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. 

Touch of Spring

 

I bought some tulips while shopping at Meijer this morning. I felt like I needed a touch of spring in my house. They looked darker pink in the store than in the vase. 

This afternoon my project is to sort through our jigsaw puzzles to decide which to keep and which to sell at the June Robin Hood garage sale. My goal is to end up with no more than a dozen keepers. 

We have been sorting through other things as well to find items to sell. Not exactly spring cleaning, more like spring sorting.

Have a Blessed Easter

 

Have a blessed Easter. He is risen!

Rosie the Bunny

 

Rosie the bunny is ready for spring and Easter. 

With all of the sunshine we have today (though blustery wind), I felt in a happy mood to put out some spring decor. I usually have old Holly Hobby calendar pictures on the wall in my sunroom, but currently I have some pictures I colored in January. I had some free time because several of my activities were on a winter break. 

I like the owl best. Which is your favorite?

Luck of the Irish

 

  Grace Village recently had a contest. A St. Patrick's basket of goodies was given away to someone on Facebook who "liked" or commented on the village posts. The more you did that, the more entries you had.

My husband won! They had such a good response, they are going to do a beach-themed basket/container in a few months. 

Since we have been sorting through things to declutter, entering the contest sort of defeated that aim. But it is so much fun to win a contest!

 I will probably give my neighbor who has grandkids the window decals and stickers. My husband already claimed the baseball cap with the Grace Village logo (missing from the picture). I definitely will eat the chocolate, maybe wear the earrings, maybe the socks. The doormat we may use this month, but then when GV swap shop happens in another month, add to that. Ditto the table runner. 

I had a medical appointment in Fort Wayne today so stopped at Costco before heading home. I saw these carrot cakes in the bakery. We will split one tonight.

 

Blustery Outing

 

Today's forecast was for temps around 38 and winds gusting up to 30 mph. We did not change all of our clocks last night. We got up around 7 standard time. To everybody else, that was 8 a.m. So we had a leisurely breakfast and watched the church service streamed at 10:30 instead of 9 a.m. We planned on a late lunch because we wanted to attend a concert at Manchester University (Indiana) at 3 p.m. 

We ate lunch at El Mezquite in North Manchester where we have eaten many times.

Often, we order fajitas for 2. Because we were trying to avoid leftovers to take home, we ordered a burrito (my husband) and enchildadas supremas above (for me). We still had to ask for take-home boxes. With the cooler temperatures in the car, we think the food will be OK to eat for lunch tomorrow. 

The promotional material for the concert had said Piano Concerto Number 1 by Brahms would be featured. The pianist who was to come from Denmark had visa trouble; he didn't make it to the U.S. Instead Jerry Westenkuehler played an organ concerto by Handel and then after intermission a concerto by Francis Poulenc (who was totally unfamiliar to me). Dr. Westenkuehler is organ professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. I do not see how a person can move both feet fast and furious on the pedals while playing the keyboards. Like patting one's head and rubbing one's stomach at the same time in my opinion.

The concert was held at Cordier Auditorium at Manchester University. According to the program, 7 of the Manchester Symphony Orchestra members are students at the college. 

This was our first time to attend an event on this campus. 

I must confess I liked the first half of the program better with the classical pieces. The Chen Yi music was based on a Chinese folksong. It was interesting, especially watching the percussionist play many instruments (xylophone, drum, cymbal, some little round bells) to give the "tunes" exotic sounds. 

It was a pleasant afternoon. I did feel my eyes slip closed a few times, but I did manage not to fall asleep unlike a woman seated towards the front. We were after all adjusting to the time change. It is nice that this orchestra presents its concerts on Sunday afternoons. The next one will be at Honeywell Center in Wabash, not at Manchester University.