Happy New Year!

Hi my Lovelies,

wish you all a very happy new decade!

I hope you arrived safe and sound in 2020, made some sensible new year's resolutions (or none at all) and did use the time wisely and stress-free.

Well, let me begin with a show and tell of my handmade Christmas gifts and the holidays. Attention - could be picture-heavy :-)

First the culinary part - after my friend played the guinea pig I made some more chocolate - ginger cookie truffles and wrapped them in tetra pak bags:

Then I mixed matching ginger cookie liqueur (main ingredients besides the cookies were vodka and heavy cream - no need to tell more, I guess…) 

Then some fruit in rum - some drink it pure but I prefer it over vanilla icecream or with some bubbly… 

A few tetra pak cartons I used as molds for chocolate - here I took white and dark chocolate and topped it with cranberries and nut brittle: 

My little sister asked for some animal hats for carnival, and here we go (unfortunately the picture of the owl hat went missing, thus only frog, moose and giraffe): 

And as I had so many sticks left over from our tree cutting action I made some wall hangings with Scandinavian fabric stars, fabric trees with wooden beads, cotton-filled hearts and painted walnuts: 

Two kinds of napkins, first with a snowflake cotton fabric and pretty neat mitered corners: 

And secondly some with a sewn monogram in different thread colors. They are rectangular and pretty big so you can use them as place mats as well: 

I also tried a quilting technique called "cathedral window" - I used it for some hot pads (without picture) and a pillow cover: 

For the two girls Marie and Sarah who are known for traveling a lot I made some travel jewelry bags but I am sure you can use it for various purposes: 

As far as I know everything was delivered in time - thanks to DHL, and was well received. My pleasure!!!

On first Christmas day we had a dear visitor and therefore, I tried very hard to lay a nice table setting:

And of course I had to do some more decorations with sticks (and pleated paper ornaments) :

On Christmas Eve we traditionally had potato salad and wieners and then we had Coq au Vin on Christmas Day. But the dogs were in for a treat, as well: They had their kibble topped with loads of wieners, but they inhaled it so fast, there are only fragments left on the pictures: 

Thanks to Marie's birthday gift we discovered a drink called Moscow Mule and we even learnt something: 
a) It tastes better from copper mugs than from glass 
b) it stays longer cool and 
c) ginger beer is different from ginger ale - and much more spicy! 
But so tasty!!!

The weekend after Christmas the girls and Sarah's boyfriend came to visit. Precautionary I baked some spelt bread and Irish rolls but we also had Krautpizza (pizza dough, no tomato sauce but minced meat, cabbage and cheese) and spareribs in the oven because we don't have a smoker.  And then we spent some reasonable amount of time with the tabletop version of World of Warcraft.

And in spirit of the holidays I bought some jam with cinnamon, apples and plums but somehow we didn't fancy it on the breakfast rolls. Therefore I quickly turned it into a cake filling. I made a chocolate sponge with cinnamon and then it matched perfectly with some curd cheese I used for the filling as well. 

But when New Year's Eve was over I got bored with all the Christmas decorations. Usually I leave them until Twelfth Day (January 6) but I wanted to re-organize all the stuff for the longest time so I dived right into it. There were times when it looked like if Hobby Lobby puked in our living room but in the meantime everything is properly stored away.

In the heat of the action I also deep cleaned some of my drawers and cupboards but when it came to filing all our documents my energy got lost instantly... 

But it will come back, definitely!