What you do on a rainy day

Wet, cold and rainy a wonderful day to write letters, finishing up some crafting swaps, make an instant pot full of vegetable soup, work on some knitting and do dishes, lots of dishes.

I woke at 3:45 am this morning and could not get back to sleep so instead of waking up Paul I got out of bed and came into the livingroom to read in my pink rocking chair. 

I had forgotten how much I enjoy being up in the early hours alone in the darkness with no deadlines or pressures.

I am reading The Triumph of Narrative by Robert Fulford and this morning I was reminded of the power of story telling and the risk that it presents as with each telling we change small bites of the story.  Family histories are like this each of us experiences the story differently and changes the narrative ever so slightly to make sense of it.

By 5:00 am I was having trouble staying awake so slipped back into bed without waking Paul and slept to 8:30 am. 

We were going to walk for breakfast and run errands, until is started to rain so our plans changed to hot oatmeal, a day at home and refrigerator soup.

Refrigerator soup is a fall and winter favourite.  The soup base chickpeas, rice and all the vegetables that are in the refrigerator, so good.

Between making the rice and re-hydrating the chickpeas I worked in my craft room finishing the last of the 4 season swaps and putting together my pen pal mail for Lucas and Clara.

After lupper (lunch/supper) we eat between 2 and 3 pm I started to sew together a sweater I am knitting only to realize I made the back to short so I am now taking the stitches out so that I can correct my mistake.

Our day was rounded out with late afternoon yoga, completing October’s zen doodles and an hour of down time before bed.

Thank you for coming along today we hope you enjoy the images

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2019 twosnydergirls

A day in Paisley Ontario

What a wonderful day I had in Paisley Ontario at Artists on the River.

Paul and his brother left the house around 10:30 to attend the Walkerton Garage Tour and they did not get back home until around 5:00 pm having looked at some amazing antique cars.  

I followed closely behind them headed for Paisley.

Before I drove off I watered some plants and took a quick tour of our gardens.

Other than red current jelly what else can I make with our currents?

I left the house under sunny skies and arrived in Paisley in rain.

 The skies cleared shortly after I arrived and I took a tour of the vendors.

There was a good diversity in art forms, wood turning, photography, jewelry, painting, multimedia, quilting, bees wax cloth and much more.

My favourite vendor was set up by children who sold lemonade and fresh baked cookies. 

Here are the purchases I made today, sorry ate the cookie.

When I was done touring the art booths I went into town and looked through the stores.  This was a place my mother liked to visit and I have fond memories of her and Great John holding hands and walking the main street.

Once home again I sat outside and enjoyed fresh cherries.  There is something joyful about biting into a sweet rich cherry and then spitting the pits onto the ground with abandon.

It started to rain so I came inside and worked on Happy Mail for my Great Nephew.

Thank you for coming along

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2019twosnydergirls

Pen Pals and Happy Mail

Quiet days are important in life.

Our day started with an hour of gentle yoga. 

I believe that we have won the war with the ants.  Earlier in the spring we had ants coming out onto our kitchen counter and not wanting to use chemicals we chased them with vinegar and water.  Finally, we determined they were coming in through two electrical outlets and we sealed these with duct tape sticky side out.

War won.

Our next stop was the grocery store for vegetables.

Our lupper was roasted vegetables, homemade guacamole, on a bed of lettuce with Nan bread – so good.

Around 2:30 we realized we did not check the mailbox and I had Happy Mail from my Great Niece and Nephew from Saskatchewan.

To my surprise and enjoyment my letter was a puzzle for me work through.

It is important to me that my great nieces and nephew know they belong to a larger family.  Pen pals is a great way to stay in touch with them, share recipes, stories and to ensure they know they are important.

It is a very enjoyable way to move away from screens.

I have created a journal to save all the letters from my nephew.

Most of my day was spent dying paper with avocado skins and working on a junk journal for a swap that will happen on July 22, 2019.

Thank you for coming along.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2019 twosnydergirls

5 Minutes Of My Day - Joy can be found in the mail.

I had forgotten the joy that comes in receiving a letter, happy mail through old fashion overland mail.

Today I received happy mail from one of my crafting partners on Junk Journal Canada Facebook group. 

 There is just something very special in reading another’s thoughts through their personal handwriting.  

Receiving small handmade gifts made just for you.  

Being acknowledged in this way just cannot happen on the internet.

As I sit here I am reminded of a series of blog posts I made in 2013 and I realized I need to take my own advice and once again start to write to my grandchildren, nieces and friends.

How do you feel when you receive handwritten notes in the mail?

Here are the links to series of blog spots if you are interested.

 Revive the tradition of letter writing to your children like F. Scott Fistzgerald 

Teaching The Joy of Receiving & Writing Notice 

Teaching the Joy of Receiving & WritingLetters Gratitude 

Writing Letters Hope to Children 

Teaching the Joy of Receiving Letters and Writing 

2017 Getting sunflowers from my beloved

2016 Watching our grandchildren play soccer

2015 Doing our part for the planet and walking to the grocery store

2014 Making hollyhock dolls with our granddaughters

Grandma Snyder

© twosnydergirls 2018

Fun with Skillshare and Grandchildren

 How do you want to be remembered by your Grandchildren?   

There are the memories of being bored out of your mind as you sit quietly while your parents talk to their parents, your Grandparents, or the memory of the “sad old people smell” as Emily our granddaughter likes to call it and finally my favourite the memory of Grandpa snoring in his chair while you are forced to watch some boring TV program.

We all have them, memories of old people, Grandparents, Aunties, or the stereotype TV likes to put out in the world, and do we really want to be remembered that way – not these Grandparents!

So it is important to deliberately watch and learn from your grandchildren and participate in the things that they enjoy. 

Today we all stepped out of our comfort zone and painted with coffee. 

About two months ago we came across ‘Skillshare’ a website where for a fee you can take classes on any numbers of topics.  We joined to build our skills for this blog and when our grandson took a look at the offered classes he thought it would be a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. 

James is a talented artist in his Grandparent’s opinion and he thought it would be fun to take a class with his Grandmother and it was.

Today we learned to paint with coffee and spent three hours together with Grandpa providing light entertainment with his coffee jokes.

More than learning to paint we spent time building memories, learning from each other and learning about each other.

I have always admired how James can draw animals rendering life like images and today I learned that he wants to relax into his drawing, creating a more “simple” drawings.

And we laughed together both at Grandpa's bad jokes and as James splattered coffee onto his paper and everywhere else as well.

Today we built memories that will last a life time, each time Grandpa and I look at a cup of coffee we will remember today and the fun we had.

Are we artists?

Yes we are!  

We are building relationships in just the same way a painter creates a master piece,  one brush stroke at a time.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls

Note: This blog post was not sponsored by Skillshare.

Three Sister Garden

June 12, 2016 marked the planting of squash in the church’s Three Sister Garden, Peace Garden.  

This is the second year that our local Mennonite Congregation has support this learning opportunity for the children and fundraising opportunity for our local food bank.

The Sunday School children started squash and sunflower plants from seed early in the spring and they watched the seeds grow on the church window ledges.  

Once the plants reached the two leaf stage the children transplanted their seedling’s into larger pots and today they transplanted those pots outside into our Three Sister Garden.

How does this benefit the Food Bank?  

The surplus plants were taken home by members of the congregation who on Thanksgiving Sunday October 9, 2016 will make a donation to the children’s garden that equals the produce the plants produced for them.  

And through out the year anyone who has taken corn, beans, squash or pumpkins home from the children’s garden will make a donation with all funds raised going to the Food Bank.

The Three Sister Garden Companion Planting is an Indigenous form of permaculture gardening.

Sister corn is the first of the three sisters to be planted and she offers support for the beans.  
Sister bean comes next and she moves nitrogen from the air back into the soil and as her vines grow up the corn and into the squash vines she ensures the sisters stay together.  

The last sister to be planted is squash, her broad leaves create a canopy that hold moisture in the ground and her prickly vines discourage animals from entered the garden. 

In this way the three sister companion planting system, creates a low maintenance garden where each plant gives back to the soil what the others needs and acts to protect and support the garden as a whole.

Links to Our Other Three Sister Garden Posts.

Transplanting Our Peace Garden

Seeds to Food A Fun Activity

A Peace Garden 2015

Preparing and Planting Sister Corn 2014

Our Three Sister Garden 2014 

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Seeds to Food Fun Activities for Children

It is time once again to think about planting seeds for our gardens and at our Mennonite Church we will once again plant our Peace garden.

This is a project that was started last year to help our children understand stewardship of both our environment and to our community at large.

Our Peace garden is a Three Sister Garden a form of companion planting that we have taken from the first people’s of North America.

The children plant, care for and harvest the garden making the produce available to the members of our congregation and the members in turn make a donation to our local food bank.

This year we have added a new element planting the seeds that will become our squash, watermelons, pumpkins and sunflowers.

Keeping with the stewardship theme we asked the children to collect toilet paper rolls, for seed pots and when we used all of those we made newspaper pots.

Here is the link we used in make both 

We also saved milk containers these we cut in half and they became the water tight contains that we placed our seed pots.

Here is the link we used 

Everyone had a great time even to cleaning up.

Grandma Snyder

2013-2016 twosnydergirls