Hopfaldera

Easter ideas

Okay, easter is coming... Time to decorate the house with flowers and color!

Damaris and Emil have already worked on colorful decorations.

Some easter ideas for myself (and you, lovely reader):

Egg cozies from a pattern on Yvestown
Stuffed fabric eggs on Olive Juice and co
Easter bread (I usually make a bread with raisins and cardamom, but this WHO bread on Soulemama might also be a good idea)

Last year I embroidered napkins with easter drawing by the kids More on Flickr

Looking at that photo of last year's Easter Breakfast Table (with capitals) makes me happy. It gives me the feeling that we will be able to cheer up in time before easter if we surround ourselves with color and flowers.
We have felt very sad this week because the little daughter of friends died after only 17 weeks of life. This weekend we'll say goodbye to her.

The cat and the turtle

Doesn't every blog need a post about the blogger's cat?! Here it is!

This is Mauries posing with the Soft Turtle Buddy I already talked about.
Mauries is not called Maurice because that would have been to classy for someone born in a cardboard box. He is very beautiful though. He looks like some kind of pedigree, but he is just a lucky genetic coincidence (his parents are siblings, oops).
He's handsome, but he's a real cat. He follows his own mind and didn't pose for long. That turtle is more patient...

Work in progress

Lots of work in progress this week! I'll show the results in later posts.
First of all, I was tidying up my work room.

I was looking for the right button to finish a machine embroidered Artsy Clutch (from the Bend-The-Rules Sewing book).

A top secret project for two people who are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary today (!) Update: Revelation on Flickr

A Soft Turtle Buddy from Bend-The-Rules. I did this to participate in a little Simul-Sew project with a photo group on Flickr.

Then today I went to my ceramics class, and found a whole new set of works in progress had just come out of the kiln.

More photos of everything (except for that top secret project) can be found on my Flickr.

Cinnamon carrot cake

On Tuesday evenings our doorbell rings. One of the kids rushes to the door, we hear a little shout of 'Thank you' and a yellow paper bag of vegetables and fruit is brought into the kitchen. Kievit brings us that bag and it is a bag of biological fruit and vegetables, our little contribution to a greener Earth.

Before unpacking the bag I read the newsletter that comes with it. It is unexpectedly eloquent and entertaining, that farmer should write a blog! On the back are recipes (written by the farmer's mother?) and that is very useful sometimes. We have encountered some vegetables we hadn't seen before.

This week we got a recipe for carrot cake. I added an egg to the original Kievit recipe, because a cake without an egg seemed wrong to me. Here it is: Almost Biological Cinnamon Carrot Cake

Heat the oven to 165 degrees Celsius.

Mix together

225 grams of flour

1 tablespoon of cinnamon

1teaspoon of nutmeg

1/2 tablespoon of baking powder

110 grams of melted butter

110 grams of honey

110 grams of sugar (I used cane sugar)

1 beaten egg

and of course 225 grams of grated carrots (I chopped them in the food processor because I didn't want to hurt my hands)

grease and flour a loaf pan, pour in the mixture and bake for 60 minutes (when a skewer should come out clean).

Market day

On Saturdays and Wednesdays we have a market here in Leiden. On Wednesday there is also a section with biological products. Look what I got today!

The cheese is Ribeaupierre made of Goats' milk and it's biological. The soup in the jar is Tomato Cream Soup and is also biological and from The smallest soup factory (De kleinste soepfabriek) that I read about in delicious. magazine today.
I got two types of Japanese rice crackers. I love those!
Three Lyra pencils for Damaris and Emil. Just to add to the ever shrinking collection a bit. I bought them at Dille en Kamille. Also from there I got the red and white thread and eight mini loaf pans to bake mini bread or cakes in. Just something fun for the kitchen!
And some Italian and Provençal herbs and cinnamon sticks.

Bird bag

I promised to show my new bag. I finished it today, so finally I can....

This is how I worked on it. (Also on the table is another bag I made (from a pattern, the All day tote by Lotta Jansdotter)).

The bird bag came from my own imagination. On the table is my sketchbook in which I designed the bag. I faced the lining of the bag with thick flannel after learning this from Amy Karol's book Bend-the-Rules Sewing.

I bought the bird fabric for the outside of the bag at a fabric market, here in Leiden. The red folklore fabric for the lining is a Dirndl fabric I bought at Komolka in Vienna.

For the strap I used green fake leather (skai) which I found very tough to sew. Not my favorite material... After a lot of fiddling and actually throwing out a complete strap that I ruined, I ended up with a strap I like a lot.

I added a key cord and a little pouch for my phone.

And an all important inside pocket. Made from a scrap with another bird.
Now I can take all my stuff from my old bag and put it in this new one. I'm happy!

Little House

When I was small The Little House on the Prairie was the only show my parents would let me watch on the night the EO (Dutch christian broadcasting organization) was on. Since then the EO has lightened up a bit.

Remember Laura, poor blind Mary, Nellie the teaser, the one room school, the romance with Almanzo? I used to enjoy the clothing of the Prairie girls and also the stories. I even read the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

On SBS6 they have reruns of this series now. Watch the following video of the first episode if you want to have a good sob... I never saw this, but I remember the dog story from the book.

Spring!

Today spring came...

A peacock in De Leidse Hout was ruffling his feathers trying to impress a female. She appeared not that impressed; all the humans out and about in the wood were all the more...

Mister Peacock gave up for now. On the calendar it is not even spring yet; plenty of time left to impress that bird.

We enjoyed lunch in the tea pavilion at De Leidse Hout.

A previous visitor left a newspaper at the table.

Brave Damaris and Emil even took off their jackets. Actually it was still a bit cold (it's February after all), but the sun gave everybody a smile on their face and a little spring in their step.

Tosti's (Grilled cheese sandwiches), Vitello Tonato and Tomato soup. All with added sunshine, the best!!
Springtime is slowly coming to the wood. So great we could enjoy it with the four of us today!

Doucepoints on Etsy.com

Look, this is the new banner I put above my Etsy shop!
I've had the shop for a little more than a year and I have had some sales, but I would like to boost the activity a bit and thought I would try a more modern look and feel. I like it!
I made the banner with some help of a tool I found through the Etsy series on how-to improve your shop, which has been inspiring to me. Personalizing the banner was fun and I learned a few more computer skills, just like this blog is teaching me. I feel like a little html-wizard when I get something to look the way I want it to!

The latest art and craft news: I'm working on a new bag for myself. The previous one is in desperate need of replacement! I'll post about it soon.

Happy New Year!

It's Chinese New Year! We wish our family in Shanghai a very happy Year of the Rat! We say: Gelukkig nieuwjaar and Emil (who is studying Chinese) says: Xin nian hao!

We are planning to visit China in this ratty year. In May we will go to Shanghai to see how big Constantine and Amanda have become and to see how Piter and Dan are doing.
We are also planning to see some new places: Beijing and Xian. Now I hope they didn't send all their Terracotta warriors to Assen, here in the Netherlands, because we would like to see some of them there.

Mmm... judging from this picture, I'm sure it'll be fine!

( I borrowed both pictures in this post from Wikipedia)