Mini windowsill garden – day 1

For Easter my Mom gave me this grow-yourself-a-Gerbera package. They were my favorite flowers when I was a kid. Apparently, Gerberas are the fifth most used cut flower in the world. Huh.

Since I possess a black thumb when it comes to gardening, I don’t really own any flowers or plants. There’s a tree right outside my window that makes it a little bit green. Tending my Mom’s flowers when she was away never really went to well. I just tend to forget them and most flowers don’t take too kindly to that. So getting this package is part of a challenge. Will I finally overcome my black thumb and actually grow something?

The kit comes with a small, adorable (albeit plastic) pot that has two holes in the bottom for drainage, a package of artificial soil and three small packets of seeds. So yesterday I went ahead and planted my first four Gerbera seeds. You just pour in most of the soil, add seeds (don’t drop them down the sink like I nearly did) and cover with the rest of the soil, then water until damp. Easy, right? Well, the hard part will be seeing if anything actually comes from it. The label says you should be able to see seeding after 10 days. Are you as curious as I am?

Here it is, sitting on my windowsill where it will hopefully get enough light. I’ll keep you posted how this progresses.

Recipe: Candy Heart Cookies

Valentine’s Day may be over, but these cookies are sweet enough for any occasion. Oh, hey, Mother’s Day is next week. How about showing your love with a batch of these adorable cookies?

I got a set of letter cookie stamps for Easter that I was itching to try out. Along came Jelena’s dessert potluck party last weekend. Everybody had to bring something sweet. It was the perfect opportunity, so I decided to whip up these cookies. After spending all day in the kitchen making these, I actually arrived at the party with no desire whatsoever for sweets. Given that I have a giant sweet tooth, it was pretty ironic but probably saved me a few pounds on my hips!

If you have some time on your hand, a letter stamping set and a heart-shaped cookie cutter, you’re basically ready to go! I used a sweetcrust recipe that came with my cookie stamps, but any recipe for cookies that don’t lose their shape while baking will do.

Candy Heart Cookies recipe

Ingredients:

• 500g all purpose flour
• 200g sugar
• 250g butter



• 2 medium sized eggs
• 1 pckg baking powder
• 1 pckg vanilla sugar
• food coloring of your choice

Cut the butter into small pieces, then beat together with the vanilla, sugar and egg in a large bowl. Sift in the flour and baking powder, mixing on low. Knead with your hands until you get a smooth dough. Now let’s add some color!

Divide your dough into equal pieces. I wanted to do four different colors, so I quartered my dough. Color each piece with your chosen food coloring. I used both liquid and powdered stuff, because it’s what I had. They both worked well, so choose whatever you have on hand.

 
Start with a little and then gradually add more. Keep in mind when coloring dough that the baked result will be lighter, so make your color darker than you want your cookies to be later. Make sure all the color is spread evenly through the dough.

It will be messy, so make sure to protect yourself and your work area. Wash your hands thoroughly before handling a different color, you don’t want to spoil your result. Since the dough has a lot of fat in it, you don’t need to flour your hands before handling it.

When you’re done, cover your dough balls in saran wrap and place in fridge for at least an hour.

After the dough is thoroughly chilled, take it out one ball at a time. Lightly flower your work surface and rolling pin and roll out the dough. I found that I got better results rolling it out not too thin. It’s easier to stamp that way, too. Get your heart-shaped cookie cutter and start cutting lovely cookies.

Ignore what the picture shows you. Place the cut hearts onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and then stamp your hearts. It’s easier than transferring the cookies after they have been stamped.

Rolling the dough out once gave me enough for 20 hearts, exactly one baking sheet. Since I was running a bit short on time I scrapped the leftover pieces of dough together and put them back in the fridge to finish the next day. Place the cookie sheet in the oven at 200°C (392° F) for about 10 minutes. My first batch burned slightly, so watch them closely.

Here they are, fresh from the oven. As you can see, the color got a lot lighter after being baked. They’re just the right shade of light green. I actually liked the color of the red cookies the best.

As you can see, sometimes the cookie stamps wouldn’t come out clearly, ripping holes in the messages. I was able to save the I heart U by simply leaving the heart as a negative space, but the other ones were unpresentable. I gave my boy the permission to eat those, so I don’t think he minded. Now delve in and bake yourself some sweet candy heart cookies. :)

German breakfast

Happy Earth Day, everyone! Today I made myself an old childhood favorite without realizing it until it laid on my plate. “German breakfast”. It’s three slices of bread with honey, jam (I used wild berries, but any red jam qualifies) and chocolate spread. They give you the three colors of Germany’s flag: black, red and gold.

It’s a fun way to teach your children something about other countries (look around you to find stuff for different colors. how about plum butter for blue or marshmallow paste for white? be creative!) and at the same time make breakfast a bit more interesting.

DIY: Stash Bust: Pacman Paper Lantern

Today I decided to try out the Paper Lantern Ornament tutorial by The Creative Place. I suggest you follow the excellent tutorial to make them yourselves. They’re easy to make (if you don’t mind fiddling around a bit, that is) and make a wonderful decoration for a table and you can use stuff you have lying around at home, which makes it the perfect project for the April Stash Bust.

At first I went traditional and decided to cut up old, yellow pages from a book my Mom gave me. The paper is really thin, which made it rather fiddly to work with.

 
But I was quite pleased with the result:

The way it sat there, it almost reminded me of a pumpkin. They’d be cute to make in orange paper for Halloween. Use a green brad for the stem, paint on a face and you’d have the perfect decoration for a Halloween party. So this got me thinking about other shapes.

I grabbed some scraps of yellow paper. If you only have a regular hole punch like I do and can’t fit all of your strips into it at once, here’s a quick tip. Punch the first half of your strips, then gather all of them together and mark the center of the hole on the unpunched half. If you remove the bottom of your hole punch you can turn it upside down, insert the second half of the strips and position them with the mark you made to ensure the holes will match up.

I used only 13 strips for this lantern, but did the rest according to the tutorial. And what do you end up with?

It’s a pacman! I colored and cut out some white paper to make the eyes. Attach them with glue dots and you’re done. If you want you can cut out some yellow dots for your little pacman to eat as well.

Blown Fuse Earrings

Let me show you my favorite pair of earrings.

For a geek with style, these earrings truly are a must-have.

I have a lamp construction under my bunk bed that is attached to a dimmer switch. Last year it stopped working correctly and my Mom and I burned through four fuses trying to fix it before we gave up on it. (I now have a torch lamp under my bed.)

Now as a crafter especially fond of electronic stuff, I found myself unable to simply throw out the blown fuses. They had to be good for something and it didn’t take long before the idea popped into my head. I asked my good friend P to solder them, since I have neither the equipment nor the experience to do it myself. He happily did the job (thanks P!) and out came two pairs of blown fuse earrings. My very first pair of earrings. If you have a pair of earring hooks on hand (or don’t mind sacrificing a pair you never wear), you could do this whole project for free.

Next time I blow a fuse, I’ll get a matching necklace.

Giveaway winner & DIY small felt bucket

Our biggest German news site announced today that tomorrow the internet will have to be taken down for 24 hours to upgrade to IPv6. And then I remembered what day it was. Have you been fooled by someone today?

I promise this post will commence 100% April fool’s free. The deadline is up and we have a winner of my first blog giveaway.

Congrats, Renanda! Your easter surprise will hop its way to you.

Yesterday evening, my boy and I decided to visit the in-laws over the weekend. Which of course means my brain has been rattling with last-minute gift ideas. This morning, I set to work with some felt and embroidery thread I had lying around.

Please excuse the crappy picture, my camera batteries were dying on me. I’ve bought a new pack, which is currently happily trailing along in my boy’s backpack. D’oh.

I whipped up my own pattern for this cute little felt bucket. Here’s the basic steps if you wanna make your own:

You will need:

• colorful felt (mine was 2mm thick)
• contrasting embroidery thread and needle
• wash-out marker for the felt
• (metal) ruler
• x-acto knife and cutting mat or scissors

1. Find a lid or something round to trace onto your felt and cut out. I took a small jar with a 6 cm (2.5″) diameter. (It’s the one you can see in the photo propping up the bucket.)
2. Either calculate or measure the circumference with a piece of paper. I used paper to get a sense of how high I wanted my bucket to be. I ended up with a 20 cm (7.9″) long and 7 cm (2.7″) high strip.
3. Sew your base circle to the strip using a blanket stitch (here’s a good tutorial). Remember to sew the right sides together since you won’t be turning this later. I pinned the circle to the strip using some needles. It’s a bit fiddly, so you might want to glue it in place first.
4. Sew up one side using blanket stitch again. You now have a basic bucket shape. Mine bulged a little oddly where I sewed up the side, so I cut down the opposite side of the bucket and sewed it up again. This will give the bucket more of an oval and symmetric shape.
5. Freehand a strip for the bucket strap. Mine was about 0.8 cm (0.3″) high and 16 cm (6.3″) long. Sew it in place. (I thought the x-stitch looked really cute.)

Voilá, you have a handy-dandy felt bucket. It’d look super cute filled with easter grass and some colorful candy eggs. I plan to sew on some applications to spice up my bucket later, but I have to get thinner felt first.