Happy National Punctuation Day!

What better way to celebrate than to share Victor Borge's delightful punctuation performance....love that man!

Holland in Bellingham

Saturday's around 3105 Vallette St. are leisurely. I'm an early riser, usually up by 7 am at the latest. Coffee is brewed, paper retrieved from the front lawn and my current book is placed within arm's reach. Later....much, much later....Wally greets the day! :) Usually I've already had my breakfast, but this Saturday I decided to whip up a recipe that I wanted to try from my newest favorite book, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg, author of the wildly popular "Orangette" blog. Each story is centered around a special recipe. The stories are entertaining and the recipes are mouth-watering. I just had to try this one: Dutch Baby Pancakes. How can you resist with a name like that? It was easy to make and over-the-top fun in its presentation. Traditionally it's served just with a dusting of powdered sugar, but I added the fresh blueberries. This was fun on every level and will be repeated often!
How in the world did this ever fall under the jurisdiction of "pancake"? Looks like a bowl, acts like a bowl, fills up like a bowl!

You Know You're Old When....

You read a book of essays about "the good old days" and he's talking about the 70's....the 1970's that is!!!

Farmer In The Dell

Saturday was Whatcom County Farm Tour Day, a day set aside when the public could visit many of the small family farms in our area and learn about their operations. There were too many for us to visit them all, so we picked the ones that we were unfamiliar with. It was informative and fun...and there were samples of cheese, milk and ice cream. It was encouraging to see so many families dedicating themselves to hard, hard work and the determination to do it as environmentally friendly as possible. And of course there were the animals!

Turkeys

Chickens
Goats

Pigs

Cows

And of course my favorite....sheep!

And late summer beauty...

And interesting examples of different county lifestyles!!

....And We Are the Sheep of His Pasture

I have a sheep fetish. They please me on many levels: they are cute, their wool provides me with endless opportunites to create lovely and wearable objects and God picked them as a metaphor for His people. It's an apt metaphor, to be sure. Sheep are basically incapable of dealing with life without a shepherd. Get the drift? I have many, many photos, paintings and knick knacks that feed my fetish, and now I have another Ryan McKenna designed quilt just finished! Baaaaa

New Every Morning

Blue morning glories have quickly become my favorite flower in my garden. Blue is such an unusual color in flowers and these beauties exemplify it. But it's not just their color that delights me, it's also the fact that they are a perfect spiritual metaphor!

These flowers can only produce blossoms when grown in poor soil--they are completely dependent upon their vines and the sun to reach their full glory. Each blossom is absolutely breathtaking in its perfection, I can easily see why Georgia O'Keefe used them so frequently as a subject for her art.

But the metaphor doesn't stop there! These flowers only last one day. They open with the rising of the sun and then they close and fade with the onset of twilight. They have just enough energy for today. As the sun rises the next day, a whole new set of blossoms bursts forth! Like God's mercies they are new every morning as He provides us with just what we need for the task at hand.

It's true, you know. We are without excuse, as His glory surrounds us every day. We cannot say, "we never knew!"