Author Archives: Ellen

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!!

What Warms Your Heart?

There are some things that we just have to wake up and see and our hearts will be warmed. And then there are the deliberate things we do or put on our schedule that can warm our heart, too.

The second Thursday of every month our church rallies volunteers to cook a meal in the church kitchen at 5:30. It’s the exact same recipe every month with a different group of people cooking it but the same supervisors to guide the volunteers. The “supe” is checking the meat to make sure it’s up to the right temperature.

Large coolers are fitted with a food safe liner to mix the dish in and to transport the dish from Kirkland to Seattle arriving hot and ready to serve. I suppose we could call these coolers “warmers” or portable ovens. First the sauce goes in. 

Then the meat and the vegetables, the rice and some more vegetables. Stir it up with the big wooden food paddle.

You add the carrots last and keep stirring.

While the hot meal is being cooked more volunteers are preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to send off with the homeless after they enjoy their hot meal.

This time we also had warm blankets to load up and distribute to the guys that would be lining up for dinner.

Of course there’s the clean-up, too. So whoever is not stirring the final product gets busy washing up as much as they can before we take off to go downtown so there is less to clean up when we come back. We load everything up in the van that will transport us across Lake Washington to the meal site. Then we wait for Kay Abe. The little perky lady that started the Lord’s Table.

“Hungry patrons stand in a line curving around the fence. Men and women of all ages and races patiently wait as Kay Abe rushes around to make last-minute arrangements. Someone can’t locate a knife to serve the pie, but digging through her bag of supplies, Abe finds something that can work.”

Our church’s ministry is called Isaiah 58 and we partner with the organization downtown called The Lord’s Table. The Lord’s Table started with one dear woman who decided she could feed the homeless. Now after several years different volunteer groups partner with Kay Abe to serve these hot meals Monday thru Thursday nights. Last Thursday night I held Kay’s hand as we stood in a circle holding hands to pray and thank God for the men who came to eat the meal, she told us she is now 86.  You can read a little about Kay and this ministry here, and  here. You can see from the first article that she used to do the brunt of the work.

I didn’t count but we served close to 100 this night. Besides the hot dish we served green salad, fruit salad, buttered bread, hot drinks, and dessert. It was a very cold night and the favorite drink for the night was hot chocolate. All but 4 of the blankets were distributed. This whole process downtown occurs from approximately 8 pm – 9 pm. After we cleaned up even the pigeons were able to glean some food.

Sometimes it’s hard to put something like this on your calendar. This very day I was sitting in my warm house thinking about how cold it would be downtown and wondering how I might get out of it. My throat was a little scratchy, you know. Maybe I should just stay home. I’m glad the Lord fixed my attitude and I went. The whole evening warmed my heart. 1. Making sandwiches with the members of our small group and their children. 2. Watching the hot dish crew mix and cook and stir the main dish. 3. Watching others from our small group wash up the dishes smiling and laughing. 4. Loading up the van. 5. Then being able to load plates and smile and give a cheery greeting to all who came through the line downtown.  6. Meeting Kay again and being blessed by her unselfish service to the Homeless in downtown Seattle. Yep…my heart was warm and bubbling over…

I’m sure you can find a similar ministry where you live and I encourage you to take the leap and join in for an evening or day. You will get a new perspective…

Encouraging Words…

For Vee’s January Notecard Party I decided to go with a theme and find illustrated verses that I’ve posted in the past.

It’s been a while since I’ve put together photos with verses from the Bible. I hope to do some new ones soon.

Thank you Vee, for hosting this meme!

I’m adding this photo of our 2 sons to say Happy Birthday to them. Today is Dan’s birthday and Saturday is Joshua’s birthday. They are sons that make us proud to be their parents. May God continue to bless their lives on this earth!

Your dad and I love the two of you and we are so grateful for your love and care for each other, too!

In the Blink of An Eye…

…it will disappear. Snow is not guaranteed in the Seattle area. Sometimes if it comes it hangs around for a little while but usually it’s gone before you can get your camera out. The freeze at our house is working on it’s 4th day now and before it leaves us I’ll post some more of my frosty photos. Many areas in the Seattle area didn’t get any snow.

This is a special week in our family. Both of our sons have birthdays this week on Wednesday and on Saturday.

Dear and I were working in the garage this past weekend. We were cleaning out the loft. We had lots of leftover debris from having our new roof put on. Dear did the brunt of the work. Clearing out, throwing out, vacuuming, re-packing, and making piles of what to shred and what to share. There were some fun discoveries (not rat related). Our kids now have their piles of memorabilia to sort through and decide what they want to keep. It was fun to see things from our sons and daughter’s growing up years. Baseball, Soccer, Star Wars, G.I. Joe and Mother Goose, Barbie, Beanie Babies and more!

It’s time to send the stash along to their grown-up homes or get rid of it. I sound real tough about the getting rid of the stuff but some things will be hard to part with…

Sunlit Sunday~

I’m trying something new today. I’m joining in with My Little Home and Garden for her Sunlit Sunday Meme. Here are my offerings from a very cold walk about the yard on Saturday morning when our temps tried to make it out of the 20’s.

I love the sparkly effect the sun has on the snow.

Brrr…

We had a wonderful frost effect on anything that had moisture on it overnight.

There’s nothing like a dry sunny day after a snowfall!

Psalm 18:28 (ESV) ~

For it is you who light my lamp;
the Lord my God lightens my darkness.

Hope you all have a good productive week and that you enjoy God’s light in your part of the world.

Winter in His Heart of Gloom ~ Hymn

Winter in His Heart of Gloom

Winter in his heart of gloom
Sings the song of coming bloom:
So over death our souls shall sing
’Lays of the eternal spring.

Then decay shall be no more,
And, the weary seed time o’er,
All the dead in Christ shall rise
For the harvest of the skies.

Wheresoe’er the faithful sleep
Angels shall go forth to reap,
From the dust and ’neath the foam
They shall bring the harvest home.

Bodies of the saints, whose bones
Rest beneath sepulchral stones,
Or are lost on every wind,
All, those messengers shall find.

All from earth to Heaven shall soar
In that flesh which once they wore,
Deathless now and glorified,
Like their Lord and at His side.

This is life’s eternal spring!
This the coming joy we sing!
Look we ever toward this day,
Be it near or far away!

’Mid the sorrow and the strife
’Tis the music of our life,
And the song hath this refrain—
Our Redeemer comes again!

Words: Samuel J. Stone, 1866.

Looking Closely…

I took a little walk about the yard looking closely to see what I could see with my little pocket camera. The birds can ice skate in the bird feeder.

Mini icicles. It’s rare for us to get the large cool ones that Jill showed us.

These might be the needle ice crystals Jill showed on her blog. This is my blueberry bush.

This plant is my thyme.

As I drove out of our neighborhood I spied the snowman built by the kids down the street.

Then I saw this…a frozen spider web.

It was good to take the time to look closely. Have you had some time to look carefully and closely at the world around you?

Snow & Ice

We are having a cold snap here in the Pacific Northwest. As I type we are creeping up to 30 degrees. Yesterday it snowed and this is what we woke up to. Overnight everything froze so we are walking and driving gingerly trying not to skid or slip.

The only footprints that appeared on our deck during the day yesterday were Dear’s. I stayed in for the day but ventured out in the evening to our church to prepare and deliver a meal to the homeless in downtown Seattle with our small group. More about that in another post.

All my snow shots were taken from various doors in our home that I opened just long enough to snap away. This was a wet snow so the streets did not stay white with snow for long but the grass kept it’s new white cover all day and into today.

Chopper 7 even came to the neighborhood to do a report on the snow. The interesting thing was that we had snow at our house but just one mile down the road there was no snow. Snow is always a very big story here in the Seattle area. Today ice is the culprit in our neighborhood. I watched the kids walking to school slip and slide down the street. Most of them managed to stay upright!

I’m still having a bit of a challenge remembering what day of the week it is after all our holiday fun. I think next week will be better in that regard. How are you doing?

Travel Tips?

First off before I get to my news and question for my friends in bloggy world I want to thank you for all your kind thoughts about my state of mind this last week. The blur has lifted and things have cleared up nicely in my outlook. God is good, all the time.

Some trips have been added to my calendar for the winter months and that’s where I would love some suggestions from you. In March during my birthday week Dear has a conference to attend in Milan, Italy. Since it falls during my birthday we decided I should tag along and take advantage of a free hotel room. His company booked his ticket and we booked mine on the same flights sitting together. Woohoo!

By the way this photo is not from Milan or Europe at all but from our own National Cathedral in Washington D.C. Since I’ve never been to the mainland of Europe (only Great Britain), I didn’t have any of my own photos of Milan to show you…yet!

So…have any of you ever been in Milan or in Italy? If you have would you be so kind as to offer suggestions of things I shouldn’t miss while there. I’m not a fashion guru so I won’t be spending a lot of time with what Milan is known for but I’ve already seen some beautiful images of the Milan Cathedral and am really looking forward to visiting it with my camera. As usual on these trips most of the time I’ll be on my own.

We’ll be there in the middle of March and fly home on the first day of Spring.

Women’s Bible study started up again this week and it was good to be back with the ladies in my group. Thursday night our small group is going to help prepare a meal and deliver and serve it to some Homeless folks in downtown Seattle. The coming weekend looks free. How are things in your world?