressurizing you to make your priorities.

Afterwards I went through the list and asked myself:  Is A more important to me than B?  Is A more important to me than C? and so on until I had put them in order of most important to least important.

Here is my final Top 10 List:

1. God
2. Family
3. Pets
4. Health
5. Home
6. Friends
7. Garden
8. Hobbies
9. Learning
10. Career

Everybody’s list will be different with different priorities, there is no right or wrong list, this is because we are all individuals and each one of us is fulfilled by different activities.  One person may feel fulfilled by having a day sitting on the porch reading, another person may feel fulfilled by a day out in the wilderness on a mountain bike.  Mark, for example, feels fulfilled when going sailing or working on his car, so his car is quite high on his list.

The point of this is to figure out what you enjoy and do it.  One thing that makes me feel more fulfilled is doing housework, believe it or not I enjoy doing laundry more than having coffee with a friend!

After creating this list I started working out some goals for the year that will make me feel fulfilled in each of my 10 priorities.  Here they are:

1. Read the whole Bible
2. Get married
3. Buy a pet dog (Beagle or Cocker Spaniel)
4. Eat three meals a day and get 15 min of exercise a day
5. Buy a house
6. Have 3 best friends
7. Start a vegetable garden
8. Hobbies:
   1. Cross-Stitch – finish a major tapestry
   2. Lego – buy the cargo train for my Lego city
   3. Sims – Reach family generation 5
9. Learning:
   1. Sewing – Learn to sew (and sew a few skirts for myself)
   2. Etiquette – Research and practice Victorian etiquette
   3. Reading – Read a book a month
10. Career:
    1. Become a senior programmer
11. Other goals:
    1. Run in the rain!
    2. Go on a nice holiday.

Some of these goals may not make sense to many people, but these are what I want to get done this year.  What are your goals for the year?

I’d love to read your priorities and goals so feel free to email me or post them as a comment!

Recipe: Shell Noodle Salad

This recipe came from my cousin, Cindy, and is a dish that is made every Christmas.  It is necessary to make it the night before you are planning to serve so that the noodles draw in the flavour overnight.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups shell noodles
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 chopped green pepper
• 1 cup tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 2 tablespoons sugar

Instructions:

1. Cook the shell noodles
2. Mix all ingredients together and leave in fridge overnight.
3. Mix again before serving

Recipe: Potato Bake

Cooking in my oven today is a potato bake.  This is going to be taken to a Bring ‘n Braai at my good friend’s house tonight.  She just moved into a new place and this is the first time she is hosting anything for friends.  So I am taking around this dish to help out, it is a Bring ‘n Braai after all.

Ingredients:

• 5 large potatoes, boiled in their jackets until nearly cooked (increase the number of potatoes if the potatoes are small)
• 250ml ( 1 cup ) cream
• 250ml ( 1 cup ) milk
• 1 tablespoon parsley
• 1 packet of white onion soup
• 250ml ( 1 cup ) grated cheese (cheddar works the best)

Instructions:

1. Peel the potatoes and slice into an ovenproof dish
2. Mix remaining ingredients together, except the cheese
3. Pour over potatoes and sprinkle with cheese
4. Bake at 180C for about 1 hour – the cream will have set and potato bake will be golden brown.

Serve with meat cooked on an outside grill and salads OR with a roast chicken and vegetables.

Godly Blessings and Thank You Cards

Dear Readers,

How are all of you doing this wonderful day that the Lord has made?  Are you enjoying the Christmas left-overs still?  Have you cleaned up the gift wrapping supplies?  Have you found time to put away Christmas gifts and find them homes?

Today I spent the whole day thoroughly cleaning my house.  It was a public holiday in South Africa.  Under normal circumstances the 25th of December and the 26th of December are public holidays but our wonderful nation decided to make the 27th a public holiday this year too because Christmas day fell on a Sunday.  It has been such a blessing to get a 4-day weekend.  Not only that, my boss has told all of us that we only need to be at work for 2 hours a day on the 28th to the 30th of December. So I'll be working from 8am to 10am each day and after that I am free to spend the day however I want.

Other than cleaning house today, I have been doing some research on etiquette.  Today I was reading up about Visiting Cards (aka Calling Cards).  I typed out a long post about them, and then I realised something else, so I put that post in a folder for another day to rather talk about thank you cards and letters.

When was the last time you wrote “Thank You” cards or letters for any Christmas gifts you received?  I haven’t done this for a long time.  I usually write one to my elderly aunt, but there are not many other people who I give the traditional Thank You card.

Why don’t many people do this anymore?  In some way’s it may be because they feel that it is no longer expected, but I think it is laziness more than anything else.

I have a challenge for you.  Write Thank You cards for every gift you received this year… including the one you received from your spouse.  For an added touch, perhaps send the thank you cards through the local postal service.  Wouldn’t you appreciate a thank you card in your post box rather than a hand-delivered one?

If you want the bonus challenge, get your children to write thank you note’s for their gifts too, and if you are a family that does the “Santa” thing, encourage your children to write a thank you note to Santa too.  It is a sign of great breeding (in my opinion), to send thank you notes.

May God bless each of you!

Ashleigh

Star Studded Hake

I have no idea why it is called Star Studded Hake, but it is absolutely delicious.  I made it for supper last night (Mark was with me for supper) and he claims that it is the best he has ever tasted and the Number 1 meal I have made for him.  So here it is:



You need:

• Hake fillets (or other fish fillets common to your area)
• Mayonnaise
• Mustard (in a bottle - like you put on hot dogs)
• Salt and Pepper
• Grated Cheddar Cheese

The quantities vary upon how many people you are cooking for and the size of the hake fillets, so just read the method below to get an idea of the quantities you will need:

1) Grease a Baking tray and preheat the oven to 180ºC (360ºF)
2) Put Hake fillets on the baking tray

3) Sprinkle Hake fillets with salt and pepper (amounts at your preference)

4) Spread mayonnaise and mustard over the hake fillet (like you would make a peanut-butter sandwich)

5) Sprinkle grated cheese over hake

6) Bake in the oven for 30 minutes

I served this meal with steamed baby potatoes, carrots and peas.

The latest relationship news

Remeber I said that I couldn't say anything about some relationship developments previously? Well, now I can since it happened over a month ago.  Mark (the home church host) and I are courting/dating.  We are very serious about each other, but not in an ungodly way.

My heart was won by a '57 Chevrolet Bel Air.  Just like this one, but in green:

At 11:11:11pm on the 11/11/11 - Mark asked me if I would "be his girl".  I said yes I would.  After that he handed me a box, the size of a shoe box - all nicely wrapped in a plastic shopping bag.  Inside was a model 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air.

1957 Chevrolet's hold a special place in my heart.  One night while sitting out at a children's play park, eating ice-cream with Mark, we were talking about how cool it would be if there was still a drive-in movie theatre in our city, but he said "We would need a nice old car with a single seat right across the front for it to be worthwhile." I replied "Like a '57 Chevrolet?" He agreed 100%.  So a '57 Chevrolet became our car that night.

See? I told you I would give the whole story when I was able to.

Unfortunately there were some casualties in Mark and myself seeing each other.  2 people got badly hurt (emotionally) in the process, and it made the situation among our friends a little awkward, but the situation has begun to stabilize now (and hence the reason for my ability to post this now).

Some of the other information is a bit more private, and I cannot imagine the people involved would be willing to let me post it online.  What I can say is that I am a lot happier than I have been in many months.

Mark and I have known each other as friends since 2008 (always having a liking for each other), but neither of us were emotionally ready for a relationship in 2008.  And in 2009 when he left the city to pursue a dream in another city, we lost touch and I thought I would never see him again... God appeared to have other plans though.  He refined both of us into the people we are today, and in my humble opinion, the people we are today are best friends and more.

Been a while…

It has been quite some time since my last blog post.  Goes to show how life can get carried away with you.  So much has happened, so here is an update:

 

Work

My work is going amazingly well.  I still love my job and all it entails.  I am challenged every day.  Like always, it is top secret (considering I am in the Research and Development Department) so I cannot say much more than what I have just said, but I feel so blessed to be working amongst so many amazing Christian people.  I adore my job and will stick it out as long as God wants me to, and when he says it is time to move on I’ll do so gracefully.

 

Relationships

Big news here, and I am going to keep it simple since there are a lot of details that the parties involved wouldn’t want me to post online.  William and I have ended our engagement.  It was mostly my decision.  I feel as though we were not as compatible on a moral and spiritual level as I once thought we were.  It officially ended on the 28th of October 2011.

 

In the past week there have been some other developments on the relationship front which I am also not at liberty to discuss right now.  However, when / if the situation stabilizes and I receive permission from the involved parties, I’ll be sure to give the entire story…

 

Spiritual

God has been blessing my socks off.  I’m still going to the Home Cell group, some weeks our numbers are fewer than others, but it is such a blessing to be around like-minded Christians.  I have also started attending a church with our Home Cell host, Mark.  He’s a guitarist and worship leader for the church band at the Student Church on the university campus, so I have been joining him there on Sunday mornings.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the few services I have been to, and I even went to both the morning and the evening service this past Sunday.

 

I have been growing so much in God’s word and God has really been speaking to me in so many little ways.  I am so blessed and I am in such an amazing place right now I cannot imagine ever wanting to live my life otherwise.

 

What God has really been speaking to me about though, is to prepare myself to be the helpmeet of my future husband, whoever that may be.  I know that God has an absolutely amazing man planned for me, and God will write my perfect love story in his time, I just need to be patient and keep my life centred on God.  I know that my future husband and I will definitely have a relationship centred on God.

 

Building Sandcastles

A very good friend of mine gave me a perfect metaphor for describing the dreams and images we build in our minds, and that is to build sandcastles.  Sometimes we get a bully that breaks down our sandcastle, sometimes our sandcastle doesn’t turn out exactly like we planned, but sometimes, if it is in line with God’s dreams for our lives, the sandcastle turns out exactly like we planned it.

 

I know what dreams I have for my life.  I dream of a relationship with my husband where we go to church together on a Sunday.  A relationship where we start and end the day in prayer.  A relationship where I can support, challenge and encourage my husband on his walk with God.  A relationship where I can be a keeper of our home and create a refuge for my husband to come to after a long day.  A relationship where I can support my husband in building his sandcastles.  The only way I could do all these things though, is if God wishes me to do them.   With God’s help I can do this, but without God at the centre of all of it, I will stumble and fall.

 

In Closing:

Hopefully I’ll be able to spend more time online and really get back to blogging again, especially now that my body has got used to the stress of working an 8am to 5pm job.