Better Butter

Last weekend I had a big event at our local church for the women of the congregation. If you've been here over the years, you know that I often lead our Women's Ministries in our local churches. However, I only was in charge of this event this time. I've done a similar one before. We had several demonstrations along with other samples of ideas for the holidays. Some were for entertaining, gift giving and others were decor. I wanted to share this particular one with you today.  

I made three different compound butter recipes. These would be perfect as gifts or when you have company. Each lady got to taste them and took home the recipes. I brought the leftovers home and popped them in the freezer for future use. Cutting them up into smaller pieces means I don't have to waste any. Tonight we grilled smoked pork chops with roasted asparagus and new potatoes. I thawed out the Lemon and Dill butter and it was very delicious with this meal.  Perfect for the asparagus and potatoes. My husband also ate it on a baguette.  

The three flavors are Lemon Dill, Cranberry Walnut Orange and Café de Paris.  I've linked the recipes so you can find them easily and try them out.  I think the Cranberry, Walnut, Orange would be perfect for Thanksgiving dinner.  Doesn't that sound good? There are many similar recipes on Pinterest or just a google search.  Check these out, it is an easy way to enhance your holiday meals. 

Spring from Japan

Hello there.  I'm sorry that I've been MIA from Elderberry Street. There has been so much going on here that I feel a little overwhelmed trying to narrow things down to tell you.  I could fill every day here with something, usually something really fun and cool.  I wonder how I'll handle life when I'm back in the U.S.?  We've even gone back to California again since the last post.  My husband had meetings and I stayed an extra day to play with friends.

I've titled this post, Spring from Japan.  Basically because Spring is ALL OVER JAPAN these days.  And it is amazing.  We've been on a hike from Tsumago to Magome.  I thought it was HARD.  Nobody else did.  Stopping to take pictures every other step didn't help matters.  * I've decided to keep this post just about the hike because there are too many photos to share.  I promise I'll post again this weekend with photos from Yoshino which is a famous location for Sakura.

Immediately when I got back to Japan I helped with a Ladies Retreat from our church.  It was at a monastery which was barren and cold.  Kind of like you'd expect, I guess.  There wasn't much warm water either.  I was in charge of the crafts.  I know that's a shocker.  We made journals because the theme was about The Great Love Story.  They were able to use them for the remainder of the retreat.

Here are the wonderful ladies that were there the second day. It was such fun to be involved with.

Back to the hike.  There were eleven of us.  We drove an hour and a half to Tsumago and hiked down to Magome.  It didn't feel like down to me for the majority of the hike.

At this point I was very happy to be finally going downhill.  That is just a taste of the beauty we saw that Saturday.  I've also been playing with kids, visiting the park for Sakura season and all around having fun.

 Grace and Lucy are absolutely adorable.  They noticed I was taking pictures and the show began.

 On my way home from the park I caught this Quince with the Sakura in the background.  

My neighbor, Meryl, was all dressed up for the tea ceremony, but her little boy was on a different time schedule.  

I'll leave you with this.  A serene little spot on my walk home the other day.  

Retreat Planning

Hello everyone.  A lot has happened around here since I last gave you an update.  Just a few days after my last post, we received the sad news that my Mother-in-Law had passed away unexpectedly.  We frantically scheduled flights and spent several days with our immediate and extended families.  It was a wonderful time celebrating her life, even though we are sad and she will be greatly missed.  It just doesn't seem real, you know?  Life is precious and flies by way too fast.

After that my husband flew to Malaysia and then to Japan for work.   I was home prepping for our next Women's Retreat which is later this month.  We are again using a kit retreat from Group Publishing.  This one is called Garden Getaway and we will be looking at scripture in the Bible to see how God walks with us through all the different seasons of our lives.  Even the times of loss and grief.

This photo was my inspiration.

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I like to do my own graphics because I never really like the ones provided, therefore I began my doodling. These will be the name tags.

Sign-up sheet.  

We are making laminated bookmarks for little reminders. These will be cut, laminated and have a ribbon added.  

We are gathering and covering cans that will be filled with flowers similar to this idea.  We are trying to go with a totally different look that we normally do.  We will see if we can pull it off.

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We plan on having a big salad bar and baked potato bar for lunch.  

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Veggies for snacks and Dirt for dessert.  Have you ever made Dirt Cake?  Here is the recipe from Taste of Home.  I'm not adding the gummy worms.  Stay tuned for the pictures of our actual event in early March.  Check out our wonderful event last year!

Women of Faith - 2014

We went to our yearly visit to Women of Faith this weekend. What a wonderful time we had.  The theme for their conference was "Survival to Revival". 

 We took off with the Survival theme and planned our tailgate party around a tropical survivor theme.

 We made ham and pineapple skewers, spinach salad with strawberries, along with mango and grapes.

One of my team made individual pineapple upside-down cakes. Aren't they adorable? They were delicious. I found the instructions for the easy pineapple gift bags on The House That Lars Built. They were a big hit. We made "survival kits" as gifts for our ladies. I found the instructions at Positively Splendid.  

 Here is my awesome team!

We heard awesome teaching from Lysa Terkeurst, Lisa Harper, Christine Caine, Patsy Clairmont, Lisa Bevere, and Sheila Walsh.  We enjoyed two concerts from Natalie Grant and Matthew West. You should check out Women of Faith when it comes to your area.  

Women's Retreat - Chocolate Style

I've been recuperating this week from all the work and implementation of our Spring Women's Retreat last Saturday the 8th.  If you've been here a little while, you might remember our Spring Woodland Retreat last year that was a big success with the women from our church.  I blogged about it, of course. We had such positive feedback last year, that we decided to use the same format again.  These are basically a "retreat in a box" from Group Publishing.  They give you all the material and music you need to have an amazing retreat WITHOUT a speaker.  It is basically a small group format.  It gives the women a chance to get to know someone they may not already know.  I HIGHLY recommend these.

We've been preparing for quite awhile.  And, you know, we don't do things by the book or in a simple way.  I showed you some of our inspiration previously here. The theme for this retreat was Café Chocolat and the topic was God's Abundant Grace.  My inspiration began when I found this pdf from Claudine Hellmuth.

These are designed to be cupcake boxes.  Our ladies were going to have some AMAZING cakes for dessert (see below), so we ended up using these as gift boxes with a bag of mixed candies inside to take home.  I've learned that if you want a great event with minimal expense, you have to use a lot of labor.  We divided these up between our council members and lightened the load a little. In the end, we had such a great turnout, that I ended up having to make 10 more the week of the retreat. I think we made 53 café boxes in total.

The take the color palette even farther, we used these Martha Stewart Rosettes that I found at Michaels. I made a few fans to go with them.  We also made banners and an "awning".  We covered bookshelves from the children's department with faux wood corrugated paper and a sweet scalloped top.

Teacher stores are a great place to find materials for the decorations.  My friend, Renee, painted the awning on a flat piece of paper.  Doesn't it look great? It really set everything off.

Here is most of my team in our matching Ikea aprons.  One did a bunch of work but had to be out of town for the event.  

Our centerpieces were made from thrift store tins and cake pans.  

Which we transformed into beautiful cakes.

We also used the little cafe boxes in the centerpieces.

I made coffee/cocoa cup wrappers with a design from The Graphics Fairy. 

A lovely woman in our church has her own baking business and makes the most amazing cakes and cupcakes. We enlisted her help and she was astounding! Look at these cakes! I gave her a little box to work from and she made two cakes and a dozen cupcakes. They taste as good as they look. Truly amazing!  

I was so busy that I really didn't take that many good photos. There were many details that I did not get a picture of. I should be receiving copies from others soon. So you may see another post on this. Hope you don't mind. I just wanted to give you a glimpse of the amazing retreat we had. The material in this kit was really good with a variety of object lessons, a charity project and quiet time. One of the things that I thought would be unpopular, became one of the most moving sessions of the day. I could tell that a lot of prayer went into the event and am so thankful that the ladies had a wonderful day.