Dresden!

Dear S.,

Dresden!! I loved it! These few days away from any of my homes were just great! We spent days of bright sun and blue skies strolling around, going to the Opera, drinking coffee and tea, sitting at G.'s kitchen table, laughing a lot, singing "What's up" at three in the morning. hmmmm, I enjoyed to live an utterly different kind of life for a few days.
Most astonishing thing about the city: it is so spacious. you don't get the feeling of being narrowed in by the buildings, the streets are broad and the many squares are vast. And so on. Summed up: We all had a great time.
some impressions, voila:


skyline! amazing sunsets at the Elbe every single day.


breakfast! fantastic german bread with cheese :)


Lovely A. at the kitchentable, enjoying heart tea


Some of the heart teabags we made


Ha! This is especially for you: A picture of one of the postcards in the kitchen. love it :)




Spread the love at the Elbe! After A.'s stop-motion-film project.



holidays are good for me. On monday, the second semester starts. My feelings towards it are scceptical- as most of the time when something new is ahead. What I wish for: less of "same-same" in our lives. And an atelier :p.
Are you in?

Love,
M.

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

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.

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 :)