This is for Dave and Dwight!

This is for Sara and Kari

This is for Dave

Mary Engelbreit and the Filing Cabinet

I am a Mary Engelbreit fan!

I have mentioned that before, but I don't think I ever gave examples of her artwork.

This is one of my favorites and it hangs in our bathroom.

Cute, eh?

This also hangs in our bathroom because we went to St. Louis on our honeymoon!

This is a the filing cabinet with ME (Mary Engelbreit) pics decoupaged on the drawers.

I needed a filing cabinet in our computer room. This is an old one which I painted.

The drawers were pretty bad looking, so I came up with this idea.

I think it was the ticket!

Now to get all my "stuff" in it, so that I can say I am organized and can find what I need!

Having it in the basement was not conducive to using it.

Tour of Doors

The guest bedroom door

Kitchen door from the back porch

Maybe we are a little weird, but we like doors. I counted that we have 18 doors in this house, all of which are boring. At one time, I thought I would like to replace all the ordinary doors with old ones we would pick up on spring clean-up. I was informed that hanging doors is very tricky business. So unless we could get our nephew, Chad, up here to hang old doors, I am stuck with the boring ones. Chad is a pro door hanger along with everything else to do with carpentry!

We do have all sorts of doors at the farm and no two are alike. Not only that, they are all old doors! Here is a farm door tour, in case anyone is interested!

Back porch door

A STUDY IN DOORS cont.

There is no door here, just a curtain for "Sara's room." We call it that, even though Sara has moved on to her own doors, because she wanted this room when we were first thinking about buying the farm. The room is very small...just room for a single bed and a tiny chest.

The door in the wood shed

going in to the back porch

The Pond House door

The Potting Shed
This is where I keep all my garden tools!

The Blacksmith Shop

Paul's Place!

The inside of back porch door

The inside of the kitchen door

The inside of the front door

The outside of the front door

The door in to the wood shed from the back porch

The closet door in the upstairs hall

The cellar door

partly covered in snow

Our bedroom door

The bathroom door

(we try to ignore the sign!)

The outhouse

The moon on the door is supposed to mean it is for ladies!

(We ignore that too!)

Paul coming into the kitchen from the back porch

The Cracked Pot

It seems ironic that I read Judy's blog entry about the cracked pot right after I wrote about my broken plates. Maybe there is hope for them! However if nothing comes up by the end of May, out they go!

Broken Plates and the Invincible Toaster

As you can see, I have plenty of red and white plates. But then, we need to have enough, not to collect, but for serving company. Monday I broke THREE! I was talking to my sister, reached up to put a glass away when one of those great travel mugs fell on the dirty plates which were sitting on the counter. It was a stupid thing to do because I am not tall enough to reach the top shelf. I threw them into the garbage, but thought better of it later. So I fished them out again. (This is a problem with us. We can't bare to throw things away that we maybe could use!) Certainly there must be something to do with broken plates. On the internet, they show jewelry made from fine china. This isn't fine china, it is English Ironstone, "Romantic England" by J & G Meakin. I have had it for 35 years and like Gramma's dishes, many pieces have cracks and chips. But then, I am the gramma!

I used to give my broken red glass to a lady who made some sort of candle holders with it. I never did so much as see what she made with the glass and I gave her four broken ones! I know that because I still have four and had started out with eight! The remaining ones are behind the red sugar and creamers in the above pic.

Any ideas for my red and white plates?

Here are the broken plates

Also you can see the toaster which came through the big ice event of 2007 at the farm. It seems to be working fine even though it was frozen to the counter when we surveyed the damage. This is a GE toaster and we received it for a wedding gift 41 years, 3 months and 21 days ago!
Now they don't make them like that any more!!!

The Farm-O

Today was a beautiful day for a trip to the farm! We went to check on the progress of things there. Here are some pics...some good and some not so good. You can judge!

Russell's bird feeder
Neat, eh?


The front hall


The kitchen looking pretty good after we put things back into place.


The window over the kitchen sink
Notice the vintage curtains!


A cupboard we bought at an auction
I got the brainy idea today that it would look nice on top of a counter. I don't think that will happen soon, but maybe another auction...

Kitchen mess before

All the kitchen "stuff" was moved in to the living room during the big "ice on the floor" clean up.

Easter Blizzard

I LOVE winter storms!!! I LOVE to feel as if I am on a holiday because something is cancelled. But NOT on EASTER!!! However, the promised storm did happen and we were shut down. And it was a GOOD STORM!!! It snowed and blew and drifted and was generally miserable! First of all the street wasn't plowed! Then when it was, the driveway into the church parking lot was not accessible! Then the parking lot itself was impossible! We could not have our Easter breakfast at 8:30 AM!! We had considered not having the breakfast because of the otherwise busy weekend. The general opinion was to have the breakfast which we all enjoy.

We thought maybe we could have our 11:00 service, but that didn't fly either. So we sat safe and warm inside and watched it blow and snow and drift.

This is looking out through the window because it was a bit more dramatic that way!

We were all set up for the BREAKFAST with these cute centerpieces made by Jennifer. And she had a horrendous week with her mother having emergency surgery in Saint John. So all her hard work and rushing around for the centerpieces seemed like a waste!

The tables were all set in these pretty spring colors! We ate Breakfast Casserole for breakfast and for lunch AND for breakfast again today. I really didn't mind that, since I was so busy with things coming up to and through the weekend.

I did think though, that it is a good thing that we didn't miss 50% of the church services for the whole year (as in those who only go on Christmas and Easter).

In fact EVERY SUNDAY is RESURRECTION SUNDAY to the true Christian.

EVERY SUNDAY we celebrate that HE LIVES!

Not only that, HE LIVES WITHIN MY HEART!

HE IS MY SAVIOUR!

Maple Sugaring

This was a very busy weekend with a Good Friday Service and lunch with two other fellowshipping churches and a maple sugaring activity on Saturday. Sunday, as you now know, slowed down considerably! We have not gone to the sugar woods for a few years. It was a nice day, a little damp and muddy, but nice. We had a great time! The Fishers, who make the maple syrup, have around 100 acres of woods. We enjoyed a nice hike in the woods and the activities ended with food, of course, singing and a message from Scott.

The Sugar Woods

Seth checking out the sap

Anything in there, Faith?

Evan and Emma waiting for maple candy

Some of the bunch who watched the syrup making and sampled the results later

Signs of Spring

Years ago we always went to Auntie Cheryl and Uncle Dwight's in Adrian or Pine Island while Paul was on his youth Easter Trip. The kids, Kari, Mari, Andy, little Sara and littler Sean, enjoyed coloring Easter eggs. I don't know how many years we did it with "the cousins," but pretty much every year until we moved to NB. Now wouldn't it be fun to see some photos of the kids coloring eggs, when they were kids? I guess we were not much in to taking pictures those days.

This year I mixed up icing to frost cookies for spring. If Wes and Wil were here, they, most certainly, would have helped me! And I wish they could have!!!

The icing

The cookies!

Speaking of Easter, there is something I have never gotten used to in the almost 25 years since we moved to New Brunswick. That is parents giving gifts to their children for Easter! Excuse me, but isn't this a celebration of the Resurrection of Christ? Isn't His death and resurrection the ultimate gift to each of us? Yes, as children we did usually have new clothes for Easter and we did the egg thing and all. When our kids were growing up, we tried to down play the secular view of Easter and focus on the importance of Christ's resurrection, much as we also went "light" on Christmas giving for the same reason. Maybe part of it was leaving Minnesota where "all the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above average."

Then and Now

This is our family - Christmas 2000

Paul, Andy, Dave

Gail & Sara

Christmas 2006

from left to right:

Paul, Gail holding Wil (almost 4), Sara holding Skye (almost 1 year old),

Andy holding Wes (5), Dave in front because he set up the camera

How did we get along without the kiddies?