Elaine's Diary

Well this has been an eventful 2016, I travelled overseas to Italy and Poland, my sister had a baby, I bought an off the plan unit, and I got a promotion at my job.

Also, Prince, George Michael, and David Bowie passed away as well as Mohammad Ali. May their souls rest in peace.

I have posted up three new posts on my other blog, Work, Life, Food Pray and Go to Mary, one of which was about New Year's Resolutions. I have to think about my new year's resolution, I haven't really thought about it.

Maybe I can do the following:

1. find a place to volunteer regularly in. - maybe continue volunteering for the eucharistic adoration and try to do better at it?
2. Volunteer overseas - that's my bucket list (ivhq.com)
3. Go see China - bucket list
4. See the Holy Land - bucket list
5. Help more around the house
6. Publish at least another 10 books on each Lulu and Amazon
7. Learn something new
8. Cook more
9. Pray for baby and the whole family every day offering an Our Father and a Hail Mary especially for Our Lady's intentions
10. Work harder at work with as less distractions as possible.

I'm excited about publishing another 10 books. I've got 4 ready to go, but I need to read through them which will take a long time. I am currently reading the Gospel of Saint Luke with commentary by Saint Cyril sermons 1-80. Up to book 4. There are 7 books in this volume.

Need to help steam the floor.

Love

Elaine

Well it is the day when Christ was born! I did alot today surprisingly, I published a new book but now need to purchase it and read it. It's going to be a small book called Concerning Virgins by Saint Ambrose. I thought it sounded interesting and it's actually to his sister. So I hope it applies to me too.

I plan to publish another book by Saint Ambrose concerning repentance as well which will be also a small book.

Still currently reading the Gospel commentary of Luke by Saint Cyril of Alexandria. I am going through all the Doctors of the Church and finding as many things I can to publish that they had written. I also want to publish the Gospels Haydock version for the Lidcombe adoration, since their Bibles go missing all the time and this will be a cheap alternative than to purchase a new bible all the time.

I have a couple fo books to give away that I had purchased to see if they were any good. All which I published myself.

I think I also published another book; The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ by Saint Alphonsus Liguouri. Good book but had lots of mistakes so I had to fix it up. I published it also in CreateSpace and will sell it in Amazon.com and the Europe versions of the store as well.

So today I published 2 books, the book Concerning Virgins by Saint Ambrose I only published in Lulu.com though and is not currently available to the public as I need to read through it.

My sister is here with her husband. Other than a very quiet Christmas Day. Mum said she wants me to relax these two weeks and do some gardening and weeding.

Looks like I won't be studying in University this year but will instead pick up the piano. Will need to purchase a good digital piano if I want to start playing. I'm going to take it seriously.

BTW, mum mad chendol for the first time and it's sooo good. Very Malaysian Christmas with rendang and roti for lunch and dinner.

God bless,

From, Elaine

My website Work, Life, Food, Pray is now updated and looks pretty awesome if I say so myself. Hello, it is Christmas Eve and I am all alone in my home with just the two doggies and my neighbour dog.

I'm waiting to go to mass tonight at 8:30pm but we will be singing carols from 7pm onwards, probably practicing. I've been pretty lazy and haven't put up any links to public domain carols that I had found online. I should do it before Christmas is over. But I think it's too late now. Should have done it earlier.

I will be staying overnight at my sister's house and will come straight from there to home on Christmas Day.

Christmas is very exciting for me. I enjoy caroling in the old folks homes that we visit annually. But I didn't go to a procession which I usually go to this time of the year as I thought I would be going to hospital to visit a relative. The procession is singing lovely carols down the city whilst carrying a large life sized statue of Jesus Christ with his arms outstretched. It is the statue of the Sacred Heart. It takes four grown men to carry it all the way around the city. While caroling we give out rosaries and prayer cards.

It starts at 7pm and ends in adoration very late at night, I think 1pm. It's all great fun and I hope to go next year instead.

It's a really hot day and I am glad to be indoors. Especially now it's quite dangerous to go to public gatherings due to the terror threats.

I want to bake, there is this recipe that is oh so nice and easy, coconut macaroons. Maybe make this some other time.

Well this is from Elaine

By Nheyob (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Hello,

Wow, what a day. I worked for half a day. I needed to prepare some books to be donated to the State Library. I also catalogued and did some donations processing. After that, I attended adoration in Saint Joachims and went straight back home.

I'm very excited as I will be an aunty soon.

There is this 9 day novena that one can say to Saint Gerard Majella who is the patron saint of expectant mothers. However I am having difficulties finding a creative commons version of the prayer and will instead post the following prayer:

Saint Gerard, we honour you as the patron of expectant mothers because of the miracle granted through your prayers for a woman in labour.
Through your intercession, protect all expectant mothers who the Lord has entrusted with tiny, infant souls.
Bless them with health and fill them with love for the lives they carry.
Give them the courage to overcome the pain of childbirth, the strength to heal from it and a constant faith to rear their children in the spirit of Christ.
Amen.

"Used by Permission of Saint Wiki, available at www.saintwiki.com"

Let's pray for a healthy nephew and mother!

God bless,

From Elaine

So I decided to bake gingerbread cookies using the easy recipe found on this site. It was really easy but I needed to substitute ground cloves as we didn't have any, I found out I can substitute with All Spice but I didn't have any of that either so I used Mixed Spice which has All Spice as well as nutmeg and cinnamon in it. I ran out of golden syrup as well so I used honey. Needless to say the gingerbread came out sweet and spicy and I really liked it. Plus I added royal icing to it and decorated it with hearts and doves.

After that I went caroling in the evening with friends from a Church Group in an oval and when I left it started to rain so I was glad I left when I did. I will need to add some public domain music sheets I found on my Work, Life, Food, Pray website.

I am so happy I started one of my websites Go to Mary. It is really interesting learning about saints and their lives, and finding new resources to add to my website is also a bit challenging.

I'm getting a good steady amount of readers to my websites so I'm happy, thank God for Twitter. It's so good for advertisement and sharing. My suggestion to those who are starting a website and will like to get a decent amount of readers is to use something like Blogspot and use Twitter and Social Media to advertise and attract potential readers. To boost a Facebook post can cost as little as $1 a day and is quite affordable and have good results.

I'm looking forward to baking and cooking more during the holidays as well as publishing more books. I love to publish books, but make sure you proof read them regardless if you copied it from a Public Domain source, they could have errors in them.

God bless, signing off.

Elaine