Shu-huuu.....

P.S.:

i love your christmas traditions. it is so nice. i guess it's really important to carry those traditions and christmas miracels from one generation to the next.

instead of becoming extreamly sentimental as i use to on the edge of this years end. i send you a snow owl. with the best wishes for yu and your dear ones

kisses
s.

Mohnkuchen am Heiligen Abend

Dear S.,

I was so happy to see your cookie-photos! Fi-na-lly you were able to bake again :)

I hope you and your family had a beautiful Christmas night yesterday.
With us here, it all went well. We all were rather nervous, because everything was different this year without my grandma, who always used to be the "master of ceremony". You know, her death is still so incredibly closeby, and it was hard on all of us that she wasn't with us. Still, we stuck to our beautiful and beloved tradtitions. First we all wished each other 3 wishes for the coming year. Every one of us gets a baking wafer (Backoblate) and tears three small pieces of the wafer of the person you are wishing the three wishes. Don't ask why exactly we have this tradition - no idea. It has always been like this in our family. Then, my grandma used to give a little speech, in which all our friends and family all over the world are thought of. This year, my dad took over this "task". Of course, Germany and Belgium were mentioned in his speech. These two traditions are the most emotional parts of the Holy Evening, many a tear is shed then. Afterwards we ate our delicious traditional christmas dinner: Steinpilzsuppe mit selbstgemachten Nudeln (porcino soup with homemade pasta). The pasta we used was the last batch my Grandma ever made. sigh. Afterwards, there were various salads, Karpfen ( carp fish - my very first time and I quite enjoyed it!), Schnitzel and rice and potato salad and bread and what not. After dinner, the 4 children (erm... aged 18-34) had to leave the room with the christmas tree and clean up the kitchen... until the little bell rang and the Christkind had arrived (=Papa incends the candles on the tree). Then we sang, beautifully, of course. Presenttime. The children (again 18-34) bring the present to the grown-ups. ah, childhood is such an expansible concept :)

Dessert follows. Here is were the pictures finally come in!
Traditionally, Oma made a Mohnkuchen, a rolled-up cake with poppy seed filling.
This year, my aunt and I made the cake together. We just couldn't imagine Christmas without it. Although we put slightly too little sugar in the filling and slightly too much filling in the cake (one of them tore up in the oven), the cake is very nice.







We are all sure that grandma watched us closely yesterday, because all the food was delicious. Before this year, we have never been allowed to do all these cooking tasks alone.

So, here's some Christmas feeling from Austria for you :)

Love, M.

Just another diamond day

my dear m.,
snow chaos in europe.
and we had such a nice idea, to pass the first hour of our trips together. my wasn't that log actually, and it almost went ok. besides we couldn't be in the same train. but at least we saw each other wil our trains were pasing each other. this was so niceand unexpected to still get a glimps of you and wave before we headded of to our homes and into the new year.

today i did all the baking i didn't do in the last month. so an oven is first priority in 2011. here are the results. I found an old notebook, i think i was 14 or 15 when i wrote it, wit the recipes of my godmother. she is the eldes siste of my granmother, and overtook her role a bit. sending every christmas a massive pakage of cookies ( like you get now from your mom). i tried out the favorites of teh family: Rum harts, nut-chocolate cookies, Spitzbuben and vanillekipferl . Plus white rum truffels ( my own creation).

I never saw so much snow in my life. and it will be my first white christmas EVER. yeah you heard right EVER. once we had half a cm snow on christmas, I was about 5 years old than, and i still rememberd the footprints of a woman in front of us, when we went to church.















that's is
merry christmas to al of you.
spend it with people who are important. just enjoy each others company.

( I ruined the handmixer!!! while making semi-fredo for tomorrors dessert)

kisses
and all the best
sophia

truffels

heyhey,

i promised to load up some craft pics.
so here are some things i made.
a little owl, some cussion covers and loats of pralines( truffels)
I don't have an oven yet so express my baking needs in chocolate.
i also smuggeld a pic of my new home in... with the advent calendar my mum made for me. it's nice to have a ittle present every morning to get me out of bed.








The easyest truffel recipe.

300 g dark chocolate
150ml cream
30 g butter

so just heat up the cream, mixe the chocolate bits in , than add the butter. let it cool in the fridge for some hours. than take scoops with a dinner spoon and rool them to balls in your cold hands. to make it look nicer role them in sugarpearls, cocoa-powder or grounded coco nut. you also can dip them into melted chocolate.

if you want to spice it up you can use some cinamon, ginger, tea, cardamom, nutmeg, vanilla... in it, just as you like it.

the thing is that the amount of cream depends on the chocolate. as more grease the chocolate contains the less cream and butter you need to use. so 300 g of white chocolate does with aproximately 80ml cream and no butter.

kisses
s

homy home + internet

dear m.,
finally!!!!
I have internet...

Christmas is in the air. and thanks to all the snow in antwerp I actually feel like it.
every year I am surprised again by the passing of time and change of seasons. when i went in november to germany all the trees were golden and lost their leafs and whoop we are covered in snow and the year is gonna end. strange strange. one question remains: is it the buzzynes of a kind of grown up life which disconnects me with the change of seasons or life in this grey grey city.

well well
anyway

i always look forward and fear christmas at the same time. usually is the most stressful time in the year. exames, jury to be prepared. presents to be bought. cookies to be baked. and this year i'm in charge of the christmas eve dinner! my mum has to work so I'll cook. I guess childhood is officially gone by that.

i send you a sneak peak of the book i do for uni at the moment.



my craft pics have yet to been taken , so a bit more patients and i send you what made during advents time.

trukloads of kisses
for you
s.

Avondsneeuw

Dear S.

december 19th, 0:28, view out of my window. It's almost as bright as daytime, isn't it?



love, M.

some decemberism

Dear S.,

quite some time has passed since the last post.
You still don't have any internet at your new place and I have been busy with all kinds of things.

My beloved grandma is gone. I went to Austria to say goodbye to her. I spent three overly busy and tiring days together with my fanily inbetween two days on the train.




sigh.
On the way back to Belgium I had a slight obsession with the electricity cables of the train, it is so strangely fascinating how they move to each other and part again...





Now I am back in Antwerp for 6 days, packed with Uni research, Christmas preparations, seeing friends and so on. And sleep of course, 9hrs is what it takes.
N. and I have made some patchwork decorations for the holidays:





I will use them as table decoration on the Holy Night dinner. The rest of the decoration I still need to buy/ make today. Also, Mum and I discussed about Christmas tree decoration: we've had a blue and golden tree for the last few years, this year we're probably going to decorate it in red and with straw stars- very traditionally. I'd love to include the beautiful old porcelain ornaments of my Grandma.

It might seem weird that I am so busy with all that Christmas stuff in these sad days, but it helps to go on. After seeing my family in such sad circumstances, I am really looking forward to a calm and beautiful Christmas celebration with them.

My dear S., that's it for now.

Love, M.

Völlig aus dem Häuschen

Dear S.

today's title is an expression for someone who is very excited about something (or very upset- but that's not the case now).
Excited about two things that have to do with Häuschen - houses.

1:COOKIES





I found this set for making cookie- houses at Dille & Kamille, and I really loved crafting those little houses with you and N.

http://www.dille-kamille.nl/nl/content/560/zandkoekjes-huis

--> check it out. (sorry, the link-feature is not doing its job)

Oh yes, and the houses also participated in the dance of the sweet treats for yesterday's early Sint festivity at the Tiki's. completely over the top but so lovely :)





2: SNOW

Antwerp was covered in soft white snow for 4 days. This is really amazing and rather unusual for early december. Last night the snow started to melt though. Hmm, don't you find that the light in the city gets so much softer when there's snow? Everything gets a little rosey shade. And also, the city is much quieter for some reason or the other. As if the snow is absorbing the sounds and cushioning the city.
Also, it was Charlie's first encounter with snow. Which made N. go completely aus dem Häuschen. She brought Charlie a snowball from outside, and of course all of us enjoyed being out of the house, no? :p

I hope you'll soon be able to fix the internet thing at your new place and then flood the blog with your entries again!

yours,

M.

Erster Advent

Dear S.,

today was the first of advent. To us german- speaking christmas freaks, this is a long known tradition, while in other countries the "countdown" until Christmas is not particularly celebrated. Read up about advent on wiki, if you like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent

It is not only celebrated in church context but also in almost all families. An essential part of advent is the advent wreath - der Adventskranz. It holds 4 candles, one for every sunday until Christmas Eve. You can buy advent wreaths in any flower shop with us at home, only people who like it very traditional bother to make them themselves. I really wanted to make one this year. All the green material I used is from our very own garden. I had to climb pretty high to find beautiful branches!


Also, It was freezing cold today- as in literally freezing all day long. It felt really good to be outside and collect fir branches, holly and ivy.

This is what my Adventskranz looks like:






It reminds me of the advents time together with my family.. I miss them these days.

Oh, I wanted to let you see what Charlie is doing these days (next to destroying all kinds of things :s ):










Aren't we all jealous?

I really enjoyed our breakfast together, dear! It was nice and cosy :)
and I'm also looking forward to you having internet in your new place! Hopefully the moving of your furniture went alright today?


Yours,

M.

cake it!

Dear S,.

a thing I have always wanted to have: a cakestand.
They are rather expensive though, and you hardly ever find beautiful ones on flea markets and in second- hand shops. Somewhere, I don't remember on which blog exactly, I read about making a cake stand yourself- this is what I did.
In the second- hand shop in my street, I found a beautiful, middle sized plate with blue ornaments. Second thing I needed: a vase with two straight ends. I had some beautiful flowery decorated vases in my hands, but eventually I chose to keep it plain. Total kost price: 75 cents.
Then I went to a Brico shop and asked what kind of glue I could use to fix them together; either a special kind of silicone or just try it with superglue. I also got the useful tip to put a small piece of wood/ other material between the two ceramic items. The only thing I found around was a piece of a very thin wooden teabox- worked like a charm! First i glued the piece of wood to the plate. Let it dry; put glue on to the thinner end of the vase and glue it as central as possible to the wood on the plate. Done! I'm really happy with the result, especially because it was my first try.









Of course, I had to try it out on the same day! I made some Carrot and Nut Cupcakes with creamcheese topping, voila:





It was a recipe I have tried for the first time and I found them SO nice!
So I want to share this recipe out of a beautiful cupcake book:

170g of finely grated , try to squeeze out the excess fluid
120g of soft butter
120g of light demarara sugar (rietsuiker/ Rohrzucker)
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
1 eating spoon of lemon juice
1 ts of cinneamon
1 ts of spicecake/ speculaas herbs
1 pinch of salt
100g of flour
half a bag of baking powder
50g of ground almonds
50g of roughly chopped walnuts or pecans
1 es of milk

How to:

Mix butter and sugar until light and cremy. Add the eggs and beat all for a while. Now add all the other ingredients to the batter, stir gently but thoroughly. Add the grated carrots as last ingredient. Fill the dough into cupcake forms with paper cups. This batter should be enough for about 12 cupcakes. Bake them in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. The should rise a bit but stay rather soft- they don!t get a crunchy top. Don't worry if there is some orange fluid when you get the cakes out- it's just carrot juice.

When they are cooled, glaze them with a cream cheese and lemon frosting:

300g of cream cheese (Philadelphia or noname)
60g of powder sugar
juice of a (small) lemon
zest of a lemon.
mix all the ingredients thoroughly and let it rest in the fridge for a while.

Decorate and enjoy!

Love, M.


ps: cats have the tendency to attack these cakes wildly. take precautions if you'd like to eat them yourself :)

Freitag

Dear S.,

friday afternoon. I'm sitting at my table, staring outside. Charlie captured my lap half an hour ago, so I'm bound to sit here. Actually I should be working for Uni, but there are too many things taking my thoughts off.
Hm. I'm discovering Roland Barthes at the moment. I really love "A lover's dicourse: fragments". Here are three small excerpts:

"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it)"


"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure. "


"Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits."

so, here's some thinking material for us :)

Ok, and here are some ongoing projects:




my future winter scarf. I should speed up knitting it, it's utterly necessary already!


tea mixture: camomile, apple and cinneamon


drying apples above our heating.. mmmh!



make-up bag for N. Her colleague singers started to laugh at her because she used to keep her make-up and toothbrush in a deepfreeze- plastic bag. Not any more ;)

My dear Frederike, I'll go on with other blury business now. And see you later tonight, for spaghetti. Maybe even at your new place?

M.

Job

zie je het staand zitten?
als je me zitten ziet zag ik het niet meer staan.

I'm sitting on a wooden cube, my left foot on a podest, my right leg crosses my left leg. my right arm leans on a chair. 15 people are staring at me. They measure my proportions with knitting pins. Her shoulders are much wider than that. I ever so slightly turn my head downwards a little and check out my shoulders. Inner sigh. I can see the canvas of an older guy right in front of me, the knees are placed right. He scratches his backhead, where his few remaining hairs are bundled into a ponytail. What on earth did he do to my breasts? The right one is quite alright, but the left one is a sad saggy flap of skin. After a few minutes, I feel the fingers of my right hand falling asleep. This is going to hurt. The next guy is a drawing disaster, but he seems to be improving, finally! oh, wait.. my feet are two misshapen chubby lumps on his canvas. No improvement. Apparently, feet are the most difficult parts to draw. In the break, after 45 minutes of immobility, I wander about and check out how the others see and draw me. One of the drawings is really good- until I realize that my face looks like that of a 50 years old woman. A little old, isn't it?, the teacher murmurs next to my ear. Yes, indeed. I quickly pass that woman's canvas who drew me from behind. No comment on her depiction of my backside. (or do I really look like this? I continue eating my chocolate bar. sugar is necessary.)
The teacher gives his students a sign, that the lesson resumes. Once again I have to drop my bathrobe, take place on the podium and sit still. 30 eyes staring at me. At times coming closer, real close, to check out my knuckels. There is good music, Tchaikovsky, oldies, balkan, Portishead, swing. Suddenly I get happy, inexplicably happy. I just sit and breathe, I am. Naked happiness. This is one of the things I really enjoy about my work, you just have to be. nothing more. But you are forced to be. You can't run away and distract yourself with anything, only with glimpses of yourself which the canvases encircling you show.
Three hours later, the lesson is over. While most of the people are already packing, sprayfixing my lumpy legs and alien ears, rolling up my saggy breasts, I still sit. Waiting for the last people to finish. Those who are not very talented leave my face blank and my limbs unfooted and unhanded. But everyone of them drew my single curl.

Love, M

Trying to be frederik

dearest m.,
i just come home from our festive activities at your place. together with l. and n.

It was a rather funny thing to do , we did things together on our own. which remindes me on a book titel " zusammen ist man weniger allein" of anna gavalda.
but sometimes i have to admit i even feel alone among the people i really care about. so some confession, today i felt inside as grey as it was outside. which makes me feel a very unlovabel person. and i get all tensed and closed, and don't enjoy my own company... which makes me feel incredible guilty to acompany other people. because usually i like to show my more embracing side.

there is stress in every little bone and fibre in my body, i have neck pain and abolutely no appetite. i don't know why...
to be honest i don't even wonder about it, because it always happens at this time in the year.

it's my master year and i start to be realy unsure if i choose the right way for me. if i should be an artist. in away it's in me and i just create things constantly in my minde. which includes the problem, my minde is this hughe space and there is just to little time in one day to do everything, besides i am not a genius in organising and i'm constantly tiered. and to be creative as a profession is extremly demanding, never a break, constantly aware that the inspiration can just disapear, never shure if ideas are strong enough, doubts; oh-so-manny doubts ...
maybe i just should have a little easy job to earn money, and do the creative stuff in my free time.

i also have the feeling again that i just want to disolve and disapear in my private little world in my head, and knowing that this is quite impossible... i want to travel to fare away countries. most people say you get closer to yourself when you travel, for me it's quite the opposite i loose myself and i enjoy that alot. losing fears, feeling strong, trying out how it would be to be a different person...

enough of ths wineness.
the message is greynes gets me, but than i have this storage of former adventures, travels adn stories ( you know i'm a story teller) which remind me of some other sides of me... like in the book " frederick of leo lionni, in which a litle mouse colectes, colours, sun rays and stories for the cold grey winter days...




conclusion, thank you that we can be alone together. and that we manage so often to remind each other of stories, sun rays, colours, smells and all.

let's hope the headaches and stomacpains will disapear soon, which will make that alot easier

kisses
s.