Should or Want

It has been almost a month since our last update to this blog and there is no real reason why this has happened.

Since our last post many things have happened and none of them earth shattering just the normal goings on of a Canadian family.

We continue to give back some of our time in volunteer activities within our community, driving, at our local library and most recently for the Salvation Army.

We have spent time with our children and grandchildren who are all well and we have visited with extended family.

Since our last post we have been consciously posing the following question to each activity we engage in.

Do we want to (fill in the blank)?

or

Do we think we should do (fill in the blank)?

What we found is that too many activities that are taking up our time fell into the we thought we should and were not activities that in the moment we really wanted too.

Over the past month we have wanted to spend time together as a couple watching Netflix, we are enjoying Suits, at the moment.

We enjoy going for walks either outside when the weather is nice, on our home treadmill or at the local indoor track when we would prefer to stay inside.

Paul has enjoyed planting his 2020 garlic crop and cleaning up outside the house.

I completed two junk journals, and two knitting projects are in the works.

Amazingly today I got into the Christmas Spirit something that has not happened for the past three years.

We continue to participate in a weekly yoga class and Paul works out daily.

I had a great time taking an acrylic art course from Kathie Smith a local artist and what fun Rylee and I had completing her Halloween Costume ‘Circus Baby’.

We took a tour of the local Alpaca processing plant.

Getting our snow tires on was a should that turned into a glad we did as snow has come to Ontario and looks like it will stay.

At church we participated in a potluck and enjoyed a cooking class.  Emma B taught us to make her Whoppie Pies.

There has also been moments of sadness as friends have discovered they have cancer and others have passed away.

There is a release in life when you consider if an activity is a ‘should or a want’.  It does not mean that you ignore the should’s no for us it has meant we do not feel guilty about adding in more wants on weeks with too many should’s.

Like movies, ice cream and yes sleeping in.

Thank you for taking the time to visit with us today.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2019 twosnydergirls

Oatmeal Raisin Drop Cookies

 

Our day started by hauling the Rpod and tow vehicle in to see the mechanic.  Tow vehicle to make sure fluid, belts etc. are in good shape and ready for our next trip.  The Rpod to have the brakes and wheel bearings looked at, not because we have had problems, this was a proactive maintenance visit and we are glad we did.  

There was a major problem developing with the right brake and we were able to get it looked after before the problem sidelined a vacation.  

Time and money well spend.

After dropping off we went out for breakfast and a great cup of coffee.

Followed by a quick stop at the post office to mail Happy Mail.

Our granddaughter came over and started baking with her grandfather while I finished up some crafting that will need to be posted before we leave.  While looking out the kitchen window I noticed how beautiful the hollyhocks are.  All the kitchen window this time of year look out on beautiful flowers vistas.

These two had too much fun making cookies for our trip.  

They make quite the pair in the kitchen and they want to share this family favourite with you.

Oatmeal Drop Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup shortening

1.5 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 ¾ cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups rolled oats

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ cup sour milk

1 cup raisins

Directions:

Cream shortening and sugar together.  Add eggs and beat until fluffy. Sift flour, salt, soda, baking powder and cinnamon together.  Add dry ingredients and milk alternately into sugar and shortening.  Mix thoroughly.  Fold in raisins.  Drop onto a greased baking sheet and bake at 350 F for 15 minutes.

Thank you for coming along today

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2019 twosnydergirls

Painting the best way to spend a day

Spent a wonderful morning and afternoon painting with my grandson and a cherished friend. 

Sue came prepared to teach James and I how to stipple.  I was guarded that this would be a good match for my impatience however under her patient tutelage and support from James our grandson I came to enjoy this form of art. 

Does it look like a Kiwi?

Sue left one of her original pieces of art for James isn’t it beautiful.

Here is James lemon as always he did a great job. 

Thank you for coming along today. 

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

Junk Journal Lapbook

As the world move ever forward to becoming paperless, there is a grassroots movement back to pen and paper and sending letters through the post.

Scrapbooking is also making a come back.  We travel with our grandchildren to Myrtle Beach South Carolina each winter and every year we look to find a new way of creating memories to being home.

Lapbooks are widely used in homeschooling communities and the internet is full of tutorials on how to make them.  Lapbooks are made with new or recycled file folders and decorated with coloured card stock to printed scrap book paper.

Ruth and I decided to create a Lapbook for her to record her 2018 memories of the beach.  She enjoyed making her own ephemera on which to paste pictures or write notes.  She also found some tiny colouring pages to busy herself with on the 18 hour car ride from Ontario CA to South Carolina USA.

The tutorial we used in by   Kathy Orta King and here is the link to part 1 of 6 in how to make the lapbook - Part One in making this lapbook

We hope you enjoy our flip through of our Lapbook.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2018 twosnydergirls

Trust God

Is there room in your life to hear God’s call?  

How often during the day do you create quiet spaces in which to listen for his voice? 

The question is, do we believe and trust that God has a message for us and wants too communicate directly with us?

From the moment we get up, too long after we have gone to bed, we are linked to the noise in our lives: radio, iTunes, TV, social media, family, friends and loudest of all our internal voices all clamor for our attention and drown out the still calm voice of the Creator.

Silencing all of the outside noise and  calming our internal voice is hard work and requires that we believe God wants to speak to us – has a very personal message of acceptance, purpose, and unconditional love for each of us.

Spiritual services dedicated to silence are profound as no service full of words and music can be.  The silence creates anticipation, acceptance, a sense of belonging, and intimacy.  

With it comes the knowledge of belonging to God and to each other.

Create space to listen to the words our Creator longs to speak to each of us, trust God.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2018 twosnydergirls

Lectionary readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20.

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.

Watermelon Rice Cereal Treats

Pinterest and children go together like peanut butter and jam and 

they are  just as much fun.

After just 15 minutes on Pinterest we had a list of 10 foods, crafts or activities that they would like to do.

Here is #1 only because we had all of the ingredients at hand on a Canadian Thanksgiving Saturday.

Watermelon Rice Cereal Treats

There are numerous posts dedicated to making a rice cereal treats that look like  watermelons.  We have included a few at the bottom of this post.

We used food colour only because we do not enjoy the taste of Kool Aid powder in our rice treats and many of the recipes include this drink powder to help colour the cereal.

Other recipes use chocolate chips or raisin on top of the cereal treat to create watermelon seeds and we expanded on this adding a ¼ cup of chocolate chips to the warm marshmallow batter to add a little chocolate treat to the inside.

Watermelon Rice Krispie Treats by YoYomax12  

Kraft Watermelon RICE KRISPIES TREATS® 

Penny Pinchin Mom Watermelon Rice Krispie Treats 

Grandma Snyder

 

©2013 – 2017 twosnydergirls 

Transplanting Our Peace Garden

 While the weather in Ontario Canada has been too cold to begin our plants outside, the church basement has wide window sills that are south/east facing and here the seeds that we planted did well.   

(click on the link to see this post)

The cool temperatures during the week made this a wonderful place for our, pumpkins, squash and sunflowers to sprout.  Our watermelons did not sprout so we will purchase two plants for the Peace garden.

The children enjoyed watching the seeds grow and announced with pride when their seedlings reached to two leave stage, the point at which once again they would get to play in the rich soil and transplant their seedlings.

Again they created labels using markers and Popsicle sticks.

Not only was transplanting fun there was a great deal of enthusiasm for cleaning up after.

The proceeds from the children's Peace Garden/ Three Sister's Garden go to the local food bank at Thanksgiving.

Now we water and wait for the weather to warm up enough to plant our corn and beans.  Followed by our squash and Sunflowers.

2015's Peace Garden click to visit

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls