Author Archives: Ellen

Friday’s Fave Five! ~ Easter Edition…

Time to sit down, take a deep breath, and consider the blessings of this past week. Now visit Susanne at Living to Tell the Story to join in or to see some favorites. Thank you Susanne for hosting this great exercise…

 

Easter, Easter, Easter! I love Easter. I love that our Faith is defined by what Jesus did on the cross on our behalf. The whole Lenten Season culminating on Resurrection Sunday and now the days leading up to Pentecost are great days to focus and be refreshed. So here are my 5 favorites from this past week…

1. Getting together with my sister Lana G! and keeping our Russian Heritage traditions going by baking the Russian Easter bread and making and molding the traditional sweet cheese spread. I have to get more cans to bake the bread in by next year. Someone at our Easter table let it slip that she might have some in her garage. Along with these traditions watching my daughter color the Easter eggs is always a fun time.

2. The night before Easter I went to the opening Sounders Soccer game. I went to a nearby park and ride that was offering special buses to take fans to Qwest field. My bus ended up being real special as I was the only one on it!! The bus driver and me. I thought of you Thom! This was one of those really big metro buses, too. I had to chuckle. Too bad our team lost…ugh. On the bus trip home there were more people but the bus driver recognized me right away…

3. Easter was such a nice day of celebration for us. We went to a baptism of 2 little sisters we know. So sweet. We came home to get ready to host our Easter meal with my DIL’s family. There were 12 of us and we had a good time eating, sharing and laughing.

4. Whoohoo! I finally got to meet some of the Mennonite Girls from MGCC face to face on Tuesday. Five of the Canadian Mennonites had a field-trip down to the Skagit Valley to see the tulips and we all met up for lunch in La Conner. It was like we were old friends. Each gal is so unique yet so cohesive in the group. I don’t know if that’s the right word but I hope you understand what I mean…

5. Tulips, tulips, tulips! I love tulips. To see these lovelies like the sea before your eyes is absolutely amazing. I praise God for creating tulips and I’m so glad those immigrants from Holland settled in the Skagit Valley and grow them for our pleasure and for their livelihood!

Keep scrolling down to the next post if you’d like to see some tulips in the fields…

 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

I’m Not Tired…

…of tulips, are you?

I do believe the pink ones are my favorite. Which are your favorite?

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Happy Birthday to My Mom!

We’re both a lot older now! My mom turns 86 today and my dad will be 87 in May. My mother is truly the Proverbs 31 woman. She has always put her children and husband as a top priority in her life. Her first child died at 2 years old and she has raised 8 others sewing clothes for the girls and making 3 meals a day most of our lives except for Sunday mornings. On Sunday mornings because we’d all be in a hurry to get ready for church she’d get a break and we’d have store bought coffee cake for breakfast. Usually it was a frozen Sara Lee variety. Of course there would be preparations under way already for Sunday lunch. Usually we’d bring someone extra home for that lunch, too. Once in the while in the middle of the week my father would pick up a pizza from Johnny’s and we’d even get soda to have with it. (Did I get that right siblings? Was it Johnny’s pizza?)

So today I am thanking our God Almighty for giving us a mother who loves us, sacrifices for us, and loves her husband. It’s a wonderful heritage and we have benefited in many ways from it.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Tablescape Thursday ~ Easter Revisited

For some of you that visit my blog regularly this will be a repeat. It’s time for Susan’s Tablescape Thursday so I wanted to post my actual Easter table for this week. Were you aware that tulips continue growing even after they are cut and placed in a vase?

 

I just realized that about all my tulips as I trimmed the stems each day when I added fresh water and they were taller the next day!

 

My centerpiece is the Traditional Russian Easter Bread (Kulich or Paska), Colored Eggs, and hollow Chocolate Russian Matryoshka dolls.

 

The china is Royal Albert Moss Rose.

We used our International 1812 Sterling. The stemware and napkin rings are Target clearance. Napkins are from a thrift store and the tablecloth is from Goodwill at $4.99. The runner is also from Goodwill but I forget what I paid.

 

Our traditional molded sweet cheese spread that is called Seerney Paska in Russian. The XB is for Христос Воскрес (Christos Voskress), Christ is Risen!

We squeezed 12 around the table and had a wonderful time celebrating the Resurrection of Christ!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Yard Art!

 

Time to visit Mary at Work of the Poet for some more Yard Art!

These great specimens are all from one yard and this is just a sampling of what was in this yard…

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

It Was So Much Fun…

…to laugh and talk with these girls!

 

6 of the 10 contributors on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog.

 

Julie, Bev K. , Betty R., and Charlotte were unable to join us.

 

It was my first face to face with all these ladies. You know these girls are even thinner in person. I forgot to ask them their secret on how they stay so slim while cooking all that great food!!  And for the record…Kathy, I think you are great!! I feel so blessed to have been adopted into the fold even though I’m not Mennonite. Many of our Russian recipes are similar to the Mennonite favorites.

 

Before eating we got a little shopping in. After lunch we parted ways. I headed South and they headed North with a stop at the Tulip Fields.

 

I brought home a food gift and the prize I won on Judy’s blog giveaway a while back.

My own Vancouver Olympic Mittens and a Canada Pin! Thank you MGCC for a wonderful day and thank you Judy for my prize. I love the mittens and the pin.

Before I met up with the girls I had a quick stop at the tulip fields and I’ll show more of those photos later.  Blessings!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Seeds of Friendship ~

Today I’m heading North to La Conner and I’m meeting up with 5 of the Mennonite Girls from Mennonite Girls Can Cook! We’re going to have lunch together at Seeds. I am so looking forward to meeting these blogging friends in person. My camera is all packed and ready to go!

 

Seeds of Friendship

I planted some seeds of friendship
All nice and neatly in a row
I tended to them with love and care
Then watched them sprout and grow

I’ll be sharing more about our meeting later in the week. Happy Tuesday to you all!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

 

Easter Was Glorious!

What a lovely Easter Day we had here in the Northwest. We started out the day by going to a baptism of two little girls we know. Sisters getting baptized on Easter morning. It was a great event to witness. After that celebration we came home to prepare for our Easter lunch with our DIL’s family and my sister Lana and Steve.

 

Sorry I caught some of you in mid-chew! I realize that when we host an event like this my photo skills go out the window. Too busy with other details. Everyone is busy eating Rack of Lamb, rice with raisins and almonds, and salad with Persian dressing. For dessert we had a Russian Strawberry shortcake made with the Kulich, Seerney Paska and strawberries.

 

Our centerpiece was the Russian Easter Bread with hollow chocolate Matryoshka dolls for each of the ladies to take home and colored Easter eggs. We call our Easter bread Kulich but another popular name for it is Paska.

 

 

Our other traditional Easter treat is this sweet cheese spread that we make from eggs, butter, Farmer’s Cheese, whipping cream and sugar. After you mix it all up you put it in a mold lined with cheese cloth and weight it down and leave it in the refrigerator for a day or two to drain as much liquid as you can out of it. The X and B are for Christ is Risen which looks like this in Russian, Христос Воскрес!

 

 

I was able to use my individual place card vases for each guest which was fun.


 

Katie, Lana, and Laura

 

Sisters flanked by my daughters :0)

The cross was one of my hostess gifts from my DIL’s mother. Thank you Pat! I love it along with my other goodies.

All the dishes are washed and put away but I’m still enjoying the vases filled with the tulips. My brain is in slow motion today but I’m sure to perk up here sometime soon so I can visit everyone’s Easter greeting posts that I missed yesterday.

Looking forward to another great celebration tomorrow. I’ll tell you about it soon.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Truly He is Risen!

Christos Voskress! Voistina Voskress!

Христос Воскрес!

Воистину воскрес!

Christ is Risen!

Truly He is Risen!

We Welcome Glad Easter

We welcome glad Easter when Jesus arose,
And won a great victory over His foes.

Refrain

Then raise your glad voices, all Christians and sing,
Bring glad Easter tidings to Jesus, your King.

We tell how the women came early that day,
And there at the tomb found the stone rolled away.

Then raise your glad voices, all Christians and sing,
Bring glad Easter tidings to Jesus, your King

We sing of the angel who said: “Do not fear!
Your Savior is risen, and He is not here.”

Then raise your glad voices, all Christians and sing,
Bring glad Easter tidings to Jesus, your King

We think of the promise which Jesus did give:
“That he who believes in Me also shall live!”

Then raise your glad voices, all Christians and sing,
Bring glad Easter tidings to Jesus, your King

Happy Easter Everyone!!