I NEED A BREAK

Taking a little break.  I hope to return next week.  Hopefully someone will still be checking in then!

HAPPY SYTTENDE MAI

Syttende mai means May 17 in Norwegian.  It is a national holiday, celebrating the signing of the Norwegian Constitution in Eidsvoll, Norway, in 1814.  The Norwegians celebrate with parades and flags.

There are many areas of Minnesota and Wisconsin that celebrate Syttende mai, also.  A Lutheran church not too far from us is well known for the Norwegian dinner they put on each year on May 17.  People drive from many miles away each year to stand in line for hours to continue on the tradition.  A little town, also not far from here, has a city wide celebration with parades and flags and food. 

Not every celebration would consist of this white plate of white food, but many do.  The gelatinous blob on the lower right of the plate is lutefisk, which is cod or ling, soaked in water and lye for days before it is rinsed off and quickly cooked in boiling water.  It smells.  No, it stinks!  It reeks!  Norwegians pour melted butter over it, Swedes pour a white sauce over it, but neither of those additions do much to make it more digestible!  Yet every year, on Syttende mai and Christmas Eve, Norwegians force this crap fish down their throats and boast of tasting it twice as they belch the foul tasting fumes for the next twelve hours. 

To the left of the white lutefisk is white lefse.  Now lefse I like.  It's like a very thinly rolled tortilla, made with riced potatoes, a little bit of lard and flour, and baked on a lefse grill.  Spread the lefse round with butter, sprinkle with white sugar, and you have a treat!  Some people use brown sugar, but I prefer white.  And meatballs or turkey rolled up in the lefse are also wonderful.

Behind the white lefse and white lutefisk on back right, are meatballs coated in a white gravy.  They are good.....not the meatball you'd use in a spaghetti sauce, but a much more bland meatball.  Comfort food type meatball. 

Next to the meatballs, and the only splash of color on the whole white plate, are cranberries.   The food police said you need some color on the plate, so red it is.

Our Syttende mai celebration is going to consist of roasted vegetables: sweet potatoes, peppers, red onions, kale, and some sausage for the protein.  Nothing white there.

Happy Syttende mai!

The pictures of the flag and the lutefisk are taken from Wikipedia.org.

BEAUTIFUL IRIS

I love my iris.   Again, thank you Charlie!

Love the iris in the early morning with the shadows from the trees filtering the sunlight.

Love the deep purple with the white.

That purple is almost black!  The yellow one is just opening......beautiful!

These light purple lavender ones are so feminine looking, aren't they?

This basket on the table is from daughter Kari.  It contains parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, which sounds like a good name for a song.  I don't think the song sounds quite right when you sing oregano and basil at the end of that line!

We are spending time each day on the patio.  I'm so glad we did this project last summer!

ENJOY YOUR DAY

This arrived yesterday from Kevin and Molly.  Isn't it beautiful?

It dwarfs the baskets I put together!

I just realized I hadn't given you an early morning picture for awhile, so am including one today.

Have a wonderful Mother's Day.  I am missing my mom this morning.

THROUGH MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Finally my first iris!  Thank you my dear friend Charlie.  Charlie cleaned out her perennial beds last fall, and I was the grateful recipient of her gleanings.  This iris is on a stalk which is standing about 4 1/2 feet tall and is peeking right in my kitchen window.  Love it!

In other fun happenings, yesterday I hung blue glass dingle-balls on the pergola.  What are blue glass dingle-balls, you ask?  I don't know either, but I found them this winter at my favorite thrift store, and thought they'd make a fun decoration for the beams of the pergola.  What do you think?

I'm having fun hanging plants in the trees and pergola.  I'll post photos when the flowers are all in bloom, but this is what we have so far.

I am heading outside this morning to pot up a few more plants for the patio area.  Love that outside decorating.  Now if the wind would behave so things don't blow away.......

BUSY DAYS

The tools are ready.

The plants are waiting.

The ground has been prepared.

Hubby worked hard.

Broccoli is planted.

The tomatoes, green peppers, and multi-colored peppers are planted, as is the kale.  Beets, zuchs, and cukes are also in the ground.

And hubby is resting with a jug of water.

Then we had three days and three inches of rain.  Yay!

Yesterday sweet Jaden was confirmed.

I love the beautiful, old fashioned white altar of the little country church.  It was a beautiful service that began with a baptism, and then Jaden and six of her classmates renewed their baptismal vows in their confirmation vows.

I have a flower in full bloom, but somehow the flower doesn't match the rose leaves.  Ummm.....something is wrong here!

Right outside my kitchen window is this green headed monster, sticking it's weird looking head into my view.  I can't wait until this iris bursts into full bloom, right in my window!

VISITING MY BROTHER

I made the long trip, 12 miles I think, to the hospital where my Big Brother is being held hostage, hoping I could get him released and he could come home with me so we could bond over my Little Houses Schnibbles project tonight.  But guess what I discovered?  I don't think the doctor has even been in to check him out yet!  I am not happy, and I'm betting my Brother isn't happy either.  I did mention to the gal that I wasn't happy, and that this would never happen again.  And it won't.  I'll find a new doctor.

No idea what is going on but it seems weird.  Maybe there is a problem of some sort that I don't know about, but you'd think they would give me a clue if that was the case.  Meanwhile,  I know my old machine was having tension problems, but I am going to drag it out tonight and set it up to see if I can get it to sew straight seams.  I just won't do anything like quilting that would show!

STILL MISSING

My Big Brother is still missing.  I took him to the sewing machine hospital last week Wednesday, but seems that Shawn and Amanda were getting ready to go to a show for the weekend, so there was no time to check out the cranky bobbin problem that my Brother was having.  I called yesterday, Tuesday, and they were still unpacking from the weekend show.  I hope today was fix Marge's machine day.  And I hope I get a call first thing in the morning.

I have big time sleep issues some nights, and last night was definitely one of those nights.  I was looking for brown and pink fabric for the quilt for my great baby that is expected in August.  Baby momma has picked those colors, and I dreamed that I couldn't find a thing in those colors.  I finally found a line by some weird sounding name that I must have pulled out of some foreign telephone book.  (Do they still have those?  We only have cells.)   And I found a nice white fabric with teeny tiny pink rosebuds on it and thought I could use that with the pink and brown.  But then the pinks didn't match.  And the brown and white didn't look good together.   And there wasn't enough of one kind of fabric that I wanted, and the gal cut yards and yards of another that I didn't want.   I was trying to decide on a pattern, and I couldn't buy fabric if I didn't know what I was making, and there was nothing I liked, and on and on this weird half awake half asleep dream went.

I finally got up at two and watched an hour of HGTV to clear my mind.  And they were having a million dollar room show.....not a million dollar house, a million dollar room!  I can't even relate.  I've never even lived in a 2000 square foot house, let alone a 40,000 square foot house!  So then I got upset with the show because it was so unbelievable to me.  I went back to bed around three, and did sleep then, but I was exhausted when I got up at six!

My friend Judy is coming for supper, so I made brownies.  And chopped all the veggies for a nice salad, and also chopped veggies to put in my spaghetti sauce to serve over my quinoa noodles.  I love chunky veggies in my spaghetti sauce, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, etc.

So here's hoping my Big Brother has a complete healing tonight and comes home, ready to get back to work.  We have stuff to do!