Christmas Presents, an AliExpress Order & Tea Time

Hello everyone,

with Christmas 2017 being over for more than a month now I am finally able to share this Christmas present I hooked for my friend Kristin :)
I found this lovely Fox Head Scarf thingie over at pinterest. Unfortunately, the link to the pattern doesn't seem to work any longer. Luckily, I downloaded the patter before it was taken offline. So in case you're looking for the pattern but can't find it, let me know, I've got a copy stored somewhere on my hard drive and am willing to email it to you :)

This project was definitely fun to crochet. It took me quite a while but it was all worth it.
I used a 100% cotton yarn for it by the way. To be honest, I prefer using cotton yarns for all of my crochet projects lately.

Apart from self-made things I also love to give local products as presents. For example coffee from the two local roasters Seegert and Die Kaffeerösterin.
Lately, I also discovered wonderful products made from Kassel City honey like honey liqueur, honey vinegar or even mead. And an all-time favorite are the mug cakes from Tüpfelchen.

What things do you like to give as presents? Maybe also some products from your area?

Alright, change of subject. My AliExpress Order arrived last week! I love ordering planner and crafting supplies at AliExpress. You can get the cutest things and the prices are pretty low. And then it's always wonderful to finally receive your order which is always a surprise - because it takes quite a while to be shipped to you and in the meantime you normally forget what you've order ;)

Okay, here's what I got:

A transparent A5 planner for some memory keeping
A felt A5 planner for my spritual art project
A set of rings for filofax inserts archiving

Lots and loooooots of stickers :)

And in case you're interested in one of these goodies as well, here's a link to the AliExpress shop: JIANWU Shop

And last but not least, I had my friend Carina over for tea last weekend. Carina prefers drinking fruit tea so I brewed us a pot of my all-time favourite fruit infusion Roasted Almonds by TeeGschwendner. It's a seasonal tea that is only available around Christmas. Last year I bought an extra large package of it so that I can drink it all year around.

We had IKEA almond cake and Dongles donuts for tea :)

Well, that's it for today, see you soon :)

Yours
Uta

Martha's Poppy Seed Torte

Hi everyone,

I figured I didn't post anything food related lately so I thought I could bother you with something yummy today :)

Last weekend I felt like baking. Recipe of choice was Martha Stewart's Poppy Seed Torte!

I made a few tweaks to the recipe but all in all stuck close to the original version:

• less sugar
• whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour
• ground almonds instead of ground walnuts
• no almond extract
• no confectioner's sugar for dusting

And that's how the result looked like:

Fresh out of the springform!

Super fluffy inside :)

Totally yummy, I tell you, it was all gone within a blink of an eye ;)

What did you bake lately? Maybe you also tried out a Martha Stewart recipe?

Yours
Uta

Yummy Homemade Christmas Goodies

Hello everyone,

I hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones :)

Even though it's Christmas today is Sunday so it's time for another blog post.

You know, there's nothing I love more than giving self-made goodies for Christmas. Especially baked goods are the perfect Christmas gift in my opinion. This Christmas season I planned to do a lot of cookie baking. Unfortunately as I already told you I got sick and nothing I planned actually worked out. So I had to come up with some last-minute ideas...

Oh and by the way, Kristin contacted me in the meantime concerning the biscuits. She shared them with her lovely daughter and even Australian shepherd lady Hanneli took a bite. They all loved them, which makes me soooo happy :)

Thanks for watching and see you soon!

Yours
Uta

Inside my Journal: Tea anyone?

Hello everyone,

I just recently started to give my journal a more personal touch. This includes dedicating pages to topics that don't involve the average journal writing. As a tea lover it was clear for me that I somehow had to incorporate my little tea addiction as well. To do so, I took the labels of the different teas I love/tried/disliked, glued them into my journal and simply added a small description. So nothing fancy but for me quite a lot of fun to be honest.

Let me show you some examples:

Any fellow tea loving journalers/tea-lovers/journalers out there?

Yours
Uta

This and That

Hey everyone,

today I'd like to share with you a couple of things that kept me busy lately. So randomly chosen and in now particular order....

Slowly my kitchen window still is turning into a little indoor garden. Just recently I planted some herbs - parsley, peppermint and basil. In addition to that I'm giving cress a try.

Walking down memory lane, I rediscovered my spirograph! And by drawing them on sticker sheets I turned them into simple but cute stickers :)

I set up my bullet journal for April at work. While doing so I made some changes compared to the March spreads. So this is how my current setup looks like.

 

Pacman! I'm sort of into retro gaming lately even though I'm not playing that much myself :) Just recently I planned to do a Super Mario related cake. Unfortunately, all the yellow fondant was sold out and coloring white fondant didn't work that well so I switched to a more basic pattern instead and it turned out to be a pacman cake. I'm not 100% happy with the result but well, it could be worse I guess.

Alright, that's it for today.
I hope you all head a great week so far!

Yours
Uta

Let's have tea, shall we?!

Good afternoon ladies (and possibly gentlemen as well, one never knows),

so this lovely Monday turns out to be another public holiday over here in Germany. Pentecost I assume is the correct English term for it. Anyways, I thought this holiday would be a nice occasion to have tea together, don't you think? I even made some sandwiches.

I brewed us black tea because you can't go wrong with black tea, can you? O'Sullivan's Favourite it's called to be exact and it's from TeeGschendner, one of my most favorite tea companies. Doesn't it taste wonderful?

So how's the weather in your region? Is it also raining? I remember this morning the sun was shining bright but around lunch time it turned rainy. And the temperatures also fell quite a bit. I even had to turn on the heating again. Can you imagine, it's the end of May and you have turn on the heating to not feel cold? Dreadful.

Even all the housework that kept me busy up until now couldn't keep me warm. Well, at least now all the laundry is done. Furthermore, I even managed to finally tidy out my office. Quite a successful day, though.

Now wasn't it nice meeting for tea? I think we should do that again soon.
Have a lovely evening my dear!

Yours,
Uta

Macramé Books + Someone's been baking

Hey all,

another Wednesday, another blog post, just as promised :)

So every once and a while when I'm visiting my parents I go through my mum's crafting books. She's got great books about all different kinds of crafting techniques. Some of these books are actually older than I am. For some reason these are the ones that are the most fun to read. Maybe because they didn't have Photoshop back then and everything looked more realistic.
Well anyways, last lime I discovered two beautiful macramé books from the 1970s. I wouldn't go as far as to say that macramé is becoming popular again over here, but I think it's safe to say it's still a quite interesting crafting technique and you can see more and more macramé supplies popping up in my favorite craft store.

Here are the two beauties:

And in case I didn't forget to switch both videos to public you can even watch them over at YouTube :)

Apart from that, I did some baking over the weekend. I actually forgot to buy bread during my weekly Saturday morning grocery run. Remembering the organic whole grain bread baking mixture I bought a couple of weeks ago, I decided to bake some instead of paying the local bakery a visit. It took quite a while with all the kneading and letting the dough prove but it was worth the result :)

I hope you had a great week so far!

Yours
Uta

Something warm for breakfast...

With Winter just around the corner I long for warmth, especially when it comes to eating. My belly prefers a warm breakfast during cold seasons. My current favourite: Porridge. And here's how I'm cooking it...

You need:
1/4 C porridge oats
1/4 C rolled whole oats
1/2 C almond milk
1 C water
1 pinch of salt

Depending on how much time you have to prepare breakfast you can either make this porridge right in the morning or the evening before.

If you would like to cook it right in the morning...
- combine oats, milk and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil
- let simmer for 10 minutes while stirring, after 8:30-9 minutes, add the pinch of salt
- set aside and let sit there for another 5 minutes before serving

If you would like to cook the porridge the evening before...
- combine oats, milk and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil
- let simmer for 3 minutes while stirring, add a pinch of salt after about 1:30-2 minutes
- set aside and let sit there until the next morning (don't forget to put the lid on)
- simply reheat in the microwave the next morning (you might need to add a bit water)

You can either eat the plain porridge as it is or you can add some toppings. I love to add a bit of maple syrup plus chopped nuts. Self-made apple sauce also tastes great.


Have a great weekend, everyone!

Yours
Uta

Tea and Cookies

Hello Ladies,

November is a strange time. It's sort of in-between Fall and Christmas season not really belonging to either of the two. But nevertheless, Christmas is not too far away. While walking through the streets downtown this morning, I realized they are already setting up the Christmas Market. Now that's definitely a sign, Christmas is approaching with great strides. So why not getting into the mood by baking some cookies and having a nice tea :)

So far, I baked three kinds of cookies.

And while having a cup of tea yesterday, I thought why not hooking a really simple Christmas-themed mug cozy.

So did you start to prepare for Christmas yet? Any cookie baking? Decorating? Crafting?

Have a cozy Friday, everyone, it's time to ring in the weekend!


Yours
Uta

What I've been baking lately

Hi ladies,

this post is going to be a short summary of a couple of dishes I tried over the last couple of day.

1. I made two batches of granola. The one on the left is apple cinnamon, the one on the right is chocolate amaranth. Both are more or less improvised.

2. These are my first ever self-made seitan sausages! A bit nasty when preparing, because the gluten makes the whole stuff extremely sticky. But they taste pretty good! The recipe is from one of my most favourite vegan cook books Vegan lecker, lecker (lecker is the German word for yummy).

3. This is a whole-grain bread, basically made using a Demeter bread baking mix which is organic. Had the first slices of it this morning for breakfast, definitely yummy!

Well, so besides all that baking I was also busy ringing in Autumn here in my little rental. Just a few minutes ago I hung up the last window decor.
Apart from that I caught myself spending a lot of time at Pottermore lately. Do you guys know Pottermore? It's the official Harry Potter website. After registration you will be sorted into one of the four houses (I ended up in Hufflepuff by the way). Then you can start brewing potions, practice spells and whatnot. Pretty addictive, I have to warn you ;) And just in case, someone of you has already registered there, I'm SnitchEcho11986, feel free to connect with me over at Pottermore.

Alright, that's it for today. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Yours
Uta

A Not So Perfect Farewell Present

Hello lovely Ladies,

finally I'm back again! I've been on holidays recently, but about that you'll read in another post. Today I want to share with you a farewell present for a colleague of mine. She is moving to Canada (the lucky ones) and yesterday we held a farewell party for her. She loves my cakes, so it was obvious that I would make a farewell chocolate bomb for her. The problem was: I've got a really bad cold for two weeks now! Two weeks! So I'm pretty exhausted and it's not so easy to concentrate with a constant headache - as you can see in the picture :-) Luckily I recognised the mixed up letters in time and was able to correct my "cold mistake" ;-) I haven't had the time to take a photo of the final and correct result. But I think you can easily imagine how it looked like with the "c" and the "k" in correct order.

I'm sorry but I can't share the recipe for the delicious cake with you, because it's an old and top secret family recipe. But what I can share is the idea of the straws with the bunting. I bought the pink straws with the white hearts in a shop around the corner and got the letters for the bunting over here in yellowblissroad http://www.yellowblissroad.com/printable-chalkboard-alphabet-cake/ .

I like the idea of the straw-bunting and my colleague liked it, too :-) Mission accomplished - even with a cold.

So happy weekend y'all!

Pancakes and More

Hey Ladies,

how is everyone doing these (Summer) days? The weather here in Kassel is one big roller coaster ride. One day it is almost unbearable hot, the other day it's just medium and raining. I can't remember having suffered from migraine that often before...

Well, anyways. I wanted to give you a quick update of what I've been up to lately!

First of all, I did some baking again :)
I now, I'm baking a lot lately. Baking is stress relieve for me, the best way to fight all the stress at work so to say.

Sunday morning feelgood breakfast:
Apple pancakes sprinkled with poppy seeds and maple syrup

Remember the cookies that turned out way too sweet?
Well, I gave them another shot :)

Furthermore, I finally bought some magazine organizers for my crafting magazines. I went for some plain white ones from IKEA (5 for 1,59€) and glued patterned paper on the fronts to make them look nicer.

Oh and I have a new addiction: LEMONAID+
LEMONAID+ is a fair-trade as well as organic lemonade. I'm in love with the passion fruit flavoured one.

Alright, that's it for today. I hope you all had an amazing weekend so far, see you next week!

Yours
Uta

A little help needed - traditional dishes, anyone?

Ladies (any Gentlemen reading this?!),

I need your help! I'm currently working on my bucket list for Fall. I know, last year's bucket list didn't really work out. Therefore I decided to come up with a more realistic one this year. And I would love to have more food related topics on it this time. So here's my big question for you:

What are your most favorite traditional Fall dishes?

Maybe there's a special bread you love, a cake or a pie, cookies, a dessert, a hearty dish... please tell me! Send me an email (see address on right under the social media icons) or leave a comment with the recipe or a link to the recipe!

Just a little PS here: I'm a vegetarian. So in case you would like to recommend a dish that traditionally involves meat, don't worry, go for it, just recommend a substitute and I'm fine :)

Oh and another PS. If you would like to recommend a pie, please consider adding a pie crust recipe as well. Germany hasn't realized yet that there are such things as pre-made pie crusts (and with that I mean that traditional American pie thingy). Unfortunately, that is also the case for canned pumpkin puree but that's a different topic...


Yours
Uta

Baked Goods for Tea

Oh I tell you, baking when it's about 30°C and more and humidity is beyond bearable is so much fun :)
Well, I had a friend over for tea yesterday. As a good host I prepared some baked goods.

These are Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins. The recipe is from Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet.

And these are very simple 3 ingredient Apple Turnovers. 4 ingredients if include water. All you need for them is puff pastry and applesauce as well as some powdered sugar mixed with some water for the icing.

Happy Sunday!

Yours
Uta

Pinspired In The Kitchen: Mac & Sweet Potatoe Cheese

Vegan Mac & Cheese was on my list for months now, finally I found a recipe that seemed easy to do and yummy to taste. It did not disappoint, it was fab! Definitely going to make this dish again!

And this is how it turned out:

Yours
Uta

Simple Happy Life

Finally, my first post! Yet another one than originally planned. While working in the kitchen a few minutes ago I just got the idea to simply share my evening meal with you :-)

Today a colleague brought me some fresh strawberries out of her mothers garden. That alone you can call yum! But I decided to add some fresh mint from my little window sill garden et voilà: Now you can call it delicious! Maybe I'll add some vanilla soy milk :-)

The simplest things are always the best...

Pinspired In The Kitchen: Peanut Butter Granola

Reason to pick this recipe:

Granola is my favorite kind of breakfast so I'm constantly looking for more tasty recipes.

Tweaks made:

Instead of brown sugar I used white one and I slightly reduced the amount mentioned in the recipe.

How it turned out:

I had it for breakfast the other day and I must say it tastes great :)

Yours
Uta

Pinspired In The Kitchen: Vegan Mug Brownie

Reason to pick this recipe:
Chocolate. That's all.

Tweaks made:
I left it in the microwave for about 1 min and 10 sec, so a bit longer than the the recipe says.

How it turned out:
Yum :)

Yours
Uta

Pinspired In The Kitchen: Banana Cocoa Refrigerator Oatmeal

Here we go again with yet another pinspired dish! I'm still busy working on a couple of birthday and Easter gifts, therefore I've got another food blog post for you in the meantime :)

Reason to pick this recipe:
I'm an oatmeal and granola for breakfast kind of girl. Plus it said cocoa.

Tweaks made:
I veganized the recipe by substituting milk with rice milk and honey with maple syrup.
No, I'm not a vegan, I'm a vegetarian. Nevertheless, I try to keep diary to a minimum because my digestive system isn't exactly fond of it.

How it turned out:
Well...it didn't exactly blow me of my socks to be honest, mostly because of its texture. The oatmeal turned out quite gooey and that's something I'm having a problem with for breakfast. I prefer dishes that are a little bit firm to the bite. Maybe I'll make some more tweaks to it (like using apples instead of a banana) and give it another try. I'm not sure yet.

Oh and I almost forgot, here's the obligatory picture:

Yours
Uta

Pinspired In The Kitchen: Earl Grey Tea Cookies

I'm currently working on a couple of self-made gifts therefore I'm not sharing so many crafting or crochet related posts lately. Sorry for that! In the meantime, here's another food-related blog post :)

Reason to pick this recipe:
I love cookies and I'm an avid tea drinker. Yes, I think that sums it up perfectly well :)

Tweaks made:
I used a Teekanne blend called Ostfriesen Teefix instead of earl grey. The label said, it's assam tea.

How it turned out:
Yum!

Yours
Uta