Whoopsie Daisy!

Hi, Y'all!

Is everything fine on your end? Here in Germany we were pretty much gone with the wind, as we were haunted by not only one or two, but three hurricanes the last few days. Thankfully nothing major happened to our home, and I am relieved. 

When I remember correctly, I already told you that I wanted to try out stitching. Basics are well-known, I guess, but I ordered a bundle of stitching frames and a colorful variety of stitching threads which I now put to good use. I had leftovers from a cream-colored bedsheet which I cut into 30 cm squares and wanted to turn them into napkins. I hemmed them and was very proud of my pretty decent mitered corners. Then I wanted to embellish them with different flowers, so that each napkin is unique but all of them together would form a pretty flower garden. Good plan, but then I got totally carried away and the embroidery turned much larger than planned...

As you can see, the embroidery takes too much space of the napkin, and tbh, 30 cm squares fit better for a hanky than a napkin. But let's have a closer look at the different flowers: 

I started with white daisies and yellow buttercups - at least in the beginning they were yellow. I then changed them into white to differentiate better between the white and the yellow napkin. 

Then I made some red roses with a woven stitch - it's far too complicated to explain that stitch on the go - if you're interested you will find tutorials galore on YT for example. 

Next in line were some lavenders in different shades of violet: 

After that I made some grape hyacinths in pink with dozens of tiny little knots one next to each other. That makes it 3D but in fact impractical as a napkin. 

I then embroidered some corn flowers in blue: 

And last but not least dandelions in yellow:

I like all of these embroidered pieces very much, but as mentioned before, they do not make good napkins. Due to their size, place mats or doilies are out of the question. BTW: I hate doilies! I mean, I could put them into a frame and hang them on the wall, or I could integrate them into a quilt but then I wouldn't need hemming and the mitered corners. But that should be no problem. Another option would be to frame them all together in one picture - in two rows of three, that might look nice. You see, I am pretty indecisive right now. Any ideas? 

Stay safe, y'all!

Hi and hello!

Hi, Y'all!

When I take Heinrich on his first walk of the day nowadays, it's getting a little bit lighter every day - isn't that gorgeous? After weeks and weeks of rain that is a hint of spring which I highly appreciate. 

And regarding morning routines: I just wanted to drop that I reached half-time of my 60-day habit changing challenge! My results so far: 7 times per week pure water instead of syrup, 6 times per week Yoga directly after getting up and 5 times per week I practiced French. If you consider that you stick to new year's resolutions for 21 days in average, I'm on a good way on my day 31 now. Let's see where that leads me...

Besides, I can show you two little things I created in my sewing room: Our neighbors suffer from infiltration! And I don't mean politically :-) Although their apartment door was already repaired, they still have air coming through underneath the door. But I don't want them to freeze so I took a pair of jeans, chopped one leg off and created such a stopper thingy: 

Slightly embellished with some trimming and a leather patch and accompanied by another jeans leg, this time in black. I filled the whole thing with fabric scraps I couldn't use otherwise. Therefore, it is washable and pretty heavy - exactly what you want in a draft preventer.

For breakfast we usually have cereals and a smoothie. Often I drink it later and therefore take it with me into my office. But the water condensation always causes these annoying stains on my desk, thus I had to sew a coaster or mug rug. Took some softshell fabric I used for my rain jacket and used the grey fleece as outside and the black water repellent as inside. Looks pretty nice and matches my office color scheme. Maybe I'll sew some more; a monstera leaf for instance may look very nice, too.  

And as we are talking about nice and pretty: Before Christmas I ordered some black metal rings to adorn them with salt dough houses and to put them in my windows. Unfortunately, I didn't like the finished product at all! Therefore I stashed them in my ufo box. But then my sister told me they're going to move, and I thought this is the perfect opportunity to make them a door wreath. Please adore the prototype currently hanging on our door:  

As my sister gave me her stitching ring she used for her first attempt in cross stitching decades ago, it deemed appropriate to use such a device for her wreath. Plus, I could pinch some vegan leather in between the two wooden frames. That didn't work for my metal ring, obviously. My sister's wreath is slightly smaller than mine, but equally pretty: 

I try to organize our menu by season. Therefore, we have lots of squash and cabbage right now. But always the same old same old gets boring quickly, and so I tried two new recipes for Savoy cabbage. First a strudel with puff pastry, savoy cabbage and minced beef which we completed with some bechamel and white wine:

And then we had pasta with cabbage and walnuts - completely different: Cook pasta and cabbage and then mix some of the cooking liquid with walnuts and parmesan cheese in a blender to get a creamy sauce. Fold in the cabbage and pour it over the pasta. Top it off with some chopped walnuts and some grated parmesan and you're done. Very yummy!

And last but not least a pro-tip for bottles: If you use such devices as SodaStream, you will probably know my battle with keeping the bottles clean. Even when you use a bottle brush it might get difficult. Usually I take some rice to clean my water bottles: uncooked rice, water and a few drops of laundry detergent into my bottle and shake it, baby, shake it! Perfect result, but the rice is doomed afterwards. But my favourite drugstore recently added stainless steel cleaning pearls. Same principle as the rice, but no waste. You can use them for thermos jugs or vases, too - I like very much!  

Stay squeaky clean, safe and sane :-)))

Cookie Monster!

Hi, Y'all,

The weather outside is frightful (ok, I'll stop here, time for carols is definitely over, but you get the picture). Our doggie wants to stay in his bed the whole day, and I feel him, but can't help it. But to make life sweeter, cookies were invented. Well, in Germany cookies don't categorize as dessert like in the US for example, they are a treat mostly for Christmas time - at least the homemade ones. But in my opinion (and in the opinion of that large coffee chain with the white on green logo) cookies can and should be enjoyed throughout the whole year. Although I must say, I prefer my small cookies which disappear with one or two bites over these palm-size cookies.

Therefore please find something to make your mouth watery...

Here are - arranged with love and atmosphere - my usual suspects, e.g. vanilla crescents and hazelnut macaroons (detailed pictures below). 

Furthermore, I made Nutella cookies aka reindeer noses for all neighbors in the house. Of course, there was one cookie with red frosting in each parcel :-) 

They were packaged in TetraPak with a crocheted border. That way you could - if you wanted to - reuse the former milk cartons as pencil holder, storage container or flower pot.

Besides these staples I always want to try something new. This time I chose orange clouds and jam stripes. The orange clouds turned out beautiful and were delish, but I wished the orange flavor to be more prominient. S'pose to take more orange zest next time. 

The jam stripes are ideal for batch production :-) As you might know, my cookie decorating patience is strictly limited. To embellish single cookies devotedly with sprinkles, frosting and whatnot - that's not my thing. They have to taste good, look pretty and have to be done quickly and easily at the same time. Therefore, I had to try them. At first you make long flat rolls with your dough and place them on your baking sheet. Then carve a channel into the dough and fill it with jam (I took the second last jar of my homemade grape jelly). 

Bake that and spritz some melted chocolate on top. In theory you could leave that step out, but I like the cracking chocolate when you take a bite. And the combination of fruit and chocolate is a match made in heaven!

Afterwards cut the strands into stripes and you are done! And for me personally, that is the perfect dough/jam ratio - there are other cookies where you glue two layers of dough together with jam, and most of the time, there is not enough jam in between for my liking. But if you take more jam, it spills out. These cookies are the perfect workaround for that problem! 

And while baking, I have to add the last cake I made. Hubby and I binged some Netflix baking shows lately, and an Italian cheesecake left us highly interested. I know the German and American cheesecakes but Italien was new - so I had to test it. There are varieties galore but I opted for a version with amarettini cookies, apricots and quark/curd cheese (thus no ricotta or other form of cream cheese). Was pretty awesome! 

With that said - enjoy your time and cookies!!!