The Adventures of the Silver Spoon, part 1

As you know, I grew up with 3 sisters. We are all slightly crazy. (but in a very nice way) I'm the one without the 2 front teeth. That year my nickname from my dad was "Ohntehn", which means: the one without teeth.:) Note the true sepia tone of the scanned picture, that only comes with real age. And how did my mom get our hair so shiny?

There was a special spoon in my Mom's cutlery drawer. It was silver, but not in the shiny way that stainless steele spoons are. When i was small, I always wanted to use this silver spoon. In my head it was precious and magical. (We only had black and white tv, I used my imagination alot!)

A few weeks ago, after a scumptious meal, made by my Mom, my sister C and I were washing the dishes (because we are very well brought up daughters). We always had so much fun washing the dishes together as sisters after we all left our parents home. I had the little silver spoon in my hand, and said to my Mom, I would like to inherite this spoon some day. She said, sure, you can take it along today already, if you like. C was sputtering, (soap suds were flying) and says: What? Just like that? I wanted the spoon. We both got a knowing look in our eyes, and decided, without saying a word, a new tradition was born.

So, the other day at our Ladies Meeting, C found the silver spoon during clean-up, in the plate with the plastic spoons.

A week later, the spoon magically appeared at my house in the tin of chocolate milk mix.

This is how the adventures of the silver spoon began, where will the spoon turn up next? If anyone has any suggestions, where I could hide the spoon for C, email me, so C won't read it in my blog:) (brendasaw@gmail.com)

In the picture, my parrot is displaying the spoon for you all to see.

Survey for my sister

Who wants to help my big sister, Daniela?

As some of you know, my parents have 4 daughters, A,B,C and D. A is the youngest, and D(aniela) is the oldest. Daniela is awesome. She and her husband moved to Canada a few years ago. They have two boys, ages 13 and 12. (Super well-behaved boys, btw. They even bought her flowers for her birthday this year)

Daniela has had various jobs over the last few years. She was head wrangler (horses) at a christian camp, she was a cook for a mennonite museum, she was a ....what would you call it...um, she worked at a pig-raising farm, taking care of the sweetest piglets you've even seen. This week she took on another challenge and started her job as a church secretary. I wish you all the best, D, for your new job.

Dani, as we call her, started school again last year. She always wanted to finish high school and now she's taking night classes to finish grade 12. I am so proud of her! (Kleenex, please)

She asked me if I could help her on an english project she's doing, and of course, if your oldest sister needs your help, you help her! And I love doing it, too. She wants me to post a survey on my blog and would like my readers to answer this survey and send it back to her. She needs at least 20 responses and it has to get to her by Tuesday (Oct. 27). Who will help? You can send in your responses to: d_hildebrandt@hotmail.com

Thanks, everyone!

Here's the survey: (copy and paste to your email programm)

Hobby and Handicraft Expo Survey

Please complete the following survey about your interest and knowledge of hobbies and crafts.

What is your gender? Please check one.
___ Male ___ Female

How old are you?
___ < 18 ___ 19 – 25 ___ 26 – 35 ___ 35 – 45 ___ over 46

Do you have a hobby? Please check all that apply.
___ Scrap booking ___ Bird watching ___ Other
___ Gardening ___ Painting ______________
___ Photography ___ Models (e.g. airplanes, ships)
___ R/C cars/airplanes ___ Stamp/Coin collecting

Do you make crafts? Please check all that apply.
___ Knitting/Crocheting ___ Sewing ___ Other
___ Baking/Cooking ___ Jewellery _____________
___ Woodwork ___ Needlework
___ Pottery ___ Card making

How many hours do you spend on your craft/hobby? Please check one.
___ < 1 hour ___ 2 – 4 hours ___ 5 – 10 hours ___ More

How much money do you spend on your craft/hobby a year?
___ < $50 ___ $50 - $100 ___ $100 - $200 ___ More

Have you ever shown your work?
___ if yes, where?______________ ___ No

Would you be interested in showing your work in a non-professional way?
____ Yes ____ No

Where do you buy your supplies?
___ Steinbach: Where?________ ___ Winnipeg: Where?_______

Thank you for taking time to fill out this survey.

Book review: Fearless by Max Lucado

I started reading "Fearless" by Max Lucado, not because I was experiencing fear in my life, but because I really like the author.
Max Lucado has the ability to speak/write clearly, so that you can understand him perfectly and really picture the situations he describes. I have learned so much from this book.
Like for example:
Fear corrodes our confidence in God's goodness.
Fear unleashes doubts.
Fear is a perceived loss of control.
We get so edgy and insecure, when we lose control of a situation. But God will always be the same and in charge, it doesn't change anything about his love towards us, if we decide to fear and worry or to trust him. His love casts out fear, because he casts out sin.
The chapter that spoke to my heart the most was: My child is in danger. Because we have three daughters (13,11 and 8) I sometimes worry and fear for the future of our kids. But the Bible says in Lam. 2, 19: “Lift your hands toward Him for the life of your young children.” We can come to our Lord and bring our kids to him in prayer. Max Lucado says: “Prayer is the saucer into which parental fears are poured to cool.” We can't protect our children from every threat in life (even if I'd love to bubble wrap our girls sometimes), but we can take them to the Source of Life.
Another chapter that was very important to me was: Make-Believe Money. In a slightly humorous way, Max Lucado shows us that the treasures that we accumulate on earth are just as worthless as Monopoly money when we get to heaven.
I would recommend this book to all people, not only the fearful ones, as everybody can learn something new from this great book.

What is/are LOLCATS?

For all my readers wondering what the term lolcats mean:

"Lolcat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A lolcat image
A lolcat (pronounced LOLL-kat, with the "lol" not being an initialism), is an image combining a photograph, most frequently of a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as "lolspeak" or "kitty pidgin" and which parodies the poor grammar typically attributed to Internet slang. The name "lolcat" is a compound word of the acronymic abbreviation "LOL" and the word "cat".[1] A synonym for "lolcat" is cat macro, since the images are a type of image macro.[2] Lolcats are designed for photo sharing imageboards and other internet forums.
The term lolcat gained national media attention in the United States when it was covered by Time,[3] which wrote that non-commercialized phenomena of the sort are increasingly rare, stating that lolcats have "a distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel to [them]"."

Thank you wiki, you can stop now...

I had seen these pictures of cats all over the place on the net, and was wondering what that was all about. Especially the language had me puzzled. But they write it wrong on purpose, now I get it. :)

As most of you know, I have a very photogenic cat, named Eskimo. Last night, I was bored so I was looking at lolcats at http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/, and I found a place where you can make your own lolcats. What fun! (Note: I was reeeeallllly bored)

So, come take a look at my very own lolcats:

Winner of the crochet bag!

Let's celebrate with a bathtub full of fun! We have a winner for my very first giveaway. {Drum roll, please!}
Gladys from http://gladysspeaks.blogspot.com/ wins my crochet bag, cell phone case and a souvenir of Paraguay. Gladys has a really cool blog with hilarious posts. I just love her comments to news stories.

I baked a cuadruple batch of scandinavian almond bars, but in the maple/pecan variation. Just so that I could give some of these scrumptious goodies to the winner, if she was out of my area. But here's a little gift for all of my readers. I have the special permision of my very good friend, Shilo, to give the recipe to any one who wants it. Taste of Home also has this recipe but slightly different. I encourage you to surf through the TOH website, there are tons of great recipes waiting to be found.
Ok, so here's the recipe:

Scandinavian Almond Bars/Maple-Pecan Bars

1 ¾ cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
½ tsp almond extract
½ cup sliced almonds
milk
almond icing
Stir together dry ingredients. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and almond extract. Add flour mixture and beat until mixed thoroughly. Divide into fourths. Form into 12 x 3 inch rolls (I like to pat the rolls down a bit, so they aren't quite that thick). Place two rolls on ungreased cookie sheet and brush with milk and sprinkle with almonds. Bake at 325 for 12-14 minutes. While warm, cut crosswise at diagonal into 1 inch strips. Cool.
Icing:
Stir 1 cup powdered sugar, ¼ tsp almond extract and enough milk to make a drizzling consistency. (I put the icing in a little bag, snip off one corner of the bag, and drizzle the icing on the bars)
To change them to Maple Walnut Bars:
Use ¼ tsp vanilla, ¼ tsp maple extract in the dough to replace almond extract and ¼ tsp maple extract in the glaze to replace almond extract then exchange walnuts/pecans for the almonds.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and come back to read my blog again.

(Photos from: pixelio.com and tasteofhome.com)