Making Christmas

 I have been trying to figure out how am I going to pack presents for my friends.  I found almost a year ago in a thrift store little photos of famous artists from the fifties, which someone collected from cigarette packs.  They are so charming I had to take them.  They have been waiting since then to be used.  I added some paper for cakes in silver and also chocolate hearts.  This will be my standard this year.

I also made my advent decoration.  This time with moss, some glass snow and little figurines from the model train shop.  I bought kids playing in the snow and with their sledges. But outside the snow still does not come...

The Winter ...

 

...is here and I finally get to knitt.   I made this cowl for myself with a wonderful cashmere tweed, handmade, that I could not resist.  It comes from the godess hands of Rita.  

I decided I need something to put on that is fast and does not bother with knots and stuff inside my jacket.  I realized that I can also use it as a very cute headband.  

The next project will be something involving this tresure of zippers I found in the thrift store.

The days are gray and cold and it seems to me that we need some color here.  So much that the book project with Karin becomes more and more colorful I guess the more the cold days get near. 

Sun, fruit and freshness

The time has come for all ripe stuff in my garden.  This year the apricot tree has produce a huge ammount of fantastic fruit, all organic.  Too much fruit at once so I made some jam with puting a bit of Risling wine in it and smooting  everything afterwords to get a pieceless jam that everybody in my familiy will get to love.

The alfonso mangoes where directly brought to me from India.  They are THE Mangoes at their best.  How do I deserve that?  One week catsitting, that's it.  Lucky me.  The mangoes where eaten straight like that, all with the raw hands.  While the juice was running down their elbows,h the kids could not get enough.  Some where made to a delicious Mango Lassi with a soft scent of kardamom.

My frist Instructable is a string

 My first little "Instructable" comes with something very simple.

How to make a string to play or decorate out of shirts or T-shirts.  I use the strings to play horsewaggon with Isa or I put pom poms on them to make a B-day decoration. Anything you want.  The strings are cheap and can be made by the children.  If you have many t-shirts you can consider making string to knit yourself a rug!

Create, try, experiment

What can actually happen with all does poor abbandoned chocolate bunnys laying around all over the place? They can turn into nice rich Brownies.

After this experiment the kids got something like a bunny fever and found this good origami video. This are inflatable paper bunnys, amazing and fun to put into an envelope and brighten someones day. They made this whole army of bunnys in just a half hour.

Doin' Things

After Easter we the princess and I had lots of carrots we made for hanging on the easter tree, so we had to come up with a possible reuse.  Finding something was easy, she loves making hairpins out of things so we made some for her and her best friend.

I never in my life thought of making so much stuff for easter.  The eggs with natural dyes, decoration and more decoration,  bread lambs and cookies with bunny forms covered with pink and blue sugar.  Lots of fun this time.  The children are getting older and we have more time to just be together and crate.



Pasta making is lots of work but also so much fun.  So we get to do it a lot lately.  The dough below made very nice Ravioli filled with ricotta and mintleaves.

I also just got myself a new very good book from with lots of easy fun stuff to sew from Pip Lincolne.  "Meet me at Mike's" is full packed with groovy projects like this purse I made for a friend's B-Day.