Author Archives: Ellen

The Young and The Old…

My almost 90 year old parents flew to Dallas to visit my brother’s family and to celebrate their youngest granddaughters 5th birthday. Here are some photos that Leonard and Mandy shared with all of us of my folks with our reigning princess Hope!

Fun and frightening all at the same time!

Glad Hope was flying and not my dad!

They were able to take part in Hope’s Pizza making and cookie decorating birthday party with 15 young guests. I’m tired just typing about it.

Here are the 3 of them at a Russian Restaurant in Dallas. My parents made it home safe and sound with great memories of their time with Hope and her parents!

Wow here it is the last day of January. We’re hoping for a fun filled February. How about you?

This and That…

We’ve had a little bit of sunshine and good thing I grabbed my camera in time to capture it for all to see.

On Tuesday I made a trip to Costco after Bible Study and was happy to see they had Season 3 of Downton Abbey that was just released here in the U.S. Now I won’t have to wait until Sunday to see the next episode.

I’ve heard about this series from a few people on Facebook, too and decided to give it a try. Have any of you seen this series?

Lest you think all I do is watch T.V. let me share that I’m also reading a Biography on Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxes. What an extraordinary man he was.

We have rain and more rain in the forecast for a few days. How about you rain, snow or shine?

The Sisters At it Again!

It’s been a very long while since my sister Lana G.! and I have ventured out together to a Goodwill sale. Last week when she mentioned it was Martin Luther King, Jr. Monday (which means a day off for some workers and a big sale at Goodwill) and we should go to Goodwill together I agreed.

We put on our serious shopping colors or should I say non-color and headed to the Bellevue Goodwill bright and early. We weren’t the only ones with this idea and shopping carts were at a minimum. I wish I would have taken a photo of the cart we shared. It was overflowing!

Here’s just some of my stash. I also bought several dress shirts for Dear to try on. He kept about 10 of them. Another great find were a nice pair of Naturalizer shoes that didn’t look like they’d ever been worn for $7.00. I’m enjoying wearing them. Those very high heeled Steve Madden shoes are for our daughter Katie to try when she comes to visit. They are fancy dancy and were just $4.00 after the 40% discount that was offered on this day. When I brought home those 6 lavender goblets I found 4 more in my cupboard so I now have 10.

I’m thinking I would be asking for disaster if I tried to wear these…

It is our tradition that the person who spends the most on these shopping sprees has to buy the other person lunch. This was the very first time that I was the winner and I had to buy lunch. The photo at the top of the post is of Lana and me from her I-Pad. We were just about to enjoy our lunch at Essential Baking Company inside the University Bookstore in Bellevue. We had a very good time laughing at ourselves!

Hope your last week of January is starting out well.

1,000,000 Celebrations!

In Celebration of over 1,000,000 hits on my blog I’m giving away our new Celebrations Cookbook to one of you who leave a comment on this post. Oops!! I forgot to mention that the giveaway will close Saturday night and I’ll announce the winner on Monday!

In March of 2007 my brother Steve sat me down and told me he was going to help me start my own blog since I was enjoying visiting so many. Since that time I have learned so much and I understand a few more things about my computer. One of the best things that has happened from my blogging experience are the new friendships I’ve enjoyed. Meeting some of these friends in person has been such a special blessing. One of my meetings resulted in a walking buddy for the years that Dear and I were living in Camarillo, California. Now that we are back in Washington, I miss my walking buddy, Willow.

During my blogging I stumbled upon Lovella’s blog and noticed that she baked Paska at Easter time. I was curious because being from a Russian Immigrant family we always had this same Easter treat year after year. I started following her blog and soon realized a lot of her recipes were similar to the Russian recipes my mom made in our kitchen. Soon Lovella decided to start a cooking blog where recipes were posted every day. She asked if I’d like to contribute. I started slow but then became more regular when I embraced this fun concept and my responsibility of being a contributor. Over the course of time the  Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog was cemented with 10 contributors and I was one of the 10. After this point Lovella was contacted by Menno Media with the idea of a Mennonite Girls Can Cook cookbook. The ten of us met for the first time all together in Canada and signed a contract and got to work. Even though I’m the one contributor of the 10 that is not Mennonite or Canadian, I’ve been embraced and accepted as their “Russian American Cousin”.

Our first cookbook has been a fun venture and has afforded the 10 of us the opportunity to share all of our royalties to build a greenhouse at the Good Shepherd Shelter in the Ukraine. From the beginning we as the authors agreed that we have all we need and we wanted to help those less fortunate with our portion of profits from our book. The whole story of the Mennonite/Ukranian/ Canadian connection is explained in the book and on our blog. Our first book is still available and you can click over to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog to see where the book can be purchased. It is also available at Amazon.

This is the greenhouse at the Good Shepherd Shelter in the Ukraine. They are already growing food year round in the greenhouse!

Our 2nd cookbook will be published May 1st of this year. For our 2nd book our author royalties will again go to a mission project that we are deciding on together. The photo above was taken during our time together to sign the contract for our 2nd book. These 9 wonderful women of faith have become my partners and dear friends all because of my little blog. Who could have ever dreamed this? It is amazing what God has given to me through “The Happy Wonderer” I wonder who I’ll meet in the future?

We are excited about our new book and the themes and recipes included this time around. I really love the cover and am looking forward to seeing all the recipes and photos put together and having the hard copy in my hands!

If you leave a comment and are chosen for my giveaway please understand that I won’t be sending you our new cookbook till May of this year. Besides your comment you will need to leave a reliable email address so I can contact you to get an address to mail the book. Your email address won’t be visible to anyone but me. Thank you to all my regular readers and bloggy friends for supporting me with your kind thoughts and comments. I appreciate all of you!

Snow & Ice ~ Tablescape

Kathleen at Cuisine Kathleen hosts a weekly meme called Let’s Dish. This week she challenged us to come up with a scape using the theme of Snow and Ice. Here’s what I came up with…

We sat at a version of this table on Sunday night with our son and his wife to celebrate our son’s birthday. I’m sorry to say I forgot to take photos of our actual dinner…oops! Our dining chairs are off to the upholsterer and we aren’t sure when we’ll be getting them back so we are using some of our folding chairs for the time being.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we’ve had several foggy days. The sun finally made a breakthrough on Tuesday afternoon. We are going to have our rain pattern return for a few days with a dry weekend promised so far. With our freezing fog we’ve had some ice issues. Do you have snow and ice in your neck of the woods?

Are You Dreary?

We are still gloomy and cold in the Seattle area, weather wise.

We are suppose to get some rain and hopefully it will wash all this fog away.

In the meantime I’m setting a sparkly table for Cuisine Kathleen’s Snow and Ice challenge.

I used the same setting modified for the birthday meal we served our son Josh and our daughter in law, Laura, on Sunday. I’m off my game because I didn’t take one photo of the food I served. We had lamb shanks in a merlot tomato sauce and roasted potatoes with a cucumber/tomato salad. Yum!

I’m getting organized for my 1,000,000 hits giveaway. Stay tuned…

Sunlit Sunday?

The fog has blocked out the sun in our part of the world for several days now so I decided to go to my photos from a year ago to show some sunlit offerings! We have also had a good stretch of days that start in the 20’s and just inch their way up, trying to reach the 40’s.

It’s hard to believe that just a year ago our daughter Katie and I were at a wedding show at the Seattle Center. Her and Andrew’s wedding ceremony was in March of last year. I decided to pick this photo for Sunlit Sunday because she just called yesterday letting us know she will be arriving in Seattle for a month long stay while our son-in-law Andrew has some cold weather training in Northern California. They currently live at Camp Lejeune Marine Base in North Carolina. There is always a bedroom ready for visits from our kids!

To cheer myself up and to remind myself that the sun is shining but I just can’t see it’s glory right now I searched for more January shots of sunshine from last year…

Not real bright but the sun is breaking through. These are floating houses on North Lake Union in Seattle. If you look closely you can see the Space Needle in the background.

A lovely shaft of sunshine lighting up my bouquet of tulips from January of last year, too.

Hope the sun is lighting up your part of the world today!

I’m joining My Little Home and Garden for her Sunlit Sunday Meme.

Yesterday was our firstborn’s birthday so we’ll be enjoying a meal together for him and our dear daughter in love this evening. We love to celebrate our family. Speaking of celebrating, it  looks like my blog will be having a big celebration real soon as my total blog visits are inching to 1,000,000 viewers!! I never imagined when I started blogging in March of 2007 that my blog would be visited by so many. I’m working on a giveaway for this landmark event to be announced this week!

Jesus My Only Hope ~ Hymn

Jesus, My Only Hope

Jesus, my only hope, friend ever dear,
Bend to my earnest prayer Thy gracious ear;
Come from Thy throne above, come and my dross remove,
Fill me with perfect love, Savior, to Thee.

Jesus, my only hope, grant me Thy grace,
Teach me in joy and pain Thy hand to trace;
Keep Thou my heart in peace, bid ev’ry murmur cease,
Come and my faith increase, Savior, in Thee.

Jesus, my only hope, Jesus, my King,
Help me with heart and voice Thy praise to sing;
Now let Thy beams divine bright o’er my pathway shine,
Draw me, O Savior mine, closer to Thee.

Jesus, my only hope, be Thou my guest;
Under Thy mighty wings, O let me rest,
Rest till the angel band home to the promised land
Bears me at Thy command, Savior, to Thee.

Words: Fanny Crosby

The Five…

Today is Friday and I’m joining Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for her Friday’s Fave Five. It’s good to think back over the past week and see the good things in life that God has blessed you with to enjoy.

1. Vareniki have become traditional for my family to prepare together before Christmas and then to serve on Christmas Eve for dessert. My mom’s version are larger and fancier than these but when I don’t get my mom’s these are the next best thing. I can buy them at a European Deli not too far form my home. They call them perogies but the Russian on the upper left translates to Vareniki with cheese. After they are formed, filled with cheese and sealed they are boiled cooled and frozen. We like to serve them hot out of the oven after they are cooked from their frozen state with butter and 1/2 and 1/2. Then we plop some sour cream on top and cover them with good maple syrup. Delicious! We had these for breakfast last Saturday before we started in on cleaning out the garage loft.

2. When we crave a good meatball sandwich we drive to a pizza joint in Lynnwood. We’ve tried to find a good one closer to us but they always disappoint. These were delicious as usual. I brought half of mine home for another day. All my favorites aren’t about food but it seems the freezing snap we’ve had since last Friday made us seek out some of our favorite comfort foods.

3. Our favorite sons both have birthdays this week. We are so thankful that God blessed us with them. Each one is unique and appreciated!

4. I’m thankful for the local library where I can put books on hold and then check out to enjoy without spending lots of money. The book in the middle is co-authored by our friend Lela Gilbert. Lela has a new book out that I’ve ordered from Amazon called, Saturday People, Sunday People. I’ll share more about it after it arrives. Without Reservations was recommended to me by Susan in Switzerland after she read about our upcoming trip to Milan. The Unofficial Downton Abbey cookbook is just for fun.

5. We are excited about finally sending our chairs out to be reupholstered. They were in sorry shape after 36 years or so of wear and tear. We are looking forward to their new look and feel.

In the meantime the table is very lonely.

Looking forward to coming around and seeing your favorites this week. What’s in store for your weekend? Some of us in the U.S. get a long weekend since Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. observance. Dear’s company doesn’t give him the day off. We hope to celebrate with Josh and Laura on Sunday if they are well enough. (Lousy illnesses gripping our world!) We also are plowing forward to try to  finish the clean up in the garage. Blessings!!