Laowai

Today we went to a beautiful garden called Seleger Moor. It is a special place started by one man – he filled a patch of pine forest with rhododendrons. They are huge and healthy and they are everywhere you look. A very nice Spring outing.

Bea learned to ride her little pink bike on the slight incline in front of our apartment. What a good day!

More not much happening around here. 

The windows have been flung wide open all week. It’s been so warm! A bee flew right in the house and Bea had to catch it.

Brian took me to the opera last week. I guess it was a belated celebration of our anniversary. Very nice to be out together – it had been too long.

This is the view of the square from the opera house balcony:

Profiteroles – why don’t I make these more often? 

When you go to a Swiss farm theme birthday party the birthday girl gets to lug around a huge cow bell (bong, bong, bong). You feed the chickens, brush the horses, hold the lambs, catch the frogs, pick the rhubarb and your take home treat is a wad of sheep wool.

And then on your way home you have to take another road because this one is blocked by the ladies crossing to get to the barn. They have to stop and rub their sweet heads on that fence too.

I’m a third of the way done with my quilting!!!  

Claire had a special poetry day at school. She took cookies and got to dress up. I’ll post her book of poems as soon as she brings it home.

These are her two sweet friends, Chloe and Lydia. They make a little band of blondies.

I planted some herbs and geraniums on our patio:

And the blissful outdoor meals continue:

Not much happening around here. The weather has been beautiful and Springy. When the sun comes out our apartment really gets heated up so I’ve had our patio doors open most of the week and the fresh air is great. This weekend I’m looking forward to buying some herbs and geraniums to plant out on our patio. Yay Spring!

Bea is growing so big her feet are almost as big as mine (and that’s saying something!) Claire on the other hand still has cute shoes. Here are her little hiking shoes alongside mine. Cute, cute, cute. And of course my Bea is still a cutie too – she’s just getting big feet like her mama. Gosh this is fascinating blogging.

Here’s Claire enjoying the warm breeze. We took a boat across the lake for a little walk in the town where we used to live.

I’m quilting! Silly to sit covered with a warm quilt going into the summer months but making these stitches calms me. I have five (out of 30) blocks quilted so far.

Magnolia!

Finally I was satisfied with a loaf of bread I baked. I think I was having trouble because the yeast is a bit different here. I’ve been proofing it for five minutes instead of adding it dry and I think that’s the trick. My girls really like fresh bread and butter for an after school snack.

Here’s that mini quilt that led to some secret baby news coming out. Let’s blame Aunt Sandy and the comment that she left on my blog (ha). Congratulations Mike and Michelle. 

The end.

I like to say Shindellegi. We went for a walk along the Sihl River near this small town. It was warm and Spring was starting to showing off.

While our friends and family in the US Midwest seem to be having an April blizzard…

We ate outside on our patio for the first time this Spring. It felt so nice and fresh!

I’ve been in need of a project to keep my hands busy and my mind occupied. Since I’m still waiting for the batting for my big quilt I decided to do some quilting in miniature.

First I made this little quilt with the scraps from the big quilt. It measures about 15 inches square.

Then Claire wanted to do some patchwork – she made hers into a tiny pillow.

And now I’ve started another – in baby sweet colors – only about 10 inches wide. It’s a block called snowball. I might have to make a full size snowball quilt…

The girls are on their spring break so we took a few days in sunny Portugal. I wanted to spend a nature filled vacation instead of seeing a city this time. We went to the area called Algarve – it’s along the very bottom edge of Portugal. We spent our time hiking along beaches and dunes and cliffs and exploring the interesting rock formations. It wasn’t warm enough to swim but we took off our shoes and the sand felt great.

This week I sewed all my blocks together and ordered some batting. I also sewed a row of squares all around the edge. They will wrap around the quilt to make a colorful edge on the back. Brian had a trip to the US so I had some fabric ordered there and Brian just brought it back yesterday. I can’t wait to get started on the quilting – of course I still haven’t decided what my quilting lines will look like… 

My backing fabric is designed by Lisa Congdon – an artist from Portland that I just looooove.