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Here is a sneak peek of where we’ve spent the last six days. This is heaven on Earth.

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“Fourth of July in Quebec”

Yesterday was our first ever 4th of July spent out of the USA. We are near Ripon, Quebec – which is about 50 miles northeast of Canada’s capital city, Ottawa.

Dave and I, along with Terry and Barbara Fenzl, are visiting our friends, Paul and Kim Howard, at their picturesque family vacation home.

We may be in another country, but we celebrated in the traditional Red, White, and True-Blue American style.

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Fourteen years ago today I began blogging. To celebrate, I’m having an easy contest, keep reading to learn more.

Here is a link to post number one. If you go to that link you’ll see that I speak about Julia Child. Ironically, I attended a birthday dinner last night with Kim Howard at Tarbell’s to celebrate what would have been Julia Child’s 111th birthday. My friend, mentor, and former boss, Barbara Fenzl was the guest speaker. Thank you, Mark Tarbell, it was a delicious and delightful evening.

The day I began blogging, Connor was a few days away from heading off to college. Not to be overly dramatic, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. Having been a stay-at-home mom for over 21 years, I was feeling a bit lost. This blog was a great distraction and gave me something to look forward to each day, a purpose if you will. And I was dedicated! Posting nearly every day for 4 years!

MAIN COURSES

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Many of the guests at Tram’s Baby Shower had expressed interest in the recipes for the brunch food I served.  In fact, Tram commented that yesterday’s post was a “Cliffhanger” since so many of her friends were hoping for the recipes and I said that the recipes would be coming tomorrow.

That actually made me laugh. A Cliffhanger? Me?

No, I just have so much to share about the shower that I have to break it up into a week’s worth of posts. So, today I shall give you all the recipes!

It sounds more daunting than it actually is because all but one of the recipes have already been posted here on the blog. See, no Cliffhanger to be had. Most of them, I made exactly as previously written and a couple of the others – have a few tweaks. Let’s get to it!

First up, The Granola Bar.

I made a double batch of my Glinda’s Wickedly Delicious Granola. It is my take on a recipe from my friend and colleague, Gwen Ashley Walters.

To accompany the granola, there were bowls of fresh blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries, plus lemon curd, low-fat vanilla yogurt, and, my favorite store-bought yogurt of all time, Greek Gods brand Honey yogurt.

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I know, I know – it would be nice if I’d post a recipe today since I missed posting so many days this month due to vacation. So sorry, but we ate the second foil packet for dinner last night, so I got nothing for you today … recipe-wise.

I have something WAY better!

Via

My vintage finds from this month’s sale at Sweet Salvage! I was pretty bummed when I realized that I was going to be out of town for the 3rd Thursday of the month. I’m usually there, standing in line with the other Sweet devotees when the doors open at 10:00.

Even though I’ve gone on Fridays, Saturdays, and even Sundays in the past, I feared that all the “good stuff” would be gone by the time I got there this past Sunday afternoon.

Not so! In fact, I couldn’t even buy all that I wanted. I had to really edit myself and use every ounce of my limited self-control to not spend four times more than I spent.

Via

For instance, I did not buy that fabulous vintage “Log Cabin Bread” display stand at the top of the page. Oh, I wanted that so bad! And I did not buy the wonderful cabinet pictured above, although I went back and forth on “where I would put it” – I just couldn’t justify spending the money, so it was left behind.

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I posted some photos of our trip to Wisconsin on Facebook and my sister commented, “I would like to see pictures of the rest of the house! It looks so pretty!” Although I’ve spoken of the cabin and posted a few pictures before, today I will fulfill her wish and show you the whole thing.

One reason I call Jeff and Jen’s vacation home a log mansion is because it is drop-dead gorgeous. And the other is because my husband, Dave, grew up in a simple and modest vacation log cabin in northern Wisconsin. It was built by his dad, several years before Dave was born. Sadly it was sold in 1987. I stayed there one time, in 1986 when Dave and I were first dating. And next to it, J & J’s is truly a mansion – even Dave’s mom agrees!

The Hopkins’ cabin was originally without running water (there was only a hand pump), no inside bathroom – instead of an outhouse (as seen above from a 2007 photo, and NO, I never went in there!). No heat besides what the fireplace provided. And no electricity until the mid-1960s. Once the electricity was in, the pump became electric and a bathroom was added. But as Dave told me, “Even then, when we lost electricity due to storms, it could be out for days at a time. I remember one time it was out for at least 3 days. So we still had to revert to using the hand pump, and the outhouse, and that is why we kept the kerosene lamps and the gas refrigerator and stove.”

This photo of the Hopkins’ cabin was taken in 1955.

And this one was taken in 2007, the first summer we spent a week at Jeff and Jen’s. We drove over to show Marissa and Connor the mystical place their dad always told them about… “the cabin in the North Woods.”

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