Postcards 2

As you know I'm a postcrosser. Here are some cards I received the last weeks:

From the United Kingdom

From the USA

From the Netherlands

From the Netherlands

From Germany and my favorite!

Also from Germany

I just found out that there also exists a community of bookcrossers!

www.bookcrossing.de

www.bookcrossing.com

And of course the link to the postcrossing website:

www.postcrossing.com

Christina

How to make your sister happy (or: sew a skirt)

My sister bought some cloth and asked me to sew her skirts. 
When she buys skirts they don't fit in the length most of the time.
I made a pattern out of tracing paper. I measured around her hips and the length the skirt will have. I added 3 cm (about 1 inch) to the hem and 1 cm (about 1/2 inch) to the waistband.
I divided the pattern into half.

But first of all I serged the cloth and washed it. 

After ironing the cloth I folded it and pined the pattern on it. Then I cut the cloth.














I pined and sew the long sides together.























Here I serged the seam.
















          I ironed the hem twice and sewed it.

Because my sister hates zippers I took an elastic band and pricked a safety pin trough. 

   With the safety pin I put the elastic band through the waistband. I fixed the band.

Voilà! 

Christina

It's baking time ... again

Who doesn't love muffins? Jawohl, no one! So far, I've only tried sweet muffins or cupcakes. So I figured, it's about time to make some savory muffins. To be honest I was kinda lazy, instead of grabbing my muffin recipe book from the top shelf, I just googled "herzhafte muffins" which simply translates to savory muffins. Lazy as I am (I'm sorry, I'm working on that :) I picked the first entry which directed me to the following recipe. 

I altered the recipe a bit and only used the basic stuff for the dough: 

• 80ml olive oil 
• 250 g curd cheese (Quark in German) 
• 75 ml milk
• 300g flour
• 2 eggs (medium sized)
• 300 g cherry tomatoes
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 125 g diced ham
• 1/2 piece of mozzarella

Preheat your oven (200°). Cut the tomatoes and the mozzarella. Mix oil, milk, eggs and curd cheese. Add the flour, mixed with the baking powder. After that, add the diced ham and the pieces of tomatoes and mozzarella (I kept some ham, tomatoes and mozzarella for the topping). Don't forget to flavor the dough. Mix mix mix.

Put the dough into a baking pan and add the leftover ham, tomatoes and mozzarella on top. Bake for about 25-30 minutes.

Tada!

 My

 

my polaroid and me... part 2

A couple of posts ago I was whining about how my polaroid decided to put ugly brown stains on each photograph. So yesterday I gave it another shot :) and took two more pictures. 

As I predicted: huuuge brown stain

The second one..

No stain? What's happening?

 I do not have the slightest idea why the second photo is stain-free. I guess my polaroid just does what it wants. We'll see how the last photo will turn out...

Some pictures...

Made with "PhotoCollage".

It's salad time!

I've got a new love and his name is aubergine/eggplant:

There are so many yummy things you can do with this delicious vegetable, but since the last couple of days have been super hot I decided to turn this little dude into a délicieuse salad. 

A Noodle-Aubergine/Eggplant-Zucchini/Courgette-Tomato-Mozzarella-Salad

 (this name is definately too long)

 Cook noodles, cut zucchini/courgette and aubergine/eggplant. Fry and flavour them.

Cut tomatoes and mozzarella, put everything into a bowl. I added two tablespoons of Miracel Whip (yes, it's spelled Miracel and not miracle... Germans :D... Miracel Whip is similar to salad cream, but I prefer the taste of Whip.) a tablespoon of vinegar, salt, pepper, rosemary and a little bit of chili powder.

Put it in the fridge to cool down and enjoy.

yum yum

Family Party

Every year my family is having a family party at the "Bienwaldmühle". 

Here you can see the signboard of the restaurant. There are acutally a lot of those signboards in the region where we are living. 
The "Bienwald" is a forest in the south of the palatinate, it borders on France. 

Just a view walking minutes from here is a small river called "Lauter". When you walk through the river you are in France! So I can say I was in France today! Yeah!

It was sooo hot I decided to put my feet into the chilly river! Very refreshing! :D

These signs are for hikers or cyclists. 
By the way... do you know the sport cyclists? The ones in sport tights, futuristic helmets and sunglasses? The ones who drive on the roads and constrain the car drivers? Yes, it was the perfect day for them... 

Can you see the big lintels? I love these houses with window shutters and lintels made out of sandstone! You can see a lot of them along the German Wine Street.

And of course a pic of an animal! Isn't the goat house cute?! I love animals!













Have a nice day!
Christina

German birthday party

This is our friend who had her birthday party.

We were in her parent's "Schrebergarten" (garden plot?). In every city there are those gardens. You can rent it and plant vegetable and fruits there, most of the time there is a little house on the plot or you can build one. A lot of families use this opportunity to have a green space outside the city. Of course there are a lot of rules how you can arrange your garden. 

Actually I don't like "Bowle" (punch) but this one was so delicious! Yes, it's orange!


Ingredients:

• 1 bottle sparkling Wine (in english you would say "champaign" but that is not quite correct)
• 1 bottle white wine
• 1 or 2 bottles orange juice
• some tangerine slices
• 1 bottle Aperol

Great stuff!

I think a very german salad is the potato salad.

At almost every party I've been there was at least one potato salad or even more.

And of course a lot of times there is the Caprese!

This time I missed the Noodle Salad!

Well, I didn't miss it, because I hate it! :)

There are a lot of varieties, but this one I saw a lot of times:

noodles

peas

sliced pork sausage 

pickles

and something like a mayonnaise dressing

Noodle Salad is also very german I think. Or do you have such a salad in your country?

Chris

 

organ donation

Don't worry, this has nothing to do with the ongoing organ donation scandal in Germany. As Chris mentioned in her latest post, last weekend our friend, who happens to be a medical student, celebrated her birthday. While Chris was baking the 'hearty' muffins, she came up with a great gift idea: a organ mobile :D

I used these stars and attached them along with some pearls on a nylon string, drew some organs, cut them out and glued them to the ends of the nylon strings. After that I knotted the single strings with stars and organs to a metallic hoop.
My

It's baking time again!

Our friend Tina had her birthday party today. So I tried some new stuff baking:
cake pops and heart shaped cupcakes, shaped like real hearts. Why organ cupcakes?
Well, our friend Tina is studying medical science and I found a real cool blog with this .

Isn't that great?! So I tried my best. 




First I baked some muffins. Any muffin recipe will be ok. 

















Then I did some butter cream. I should have colored it red...dark red.
Well, I covered the muffins with the butter cream







I made rolls out of almond paste (marzipan) and stuck a pair of them in each cup cake. 
In the end I blended some blueberries and filled up the two rolls with the sauce.
They should look like the ones from Barbara Jo but...

Well, they look a bit messy.















But we had fun with them. Butter cream is a bit too sweet for the german tongue so three of us shared one heart. 






I also tried to bake my first cake pops. They are still not that famous in Germany so it was a nice surprise for all the party guest to see and eat them. Cake pops are really great but a lot of work to do!

First I baked a yellow cake and crumbled it. 

I added cream cheese until I could form balls which wouldn't fall apart.

 I formed them too big in the first time. I think to form them to the size of small walnuts is the best.

Then I took wooden sticks, put them into melted chocolate and skewered the cake balls.

I covered them with chocolate and sprinkled them.

They were really delicious!

Nice recipe from abroad!

Christina

lucky stars!

I've come across those cute little stars somewhere on the internet a couple of years ago (can't remember where though..) They seem to be quite popular in Asian culture.

 They are actually easy to make. All you need is a paper strip (any paper will do, it shouldn't be too thin/thick, though). I used some old Christmas wrapping paper. The width of the strip depends on how big you want your star to turn out. The length can vary between 15-20 cm (about 6 to 8 inches.. hope that's correct :)

1. Make some kind of knot at one end of the strip.
2. Press the paper so that it has the form of a pentagon.
3. Tug the small end of the strip into that pentagon.
4. Now you should have a pentagon with a longer strip sticking out on one side :)

5. Wrap the remaining paper around the pentagon ...
6. Until there is only a small end left.
7. Again, tug the end into the folds of the pentagon.
8. Now, use your thumb and index finger to puff up the star, by squeezing the corner.
9. Squeeze all five corners. 

Most people create a whole bunch of those stars, put them in a tiny bottle and give them away as lucky charms. I attached them to a mobile that I am working on right now.

starry starry night

My day in pictures

I was at my parents today. A hedgehog visited us.

My mother is feeding the hedgehogs. She started with one and now four are coming by for dinner every evening. Soon my mother will have a small zoo in her garden, I think. Yay! "Hedgehog" in german is "Igel". 
Chris