cherry picking

not a lot left to say....

i did not post the past two days and i missed posting.... we have guests and i'm very busy with them and keeping the last week of school some how. we are by now all very antsy and ready to start summer brake (in switzerland there is just a 5 week brake, the other 7 weeks are in october/december/february/april).

so here we are, picking cherries, o so wonderful, so delicious and the girls really enjoyed the climbing of the ladders a lot. naomi didn't just eat all her picked cherries but really added a lot to our harvest. there will be one more time of picking either tomorrow or on friday, though for today, the ladders are locked up under the tree.
summer is here and it's one big celebration, it's warm if not to say hot and i  love it. with cherries in my mouth and the smell of hay in my nose, what else do i wish for? no not anything. i'm thankful and so very happy for the moment i life in right now!

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

the berries are on the table

we went to the strawberry field at rikon on tuesday, it was wonderful. the field is very well kept and the berries looked good though didn't have a strong flavor, i guess we did not have too much sunshine over the past week. it took me almost an hour to pick 8kg strawberries. thea was with me and loved the eating and chatting with all the other people, mostly middle aged women picking berries. so on tuesday for lunch we enjoyed a mixed salad and then berries with vanilla sauce, the perfect lunch for that day, a warm almost hot summer day. we didn't have many of those, so far, just a hand full and i really want more of them...

summers bounty in bloom

 

i love summer with all it's flowers. just one walk around the house and there is so much collected. especially at my parents house, they have been lovingly tended their surroundings. lots of very common species of summer flowers, lots of white and pink, many kinds of greens and all these put together in little yoghurt jars. super simple and lovingly to look at.
those little bouquets i put together for my mom, she needed a little bit of a decoration at a church event.
i will pay a bit more attention in my garden corners around the house to plant the common and easy. the flowers and bushes which don't need a lot of care taking and yield  a wonderful summers bounty.

granny squares week 4

there has been an effort to get all the 24 blocks together, a bit more cutting and i had to go to the shop for more solid white cotton. it has turned out wonderful, i'm excited every time i sit down and work on this summer project. the last hour i spent on trimming the blocks into rectangular shapes, all have to be the same size. of course there is some give and take as i'm not the perfect seamstress, there has to be room for an 1/8th more or less here and there.
i'm now looking forward to puzzle colourful blocks together, not sure yet how i will arrange them, so many options! next step, sewing the borders and then it's playtime!

the party under the big tree

we celebrated the baptism of two of our children yesterday, it was a wonderful day, just perfect to set up for a big fest under our chestnut tree in the garden behind the house. the streamers have been prepared a while ago

 

the kids godparents and their families joined us and all the grandparents and an other couple of friends. lots of kids running and loving to eat parmesan, digging on their own with the cheese knife. eating lots of marinated olives and fresh bread. i was enjoying all those friends from very different angles of our lives coming together and celebrating. i'm so very thankful to God our creator for our family and everyone helping our kids to find their way in life.

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

public transport practical

that's what we did, amos a couple of his schoolmates and me/joel chaperoning them around the canton of zurich. the group put together a travel itinerary and we tried to stay as close to their planned day trip as possible. riding on winterthurs city bus #3, taking many different trains, the elevator at the rheinfall, the "polybahn" in zurich, of course a number of trams and the big ships on lake zurich. it was a fun group to travel with and even with the weather not being super nice, more like the opposite, we all really enjoyed it. i'm glad my boy got to travel a long day around with public transport and doing this for schooling. absolutely and very important skills have been added with this project. and once more i'm proud of the public transportation system in this land, we call homeland.

the "glingeling"

she had been wishing for a "glingeling" a long time, called up people and then her godfather heard her wish!
thea is riding her red bicycle for a while now and was missing the sound of a cool "glingeling" all the while, this is now history. we hear her riding and squeezing the giraffe from far away, from out of sight, there is that shreeking sound of the giraffe being loved! thank you godfather b for being in tune with our not anymore so little bicyclist.

the granny squares week 2 & 3

i have been working a bit on this summer granny project, it's exciting to have the sewing machine back from the doctors office. it was a major job the mechanic had to do and i got back the machine running smooth and easy again. a wonderful gift to me. while the machine was gone, i realized how much i missed it. not that it's taken very long, not even 2 weeks, though i noticed, how often i wanted to sit down a quickly mend a pair of paints or finish up the pajama pants and then of course get started with the many little squares for the granny summer project of this year.

it was here when it all got started, and i have been cutting and putting together many squares. a fun undertaking to utilize the scraps and give them a purpose, at least that's what i'm hoping for them.
this spring i also got a little envelope with many liberty print scraps, a nice addition to all my fabric scraps. it spices up the process a little bit and of course i love the newbies in the mix.

so here i am there is more to come, trimming and puzzling together the big picture will be the next step. just to not forget where that little inspiration came about...
there was last summer's granny square crochet project, i loved it and wanted to find something for the summer 2013. not certain where to find a "work a long" project, i decided to just do my own. it is definitely not as cool as to work with others, though the inspiration for right now is big enough to get things off the ground. jolene at the blue elephant stitches has put a tutorial up on her blog, "granny square quilt blocks", that's where it started all for me with this summers grannies .....

red and rhubarb

it is summer and red lupines are just so beautiful.  they don't keep very long after cutting, though for 3 days i enjoyed a bit of heaven in the living room. a friend is bringing me regularly bouquets onto our kitchen table, i'm so blessed, thank you k for delivering flowers into my house, without me even having to order!

and then was there that delicious idea of combining linzer tart with rhubarb. of course i had to try this recipe out as rhubarb is one of my favorite treats in this early summer season.
it turned out to everyone's liking, even joel who's favorite dessert is the classic linzer tart (with raspberry jam). he was very skeptical about the rhubarb idea, though he helped himself to seconds and that has been reason enough to know that he likes it too.

besides, the rhubarb lemonade was a nice add on. after cooking the rhubarb with some brown sugar, and letting it drain for a moment, there was that wonderful lemonade. great in colour and even better to taste!

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

the sewing school

a couple weeks back i got the sewing school book for naomi. she absolutely loves it and got started right away. there is something to this book, just super easy and exciting to pick a project, get fabric and accessories together, find the pattern and start the real work.
mama has a big stash of crap fabric and notions to pick from. this is of course an other fun moment, digging through all the piles of it and finding just the right fabric for her ugly doll.

a few hours later, the next day, the doll got all stuffed and had to pose for me, together with the girls. i don't now who was more proud, naomi or me... the finished project looks very good, a wonderful present for naomi's little cousin j who turnes one next month.

eating together around the world

our annual "neighbor-fest" has been in the back yard through the late afternoon into evening. lots of dear friends (o my over 100!) and their friends, neighbors and all their families. very international, o that is the best about it all, a few swiss folks came too, thank you for coming... and then there were people from turkey, macedonia, albania, serbia, bosnia, irak, egypt, eritrea, somalia, greece, turkie,  germany, burma, austria, peru, a wonderful bunch of people sitting together, eating together, talking and laughing together. it's good to be with friends

in the vineyard

 

last saturday as we visited my parents, we also did a quick work trip into the local vineyard. my dad had to install a new wire in order for the nets to be pulled over the vines later in the summer. it was the kick off of summer weather, o such wonderful sunshine and warmth, bare feet and the smell of fresh cut grass in the air we walked the quick way over and did our work. once more i realized how much i love the work with my hands outdoors!
maybe one day i will be a farming girl again, it's back there in my head...

sometime i'm glad to have taken the camera along, this time it definitely was fun. o that hand of my father, it has to tell many stories, working all their life and still going on. every day lots of cows have been milked, apples picked, insects inspected and bugs plucked from potato plants, held many times our little hands, taken us along on walks around the farmland.
it's good to see through the lens, many times i started to ponder, looking at pictures taken. a good thing, this time too, wonderful memories and a wee bit more understanding my dear father.