Tag Archives: Weather

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!

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.

Hello Winter…

I’m sharing some photos our son sent along of some true winter scenes at his new home in Eastern Washington. He’s talking about the need for some snow clearing equipment and I can see why…

The snow on top of the bird feeders reminded him of Marge Simpson’s hair. Too bad it’s not blue…

How is the first day of winter where you live? We are still having rain and it’s cold but no snow that sticks around.

a Mother Goose poem

Cold and raw the north wind doth blow,
Bleak in the morning early;
All the hills are covered with snow,
And winter’s now come fairly.

Have a great weekend everyone!

When You’re Hot…

We were sizzling in Washington this past Sunday and our Seattle Sounders were hot hot hot on the field and beat L.A. Galaxy 4-0. I was happy to see that Beckham was back from London.

There were 60,000 people at the game and when we scored the noise was deafening! In other news…

The apples are falling off the tree and I’m slow in getting inspired to do anything with them.

My hydrangeas have really advanced to a deeper color. They are so nice to cut and have in fresh arrangements in the house.

We have cooled down around here today and it’s nice to be more comfortable while working around the house.

While I’m typing I’m watching the U.S.A. vs. Canada Women’s soccer semi-final at the Olympics. What a game! It’s a toss up on who is going to win. I’ll let you find out who does…

Tuesday my 89 year old mom will be having hip replacement surgery because she has been experiencing severe pain constantly for several months now. Could you pray for Nadia for good results from the replacement and a good recovery from the surgery. We are hoping for pain free days in her future. Pray for my dad, Moisi, too. He will be home alone for a while and he’s not used to that.

A Lovely Weekend…

This was our first true summer weekend here in the Pacific Northwest. The sun has been shining brightly since the 4th of July. We finally just puttered about the yard and stayed home.

After I finished my puttering inside I sat out in the shade to keep an eye on Dear while he was up on those high ladders.

He worked on the trim on the garage. Thankfully he was shaded most of the time.

I think pansies and violas are the sweetest little flowers. They make me smile.

I still have a few more pots that need some fresh flowers in them. On Sunday there was one more project I needed to get done.

Rosella reminded me that it was time to add our next layer of fruit to our topfs! Rosella’s is Rumtopf and mine is Smirntopf! We both added cherries. I know I have a cherry pitter somewhere that Dear’s mother owned but it’s probably tucked away in the attic so I improvised and used a fondue fork to pit my cherries. You were right Rosella…it’s not easy to pit cherries and it’s good to wash a load of dishes when you are done so you can get the cherry juice stain off your hands and fingernails! My blueberries aren’t quite ready to pick yet so they will wait till the next layer…

This is the beginning of a very busy week for me with travel to Canada for 3 days included. I don’t know how often I’ll be checking in. Still praying for those of you suffering in the hotter than normal temps and for the areas that are desperate for some rain. May God shade you and refresh you with his rain…

Raindrops Keep Fallin…

In between the raindrops here in the greater Seattle area I decided to take some shots of what’s growing in our yard.

Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head
And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed
Nothin’ seems to fit
Those raindrops are fallin’ on my head, they keep fallin’

So I just did me some talkin’ to the sun
And I said I didn’t like the way he got things done
Sleepin’ on the job
Those raindrops are fallin’ on my head, they keep fallin’

But there’s one thing I know
The blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me
It won’t be long till happiness steps up to greet me

Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head
But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turnin’ red
Cryin’s not for me
‘Cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’
Because I’m free
Nothin’s worryin’ me

So we do have apples, pears, and blueberries growing. My hydrangea is going to have more than one bloom this year and that makes me happy. That rose bush blooms like crazy and my lavender is blooming but not as lush as years past.

The birds are enjoying my new bird feeder and have almost emptied it of seed.

I finally planted the new rhododendron plant we bought at the end of April.

And here’s my last shot of part of the yard on July 1st…just keeping it real folks. Hopefully I’ll have a dry enough spell to mow these weeds before our 4th of July barbecue!

Our lawn definitely is not the envy of the block and is mostly weeds and moss!

I’m linking up with Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.

Easter Day 2012

 Dear and I were out the door early Easter morning and attended the 7:00 a.m. service. It was a great way to start this glorious Easter day. The Easter cross was on center stage!

After church I set the places for our Easter meal.

We had Shashlik (marinated lamb barbecued on skewers), glazed ham, roasted vegetables and salad. I sent ham home with our guests, too.

Our centerpiece was our Russian Easter Bread. Some people call it Paska. We call it Kulich.

The signs written in Russian say, Christ is Risen, Truly He is Risen or He is Risen Indeed.

This is Searnaya Paska which is served with our Easter Bread. Searnaya Paska is a sweetened cheese spread that is made with a type of dry cheese, egg yolks, butter, cream, and sugar. Don’t even bother trying to figure out the calories or how it will raise your cholesterol levels. The mixture is pressed overnight in a mold to get the excess liquid out. Besides the sweet cheese we serve this with strawberries. A most wonderful combination. Think strawberry shortcake.

To document the fact that we got amazing sunshine on Easter 2012 I had Lana and Laura pose with some Easter symbols outside.

Look at them! They are squinting. That made us happy today!

We all spent some time out in the Easter sunshine soaking up some vitamin D.

We are full and satisfied with all the glory of the day we enjoyed. Hope you had a wonderful Easter Day!

FFF ~ Never a Dull Moment…

Another week with the chance to pause and look back and remember the good things in our lives. Thank you to Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for hosting this event every Friday. My days have again been full.

We had a sermon on gratitude a couple Sundays ago and the pastor shared 2 Killers of gratitude. One killer is complaining and the other killer is comparing. I’ve been on the lookout for these two killers in my heart and mind.

Now to my 5 favorites…

1. Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine! When the sun shines in the Seattle area we enjoy it to the fullest. On Friday morning I walked the Sammamish River trail with a friend and we enjoyed the extra shot of Vitamin D!

2. Friday night I met up with Josh and Laura and we traveled to the Seattle Sounders Soccer game via Kerry Park where there are great views of Seattle. We were showing Flat Stanley what makes Seattle special. Have you experienced Flat Stanley? We took Flat Stanley to the game and we were so happy they won and it was a fun game.

3. Saturday I packed my Mennonite Girls Can Cook Apron and headed north to the Blaine Library for a presentation of our book and story. Lovella did a wonderful job of sharing our story. My friend Cindy who works in the children’s area of the library and her boss Debby baked goodies from our cookbook to serve to the participants at the seminar. It was a great time and we all had lunch together at the Blackberry Cafe after our time at the library.

4. On Monday I finally took the leap and joined the 21st century with a new phone and I’m in a new learning curve. I was even able to text my son. I laughed because it took me about 2 full minutes to type out 2 sentences and send them on their way. OYE!

5. Homemade spaghetti sauce. We had a lot of tomatoes leftover from our wedding weekend so I decided to make homemade tomato sauce. When it was finished I added some mild Italian sausage to the sauce and served it with pasta and some fresh basil. It was delicious.

Hope you all had a good week. Waiting to see if my friend and I can fit a walk in today between rain showers…

FFF ~ Late Snow

It’s time to look back and choose favorites from the past week. Susanne at Living to Tell the Story is our hostess for this weekly event.

I’ll intersperse my Fave 5 amongst these snow shots. We had some late snow for our parts. It’s always a surprise around here and we get all worked up over an inch or two of snow. Last night some areas north of Seattle got 14 inches of snow which is unusual. One of the things that makes snow in the Seattle area very hard to deal with is our hilly terrain. We are not flat like Chicago!

 

1. Well since that’s our apple tree in the snow I’ll start my favorites with the fact that we finally got all our tree pruning done!

 

2. When it snows I tend to stock up and cook meals at home. Right now I’m smelling the great aroma of chicken cooking in my Crock pot.

 

3. Another favorite from this week was a telephone call from our son in Eastern Washington just to let us know they got another 10 inches of snow out at the cabin he’s living in. He also made arrangements for us to use some of his Marriott free nights at a hotel we’ll be staying at in Washington D.C. Thanks Dan!

 

4. My father passed out for no reason last Friday and ended up in the hospital for a couple nights. They tested him out for heart and brain issues and everything came back negative. The doctor thinks the problem was a medication issue and gave him instructions. He’s home and I’m glad it wasn’t something major. My mom was so cute she said “I tested the lonely life and it didn’t pass” That was after only one night without my dad at home. My dad also told us he didn’t need his Bible at the hospital because he just recited all the Psalms he’s memorized when he couldn’t sleep. I’m so thankful for my parents and the love they have for each other and all of us.

 

5. My Friday cleaning schedule is going well. I’m always thankful when I stick to a plan. It was also very satisfying to see my daughter thoroughly clean the main bathroom. It’s her bathroom for the most part so it’s her responsibility. She even cleaned out all the drawers, etc. Scary what she found in there. One of the funny things was that there was enough dental floss for a family of 25. I won’t even mention the retainers she found….

 

So what were your favorites this past week? I’ll be around really early before my cleaning schedule starts or late in the day to see your favorites.

Photobucket replaced all my photos with ugly black and grey boxes and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.