Nikolaus was here

I know it was very quiet here. Despite my promises to post everyday and share with you lots of homemade Christmas ideas. Reason why as so often – a sick baby and then a sick me. Yeap, this time I couldn’t avoid it. I had to surrender, lie down, watch stupid daytime TV, drink pots of peppermint tea, even take paracetamol to bring down the fever... Oh, well, I am sure you know these stories... on to something more pleasant.

Nikolaus was here.  My little one checked on her stocking every 5 minutes after she understood that there might be something in it later on

But then she suddenly and quite unexpectedly fell asleep at the dining table. So she opened her little present this morning. And it was ...

... a xylophone. What a delight! She almost refused to go the day care because she loved hammering away on it so much. Well, let’s see when our neighbours come around to confiscate this means of pleasure (or pain?) ;-)

Homemade Christmas: Cinnamon Balls

It is almost Christmas. Unbelievable, but so true.
This year I decided to make my Christmas as homemade as possible.
Because I love crafting and doing lots of crafts as decorations and presents
make my day uhmm December. So I try to share one idea for a homemade Christmas with you
as often as possible and hope that you feel inspired, amused or simply festive.
Happy Christmas time to all of you!

After talking so much about food – one of my favourite topics yesterday, I want to share a wonderful easy but super-yummy cookie recipe with you.

Cinnamon balls

I rediscovered the recipe in an old Christmas crafting book of mine (approx. mid 80s by the look of the fashion items ;-)) on Thursday, then I made them yesterday, because my lovely husbands love hazelnuts, and then I found them in Katinka’s blog today. So either cinnamon balls are in fashion – the trendy cookies of the season – or they are just meant to be shared with you.

Here is the original German Brigitte recipe...

... and here is my clumsy translation for all my English speaking readers:

Cinnamon Balls

For about 45 pieces:
3 egg whites
250g icing sugar
2 packet of vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
300g ground hazelnuts
Grease or baking paper for the baking tray
Whole hazelnuts for decoration

1. Beat egg whites with a hand mixer until semi-stiff. Add icing sugar and vanilla sugar and continue beating until the snow is shiny and firm, but still elastic.
2. Remove half a cup of egg white mixture for decoration, then mix the rest with cinnamon and hazelnuts.
3. Make walnut-sized balls out of thus dough with 2 teaspoons (dipped in cold water to stop the mixture from sticking to the spoons) and put them on greased or paper-lined baking tray. Brush egg white mixture onto balls and top with a hazelnut each.
4. Put cinnamon balls in a cold oven (middle shelf) and bake at 130 degrees about 20 min. Take them out of the oven and let them cool on a wire rack.

Voila, that is it. Super-quick, super-easy and I love them.

I added more cinnamon, because for me you cannot use enough cinnamon and I rarely completely stick to recipes. They don’t look as neat as in the recipe book – well, I call them cookies with personality J – but oh man do they taste good. Strongly recommended!

Homemade Christmas: Adventskalender

It is almost Christmas. Unbelievable, but so true.
This year I decided to make my Christmas as homemade as possible.
Because I love crafting and doing lots of crafts as decorations and presents
make my day uhmm December. So I try to share one idea for a homemade Christmas with you
as often as possible and hope that you feel inspired, amused or simply festive.
Happy Christmas time to all of you!

Today as a start I will share the Adventskalender, which I made for my little one this year. She is just 1,5 so I am not sure whether she enjoys it as much as I did putting it together. But she loves the daily unwrapping anyway ;-)

I love Adventskalender as I told you yesterday  probably in too much detail. I love the anticipation. I love the surprise. I love the chocolates. And I love that my little one’s face lights up every day when she gets one of the little pressies and rips them open at once.

Following Catherine’s creative challenge ‘Christmas dresssew along’ and her wise advise to refrain from sewing millions of little bags for Adventskalenders, I simply bought this adorable one at Ikea

Simple – stylish – in my favourite colours – well, not self-made, but self-bought and giving me hours of extra time for more satisfying crafting.

Since the little one likes to eat as much as we do and started to imitate our action in the kitchen with whatever she could find and that was not an awful lot...

... we decided to give her a play kitchen for Christmas. And that of course gave us the greatest possibilities to fill her Adventskalender:

Here is its content in detail:

an apron and oven mitts with red-white polka dots and an oh-so-cute Christmas dog

empty metal containers from my kitchen cupboard

other empty containers to be filled with healthy snacks and the like

a set of wooden fruits and veggies which can be cut with the wooden knife thanks to Velcro

a set of wooden spoons and a plastic fish (with a plastic letture leaf I guess)

a bag of apples and a bag of oranges (her favourite fruits – at least I guess they are her favourites, because they are the only ones she can say until now ;-))

The Ikea breakfast set: with felt knife and board, bread, cheese, pancakes, sausages, bacon and eggs. Initially I wanted to make felt food myself after these wonderful examples of Schokoli. But then I completely ran out of time. Why is Christmas always coming so soon and so unexpected ;-) Anyway, make sure to have a look at all the amazing things Schokoli made for her little one and his little shop. It takes your breath away.

two fruit bowls

Of course she also gets a few things which have nothing to do with cooking. Or eating. Or pretending to cook. Or pretending to eat. Well, a few anyway. They are all truly home- resp. me-made and I am going to show them in more detail in the next couple of days.

Now, I will get myself a lovely glass of red, because it is Friday after all. Have a great start of the weekend!!!

I ♥ Adventskalender

One of my favourite Christmas traditions is the Adventskalender. I guess it is a very German tradition since there seemed to be not even a translation into English.

So for those who know what an adventskalender is, please just skip this paragraph. For all the others: the idea behind the Adventskalender is to make the wait for Christmas a bit sweeter for all the big and small children out there. Therefore you are allowed to open a little present or a paper window on your Adventskalender filled with chocolate or a picture. It all starts on the first of December and finishes on December 24^th, Christmas Eve, because then we celebrate Christmas here in Germany. With presents, candles, too much great food and the like.

Picture found here

My late grandma always made fantastic Adventskalenders for us children. First filled with Lego and Playmobil – basically a big box spilt up in 24 little parcels. So we might get the Playmobil nurse on the first day, the hospital bed on the second and the patient not before the 15^th of December.  And since the parcels didn’t have any number (as opposed to traditional Adventskalenders where each parcel is attributed to a certain day) and we were allowed to choose which one we would like to open on the day. I can tell you, there was a lot of squashing and shaking going on before we would decided each day which parcel to take.

Picture found here

Later when we had outgrown Playmobil and Lego (though you never really outgrow the fun of these wonderful toys, I guess), she changed to riddles. They were quite difficult to solve in order to keep us excited for as long as possible and revealed in the end the ‘big’ present we got from her. The exciting thing was that we would get the big present as soon as we were able to solve the riddle. So there was a chance to get the big one before the siblings. And this bit of competition made it all the more thrilling.

In short: I LOVE ADVENTSKALENDERS...

... and I cannot wait to show you the one I made for my little one tomorrow.

I know it is mean to water your mouth and then say that you have to wait until tomorrow. But that is the anticipation that made my childhood Adventskalenders so exciting and unforgettable J

Weihnachtskleid sew along – Cut

Although I had the best intensions I am already falling behind in the Christmas dress sew along creative challenge. The reasons are manifold of course (job, little one, lovely husband, other crafting, Christmas decoration,...), but the real reason is...

... that copying the pattern is my least favourite part of the whole dress-making process. And I am glad to read that I am not the only one who thinks that. Anyway, I therefore procrastinated it as long as possible (as you do with things you don’t want to do or as I do at least :-))

Anyway, I am very proud to announce that I have taken that hurdle.

Voila, that is the visual proof.  8 pieces of pattern copied in the right size. Well, I hope it is the right size, since my measurements seem to fit with none of the suggested sizes: breast medium size, waist medium to small, hip largest size. I guess that is what you call an hour glass figure ;-) Anyway, I decided to make the biggest size and then make the dress tighter in special areas if necessary. And after all it is a Christmas dress – so it should still fit even after a month of great food, sweets and no sports.

Additionally to copying the pattern which I only ‘survived’ due to a glass of red and Hector und die Entdeckung der Zeit, a great audio book , I managed to wash my fabric. So since I have a few days off at the end of the week, I am positive to catch up and show more of my soon-to-be-Christmas-dress next week. Although this not even one of Catherine’s deadlines. Which means I might even be ahead of the class ;-) Hurray!

So, I am off now to have a look at what you have been up to.

Weihnachtskleid sew along – Fabric Choosing

Oh dear, only the second round of the Christmas dress sew along, my favourite creative challenge at the moment and...

... I already have to draw the PANIC card. And that is supposed not to happen until the 19^th December ;-(

found here

Choosing the pattern was easy, but choosing the fabric seemed impossible. My lovely readers Doris, Christiane and Wiebke suggested ‘Viskosejersey’ or ‘Merinojersey’ as ideal material for my pattern and so the decision was made: I am going to sew my first jersey dress.

And then I had a look around and all I found was...

... cheery stripes...

... weird camouflage patterns...

... cute children patterns...

... and boring unis.

All fabrics found at Stoff & Stil and believe me those were the ones which were still quite okay. I want to spare you the horrible flower, batik, punk-style jerseys which I found elsewhere.

No fabric for an elegant, vintage-inspired Christmas dress ;-( Unfortunately I also haven’t had time to go to the Stoffmarkt or Berlins Welt der Stoffe, so I had to turn to my beloved stash –  full of fabrics which I simply loved without having a project in mind. And guess what I found. The perfect fabric. Right there before my nose.

It isn’t jersey, unfortunately, so there will be lots of ironing involved in the making as well as the wearing process, but I am willing to deal with it. I LOVE this fabric, because...

... it is elegant (the black and white is a bit Chanel, n’est pas?)...

... it is a tiny bit ethnic (if you look very closely you can see little chamois bucks jumping out of the tendril pattern)...

... it is unusual (not something you could find at H&M and the like)...

... and the pattern will look gorgeous with it. Ummmh, well I hope it will look gorgeous and I hope that I can refrain from swearing during the sewing process, because white fabrics means, I will have to make a lining dress as well, I am afraid. Oh well, it is a challenge after all ;-)

Ahhh, I cannot wait to see what fabrics you have chosen. And I am particularly curious whether Friederike has decided to do the same dress like me or not. I hope she did, because I would love to see which fabric she has chosen and how the same dress looks in two different variants. So I am off to browse...

I ♥ red shoes

found here