Hopes, Dreams & Best wishes to You!

Do you have any resolutions for the coming year? Mine is to improve my knitting and crochet skills. And I would like to learn French. And I want to finish a real baking book. It's never too late to try out something new!


It is time to pause, cherishing the old and celebrating the new year. Sending luck to our family and loved ones, bake some fortune cookies to warm the heart of a dear friend. Stepping out in style on New Year's Eve, wrapped in a cosy huge scarf. 2013 is coming! Cheers to a new year!

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Christmas Sweater Counting Challenge

While you wait for santa to bring you gifts make sure to take part in our christmas sweater counting challenge. Animals are counted double and if a sweater is owned since the 80ies you can even do triple counting.

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Gingerbread House Party

Doing a gingerbread house is not the newest idea of course, but I am doing it every year on christmas with great fun. This year I had the (supposed to be!) glorious idea of baking a complete gingerbread village with many of tiny houses and deers and sweets around, without thinking how much efforts and time-consuming that would be.



I had the idea of a village quite some weeks in my head already and was so eager of doing it. Well, no sooner said than done, I prepared double amount of gingerbread dough wednesday after work and stayed up until midnight, because I wanted the village to be finished before saturday eve, when I had some friends over for christmas dinner.



The difficult part was to fix the roof on top without slipping away but luckily for me the hubby came home just in time, to help me out here!



Well, after hours of baking and icing and decorating, ahhhh, you can see the results here! The village turned out really nice and cute and all my curses about the gliding roofs are forgotten so far!

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Christmas Decoration

Finally, as we get close to Christmas 2012, the Christmas decoration at our house is finished. This year, the two main areas to look at are the entrance and one of our fireplaces.



In the entrance I have put lot´s of wood themed things onto a paravent. I tried to be as vintage as possible there and drove my husband crazy by buying a vintage pair of skis and a sleigh.




As a backdrop of the entrance I used my favorite stockings that I collected from this years vacations. They are mainly Anthropologie from London and the US.


On the fireplace I have used two ideas. First I recycled the big XMAS letters from last year but this time I covered them with knitwear in order to make the look more vintage. At the bottom of the letters I placed lot´s of deers and bambies that I have collected over the last month. My husband was relieved when I told him that the giant wooden rim is not replacing a chandelier this year but placed in front of the fireplace.



For the first time I also gave our vintage cupboard in the kitchen a christmassy look by adding a little ribbon to the glas doors.

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Candy Canes

Our house is red and white and filled with candy. I can´t believe there is only one week to go until Christmas and I still have not posted the majority of this year´s Chritmas decoration yet. So take this as a start. More to follow.

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Last Pop-Up Tearoom 2012

Today is the final afternoon tea before X-Mas. Everything is prepared and set up. It was so great to meet so many nice people, I am so inspired by all of you and overwhelmed by your cheerfulness. Thank you so much!


The tray is waiting for the eggnog


Magnolia is waiting to be served & eaten, of course


I am looking forward to meet you all again, maybe for the upcoming Valentinesday Tearoom event in February? Merry Christmas to all of our friends! May your days be filled with cakes!

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All I want for Christmas is you

It is now only 9 days until Christmas!! And there is still so much to do... I have had no time to do any Christmas Markets, I still need to write my cards, and I haven't bought any gifts for my family & friends yet!


The one good thing is that I can already listening to Christmas songs....Like my every year favourite Last Christmas and All I want for Christmas is you. And of course Christmas Pop Up tearoom starts today.

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Snow in our garden

Last weekend the winter was just perfect, with sun and snow. We are very happy with the fragment of the wall, gate and fence that our gardener put there just a couple of weeks ago. It looks like it has been there forever. Although the path is really leading nowhere, and the gate is only decoration, we keep telling ourselves that Santa will use it in two weeks time to bring our gifts.

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Christmas Afternoon Tea at our House

The perfect Sunday afternoon: Snow, only 15 days until Christmas and we have some friends with us enjoying afternoon tea at our house.

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Miniature Couple in a Jar

My husband's saturday project is to take pictures of our Christmas decoration in the house. This is one of the 200 pics that he already took. A miniature couple drinking hot wine in a jar. I love it.

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Outside Christmas Decoration

This year we took an empty suitcase to a vacation in Florida and came back with lot's of Christmas stuff including large red ribbons. As any outside Christmas decoration looks way better with real snow (sorry Florida), we put it at the entrance of our house and only had to wait a couple of days until the snow did the rest.



When my husband said that we do not have enough room to put another decorated fireplace inside, I just gave it some knitted warmers and put it at the front porch outside.


On the other side of the porch I put one of my favorite bambis wearing some knitwear in order to keep it warm as well.

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Spotted: Elf Shoes

While we were on vacation last week, wonderful elves started working on the Christmas decoration at our house. However, they seem to have been so busy that the head elf totally forgot to take the new special elf shoes that I made for them to say 'Thank You'.

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Sweets for Kids on St. Martin

In our area in Germany we have this tradition where kids make their own laterns and knock at doors of houses. When you open up the door, they sing songs that go back to a story of St. Martin, a guy who helped the poor by sharing his clothes. Well, today the kids do not want clothes they are in for a sweet treat.


This year, I wanted to make sure that, our house is being recognized as a special location for St. Martin singers, so I prepared recipies that kids love. I had "Caramel Shortbread", big chunks of "Rocky Road" (Marshmallows, nuts and cookies covered in melted chocolate) and "Mars Bar Rice Crispies".


As you can imagine, these things "worked" pretty good on the kids so that I already have to think of sweets for next year. The expectations are high.

 

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Christmas Event at Danroeschen

Yesterday was the start into the Xmas season and I decorated my new wooden etagere for the first time. I was so proud to show this Winter-Wood-Forest-Leaves-Deco, that I was in a incredible good and happy mood the days before already!


Everybody did ask: "Oh my god, are you not being stressed out completely with all this baking and stuff?". Well, no, I wanted to present all the new stuff and recipes, and I did!


Tell me, How did you like the chocolate&pear cake? Didn't you think that the new chocolate frosting was great? And did you try the cheesecake with cranberry filling? And how about the shortbread with homemade mincemeat?



Aaaahhhhh.... it was crazy fantastic, and the only reason that you probably were not there is, that Langenfeld in Germany is too far away for you. There is no other excuse if you missed that event!


The complete crew was beaten yesterday at 4 pm, but also glad, that everything went so well! After 4 years since we started this Xmas event at Danroeschen, we think that we are still making it new an special every year! Thanks to all friends and customers for this event yesterday! Some of you I am going to see already next month in the Pop Up Tearoom, to all the others: see you next year!

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