It’s a beautiful day here! Sunshine always seems to change my outlook — sort of, no matter what I’ve got to do, if the day’s a sunny one, generally, my attitude is sunny, too! It’s taken me all these months of ‘working at’ the Trim Healthy Mama plan to get confident enough to begin sharing some of the different recipes or how I’ve learned to use the different recipes in the book — but every day I learn something new! Ever a “free-styler” I have to really work at following the recipes. But I’ve come to see and really appreciate…
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NEW! TrimHealthyMama Online Store Many women are enjoying great success following the Trim Healthy Mama book & eating style or plan. But many women aren’t. I notice this many times as I read the different posts on the Facebook THM group “encouragement page” [my description] and the number of comments that are either negative or reflect a lack of being able to stick with the THM meal plans. Many women are simply feeling defeated as they try to “stay on plan.” I don’t know why this is, exactly, but I think it has a lot to do with the proliferation…
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Someday an Heirloom Marriage by pamela spurling written year-2000 I pray as we sit here at the kitchen table, that what I share with you today will be a blessing to you and a blessing in your home—I pray it will maybe even change the way you look at your marriage and perhaps it will never be the same again. So… Your Marriage is an Heirloom. An heirloom that, depending on its value, will be passed down for generations… I think most times, women don’t have any idea the value of what they have in their hand and that it…
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I love blue and white things. Blue is my favourite colour. It’s not my favourite mood, though I struggle with that one. Sometimes, a lot. Blue is my favourite for hydrangeas, dishes, gemstones, berries, skies and seas. And though I mostly prefer to wear pink and black now, navy clothing has long been pretty much the only colour I’ve worn. So you can imagine, that when I went to my first Basic seminar (wearing my favourite colour and that favourite colour was the colour of my dress), I felt right at home that night. I hadn’t learned yet that…
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A continuation of posts in a series of thoughts looking back on our life and experiences with the Advanced Training Institute and the Institute in Basic Life Principles (hereafter, ATI / IBLP)… I want to say at the outset, that it wasn’t all bad — ATI / IBLP — for I cannot really accurately recount the good things we learned in the ATI / IBLP years in our family or the blessings we reaped from what we experienced. And I don’t want to belabour an increasing list of negative points or excuse some of the more egregious errors in the…
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What I’m writing about these days isn’t sensational and isn’t unique to me. It’s not isolated and it’s not rare — at least not in homeschool and/or conservative Christian circles. It’s probably going on all over the place to one degree or another. Most everyone who’s been caught up in a particular group/movement/method comes to a day of reckoning and has to unpack the baggage they’ve intentionally or unwittingly picked up and carried as their own along the way. And it’s in the unpacking that some things — some ideas or ideals — are seen for what they are: good…
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Every once in awhile there comes a stir on the internet about Bill Gothard or ATI (the Advanced Training Institute) or IBLP (the Institute in Basic Life Principles). Welp… things sure are a-stirring… and seem to have finally come to a point of boiling and bubbling over. If you’re not familiar with all this, then this mess probably will just seem like yet another airing of grievances by former ‘cult members, or grown children of ______ parent(s), or divorced people talking about their former mates. I chose those different categories bcz most of us have either been in those…
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Consider the spider who spins a web and yet begins with no thread. My friend, Margaret, told me that a long time ago. I’ve considered it many times. I’ve considered other sorts of webs through the years, too. Webs of good intentions. Webs of ignorance. Webs of deceit. Webs of understanding. Webs of desires. Webs of guilt. All sorts of webs in our lives… these are the webs that connect good things and blessings to other blessings, lessons learned, desires realized, etc., etc. But there are also a lot of tangled webs that only eternity can sort out. ATI/IBLP is…