Arts, Crafts, More

 

When my husband came home Friday after eating breakfast with a friend, he said "Did you see the new resident out front?"

The gardener had removed the spent tulips and planted a rose bush in their place. It is already full of blooms. It makes my heart happy to know I will once again have roses to put in my bud vases.

Today Grace Village hosted an Arts and Crafts fair to celebrate its 50th anniversary. There were about 40 vendors set up in the parking lot in front of the healthcare entrance. 

We walked over as many parking spots were now unavailable. I purchased a pair of blue earrings. The vendor put them into a net bag ready to give as a gift. I bought them for myself, however.

My husband and I had split up to peruse the booths. He bought a lasered tealight holder.

Around noon he returned to the fair to buy 2 pulled pork sandwiches stuffed full. Only $5 per sandwich. He brought them home to eat.

I had purchased a monster cookie earlier at the fair so we finished our meal by splitting that. I put the spoon next to it so you can see how big it is.

We are having a lovely spring day.

Tea Luncheon

 

My ladies Bible study group ended our study year with a tea luncheon. One of our members had a friend who does teas as a ministry gift (also caters to groups). 

Another lady has a friend who collects hats. What a nice surprise to be told to select a hat to wear during the tea.

We learned something about the history and etiquette of the afternoon tea.

Each place setting had a cute teapot favor. Before we left, they told us to be sure to open the bottom as there was a gift inside.

The food was delicious and beautiful. I had pineapple tea which I had never drunk before. The other choice was passion fruit tea.

We started with the sandwiches: salmon (the curled up pink in the middle), cucumber, egg salad, and chicken salad on raisin bread (my favorite). 

Then we moved on to the cranberry and blueberry scones with Devonshire cream and lemon curd. 

The top tier was the sweets: creme brulee, lemon tarts, chocolate covered strawberries.

Lots of nice little touches: fabric tablecloths, fine china, flower napkin rings, tinted sugar cubes, lemon rings. The hostess even brought around seconds on some of the goodies.

This is a lovely group of ladies who are a satellite of the Community Bible Study in Winona Lake. We meet at Grace Village. This event was so appropriate for our demographic. 

My First Laptop

 Our desktop pc will be 5 years old this summer. With the thought that we may downsize to an apartment in a few years, I decided to buy us a laptop. My husband built a nice rolling cart to place it on. 

My sister-in-law has a Lenovo that she likes. After reading various reviews and comments online, I decided to buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 with a 16-inch screen. I also bought Microsoft Office for Home and Student to install. 

I ended up ordering on-line from Staples. I ordered yesterday about 1 p.m., and the computer arrived at my house about 10 a.m. this morning. Yesterday morning I stopped in our local Staples store to see if they had this computer on display. They did but only the 8 GB, not the 16 GB I was looking at online. I was glad for the opportunity to see and touch the 8 GB as that was no different than the 16 GB.

I spent this morning and afternoon setting up the Lenovo. I am starting to get used to Windows 11. My desktop runs Windows 10. I see that the Office products also look different. The thing that drove me crazy was Microsoft wanting to put everything in the Cloud. I finally uninstalled it. I may load it again to sync documents. I have way too many photos. I had already used up the free space before I had finished loading music and videos (Power Points). I ended up transferring my photos, docs, videos from my external hard drive I use as a backup on the desktop computer. I will have to plug that device into the USB on the laptop once a week or so to keep it up to date. 

We were fortunate that since we used Microsoft Edge already, it transferred our favorites bookmarks. And since we use Gmail, all of our contacts were still there once we loaded Gmail on the computer. 

I am sure there are lots of tweaks to do and capabilities that I am yet unaware of, but I am pleased that the computer is functioning and I can navigate around though still somewhat clumsily. 

The purchase of a laptop is more for space saving not portability, but I should move it around in our condo.

Spring Flowers

 Right now it is 78 degrees outside. We have the house windows open letting in fresh air. Lots of sunshine, but also lots of wind. 

Today my tulips started opening up. I had seen some reddish tips the past few days but was surprised to see yellow blossoms, too.

The quince bush on the northwest corner of the condo is also putting out blossoms.

The pear trees in my neighborhood have been in bloom for almost 2 weeks. The wind is causing the white petals to float down now.

Tomorrow I am going to wear my new flowery top to Bible study and choir practice. Maybe even sandals. Next Sunday is forecast to be around 50 degrees. Need to enjoy these pleasant spring days while we can. Rain later this week, too.

My husband has been watching the Masters golf tournament on TV. It has had its share of wind.

Hope you are enjoying spring, too.