Signs and Fences…

The signs and fences I’m sharing today are all from Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C. taken on Friday March 18th.

We were happy to find Stanley’s at lunch time. We were still full from our hearty breakfast but after walking about we were ready for some refreshment.

May would be another great time of year to visit Stanley Park to enjoy the Rose Gardens. I still have a post with the beautiful flowering trees we enjoyed on this day. After we had our refreshment at Stanley’s we hit the road back to the good ole U.S.A.

I’m linking up with Lesley for signs, signs and with TexWisGirl for Good Fences.

We have another few days of sunny weather here in the Seattle area and there are predictions of the temps getting close to 80 tomorrow!! I’m back in a pattern of walking which is a good thing. I finally got my Senior Sneakers membership card so I will head to a gym nearby to sign up and see how that goes…

What’s new for you?

Mennonite Girls Can Cook

M is for the Mennonite Girls Can Cook! I am one of the ten girls who have a blog we collaborate on to post a recipe a day and a devotional on Sundays. That blog is called Mennonite Girls Can Cook. We also have two published cook books, Mennonite Girls Can Cook and Mennonite Girls Can Cook Celebrations. Both of these books are available on Amazon.

Anneliese, Judy, Lovella, Kathy, Bev, Betty, Ellen, Julie, Charlotte, and Marg.

Sometimes my meme buddies think that MGCC is my blog and all the recipes are mine because of my blogger comment link that will take you straight to MGCC. If your blog has the (name/url) option to click on when I comment everything works great for memes because I can put in the url that will take you straight to my ABC Wednesday post, etc. My personal blog is The Happy Wonderer, ellen b. but blogger/google has hijacked me and will send you straight to the MGCC blog if you click on my comment name when I don’t have another option in commenting. Does that make sense? Enough of that…back to the Mennonite Girls.

In 2010 all ten of us got together for the very first time to sign the contract for our first cookbook. Nine Canadians and one American, me. The nine Canadians hail from Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Winnipeg and Steinbach.

Here we are with our first cookbook in hand. It’s easy for me to get together with the girls from British Columbia and we cherish the few times all 10 of us can be together since Betty and Charlotte are over 2200 miles away from us. Along our cookbook journey we’ve had some fun book signings at farm markets, 10,000 Villages, bookstores and more…

Barnes and Noble in Bellingham and Ten Thousand Villages in Vancouver.

We’ve also done cooking demonstrations at the West Coast Women’s Show, Lepp Farm Market, Mennonite Relief Sales and on Global T.V.

In July of 2012 we signed a contract for our second book “Celebrations” which would be released in Spring of 2013.

Since this book was first published the cover has changed.

The West Coast girls traveled to Manitoba for book signings at several locations around Winnipeg and Steinbach so Charlotte and Betty were our hostesses for this great trip. I drove up to Abbotsford, B.C. to hop on a plane with the west coast girls for this trip to Winnipeg.

I never dreamed blogging would bring this whole new world of Mennonites and Cookbooks into my life. This journey started with me contributing some recipes to the newly formed Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog that was inspired by a Paska Post on Lovella’s blog. Because the girls and I have family recipes that are very similar I was invited to be one of the contributors on the newly formed Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog even though I am not Mennonite. The ten of us remained faithful to the blog and soon a publisher came knocking at our door. Beyond publishing and blogging we have formed lifetime friendships with each other. The girls call me their adopted American cousin.

It’s not just the girls who enjoy our times together. Our husbands get to come along for the ride, too. We get together for events that have nothing to do with our cooking blog, too, but there is always good food to be eaten whenever we gather together!!

All this fun has not stopped yet because in August we will be published again with a smaller Devotional book with some recipes included.

I’m linking up to ABC Wednesday started by Mrs. Nesbitt and carried on by the masterful Roger and the ABC team. Thank you!

Totems at Stanley Park

The nine totem poles at Brockton Point are BC’s most visited tourist attraction. Because many of the original totems were carved as early as the 1880s, they have been sent to museums for preservation. The totems you see at Brockton Point today are new ones commissioned or loaned to the park between 1986 and 1992.

Luke Marston’s sculpture, Shore to Shore, stands at the site of his family’s ancestral village site X̲wáýx̲way, and celebrates Portuguese adventurer Joe Silvey (“Portuguese Joe”) as well as his first and second Coast Salish wives, Khaltinaht and Kwatleemaat. The artist Luke Marston is the great-great-grandson of Portuguese Joe and Kwatleemaat.

Joe Silvey was born and raised on Portugal’s Altantic Azores Islands, though after several adventures, Joe found himself on the Pacific, and an early pioneer of Vancouver’s Gastown.

The sculpture honours the link between Portuguese and Coast Salish First Nations cultures, marks the land’s rich heritage, and symbolizes unity for the Vancouver’s present-day diverse inhabitants. The large bronze sculpture is surrounded by engraved Portuguese stone, prominently installed in Stanley Park’s Northeast shore, overlooking downtown. You can read more about Shore to shore here.

The Skedans Mortuary Pole is a replica as the original was returned home to Haida Gwaii. In the late 1980s, the remaining totem poles were sent to various museums for preservation and the Park Board commissioned and loaned replacement totems.

In March Dear and I had an overnight trip to Vancouver B.C. and we were able to spend a few hours in Stanley Park on March 18th. We stopped at the Totems at Brockton Point for a while. You can buy an all day parking pass for $6.00 which worked well for all our stops. I’ll share our other stops at the park soon.

I’ll be linking up to Tuesday’s Treasures hosted by Tom the Backroads Traveller.

March in Vancouver B.C.

On March 17th (St. Patrick’s Day) we headed North for the border between the U.S.A. and Canada. We are fortunate to be a few hours from our friendly neighbors to the north.

On this trip we were headed to North Vancouver and had to cross some bridges to get there. We found our hotel and after a wait in line to get into the parking structure of the hotel we checked in and looked at our room.

The room had a nice view of downtown Vancouver across Vancouver Harbor. We were ready for our first adventure on the SeaBus that would take us across the harbor to the downtown area of Vancouver. We were ready for a meal.

We disembarked close to Canada Place and walked along the harbor to find a restaurant recommended by Lovella of the Mennonite Girls.

We found the restaurant and later when we shared our view Lovella realized we had sat in almost the same spot a week after them and we definitely had the same view. See the boats I marked with an X? Thanks for the recommendation Lovella. We enjoyed our meal at Cardero’s.

We walked after our meal and saw some interesting things and then headed back across the harbor to our hotel where later in the evening we enjoyed a light meal in our room that we purchased at the Quay Market that was located under our hotel.

We didn’t make reservations in Vancouver until we saw that the weather would be good for walking and exploring. Having Dear working from home gives us that flexibility to decide on last minute trips with the weather in mind. Being so close to Canada is another win win for traveling and seeing new things. On Friday the 18th we checked out of the hotel and drove to Stanley Park. On the way we stopped for breakfast at De Dutch…

I’ll share what we saw at Stanley Park in another post.

Dear and I are having a hard time standing up and sitting down today after several hours working outside yesterday. I’m glad we still can manage to do what we did. Cleaning gutters, pulling some weeds and cleaning out some planters, pressure washing the deck and cement areas, and then washing the car! Sheesh, this weather brings out the work in us! Thankfully I had a leg of lamb marinating in the fridge that I could throw in the oven for our meal of the day with potatoes and carrots that cooked underneath the roast in my handy Jamie Oliver pan. Today after church we had lamb sandwiches with our leftovers. So happy not to have to do anything today. A good day of rest.

Hope your Sunday is going well.

Since this post is filled with blue skies and blue water I’m linking up with Jeanne at Backyard Neighbor for Blue Monday! Thanks Jeanne!

Lo, the Earth is Risen Again ~ Hymn

Lo, the Earth is Risen Again

Lo, the earth is risen again
From the winter’s bond and pain!
Bring we leaf and flower and spray
To adorn our holiday!

Once again the word comes true,
Lo, He maketh all things new!
Now the dark, cold days are o’er,
Light and gladness are before.

How our hearts leap with the spring!
How our spirits soar and sing!
Light is victor over gloom,
Life triumphant o’er the tomb.

Change, then, mourning into praise,
And, for dirges, anthems raise!
All our fears and griefs shall be
Lost in immortality.

Words: Samuel Longfellow, 1876.

I Hold You in my Heart…

Philippians 1:3-11 (ESV)

Thanksgiving and Prayer

³I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, ⁴always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, ⁵because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. ⁶And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. ⁷It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. ⁸For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. ⁹And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, ¹⁰so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, ¹¹filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

HT: Bible Gateway

I love this prayer of Paul’s and wanted to pair it with the collage of my bleeding hearts.

We are enjoying a fine stretch of dry sunshiny days here in the Seattle area. I’m getting ready to head outdoors to work alongside Dear who is cleaning out the rain gutters. I’ll be doing some weeding and maybe even wash my car! Hope you have a nice first weekend of April!

The Peeps and Daffodils…

This Easter we were blessed to have a table of ten. Five couples including Dear and me. It was good to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ together at an Easter service and around our celebration table. On Saturday before Easter Sunday we had a baking and creating day that you can see here. And if you are interested in seeing the table we sat at you can see it here.

Jamie and Dan traveled over 5 hours to be with us for the weekend. They were married last summer. Dan is our second son.

Dan with his dad.

Steve and Lana with a stand up daffodil photo and a silly one, too. Lana is my youngest sister and the only sibling of mine that lives in Washington State.

Laura and Josh are the longest married of our children. Josh is our firstborn.

Dear and me.

Katie and Andrew were under the weather on Easter day and we didn’t find a time to get them to stand behind the daffodils so I pulled up this great photo of them as they were on their way out to celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary a couple weeks ago. Katie is our youngest.

And here’s my new Peter Rabbit (Beatrix Potter) bunting that Katie put together for me including making what the kit called radishes that look like carrots and flowers. Josh and Laura gifted me the bunting kit on my birthday.

I’m linking up with Amy for Five on Friday and with Susanne for Friday’s Fave Five even though I added #6!

I’m happy to report that I’m feeling well again with enough energy that I conquered the lawn today with the lawnmower. No fooling! But because I was spent after doing that the king of this old house had to take his gardener out to dinner! It got up to the 70’s today and it is going to be up to 70 degrees on Friday, too, woohoo!

Hope no one tries to fool you on April Fools Day.

Foreign Fences…

Washington State borders Canada to the north (British Columbia) and it’s great to be able to visit a foreign country so easily that’s not really too foreign since for the most part they speak English and they accept our currency. Dear and I drove up to Vancouver B.C. to enjoy an overnight on St. Patrick’s day. Here are a couple of photos of a wooden fence next to the Totem Poles in Stanley park.

Next week I’ll be sharing a longer post about our adventures in Vancouver and Stanley Park.

I’m linking up to Good Fences #106 with TexWisGirl.

We’re having another great weather day in the Pacific Northwest so I’ll be going out to mow the lawn. I’ll visit later…

Easter Brunch…

…was a first for us. We always have had Easter lunch or dinner and served lamb. This year our kids from across the mountains joined us for the weekend and had to get on the road earlier on Easter day to head home. We went to an early service and came home and started on brunch. We decided on Biscuits and gravy which was easy to have ready for 10 in a short amount of time. We used our electric skillet to make side eggs for anyone who wanted one or two.

The tablecloth and runner were purchased at HomeGoods.

We used shrink wraps for the eggs that I purchased at a Ukrainian market.

I bought the glasses that are tinted on their base in green and blue from Dollar Tree.

This is Seernaya Paska which is a sweet cheese spread made with cooked egg yolks, butter, cream, and sugar mixed well and then put in a mold with weight on top to force all the extra liquid out of it. This happens overnight in the fridge.

This is one from a couple of years ago that I made using a larger amount and larger mold.

The signs that the bunnies are holding are in Russian and they say Christ is Risen and He is risen indeed.

I used little blue and green egg cups for place cards and let each person take theirs home so each household took home a green cup and an aqua cup. I bought the egg cups from World Market. The napkins were a thrift store purchase a few years back. The pearl napkin rings were a Target clearance purchase from several years ago.

The Russian Easter Bread ready to go with our favorite toppings…

A nice layer of Seernaya Paska (Sweet Cheese Spread) on top of the Kulich/Paska (Russian Easter Bread) and then top it off with lightly sugared fresh strawberries. Delicious! And on the morning after this next picture shows my Easter Monday breakfast…

My next post will be all about the people we enjoyed this meal with.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we are enjoying some glorious sunshiny days! I will have no excuse not to mow the grass. It’s getting a little wild out there with dandelions! I’m feeling better, too, and using less tissues everyday. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods!

I’m linking up with Laura at Decor to Adore for Thoughts of Home #8.

Signs, signs…

We saw this sign on a shop in La Conner during our sister weekend. That’s my sister Kathy who we made sit down under the sign. This sign is very accurate and true about our clever sister Kathy.

While Dear and I were driving about Stanley Park in Vancouver we came to this sign. This sign can be confusing. Should you stop or should you heed the NO STOPPING sign.

Linking up with Lesley for signs, signs.

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Author Archives: Ellen