I love the Swedish artist Aina Stenberg.

She was born in 1885 in Stockholm, the second youngest of  twelve children.

She loved to draw, and at the age of ten she approached a publisher with her first Christmas cards and…

…he accepted them!

She sold fifteen images and received fifteen kronor for them!

She went on to study art.

At art school she met her future husband, Helmaer (Mas Olle) Olsson.

He was from Dalarna, the home of Anna Lena!

After they were married, they bought an old farm in Dalarna.

They took the old log house and moved it to the village of Siljansnäs, high above Lake Siljan.

Aina loved to listen to old timers tell stories of superstitions and legends, especially those of elves, trolls and superstitions.

Many of those images made their way into her artwork.

She drew between 5000 and 6000 designs for Christmas, Easter and New Year cards during her career!

I hope you enjoyed these Easter cards.

Last week was both the Peninsula Quilt Guild meeting and our Redwork Club meeting.  It’s always great to see everyone, but I like the show-and-tell best!

We’ll start with Guild.  Gloria really livened up this Log Cabin with some beautiful applique!

She did the same with the border on this star quilt.

Janet has strip pieced this Seven Sisters block.

Here’s Cherry’s fun St. Patrick’s wall hanging.

And a sample quilt she made from shop hop blocks.

Earlene got another amazing horse block from her secret pal.  I featured them a few weeks ago on another blog post that you can see here.

It’s always fun to see someone use my fabrics, like Dee did with this At Play quilt!

Doris’ Christmas sampler blocks look great set this way.

Randi took a photo of the tile floor at our county  courthouse and is reproducing the design!

Ann made this pretty quilt…

…and also this log cabin.

And now for Redwork, which always includes a lot more than just Redwork!

Linda made a reversible picnic cloth from my book Quilts From My Garden.  This side is for birthdays….

…and this side is for the Fourth of July!

Our Redwork group has started two new patterns.  The first is called Shabby Chic Girl.

Cortne` is almost finished with her center square.

Linda has started her border.

I love the little bits of fabric in the flower petals.

The other pattern we’re doing is Snow Crazy–a combination of snowmen and crazy quilting!

Marla has her first block finished.

Mary’s shared this delightful Valentine from her granddaughter!

She had also made this cute Pinwheel quilt while visiting her daughter in the Tri-Cities.

Robin brought lots of goodies to share, including this adorable wall hanging.  I love the addition of the rickrack and buttons.

She’s been making doll quilts for a reach-out in her community.  These are 1-1/2″ squares!

She recently quilted this Eye-Spy panel.  Panels are a great way to practice your machine quilting!

Here’s she showing off her sweet Valentine pillow.

This is another Valentine stitchery she is working on.

Robin calls this a Crumb Quilt–just sew all your fabric crumbs together!

Robin makes wonderful scrap quilts.  This one is 4″ squares.

Earlene has been working on these sweet Redwork blocks with birds.

And she’s almost finished with this snowman block.

Thanks, Ladies, for all the inspiration!

Today I hosted my Mentor Study Group.  How fun to get to do it on Valentine’s Day!

I love to entertain, but I’ve been gone and didn’t get a very early start on my preparation.  I was expecting 15, so needed to use both tables.  This is the dining room, with some vintage china my mom bought me a few years ago.

In the living room, we have a drop leaf table that’s only 14″ deep when the leaves are down.  When we need more table space, we move a couple of chairs, pull up the leaves and have a 60″ round table.  Works great!  Another set of vintage china.

I decided I wanted to make something called a Smörgåstårta–literal translation from the Swedish is sandwich cake.  It’s usually done with a whole loaf of bread, then sliced and served, but I decided to do individual ones.

I started by cutting rounds of bread–lot’s of rounds of bread, as these are triple decker sandwiches!  Then I spread some softened cream cheese on them.

That was followed by Swiss cheese.

More bread and cream cheese, very thinly spread.

Then there’s turkey.

Finally, the last piece of bread.  I used a yummy oat bread.

I made a mousse of shrimp, lemon and cream cheese and spread it on the sides and top.

Then I wrapped the whole thing with a thinly sliced cucumber and topped it with a cherry tomato and some sliced radishes.

I may have gotten carried away with slicing radishes, and I think Bob will be eating radishes with every meal for awhile!

Here are the first eight ready to go into the refrigerator.

All plated up.

I served grapes and an asparagus salad with them.

The ladies dug right in, which I always take as a compliment.  There’s my friend, Karen, helping serve.  Thank you, Karen!

I had three no shows.  Argh!  But, we just pulled off a couple of table settings and it all worked out.

We had a great meeting, then a little dessert.  Last night I baked a double batch of Chocolate Decadence in a sheet pan, then this morning I cut out hearts.

I borrowed these adorable heart shaped dishes and mugs from my sister.

A little raspberry puree and whipped cream along with the Chocolate Decadence was a perfect finish to a fun day.

I hope your Valentine’s Day was fun, too.