Awaiting Outdoor Warmth

Hello!  Is your garden growing?  Mine is growing inside at the moment, awaiting the outdoor warmth before it can go outside.  The Lord has blessed me with having lots of big windows in this home.  

We have lots of tomato plants, five varieties.  Siberian (red), Yellow Perfection, Sungold, Orange Flamme, and Yellow Pear.  So we're kinda straying from the traditional kind this year. 

As you can see above some of them are starting to get flower heads on them already. They will be up potted one more time into the pot they'll stay in for the summer once they go outside.  Then I'll bury them as much as I can so their stems get a bit stronger and thicker.  

For now, there are plants on every available window sill. ~smiles~

I still have lots of plants vying for light in the one window.  On the top I planted lots of chamomile and so this year we will end up with a bit of a chamomile forest I think. lol 

We love chamomile tea so it's perfect!

Then there are marigolds, lavetara, baby's breath, prairie mallow, african violets, and calendula there, with the tomatoes getting the best place right against the window.  

On my desk, I have some more chamomile, marigolds, tomatoes and a violet.  Next to the desk there is a bunch of borage catching whatever light filters down there.  

In my room I've put the sunflowers that are bigger.  They're ornamental ones, so not big.  So cheerful to greet me in the morning! 

I also have a cucumber forest started in my downstairs hallway.  The zucchini are there with the mint as well.  

Thank you for checking out my garden. I'll leave you with a sweet little marigold that is just starting to break into bloom.  

Praying you have a lovely day! 

Sharing with The Art of Homemaking Mondays.

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Nature Walks

Hello!  So glad you could pop by today!  I'd like to share with you some pictures of the "nature" walks my kids do with me.  We just call them walks/ hikes or strolls, and of course it's in nature.  There are always cool things to see and interesting things to talk about.  

No matter the weather, it's fun to be outside for at least a little bit.  

 We have a lot of mountains around where we live, and it's nice when we climb out of our little valley to see them.

Down in the valley is a wonderful river that gives us hours of enjoyment.  It snakes around so much that it takes a super long time to get very far.  

It has tons of cool dead wood and drift wood along the shores as well. 

Lots of wonderful moss and lichens and we like to see how they change with the seasons. 

Today the river was glimmering so beautifully in the sunshine.  As the river ice melts and falls into the water it gives huge crashing noises, or soft tinkling ones from he candled ice.  

The mountains were beautiful above the trees today.  

We found just one little birdie feather today and wondered at who it had belonged to, a sparrow, a junko, a chickadee?  We also heard our first robin of the season a couple days ago! Yippee, a sure sign of spring being here. OH, and the bugs they eat to have come out.  

We found this wonderful stump on our trail and thought it was great how it had decomposed.  

It had beautiful lichen growing on it. 

It also had such cool little crevices.  

In parts of the river the candled ice was jamming up and sounded so sweet like one of natures special musical instruments. 

Thank you so much for joining me on a nature walk.  It's always nice to share what we are discovering in our simple world.  

Praying you have a wonderful day!

Sharing with the Art of Homemaking Mondays.

Tea Time with New Friends

Hello!  I have something special to share with you today.  I have been apart of a wonderful tea exchange held by Stephanie over at The Enchanting Rose.  

It is a wonderful exchange of tea sets/ mug sets with little gifts to another lady.  So I made two new friends...one that I sent a gift to, and one that sent a gift to me.  

So I have lots of pictures to share with you today so I hope that you can take the time to scroll down.  

To start with I'd like to share with you a few pictures of things that I included in the package I sent to Wendy Fletcher.  She has a charming blog called September Violets.  

I found this lovely tea set that is quite out of the ordinary for tea cups.  I loved the shape of it and that it was so simple yet elegant. 

You can better see the shape of the tea cup and saucer this way.

 I heard she liked blue so I made a couple doilies to brighten up the set. 

I figured she could use them with the tea set or on their own somewhere. 

Then I found this wonderful tin and knew she loved nature.  I included some nice Earl Grey tea inside.  

I also added some little chocolate dipped cookies just because they are nice with tea. :)  Then I added a handmade card and a little note. 

Now I'd love to share with you the delightful package that I received from Judith Rogers from Lavender Cottage.  It was a wonderful thing to open.  She had so carefully wrapped everything up in blue tissue paper. :)   There was firstly a lovely hand towel that quickly made it to the handle on my kitchen fridge . Some spring napkins, some little card making floral strips, a cute bookmark, a beautiful journal, a package of wonderful tea, and a beautiful handmade card.  I must admit that I'm not a journal person, but the pages do come out very easily and so I have started using them to help me plan out my home making needs.  Brings a smile to my face to see the pretty paper! 

All of the items were packaged inside this beautiful butterfly box!  

I just adore the beautiful tea cup she sent me.  I love all the flowers on it, and the shape of the cup and saucer is just splendid!  

Here is a look at the other side. 

How fun that there are flowers on the inside of the cup to.  Then the saucer also has lovely pleats around the centre as well. 

There was also this delightful container with an elegant song bird on top. 

It was filled with yummy chocolates...and I can say yummy because I've eaten them. ~smiles~ 

Now I have a special box to store some precious things away.  Thank you so much Judith! 

Oh, and I thought you might like to see all the kinds of tea that were included.  

My children were just as excited about the tea cup exchange as I was, and we all picked out a tea cup (I got my new one.) and had a tea party!  We also each took sips of each others tea so we could try all the used flavours.  

I want to also thank Stephanie for organizing this wonderful exchange that has included so many people from so many countries.  It's been wonderful to be apart of it.

Sharing this at the Enchanted Rose Reveal Linkup.  I encourage you to go there and see all the wonderful exchanges that have happened!

I am also linking to The Art of Homemaking Mondays.

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Tweet Birdie Card

Hello!  I have a card to share with you all today.  It's a birthday card I made for a dear friend of mine. I was given this sweet paper so I'm not sure where it's from, but it has a ton of different components that are all equally charming.  I love the bird, and I layered the paper on some neutral patterned paper then on the card base.  A little touch of distressing I thought looked just right.  I added a simple multicoloured ribbon and twine.  Then for a final touch a burlap flower and little love charm.

Do you love the birds?  I do, and with the kids building birdhouses, and the bird feeders coming down for the season I have birds on my mind.  We take the bird feeders down for the summer so as not to attract the bears.  We just saw a couple more birds in the yard today..junkos, and an eagle soaring high above us.

Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Sharing with Word Art Wednesday. 

Sunny Sourdough English Muffins

Hello!  Today I'd love to share with you some lovely sourdough english muffins.  A friend of mine made some for her family and they liked them so much she shared the recipe with me. :)  I love this kind of sharing!

So since I have lots of sourdough starter, I thought I'd give it a try.  We mixed up the starter and let it sit overnight, then mixed up the muffin dough and put it back in the fridge for three days.  Seems like a long time, but the flavour is totally worth the wait.  We took the dough out, rolled them into kinda balls. lol and put on a cornmeal dusted cookie sheet and then sprinkled more over top. We put them next into a warm oven to rise.

Once they had gotten big enough like above we put them into a hot buttered cast iron frying pan....my favourite.  It took a bit to get the temp right, but they cooked nicely. and then the ones that were still a bit undone inside got to sit a hot oven for a bit to get toasted.

I stacked some on a pretty dish and put them on the table...where they were gobbled up with jam and scrambled eggs.  They were so delicious and totally worth the extra time involved!

So would you like the recipe?  You can click the link HERE to pick it up. :)

Now for the sunny part of the post. This lovely sunflower that was gifted to us as a starter plant has erupted into bloom and is so amazing!  It's in my office window enjoying the sun and you can see it happily looking out from the yard.

Thanks for dropping by!  I hope you have a wonderful sunny spring day!

Sharing with The Art of Homemaking Monday.

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