New Years Wish List

On familyfun.com there is this wishlist you can print. It says 2008 on top ... but oh well. I just liked the idea to ask my daughter what she wishes for 2009. So I did ... well, it was rather hard to explain the concept to a 3year old! The only straight forward answer was the one she gave to the question what she wants to learn in 2009: READ! :-) The other questions:

Places you want to go?
-somewhere where I can sing, church - I had to laugh so hard
-vacation at the beach

Weird food you want to try?
-she did say tomato - but only after prompting her, think that is just wishful thinking of mom :-)

Books you want to read?
At first she kept pointing out books she owns. It took me ages to explain to her that she is supposed to give a new book or a topic that she would like to read about. After that she answered:
-a book about her new doll, that she got for christmas - Great! Now I will have to make up a book about her doll! So another project set for 2009!

We skipped the questions about the movies and also about the silly songs to make up. My daughter seemed quite exhausted after all that thinking and answering ... well, and I was exhausted after all that explaining! :-)
But I am going to do this every year. Think it will be nice to look back in a few years ...

Sugar Cookie Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

I just found this site - and it looks so cute! It would be perfect for my daughter when she plays with her play kitchen which she got for christmas!

Sugar Cookie Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Crochet flowers - a new addiction?

I fell in love with crochet flowers. Wow, are they cute!
I started with these (sorry, german only) and since I needed some smaller ones as well, I used these.
It's very addictive! They come together so fast and you can do so many different things ... use them at clothes, at hair clips, at handbags, ....


(Sorry, in the picture I didn't weave in the ends yet since I don't know yet what I will do with them ...)

Yummy banana bread

If you don't want to eat any more christmas cookies I can recommend this banana bread! It's called two tone banana bread and it is just delicious. You can mix it together really quickly and it turned out so moist and just a really nice blend of banana and chocolate ... hmm, ...
Well, I'm off to the kitchen for another slice ... :-)

One-day-project: Tiny handbag

I was glad that I had finished all projects in time for christmas ... but of course as soon as I was done I kinda started looking - or at least thinking - of new things and ideas. Yesterday I started cutting up some red old pants to crochet a handbag out of it. Well, you really need more than one pair of pants for a handbag. The one I made is just a tiny one for my daughter - and all the "yarn" I cut from the pants is gone. But I really like the way the product looks. I especially like that it is rather sturdy and does stand up all by itself. I think I am going to cut up more stuff and I will make some kinda "boxes" for my daughters toys. And I really would like to make a handbag for me too ... but I think I am going to practice a bit more first. And I have to make up my mind about a pattern. There are so many ... I simply can't decide at the moment. Also I really like the possibilities of embellishment. To the tiny handbag I added just one crochet flower. But there are endless possibilities ....

Play kitchen and bandana for teddy

So just in time for christmas eve we finished the really big present for my daughter - the play kitchen. I am very proud about how it turned out and I was a bit scared that my daughter wouldn't like it a lot ... but she loved it. Now she is cooking - like daddy - all the time.


As you notice the "kitchen" is made out of a very old bedside cupboard. We painted it and turned it into an oven with knobs and a see-trough oven door. (I am especially proud of that one!) Inside there are "baking trays" you can pull out. On one side we - or rather my husband :-) - put shelves. On the other side we were going to put some hooks, but couldn't buy them in time since the store was out of them. So we will put them on later.




I also really love the colour combination. I don't know whether you can tell from the photos - it's yellow and a bright yellow. The knobs in the front (you can actually turn them) and the top are white. I was thinking about painting it blue and yellow. But I am glad I did it in yellow only.

Other than that ... I had made a tiny little bandana for the teddy of my daughter. Maybe the fabric looks familiar? :-) I used the same fabric as I used for the dress that I made for her. Now they can wear partner look! :-)



And of course teddy got his present in his own little packet - on the gift tag was his photo. (The bigger present was for her baby boy doll.)

Wishing everyone a ...

Gift wrapping and gift tags

When it comes to wrapping my gifts it's always the same. I realize way too late that I don't have any nice wrapping paper. :-( I do care alot for the wrappin of presents. Somehow I think it's part of the present ... and I myself like to get a very nicely wrapped present. So foregoing the wrapping is just not an option.
When I realized that I didn't have any christmas themed or plain coloured wrapping paper (just flowers and stuff) I stumbled across some postings in the blog "Little dishy". She writes about how to make gift wrap from glossy magazines and about how to make gift bags. I was saved! I had a free subscription for a fashion magazine and since I don't care too much about the magazines but do like some of the pictures ... that was a perfect idea. So I started cutting out pages! What I realized while wrapping presents - this idea does not work too well for kids! There are no pictures in glossy magazines that kids would care for ... and I had a few presents to wrap for kids. In the end I used an old clothing catalogue with childrens' pictures to make a gift bag and some brown paper (with many embellishments) to wrap the rest. Another thing I learned while doing this! You really should only use the very thick glossy pages for gift bags! I made a really cute one - but out of the regular magazine pages. It is very thin and if you put a gift in there that is not VERY lightweight it's about to rip apart.
But the thinner pages work fine as regular wrapping paper. And I think this year my husband really liked how his presents were wrapped. ;-) (I guess that usually he doesn't care too much about the wrapping.)


In the last years I didn't really bother using gift tags. In a family of three including a child that is three (who isn't giving presents yet) you just know anyway which presents are for you. Either you know it - or it's for you. :-)
But this year I
While searching the internet I found quite a few really nice gift tags you can print for free. But my absolute favourite are these:

Martha Stewart
Angry chicken

As you might notice - I am rather going for the less traditional stuff when it comes to gift wrapping and gift tags ... ;-)

Crazy cookies!

A few days ago I realized that I had to do something. The plan was to decorate our tree - as every year - with straw stars and cookies. Problem: all cookies I had made so far had vanished into thin air! Well, either I had to go shopping for ornaments or craft some or bake more cookies. I decided to go with the baking.
(Shopping right now seems the worst to me. It seems half the world is stuck at shopping centres!)
Well, so I made up two batches of dough and started baking yesterday night. One was a sugar cookie dough - and man, this dough drove me crazy!!! I have baked MANY cookies over the last years but never have I come across a cookie baking as fast as this one! You turn your back and it's done! Of course I effectively ruined the first batch by trying to do two things at once. (Blogging and baking does not mix!!!) After that I thought I had learned my lesson. I cut out cookies and closely watched the ones in the oven. But they still were done so fast that I couldn't keep up with the cookie-cutting! And I am not slow! Wow, after I was done with all the dough I felt like after a workout. (And I also looked like after one - all sweaty and red head and stuff.)


Sugar cookie angels before baking - still looking all innocent! Little bastards! (Here's the recipe I used.)


Spicy ginger cookies after baking (You can find the recipe I used here):

Now I just have to decorate them ... Hopefully they will stay at the tree once I hang them up. The ones I made last year got really soft and fell of the tree just after a few days. Our dog REALLY liked that - and it took us a while to figure out how she was able to get the cookies off the tree ... ;-)
If anybody has a recipe that is really good to cut out ornaments that are supposed to hang a while at the tree - I would really appreciate tipps, recipes, suggestions ... :-)

Christmas card factory ;-)

This year I even mailed out christmas cards. I sent exactly FOUR cards! :-) Well, regarding the fact that I didn't send any for the last YEARS that is already quite a big improvement!
And to make the cards extra special I wanted my daughter to participate. But since I know that her attention span can be really short when it comes to crafting ... I was wrecking my brain for a good idea. On some websites I saw some really simplistic cards that I liked a lot. So I thought, maybe we will do something really "simple". Not a lot decoration ... just something "christmassy". Finally I came up with the idea of a christmas tree. It has an easy shape so she can even cut it out herself.

(I still ended up cutting most of the shapes myself because she just didn't feel like crafting at the moment and I really had to finish the cards to get them in the mail. I used some zig-zag shaped scissors - but I think I like the one my daughter did with the straight scissors even better.)

But the best thing about the project - my daughter got to decorate the trees with stickers!!! And she loves stickers! We used simple round stickers in different colours for the ornaments. The good thing - you really can't do anything wrong as long as the stickers are placed ON the tree. :-) No matter how many or how few ornaments - it always looks cute! For the top of the tree we used a star-shaped hole-punch and glued the punched out bit to the top. But you could easily use stickers as well. I just didn't have any star stickers lying around ...
Finally we just glued the whole tree to some fancy cards and DONE!

Sweet christmas trees

When I saw this cute idea here I just had to try this with my daughter. We used just frosting made of icing sugar, a bit of lemon juice and water (and of course green food colouring as you might notice). It is more like a thick liquid therefore you don't get those nice swirly bits ... (hope you know what I mean - but I think you will know once you look at the other pictures in the link above). But I think it still looks quite cute. I like the colour! It looks really poisonous! ;-)


Unfortunately I didn't think ahead when we were doing it ... I planned to take the tree and put it on a white plate or something to really show it off. But once the icing dried it was really stuck to the plate! I have to really carefully trie to get it off the plate and put it somewhere else. Maybe my daugther will feel crafty and make a few more ... and we can have a little wood ...
But up until now everytime I brought up the tree all she was asking was "Can I eat it NOW?" *hmpf*

By the way, this is what we did last year:


And yes, it is a frog living in the house. Don't ask!

Finished first dress

I finally finished the dress. My first dress. The first wearable thing I sewed. Well, I suppose for the first real thing I sewed it turned out alright! And I am very proud of myself! :-)

But there is alot to improve. Luckily - for me - in the photo it lookes much better and you don't see the not straight seems too much ... :-)
Also I did make a mistake on the backside therefore the slit in the dress is not exactly in the middle. But I couldn't bring myself to undo the whole seam again ... and just left it. Of course the button and buttonhole (I sewed a buttonhole!!!)  DID turn out to be completely unnecessary. My daughter can put the dress on and off without opening it! Well ... would have saved me ALOT of work and pain if I would have known that before. But on the plus-side - I did learn how to sew a buttonhole!!! *still-so-proud*

A few other things I learned while sewing this first piece:

You can actually leave in pins WHILE sewing if you put them in the fabric vertically to your seam. Everybody who KNOWS sewing will laugh at me for not knowing. But well - how was I to know!
(Maybe I should have read an introductory book before I started after all? *wondering*) Unfortunately I figured this out with the last seam I did! Would have made my sewing that much easier ... but next time I know.

*

Using striped fabric when sewing for the first time is not necessarily a very clever choice!!! It can help you to sew straight lines - as long as you are sewing in the same direction as the stripes - and as long as you are able to actually follow the stripes. Other than that - it will just really show of the seams that are NOT straight! Great! :-/

*

If the instruction tells you something you should do - JUST DO IT! Even if you don't understand WHY you have to do it that way and think it would be better another way!
Of course at some point I did not unterstand the instruction - I did not do exactly what it said - and I figured out LATER why the instruction was right and I was wrong! :-/

*

It is definitely worth alot to invest in a very good marker to mark your pattern on the fabric. I bought some really crap one. (Just didn't know it would not be good.) Makes sewing life an absolute hell! Therefore next step before I sew anything else - find a really good fabric marker!!!

*

Oh - and of course there is kind of a "Murphys law" of sewing:
"No matter how often you practice sewing a buttonhole on a scrap bit of fabric and it turns out totally fine - as soon as you do it on the actual garment you're making, it will DEFINITELY be too small!"
I had to use some real force to push the button through the hole! Lucky me, that we won't have to open the button again!

Here a few more pictures:




I know that the photo above is out of focus. But it shows the nice fall of the dress from the side ... so I still included it.

Well, my daughter had alot fun modelling ... until she slipped in the muddy grass and fell. Nothing really happened but she didn't want to model anymore and I wasn't allowed to take any more photos.

Salt dough

Here the results of the salt dough craft yesterday. These are the ones my daughter made. They were supposed to be christmas ornaments - that's why they have holes. But my daughter decided after collecting them into her play shop box that her dolls needed cookies to eat ... and carried them away into her room ... I think I might not see the "cookies" again for a while ... :-)
She also didn't like to colour them, which I found strange since she usually loves to colour things. Her explanation: "The dolls won't like to eat paint."
Well, she's got a point!


These are the ones I did. They all turned out very brown. That's because I was very impatient and turned the heat of the oven up ... But I like them that way! I think I might not even colour them. Some of them are lighter than others. That's because to some of the dough I added cinnamon and it makes the dough look darker. It also makes your kitchen smell REALLY nice while baking the stuff (and it bakes for a WHILE!!!!). When my husband got home last night his first question was "What's for dessert? Smells like pie or something." :-)

Just too cute

I bought a thick yellow bandana for my daughter to wear around her neck in winter. Obviously she thought somebody else needed it more! *laugh*

Cookie cutters and play dough

Yesterday I finally got the chance to go shopping for cookie cutters. For my last birthday (already a while ago) I got a gift certificate for a baking store. I LOVED the gift and the store. When I went there the first time I was so overwhelmed that I didn't buy anything at all but just looked at everything and took a catalogue home. :-) At home I sat down with a nice cup of tea and enjoyed some really nice time with myself and the catalogue! How easy it can be to enjoy oneself! :-)
So yesterday I finally went there again to actually buy something. Because of the gift voucher I could spend quite some money without feeling guilty. It was so great!!!
In the picture you can see the cutters I got. I especially LOVE the tea pots in different sizes. Yes, I know I am a bit weird. ;-)

Today me and my daughter tried the cutters with play dough. I had the dough sitting in the fridge already for a few weeks. We had already started to make some christmas ornaments with it. But we didn't use up all the dough.
(That's a good thing - it keeps for a few weeks in the fridge. So if your kid get's tired of it you can just put it away and get it out any other time.)



I really love making play dough with my daughter. It is so much fun, easy to make ... and sometimes you even end up with something cute! :-)
When checking the internet I realized that there are quite a few different recipes for play dough. The one I use is called "salt dough" in German and it is not cooked. So you can easily mix it together in just a matter of minutes.

After you form the dough or cut out cookies you can bake (or rather drie) it in the oven. It takes quite a while!!! because you shouldn't put the temperatur too high. (If you do, it will make your things kinda burst open.) The drying process makes it hard and you can either hang it somewhere or play with it or whatever ....

You can also put spices or food colouring in the dough to colour it or make it fragrant. I often put cinnamon in - it makes the dough look a bit darker.

The oranments we made today (and a while ago) are in the oven right. Am really curious how they will turn out!!!


Meanwhile, here are a few pictures of "food" I made for my daughter's play shop a while ago:


Of course after baking it you can colour it also - which I did with the things in the last picture.

Finished the rag rug!

One day without internet and I am almost dead!
Yesterday and today (until the afternoon) we did not have a phone line or internet connection! Horrible! Didn't mind about the phone line ... but INTERNET!!! How can one live without internet!? I almost didn't know what to do! :-) I definitely should think about a withdrawal concept ...



But I finished the rag rug - finally! I think it has a nice size now. I could have made it even bigger - but I was afraid that it wouldn't fit in the washing machine anymore. (I am actually not too sure whether the size now will still fit into my washing machine ...)

Third of Advent ... and happy again :-)

Since we weren't home almost the whole weekend I didn't really get to do continue any of my projects ... But tonight I worked at least a tiny bit on the dress that I was so frustrated about earlier. I got help from the designer of the pattern a couple days ago and had finally managed to finish the backside of the dress. And tonight I sewed my first button whole!!! YEAH! :-) It wasn't as hard as I thought. I had a bit of trouble since the fabric was very thick and my sewing machine didn't seem to handle this too well ... I have to figure out if I did something wrong or if my sewing machine can't handle fabric that's too thick ... But other than that, I am just glad that it worked out and I didn't ruin the dress. :-)

Snow!

This morning when I woke up - or rather got woken up - the world outside was white! So great!

Today I painted some more buttons. :-) And even remembered to take pictures:

This is the one I started to do yesterday. Had to try to make it a bit more fancy. :-) But realized that this button will be too large for the dress I am making. Maybe I will just use it as an embellishment or something ...


So I had to do some smaller ones as well. I simply put them on little wooden sticks so I could easily paint them. The sticks I put in some plant (of course in the earth of the plant - not the plant itself!) so it could dry - therefore the green leaves in some of the pictures.

Help ... too many projects ...

Today I did so many different things that at some point I got really confused ...

Well, I wanted to continue working on the little dress I am making for my daughter. But I had some troubles figuring out the pattern and what to do next ... So I took a break and made a button! Yes, I MADE a button. Well, to be correct, I did not REALLY MAKE one. Somewhere on the net I saw this neat idea to make buttons out of modelling clay. And I was searching the net for ideas ... when I found another page, where someone painted old buttons with nailpolish!

Since I don't have any modelling clay yet, but I do own a large box of old and rather boring buttons (from my grandmom) and some bottles of rather colourful nail polish that I probably will never wear again ;-) the project was just perfect! So I started right away! I will post a picture when it is finished.

I also made a key chain for my best friend out of felt. After all the felt sewing for the advent calendar I still had so much felt left ... and I needed just some little tiny thing to complete the present I bought! I think it turned out really nice.

I am not entirely happy with the way I fixed the little round things to the key chain. I simply used some green wool. Maybe some kind of ribbon would have been better ... but I simply didn't have one in a matching colour ... Well, that's the drawback with last-minute-projects: you have to work with what you've got! :-)

And the biggest project: I am making a play kitchen for my daughter for christmas out of an old bedside cupboard. I started painting the cupboard today and realized that it will take a while until this one is finished .... hope I will get done before christmas!

Well, I did plan on making some more cookies and glaze the ones I made ... But postponed that until later ...

Very frustrating first try at sewing ...

Well, a few days ago I finally started sewing something "real". I got this cute ebook "Empirchen" from Farbenmix to make a top for my daugther. Well, I got along quite fine considering that I had never made something as elaborate as this ... but now I am stuck! I simply can't figure out how to sew the backside of the top ...
Well, very frustrating day!!!

But one good thing happened today. My husband brought a candy apple home for me. Love those apples! :-)

Christmas cookies

Of course we had to make more cookies ...



We made christmas balls (first picture) and cinnamon wreaths (the other pictures).


For some reason quite a lot of the candy never actually ended up ON the cookies but just vanished on it's way from the bowl to the cookies. Wonder where it went ....


That happens when you try to take a picture of colourful candy and don't focus right ... I kinda like the picture! :-D

Second of Advent

Of course we lit the second candle on our advent wreath. And I took some more pictures of our holiday decoration. :-)



This one was acutually supposed to become an advent calendar - with little presents hanging from it. But I just put it up with tiny ginger bread and candy canes. I was thinking of hanging little pine cones or straw stars or something as well ... But didn't have the time ... so it stayed like that and I really like it.
(I think in reality it looks prettier than in the picutre. I had to take the photo with flash ... but it didn't turn out too great ...)

Christmas decoration for "moms in a hurry"! :-) Take a wooden wreath, put straw stars on it, hang a little christmas toy, stuffed animal, cookie cutter or just anything christmassy ;-) ... and you're done! :-)

My daughter also made a christmas decoration herself. I was quite impressed - she cut out the tree all by herself!

And my daughter enjoyed very much to decorate the window in her room with star stickers! I think it looks quite cute ...


In the living room we decorated the glass door to the garden with snowflakes - they do not really "stick" but just kinda clinge to the window ... so they can be rearranged as often as you like - which my daughter of course does a lot! :-)



Yesterday was the day of St. Nicolaus. To "celebrate" we had baking apples. I usually never really liked them that much. But the ones we made yesterday were great. We just put almond paste, brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg inside some apples and but them in a baking dish with some water. Baked them for about half an hour ... and they were so yummy!!!
(Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture.)