A Special Date

A Valentine Date with my special friend. We kept the day free to just be together, a trip to Powell Books in downtown Portland, Oregon was on our agenda. We both like books so that would be a natural place for us to go and explore. Loaded up with some great books, we checked out some of the other stores close by like Sur la Table, Anthropologie, and Whole Foods. The letter "M" was a treasure from Anthropolgie, the plate with the hearts was a great find from Target. Below are some books that caught my eye.
The smell of Sunday Roast, that sure evokes a memory in me from my high school years. My mom made some of the best roasts for us growing up.


Where have I been, I did not know we had one of these stores in our area, what a nice surprise for me, I certainly enjoyed wandering through here.
I saw these imprinted silver ware and thought oh my, thinking about the cost of them, the next time our farm girls get together we are actually going to make these.
I have been eyeing this book for a long time, I have always dreamed about going to France to see the Eiffel tower and the Lavender Fields. Who knows someday. When Roger first proposed to me, we were watching a movie and the guy in the movie said "lets go to Paris and get married" and Roger said to me "how about it?" meaning lets get married. To this day I keep reminding him of it. Maybe someday.
A stop at McMenamens to finish off our outing, with a Ruby Beer, my favorite. First I will tell you when we were at PF Changs for an early dinner we ordered a Moonstone Raspberry Sake, of course I thought it would be red or pink at the least, well it was neither and really did not taste good. My favorite choice of beverage is pink or red, so I naturally will choose something that might be that color, and then to top it off "moonstone" was just the topping on the cake, since I love gemstones. Since I did not want to be disappointed, I knew I could have a Ruby Beer at McMenamens.
A trip to Whole Foods to find that perfect desert to take home to savor, in the mean time taking in the beautiful flowers they had available, so much the sign of spring.
A wonderful desert to take home to savor that evening. Yummy!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Roger for a great Valentine's Day!

A nice ending to a perfect day.

Valentine's Day with The SisterHood

"Love" This says it all, we gathered at the home of Robins to celebrate the holiday of Love, Valentine's Day. Thank you Robin for hosting us and presenting us with a feeling of the holiday to continue through our week, with sweet inspirations. We always sit around and catch up with each other's lives and then we are on to some special treats. We have been doing this for almost 30 years. Wow
This cake platter was found at Target, what a great find, the cake was a butter cream bundt cake with raspberry filling on the inside.
The presentation was a feast for the eyes. Yummy.
Nancy presented us with heart shaped spritzer cookies on a beautiful dish, with Lola and Judy giving us candle and candle holders with the Valentine theme.

Here are our Sister Hood Friends Lola, Nancy, Judy and Robin and of course myself not in the photo.
I loved the packaging that Robin did with the brown paper and grosgrain ribbon and hand made card. Inside was a "LOVE" plaque to adorn our walls.
I leave you with a setting for Valentine's Day party that was for my youngest daughter seventeen years ago, wow. Where has time gone? I remember the excitement I had putting it together and the ah of her friends.
Here is Heather my youngest (in the far back ground) with her friends celebrating Valentines Day, a memory that will be with her for years to come. All these young ladies are grown women now, perhaps carrying on their own traditions.

Farm Girl's Valentine Gathering

"Farm Girls gathered on Saturday February 6th at my home to celebrate Valentines Day, to create and just be together. I love having the girls come to my home, they are all so giddy and fun to watch and I love to bring out elements of surprises for them, creating a day to remember. We share our stories and our creations, always eager to share our skills with each other. Below you will see a couple of quilts I just made in the last month. Very simple but fun.
This is my quilt on "steroids" I had a few sleepless nights so I got up and started sewing. I had a bad chemical burn on my hands, so I had to get some medical help to heal them up, along with that comes the side effects, however well worth the miraculous healing the meds do. Since I use my hands in my healing work, they have to be well. They say every quilt has a story, well mine will not be lost.
This is my Red and White Valentine quilt, very simple but just perfect for that lap blanket. It is quilted with a heart pattern and will be finished with a white back ground and red dot binding,
Robin and Katy with lots of smiles just because we are getting together. Our bond as friends continues to grow, we have now just hit our one year anniversary as "Farm Girls" wow, the bond is strong, we know we can lean on each for strength when needed, no burden is to great to bear, we are here for the long term. I hope many of you have this bond with some one.
Some of our shared Valentine treasures we received.
Erin and I sharing our stories, we share our apron stories and journal pages from our last gathering and what ever might be happening for us at this time. Katy and I have both experienced the loss of a loved one this past week, so bringing our group together gives us a wonderful lift to our spirits.
Katy's husband Eric surprised us all with bouquets of flowers, I sure think he gained some extra brownie points from all of us. Thank you Eric.

Robin was our teacher for this project and she most definitely has down the embroidery work, and we all thank her for all her ideas and hard work gathering all the the things we needed to accomplish this project.
Here are some samples that Robin brought to give us some ideas of things we might like to make in the future. She also blessed us with a great little card holder, that I quickly put my coffee card in. I think I will have to try and make some more of them. Thanks Robin.
With lots of wool scraps to work with, we set about to create our wool pin cushions.


Erin and I will our wool pin cushions, I think we were very happy with our creations, don't you?
Robin showing her pincushion.
Katy with her finished pin cushion.
Our lunch included a Hearty soup made by Erin, a spinach pear salad provided by Robin, and I provided mini quiches to round off our luncheon. We had Lavender Lemonade, which we soon learned as we were creating we were pretty relaxed, um could it have been the lavender, maybe.
Our desert was provided by Katy in this beautiful heart shape baking dish from Le creuset, it was a Bare Foot Contessa recipe of apple crisp. Yummy. I will leave you with some fun settings that I created for the atmosphere of the day. Enjoy.






I am a pretty lucky lady as I also had another Valentine gathering with my sister hood group that I will post next. I hope your Valentines is everything you would want it to be.

A Day To Play

A day to play, Erin and I went on an adventure to Silverton to the Third Annual Quilt show at The Oregon Gardens, the theme this year was Stitches in Bloom, it was perfect setting for such a show depicting garden quilts. The vendors were great, allowing us to play and be inspired to make a quilt, our friend Joy was not there this year, we surely missed her. I met Joy three years ago at this show and since then consider my friend. You never know what you might experience when you go on adventures like this. We had lunch, both experiencing our first smoked salmon strata, very interesting I will just say. (think tofu) The Chocolate Box was there so our sweet tooth was satisfied. Later would end our visit to Silverton with a stop at this sweet little candy shop. Yummy. The quilt above was made by Laurie Smith depicting The Three Sisters Mountains, in Central Oregon.

Here is Erin, and Gwendolyn of sibling arts, one of three sisters were presenting their cloth paper dolls and invited people in to make one, so yes we indulged and let our little girl come out in us, it was so much fun, now I have to make more for my girls and granddaughters.

You can tell here I was having fun with this new bling tool, all I kept thinking is I have to do this with my girls. I remember as a child playing with paper dolls, even using the sears catalog to cut out paper dolls and clothes. What memories those evoke in me.
The quilt above and the next three quilt photos are by an artist Janet Fogg, these quilts were appliqued, and were absolutely beautiful. The workmanship was astounding. I know that I probably would not ever do this kind of work but I certainly appreciate it.



A wonderful collection of fabrics were available, inspiring one to start a quilt. Leaving the Quilt show we headed down town Silverton to explore the shops. We found the Chocolate shop, and visited a shop that had some beautiful Lavender Syrup for us to use in our cooking. Syrup in hand we headed home with some great ideas. It was a beautiful day spending time with my friend.