Our Christmas traditions: Doggie biscuits & new labels

Yep, that's right. We make doggie biscuits every year. And we don't even own a dog. But our friends do, and my in-laws used to, so I started the tradition when I was quite pregnant with little brother.

This little guy here, routinely rolling out dough and cutting out bone and dog shapes.

Big brother also likes to help. We use this Epicurious recipe and the boys take turns measuring out ingredients, rolling out, cutting shapes out and carefully placing them on baking sheets and brushing them with egg wash.

This year I designed labels using PicMonkey. My favorite web-based editor for quick blog photo editing, and now it also lets me make all these cool labels using overlays and design elements that almost look like I know my way around Photoshop. Which of course I don't.

It's so easy that I made all kinds of labels for all our handmade gifts. I love it. Love it. LOVE it. Did I mention I really really like it?

Anyhow.

Here's to Christmas traditions and adding to them. Because maybe these labels will be a permanent addition, saving me the trouble of designing and making / stamping new ones every year, thinking about Christmas label design in September. I mean, not that I would ever think about Christmas labels and gift lists in September. Ha.

What's your favorite tradition?

Our Christmas traditions: Kulleraugen

These are hands-down my favorite cookies. Known as jam drops or thumbprint cookies to the rest of the world, we call them Kulleraugen, which translates to something like googly eyes.

Funny thing is, I hardly ever make them myself. My mom makes them, as one type of cookies in her annual Christmas repertoire of a dozen or more types of cookies.

And she only makes them because I request them. Every year she'll ask me what to make, and every year I don't care about all the elaborate confections and artfully decorated cookies and request Kulleraugen instead. And every year I ask her to make a double batch. She never does, but she also doesn't include these in the cellophane bags of cookies she gives to friends and neighbors. These are our to eat.

Of course, with two boys, my share of these cookies is getting smaller by the year. And on top of that, big brother has the Christmas get-together at his class this wee, and with me having to work both the day before and the day of the little party, I opted to bring cookies.

But what to bring? As pretty much every year, we made those cookies that by now make up our holiday cookie tradition: fig and cinnamon swirls, plum streusel stars, Christmas cantuccini. But those aren't necessarily for kids. At least not all kids.

There's only one answer to that: me making a double batch of Kulleraugen today. What makes them special is not just the fact that they belong to my Christmas for as long as I can remember or that I make them from a photocopied newspaper clipping that dates back to the Seventies. They are also filled with homemade red currant jelly from our own backyard. Bright red and wonderfully tart.

I have a feeling I have to hide these well or they'll be gone before I can take some to school. Or maybe I should just make another batch. Or two.

Kulleraugen (Jam thumbprint cookies)

250g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
100g sugar
homemade vanilla sugar or vanilla extract to taste
3 egg yolks (save the whites for another use, such as coconut macaroons. Just saying.)
150g butter
red tart jam or jelly such as red currant
1 egg white and some chopped almonds, optional

Sift flour and baking powder into the bowl of a standing mixer. Add sugar, salt, vanilla and egg yolks. Mix briefly with dough hook. Turn the mixer off and add butter in cubes. Mix until small crumbs form. Knead the by hand until the dough comes together. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least an hour.

Roll the dough into longs and cut off walnut sized pieces. Roll pieces into little balls and push a well into the with your finger. Place on a lined baking sheet. Fill cookies with a little jam and bake at 175 C for about 10-12 minutes.

Optional: once you have rolled your little balls, brush with a little egg white, dip into chopped almonds and proceed as above.

The cookies should not brown and just set, maybe turn a tiny bit golden around the edges.

We store them in Christmas tins where they keep for a few weeks. In theory, that is.

Beware of the sharks: party preparations

I could have sworn big brother would go for a guitar party this year. Sworn.

I was so sure that I actually got blow-up guitars and guitar shaped key rings, weeks ago. I mean, after this year's Rock Star Cats for carnival it had to be a guitar party, right? Right?

Wrong.

Instead, we're in for a shark party this year.

Which is ok for me - I mean, just do a quick search for shark party on Pinterest. See what I mean? Lots of ideas.

Good thing that I was anyway planning to reuse last year's bunting and the blueish party supplies with the stars. I mean, it's blue, right? Goes with sharks if you ask me. And besides, the store still carries some of it, so I could stock up on napkins, balloons and some other cute things.

Such as the cutest little favor boxes. Turns out they're too small for goodie bags, but they make nice invites, at least if you fill them with some gummy sharks. And they just happen to give those homemade invites something to cling to, because just printed on plain paper they looked just that. Plain.  Punch a hole, tie them to the boxes with some green raffia and - ah, much better. To anyone who's interested, this is where I found the shark clipart I used in the invites.

And since I has a kid-free house last week, I got the goodie bags out of the way as well. I don't know about you, but I don't really like when my kids come home from birthday parties with a lot of little things. They are treasures to them for a day or so, and then these little things turn into clutter. And they start to multiply. Take over their rooms, the basket of miscellaneous toys in the living room (it's a junk basket, if you ask me, and we weed it out every couple of months, usually sending at least a quarter of its contents to the trash).

Using simple white bags, I glued the shark to the front, added the guests' name on some washi tape and cut teeth into the top. They got filled with some more shark candy, a plastic shark and, my favorite, a shark bell for their bikes. Not too much crap, right? Right? 

Finally I did birthday shirts, and the traditional felt birthday crown and yarn wreath. Luckily I could reuse last year's letter and garland and just cut out the number and pinned it to the wreath. Easy. Which was good, considering the fact that I had been crafting, sewing and eating gummy sharks all day.

Stay tuned for more!

Swenja

A Chocolate Party - the action

Chocolate. Soft, sweet chocolate. Something little brother loves dearly. Which could be a reason we decided early on that this year we were going to throw him a chocolate party (the other reason being that this was the perfect excuse to go buy a chocolate fountain. Please don't tell anyone though).

Of course I took way too many photos. And of course there are quite a few I forgot to take or simply didn't have my hands free enough (or clean enough...) to hold a camera. Oh well. I took plenty of photos of some of the preparations, which you can read about here.

So here we go.

Decorations included giant yellow doggie balloons. Because birthday balloons are a very serious tradition around here. Very serious. Since these things can get expensive (especially when you need two, because tradition dictates that the sibling gets one as well, making it four of these per year) I save all the old ones once they finally go flat. One of the most popular ones ever was big brother's giant dog balloon, and since I was overworked, tired and a little tight on budget I couldn't find the perfect chocolate party balloon, I decided that the yellow dog would be just fine, after all they loved it (and it matched the party colors), so I just got him filled up again and bought him a companion. Don't they look happy together?

We had added the garlands earlier in the week, but I felt the urgent need for some simple streamers on the party day. We removed the rug, put down old bath towels and placed our two kid picnic tables from the backyard in the living room play area, hoping that this would keep the chocolate mess in kids reach and away from my white dining room chairs. So the streamers ended up forming a nice canopy.

They also played nicely with the garland and the goodie bags in the background. Yes, I admit to standing in this spot for a full five minutes, admiring my decorations. Yes, I know I am insane. But I just love it when something works as planned. What can I say.

The birthday boy with his crown - same one from last year with a quickly added 4 to it. And no, I didn't dress him to match the crown - I simply figured that the chocolate stains would show the least on a brown sweater... 

I usually refuse to buy strawberries when they're not in season and not grown locally. My kids know that, so they were beyond thrilled when they saw me prepare strawberries for the chocolate fountain. After all, birthdays are supposed to be special occasions, right? So strawberries in winter it was. We also had cookies, blueberries, grapes and bananas.

Since big brother suddenly got a rash and a fever literally five minutes before the party, the first part was a little hectic and I didn't get too many photos of little brother and his guests and gifts. He got the cutest things ever and had so much fun opening all his presents.

When everyone had arrived and played for a bit, we started the chocolate fountain. It works really well and does not get hot at all, so the kids can just enjoy it. The bananas, strawberries and cookies were the biggest hits. I guess you could also do marshmallows, but they aren't popular over here and as far as I am concerned, we had enough sugar already.

With all the sweet things, our prepared milk glasses were refilled quite a bit. I had snipped a few inches off some regular plastic straws, which were apparently great for making milk bubbles.

Here's a shot of the party tables - not as messy as expected, really. Of course we had chocolate mouths and fingers and drips on plates and some shirts, but it was all easily cleaned up.

The birthday boy couldn't get enough!

Now this is where my lack of photos comes in. With big brother at the emergency clinic and a chocolate fountain to clean up, other guests to entertain, I never really managed to get photos of our simple dinner that we served before guests left. I had prepared sandwiches with a large star cutter, and we set out some leftover grapes - oh, and fancy little paper umbrellas never hurt anyone, either (unless you'd poke someone in the eye which luckily nobody did). The sandwiches were prepared ahead and just eaten on the run, they were just too busy playing to be sitting down for long.

Overall it was a fun party, we just wish big brother could have been part of it. He was ok when he returned from the doc though, and although most guests were just leaving, our neighbors stayed for some real dinner and he got to play with their kids for a bit.

We have since done the chocolate fountain thing in little brother's preschool as well -  and I'm sure it wasn't the last time!

So if you'll excuse me now, I have a sudden craving for something sweet, no idea where that might come from...

Swenja

A Chocolate Party - the preparations

Anyone who knows little brother will know that chocolate is one of his favorite things in the whole world. Well, cars, keys, phones, anything with buttons to push.  And chocolate.

It's funny when I hear parents of just one child talk about how well their kid eats and all these great things they did and how they pay attention to what the feed their child. Yeah... been there. Done that. And big brother will try and eat pretty much anything, he doesn't eat a whole lot of sweets and prefers a strawberry over a piece of chocolate at any given point. Little brother on the other hand... well. He likes pasta, but only with butter please. And bread, but preferably with a certain kind of cheese, or maybe honey. In short, he's an extremely picky eater, and I have no idea where he got that from.

But birthdays are supposed to be about favorite things, right?

And chocolate is one of little brother's favorite things. So a chocolate party it had to be. As long as I can still get away with things like puppy parties and such, I will take advantage of it. Sooner or later they'll just roll their eyes and tell me what they think is cool. But we're not there yet.

Also one of my new years's resolutions for this year is to keep it simple, meaning the goal was to try and use things we had on hand or that would really make sense to purchase. That meant no cute small glass milk bottles. No paper straws in matching colors. Instead we used small glass, dipped them into chocolate and sprinkles, and at the party added milk and some very basic very normal and very plastic straws that were cut a little shorter to match the tiny glasses. The kids loved it, even without fancy paper straws.

Surfing around the Internet one evening (and admittedly looking at paper straws and such), I found this cool phone wallpaper  of a cat looking at a pot of chocolate. And it was yellow, sort of, which is his favorite color. And did I mention it featured a cat?

For invites we ended up using that and just stapled it to a paper bag filled with some chocolate-on-a-stick we had left over from Christmas, figuring it was still winter and cold enough for some hot chocolate.

We originally wanted to do individual chocolate fondues, but my trial run was a total failure. The small tea lights heat them so much that the chocolate scorches instead of just melting. So it had to be Plan B - a chocolate fountain. Seven kids and a chocolate fountain, hmmmmm.... it did actually go pretty well, but I haven't managed to sort through the pictures from the party yet.

Decorations were pretty simple, too. I was going to make dot paper garlands in sprinkle colors, but I don't have a large circle punch and was determined to not use the party to buy more craft supplies (does that sound familiar to anyone or is just me who suddenly thinks she needs paper straws and circle punches and all these things?). Instead, I used paper I had on hand in yellow (of course), brown, red and white and my trusted star punch and my sewing machine to make star garlands. The day of the party we added some balloons and streamers, but the star garlands were hung the week before the party.

Since I had my sewing machine out anyway and this could be prepared well in advance, I used some felt left over from making last year's lion costumes and sewed a simple felt chocolate. Most of our guests are still young enough to have a play kitchen and/or play store, so I figured they could use it. It's also pretty simple to make. After making a couple of them, I came up with this technique: cut out a felt square, sew around three sides, stuff it (I usually use cheap Ikea pillows for that) while the needle is still in the felt (can you tell I am lazy?), sew it closed. Measure, then sew down the center of the long side. Measure again and sew down twice the shorter side, dividing it in thirds. Done.

I also found two small books about chocolate and threw in a car shaped eraser and a party blower for good measure. As usual, our favor bags were simple kraft paper bags, the names clipped on with wooden pins. Doesn't get easier than that!

Oh, and we made use of a small chocolate bar mold I've had around, adding melted chocolate and some sprinkles, wrapping the finished bars in cellophane.

Currently both kids are sick and at home, so I can't make any promises on when I'll manage to post some actual party pics. But I can say they had a blast, even though little brother wasn't in the best mood all morning and big brother had to make a trip to the ER with daddy right during the party (turned out just to be a fever and a case of hives). Sigh. I am so ready for Spring and the end of this long, long and sick winter season... But the sun is out today and it's supposed to be really nice. 

Can't wait!

Swenja

{the simple things} Rock Star Cats

It was Karneval over here this week, so the boys had to dress up for preschool and school. For some reason, cat costumes have been very popular at this house. Wonder where that comes from... Although we did lions last year and magicians for Halloween the past two years, cats remain the absolute favorite costume of all time.

Except that big brother is six years old now, and in school. Somehow I could not bring myself to buy him the same cat costume just a size bigger. A six-year-old dressing up as cat? Hmmm....

Instead, we took a cue from their all-time favorite music, the Mukketier-Bande (if you follow the link, click on the green arrow to listen to some samples).

You see, their all-time favorite song is about a rock-star cat named Atze, complete with leather jacket and electric guitar. And I just couldn't resist that one. So I got two used leather jackets from eBay for very little money, plus inflatable guitars. Then I made some cat ears using fleece we had left over from other projects, and bought cat tails since the week got so busy that I didn't have time to make them. We also printed a picture of Atze on simple white tees so that the boys could wear them under their jacket and show them to those who might not know who Atze the cat is (blasphemy!).

Thus we had two rock star cats for this year's carnival parties. And I can just see a rock star party in our future...




Happy Sunday,
Swenja

Homemade Orange Chile Pepper

The brother's daddy and uncle both had their birthdays last month, so we needed to stock up on gifts. It needed to be homemade (by the boys, of course), use mostly things we had around and be fairly quick to make, since the weeks before the birthdays were insane work wise. Tall order?

Nah.

Both daddy and his brother love to grill, so we made Orange Chile Pepper for meat hot off the grill. I had some oranges left over, so I used a vegetable peeler to get the skin off and a knife to scrape the remaining white pith off the back. Then I finely minced the peel and left it on a plate on the counter for a day or two. Voila, dried orange peel!

Then big brother and I took a trip to Ikea one Saturday afternoon and (among a select few other items, naturally) bought two of their spice mills.

While daddy was at going for a run, the boys took to their project. We got our dried orange peel, some coarse sea salt, black pepper and whole dried red chiles.

We started with some salt, then added the orange peel. We didn't really use a recipe, the boys and I pretty much eyeballed it.

 Add some black peppercorns and then some hot chiles.

Screwing the top back on the mills, giving it a few shakes and adding a tag - done!

Actually, that was too easy. Even for us. Luckily we had picked up some simple gray oven mitts at Ikea. We grabbed some fabric pens we had, and the boys drew a design, each one on one side of the mitt, so both mitts have big and little brother's artwork on them. It's a cat standing at a grill, btw.What, your cats don't usually grill your dinner? Ha.

Of course we also had to come up with the matching card. A quick Pinterest search later, we made these BBQ cards where you can actually open the top of the grill. That's fish on the grill. Guess the cat went to get himself another beer then...

So, now I have some time before I need to come up with a father's day craft...

What kid-made gifts have you done recently?

Swenja

A baby party and way too much fun with cupcakes

A good friend of mine is expecting baby number three these days (well, practically any minute now...), and it's a baby girl after two boys.

So of course we had to throw a baby shower. Now, that is a fairly American thing, so we changed it a bit. Made it smaller and more relaxed, oh, and minus the gifts (we're saving those for the little girl's arrival). We just wanted a simple afternoon for the girls, so the mommy to be could relax and have nothing to do at all except for chatting and eating some cupcakes.

And since I have two boys, I went all out on the lavender color scheme she had chosen for the nursery. I made a cloud mobile with little hearts - unfortunately that is the only photo I have, sorry for that.

Then I made some bunting with the leftover fabric and bias tape. I love it (just don't look too close. Let's just say the bias tape and I had some disagreements...)

Oh, and cupcakes. Did I mention cupcakes? I used the Hummingbird Bakery's recipe for chocolate cupcakes and made one batch each of the chocolate and vanilla frosting, tinting half of that lavender. I had way too much fun with the frosting and all those pink and purple sprinkles. But hey, I don't usually get to make girl cupcakes, so I really took the chance to indulge in this!

Now we're waiting for the baby girl's arrival...

Swenja