Singing in Garden #3

When we arrived to the 3rd garden we were greeted with a musician singing songs that came easy to sing along with.

 

This garden also had many separate areas and paths leading here and there. There were many large yard art pieces, too.

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Wednesday was a very productive day for me. I was able to clear out a lot of spaces that will be re-carpeted soon. I went up and down our attic stairs many times and also downstairs to the basement where we are storing a lot of stuff since those floors will not be replaced.  My back is letting me know that I’ve done enough for a while. So happy our high school hire is mowing the lawn for me as I type and sit still. This weekend Dear is planning to replace our patio french doors.

Secret Garden Tour

In mid June my sister and I went on a Secret Garden Tour in the town of Lake Forest Park in Washington State. The gardens were numbered on a map for a self guided tour. We chose to start with garden #5 and work our way down to #1 hoping to have the least crowds at each garden.

 

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We were curious and making guesses as to what this little cottage at the end of the path might be. What a lovely surprise to look inside.

 

There was a little loft with a bed in it, too, that I didn’t get a photo of. It would be nice to retreat here for a quiet get-away. This next photo is the view of the main house from the little cottage.

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I caught Lana photographing the same thing I was through the looking glass. There were fun quirky things in a lot of the gardens we visited.

 

This was one of our favorite gardens out of the five. It was so surprising to find this lush setting coming around to the back of the home.

I’ll share more of the different types of gardens we strolled through over the course of the week.

Dear has done a lot more clearing out in this old house to get ready for the floors. All the carpeting is torn out of the family room now. This coming weekend he’ll install our new patio door. We’re loading up the living room with furniture from the family room and kitchen area so he can remove the vinyl flooring soon. My living room looks like a furniture store.  I’m going to look on the bright side. I will not need to vacuum or dust till all of this is over. We’ve moved from bright sunshine to dreary skies and rain. Hoping for some good weather on the weekend since the door will be removed. What’s new with you?

Sweet Marie…

On Saturday Lana, Laura and I were able to attend a bridal shower for our nephew Caleb’s bride to be, Marie. The shower was given by her aunt and cousins. Marie has a large supportive family and it was nice to meet a lot of them.

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Marie's shower

Marie's shower3You couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day in the greater Seattle area for a shower. Marie’s side of the family hails from this area and we were happy to be able to join in the fun. Our nephew Caleb and many of our family live in Southern California. The wedding is going to take place in Southern California.

Our sweet Marie with her aunt and cousins who collaborated to host the shower.

Marie's shower2It was fun to watch Marie open each gift.

Marie's shower6Marie with her mom and with her great grandmother and her paternal grandmother.

Cousins on the top and Marie with both grandmother’s, her mom, and great grandmother.

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We loved meeting Great Grandmother! She is a fabulous 95!

IMGP0550Sweet Marie! We are looking forward to seeing her walk down the aisle at the Blueberry Farm/Ranch in Southern California to be married to our nephew Caleb. Our side of the family is having a shower for Marie the later part of July in Southern California.

IMGP0559After the shower Lana, Laura and I headed back to our house and met up with our hubbies to head out to dinner and celebrate a belated Father’s Day meal.

Another relatively quiet week ahead for me…sigh of relief. We are narrowing down the choices for our new carpeting. We are still overwhelmed with the idea that we have to empty out the rooms that will be re-carpeted. What’s ahead for you this week?

Give Me, O Lord, a Heart of Grace

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Give Me, O Lord, a Heart of Grace

Give me, O Lord, a heart of grace,
A voice of joy, a shining face,
That I may show, where’er I turn,
Thy love within my soul doth burn.

Though life be sweet and joy be dear,
Be in my mind a quiet fear,
A patient strength in pain and care,
An enmity to dark despair.

A tenderness for all that stray,
With strength to help them on the way,
A cheerfulness, a heav’nly mirth
Brightening my steps along the earth.

Words: Rosa Mulholland, 1886.

Count Them!

Here are my five blooming blessings for Susanne’s Friday’s Fave Five!

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1. I got to enjoy 5 Peony blooms from my plant this year. Last year I only had two! Peonies really delight me.

 

2. Dear returned safely from his business trip to France and we enjoyed a relaxed Father’s Day weekend.

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3. After non-stop activity for a few months we had a very slow uneventful week and that was good as we head into a flurry of prep work to replace all of our floors by the end of July.

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4. Last Saturday my sister and I went on a garden tour in a neighboring city and enjoyed lots of wrong turns and laughter.  A post is still coming about that morning…

 

5. Lots of good talks on the phone with our grown children this week. Our daughter and son-in-law are anticipating lots of changes over the next several months and it was good to be able to listen to all the possibilities and help them in the “waiting”.  We are starting to get real excited about our plans for our England trip with our oldest son and DIL. We were waiting on the Premier League “Fixtures” to be released and now we can plan in earnest. (Fixtures are the teams schedules for the coming season) Now we are hoping we can actually get some tickets for the game we want to go to. Our son Dan is doing well on the other side of the mountains and that makes us happy.

Yesterday we had a solid day of rain. We are hoping for some dry time this weekend for some of our scheduled projects. Today is the first day of summer and looking out my window it’s hard to believe that. We joke around in the northwest that summer doesn’t really start up here until July 5th! Do you have some fun summer plans?

Ditt enn Daut…

This and that from the rest of our time in Manitoba…and of course food is involved. These events are not in any particular order.

This was the Retreat Center that we stayed in during our time in Manitoba. Our last morning there we took our coffee out on the wrap around porch.

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Betty is keeping an eye on me as I trek through the tall grass and weeds over to the church next door to take a stroll through their cemetery.  She was hoping I wouldn’t end up with ticks on my legs. Yikes!

 

Here I go…

 

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When I got back from my trek I found most of the girls having their coffee on the porch while we waited to enjoy our breakfast. Or maybe this was after breakfast. Anyhoo I won’t say out loud on my blog what I said to make them laugh.

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One thing for sure is that we did not go hungry on any day or for any meal!

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We were able to make a quick stop at Betty’s home and have a little tour to see where she cooks. While we were there a storm blew through and Lovella was excited to get out into it. The reason she’s toting that hanging plant is a whole other story.

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While in Betty’s community we stopped at Main Bread & Butter Co. so some of the girls could buy some famous Bothwell Squeaky Cheese. We were excited to see our book for sale on one of their displays.

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Now we are all the way back to the beginning of our time in Manitoba and our first night at the Women Refreshed at the Well Retreat Center. We pretty much started with good food and ended with good food. After all…it was a cookbook signing tour.

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This was Charlotte’s Cake that she made for our dessert on our first evening.

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We are grateful to God for all he has done in each of our lives and the great times that we enjoy together.

 

It’s been good to have a large chunk of this week without any plans or appointments. The next thing on the calendar is a bridal shower on Saturday for my nephew’s future bride. Those of us up here in the PNW are happy to be able to attend a family shower without having to fly. We will be flying to the wedding in August that will be in the Santa Barbara area.

I’m experimenting with a new way to make ribs in the oven and if the recipe turns out well I’ll be sharing it on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook website on the 4th of July. Time will tell since I’m cooking it low and slow…

The Village…

The Mennonite Heritage Village helps preserve the history of the Russian Mennonites.

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The outdoor village takes you back to 1874 when the first Mennonites arrived in Manitoba. Over twenty historic buildings, including Mennonite homes, schools, churches, and small businesses line the village street. You can absorb the history as you walk through the village and the buildings.

This is a replica of the turn of the century General Store.

The original Klass Reimer general store was the first in the village of Steinbach back in 1884.

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Lichtenau Church was built in 1930 by Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920’s.

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We had an appointment at the Livery Barn Restaurant for lunch so I’ll stop here for a bit before we continue our village tour. This is Betty and her daughter Allison.

All of us chose to order the Bestje Dit enn Daut. Sample of a little this and that. All of this plus it came with a slice of rhubarb plautz. A very traditional Mennonite sampling.

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Marg decided we could all sample the Cinnamon roll, too. Yummy!

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Mennonites used windmills to grind grains and drain marshes throughout their history in Europe and Russia. The first windmill in Steinbach was built in 1877 by Abraham S. Friesen. A replica was built at the museum in 1972 but was destroyed by fire in 2000. Now Canada’s only operational windmill, reconstructed in 2001, is an exact replica of the 1877 windmill of Steinbach and sits in this village.

We didn’t have enough time to walk into all the buildings but I was interested in seeing the inside of one of the school buildings. This school was built in the village of Blumenhof, near Altona, in 1885.

Dear’s mother taught in a one room school house and I can imagine it was not unlike this one.

 

 

Lunch boxes or I suppose they should be called Lunch cans!

 

The teacher could live right in the school in an adjoining room. I think I would have preferred to have quarters elsewhere.

 

Old Colony Worship House

 

The house and barn connection and dwelling layout of this home can be traced back to Prussia/Poland, where the Mennonites settled from the 1500’s onward.

 

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This is a Semlin which was made of sod, soil, grass and wood. These were the materials used in the first homes built by Mennonite immigrants in 1874. Although very crude, these sod buildings provided the shelter necessary for survival on the Manitoba plains.  The house above and below this Semlin was a vast improvement built with oak logs and larger rooms. IMGP0216

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Hope you enjoyed my little tour of the Mennonite Heritage Village. Putting something together on this scale must have taken lots of hard work and volunteer hours. From what I’ve seen and experienced, Mennonites aren’t afraid of hard work. Volunteers put in hours to mow the lawns on this 40 acre site, too. It really is a great destination to visit if you travel in this area.

I have one more post to wrap up our time in Manitoba.

Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

Ht: Mennonite Heritage Village Brochure

A Surprise…

I had no idea of the scope of the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach. When we pulled up in front I still didn’t realize what was waiting to explore within and beyond the museum building. For this post I’ll just share the Center and the Museum with our signing photos and in another post I’ll share the Village and the Barn Restaurant where we enjoyed some heritage food.

The Village Centre contains the main exhibit telling the Mennonite story from the 1500s to the present.

The whole time we were in the center signing books there was a steady stream of elementary students arriving in school buses to have a tour of the center and village.

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The Museum gift shop had a great collection of Mennonite books and they had our cover aprons from our first cookbook for sale in different fabric patterns.

A walk through the museum took you on a time line of the migration of the Mennonite People over the years. There were many great photos and items from Russia in the museum.

Even though I am not Mennonite these photos could have been a photo of my relatives from Russia. They look so similar to the few photos we have from our ancestors in Russia.

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Kathy’s cousins came to the center and it was fun to take this photo with Kathy holding her cousin’s Draft Horse Calendar that is sold in the Heritage gift shop.

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It was fun to meet Jeanine from The Baking Beauties who is actually only one baking beauty right now. She has a great Gluten Free Baking sight and you can click over to check it out. She’s in the middle in the back row.

When we were done with our signing slot we headed out the back doors of the center and I was pleasantly surprised with the sites I saw. I will share more in my next post.

We are busy now working on options for easily storing some of our larger pieces of furniture while we have all of our floors replaced. We are having it done in two stages and will be moving things in and out for the hardwood floors first and then following up with the carpeting. We are still trying to choose the color and pile we want on the carpeting. Everything you do opens up the door to more things that need to be done. Any big projects at your house?

At the Villages

During our short time in Winnipeg and Steinbach we had book signings in 3 different Ten Thousand Villages. Each one of the stores served food that the staff prepared from our cookbook. If you aren’t familiar with Ten Thousand Villages here is a short description of who they are.

TEN THOUSAND VILLAGES

A Fair Trade Retailer We create opportunities for artisans in developing countries to earn income by bringing their products and stories to our markets through long-term, fair trading relationships.

You might want to have something to eat before you scroll through this post. Just thought I’d give you fair warning..

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At two of the stores we ended up right next to the jewelry. I ended up coming home with 4 pieces of jewelry. That was good marketing for sure.

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Have you shopped in a Ten Thousand Villages store? This was the store in Steinbach. Our last 2 signings of our days in Manitoba were at 2 different Ten Thousand Villages in Winnipeg.

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This time we were right across from the jewelery instead of sitting in front of the jewelery. At this store we met many people who had connections to some of our own girls. This was TTV Henderson.

A little guy was my favorite fan for sure. He was so interested in getting one of our books and being able to enjoy some of the recipes. He never left our table even when his sister next to him found toys to play with in the store. He was more interested in making sure he got a book from us.

He watched each of us intently to make sure we signed the book just right. It was so much fun to talk to him.

Our next signing would be at the larger Ten Thousand Villages in Winnipeg but before we headed there we were invited to lunch at Margaret’s home who is Charlotte’s cousin. She was working at the store the whole time we were signing and left just minutes before we did but still had a wonderful table and food ready for us at her home nearby

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We had a wonderful time at Margaret’s table, thank you so much! This was the first time that I had Obst Moos (a cold fruit soup) and it was delicious. Margaret said she followed Charlotte’s recipe in our first cookbook. From here we went to our last signing in Winnipeg (TTV Plaza Dr.) where more dishes from our cookbook were served.

Genevieve made my Dear’s Tomato Rice Soup and it was delicious. I wish I would have thought to take a photo of sweet Genevieve next to the soup. By this time my head was spinning from all the fun! I still have a couple more adventures to document from the Mennonite Girls trip to Manitoba.

In the meantime my Dear is back from France and we spent a nice Father’s Day at church and brunch and then enjoying some relaxation as each of our kids called to wish him a Happy Father’s Day. We’ll celebrate next weekend with our kids who are near. On Saturday to help the hours go by before Dear came home my sister Lana and I went on a Secret Garden Tour in a neighboring city. We had a great time and I’ll be sharing about that soon, too. Hope you had a nice weekend. Spring is coming to an end. What are your plans for the last week of Spring?

A Hymn to Honor My Heavenly and Earthly Father!

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Happy the Home When God is There

words by Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843)

Happy the home when God is there,
And love fills every breast;
When one their wish, and one their prayer,
And one their heav’nly rest.

Happy the home where Jesus’ Name
Is sweet to every ear;
Where children early speak His fame,
And parents hold Him dear.

Happy the home where prayer is heard,
And praise each day does rise;
Where parents love the sacred Word
And all its wisdom prize.

Lord, let us in our homes agree
This blessèd peace to gain;
Unite our hearts in love to Thee,
And love to all will reign.

I’m thankful to God for my father and the father of my children and my children by marriage. Both my father and my Dear are good fathers that their children respect and honor. What a blessing it is…Happy Father’s Day Pop and  Dear!

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