Blessing of the Easter Food

This Easter season has me posting a lot more frequently!

Here is my basket.

My church did something we had not done before. We had the Blessing of the Easter Food this morning.
I had heard about this. It's a tradition dating back over 1,000 years and practiced quite a bit in Eastern Europe. In Poland, it's called Swieconka. On the day before Easter you assemble some of your Easter food and take it to church for the priest to bless. The basket is traditionally lined with a white cloth and is decorated with boxwood. It was a rainy morning here, so my basket was rather small - I didn't really want to carry a ham with me anyway! Attending the blessing was fun and definitely a new experience for me. Apparently in parts of the US, people make butter lambs to include in the baskets. Maybe a thought for me for next year...

Here's the scene of the blessing of the baskets at church. We managed to wish each other a Happy Easter in many, many languages.

Other than that it has been a sleepy day here with all the rain. Maybe I'll work on a quilt for awhile before it gets too dark. Happy Easter!

Easter Week

Easter Week has been a busy one for me. Just so I don't forget, I'm wishing you a Happy Easter right here at the start!

On Tuesday, my quilt guild met and we were wonderfully entertained by Cathy Miller, the Singing Quilter. If you have seen the YouTube with "You Can Quilt That Out", that's Cathy Miller's song. Also, I couldn't resist taking a comfort quilt packet home with me. Once it's stitched, I'll return it to the guild and it will be given to someone. Our guild makes quilts for so many deserving groups.

Are you a Snoopy or Peanuts fan? I think this is going to turn out really cute.

On Thursday, I attended the Lexington County Master Gardeners meeting. We had a speaker who provided information on that wonderful plant - the Hydrangea. I won a door prize and here it is! Look at the size of those hydrangea blossoms!

 

Arrangement with dried hydrangeas

So what did I do today? First time ever, I made pierogi (a traditional Polish dumpling type of food.) My husband helped. Some batches of the dough worked better than others. The fillings were one of two types: sauerkraut with mushrooms and onions - or ricotta cheese with onions. The recipe says to use farmer's cheese, but I've never seen that sold around here. I added some seasoning to each.

The bad part was when I got to the cooking instructions and it said to boil each one individually for 5-8 minutes. We made over 2 dozen! Anyway, we ended up putting them in boiling water 2-3 at a time and it worked fine. I thought we did pretty well considering I had not attempted this before. Here's a picture. As you might guess, it's supposed to look like a half-circle. This was photographed after the "taste tester" checked it out!

We have rain arriving today and apparently it's going to continue to be wet through to midday on Easter.
However, the Easter eggs have been boiled and dyed. I think I'll be ready for Easter Sunday!

Little Girl Things

I've found that after that beautiful granddaughter arrives, you develop a special interest in "little girl things."
I'll start out with a newer picture of my darling granddaughter, Miranda.

With Easter coming up, I had to get this cute little bunny hat for her. It's not listed on Etsy right now, but comes from the shop https://www.etsy.com/shop/HookedByNurseSharon.

As you may recall, I am captain of two teams on Etsy. The baby girl items have caught my attention. I think Miranda needs all of them!  Here are some cute items from 2HeartsDesire First of all, look at this pretty card to welcome a new baby girl.

 

 Then there are these adorable teething ring rattles. These work for a boy or a girl.  :-)

 And how about this beautiful pink wooden Easter to celebrate Baby's First Easter?

Check out all of these items at  https://www.etsy.com/shop/2HeartsDesire

Miranda might need to be a bit older to appreciate something like this, but one day she will simply have to have an American Girl Doll. Look at this cute outfit:

This dress and many other outfits for American Girl Dolls can be found at DonnaDesigned.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaDesigned

And we can't forget Dr. Seuss. In fact, Miranda was born on what was Dr. Seuss's birthday!

 This print and others as well as photographs can be found at SoupDimples:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/soupdimples

Well, I think Grandma needs to stop shopping now. Enjoy the Springtime weather if it has reached your area by now. We've had a few really beautiful days and my plants are responding.

Introducing Miranda

My sweet little granddaughter, Miranda Cadence, arrived on Sunday, March 2. She is doing really well and is at home now. The weather has not been too kind to her (who expects all this snow and cold weather in the South when it's almost Spring), but her mommy and daddy are taking really good care of her. I think she is very lucky to have them as parents. Hopefully we will see you soon, Miranda!

Valentine's Day Snow Delay: IOU

When our newspaper arrived after a couple of days of snow, sleet, and rain I had to laugh a bit about this Valentine's Day IOU. It was a full page ad.

I made the photo large so hopefully you can read it. Yes, a Valentine's Day Snow Delay...
and here is the coupon your can present to your special sweetheart.

This one might be a bit harder to read so I typed out the wording on the coupon:

Dear _________
I'm so sorry your Valentine's Day gift is running late. If you will give me a little more time, I promise to make it a little more special. There is no amount of snow that can stand between us, so let's celebrate on February ____.
Thank you for your understanding!
Love always, ______________

I've never seen anything like it before. Fortunately I shopped early.  Unfortunately, even though we sent the packages priority, one didn't reach a daughter and son-in-law in time. (A priority package that was mailed in South Carolina took 6 days to reach North Carolina. The South Carolina to California package made it in time.)

My husband and I exchanged small gifts and cards and last night was our special meal - cheese fondue with two types of bread, Granny Smith apples, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots followed by Valentine cookies. It was so good!

Lately I've been working on my Scrappy Trips Around the World quilt... at my usual slow pace.

Snow, Freezing Rain, and an Earthquake

What a week last week was. We had our second bad winter storm of the month: this time with rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, and more snow. The ice build up on the trees was just short of what it would have taken for lots of us to lose our electricity. In the next county over 90% of the people lost power.

Here you can see lots of layers of the storm on our porch railing.

 

 

Here is ice coating all the trees.

Then to add to all that on Valentine's Day evening, we had an earthquake. What? Exactly what I was thinking. It was just a rumble and I wasn't even sure what it was until the local weather interrupted the Winter Olympics to say there had been an earthquake.

Certainly this week can be better than last!

Snow! A Winter Wonderland

It has been a few years since we got snow in this part of South Carolina, but we woke up to snow yesterday. Of course that meant I needed to take my camera outside and snap some pictures. I hope you enjoy these. What a magical winter wonderland!

View out the front door

Big Fluffy Flakes That Stick to the Trees

No Gazing in the Gazing Ball Today

Would you like a seat in my garden anyway?

View on the way to the barn.

Piper says "Neigh" to the snow and Sydney doesn't care for it either!

Thanks for visiting and stay warm!