Merry Christmas

All the gifts are wrapped, now I am off to spend the Christmas Days at my parents house with the whole family.
Merry Christmas, fröhliche Weihnachten and God Jul!

Back from Copenhagen

To celebrate my birthday I spent a prolonged weekend in Copenhagen and came back today.
It was wonderful.

Christmas Decorations

This year I found these nice Christmas decorations.
The imps (?) are from my local flower shop and the felted balls are from the tea shop, where my mother used to work. I am not yet sure, where I will put them, but my Christmas tree is to small for them.

Cookie cutters

I finally bought some new cookie cutters. I made plans for buying them back in october ;-).
Now I hope to find some time to use them. I would love to try the pepparkakor recipe from Nicole Stich's wonderful blog delicious days.

Second Sunday in Advent

Lights

I need many lights to bring me through the winter darkness.

Last year...

... at this time I was in Sweden. First a few days in Stockholm, then in Västerås.
I enjoyed it and wish I could be there now.

Promising packages

and look what is inside: beautiful things from Marion's DaWanda shop "morgen ist gestern heute".
The forest mobile is a gift for a colleague. My co-workers and I will send it to her, when her baby is born in january. I hope they will like it.
And the little fox pin is for me.

Calendar 2012

I don't have too much space for calendars, so I limit myself to a few favourites.
In my hallway, I have Martina Hoffmann's "Mädchenkalender". It makes me happy every time I come home, open my apartment door and look at it.
You can order the calendar (there are three paper sizes) from Martina's DaWanda Shop "Stift und Papier". She also has lovely postcards and prints.

First picture: calendar 2012;
second picture: from this years calendar;
third picture: some of the postcards, I have also ordered.

Finally weekend

Breakfast this morning was somewhat simple.
I had a dreadful workweek and am still terribly tired.
But the sun is shining and I am looking forward to this weekend.

For the best tomato sauce in the world...

... that's all you need: good olive oil, garlic (or onion), pureed tomatoes, salt, pepper, chili (if you like) and time.
I got the recipe from Claudio's blog "Anonyme Köche". He is cooking and showing some pretty amazing things on his blog. But because I am not a very good cook, I love his simple recipes.
This is another favourite: "Orecchiette e Broccoli".

Vacation

Today I spent the whole day in my pajamas, reading, browsing the internet, reading my favourite blogs, baking and eating cheesecake muffins. Doing only things I wanted to do, nothing I had to.
It's such a wonderful difference to workday mondays and a perfect start to a week off.

Preparations

When at this time of the year the first Christmas sweets arrive in supermarkets, I ignore them. I might take a quick look, ahhh gingerbread, mhhh "Dominosteine", think no no no and walk away. It's way to early for me.
But ... when the first magazines with Christmas Cookie recipes hit the newsstands, I simply have to buy them. Every year!
Well, this Friday I bought "Brigitte" with the cookie supplement, the Christmas special edition of "Lecker", "Essen und Trinken" and "Living at home".
And to be prepared for future baking, I got my cookie cutters out to see what I have and what I still need.
For example I want a polar bear cutter, like the one pictured below. The picture was from Katja and Minna's blog "Nestled in" (still miss it).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nestledin/4206550973/

And a snowflake and gingerbreadman cookie cutter would be nice.
Oh yes, I like this early planning!

Autumn Sunflowers

A co-worker gave me those sunflowers last friday and they are still beautiful.

Putting a smile on my face

Diamond Head

U900 | Myspace Video

Ukulele Duo U900. Fantastic and supercute!

Quince crop...

... and a dragonfly

Breakfast

On weekdays my usual breakfast consists of orange juice, green tea, muesli with yogurt and reading the paper. And for a good start in the office I make myself a coffee to go.

The last image is from this sunday. Well, weekend breakfasts are different ;-)

Autumn Finding

Long weekend

We had a long weekend here and I tried to get as much sun and fresh air as I could.
The images were from a walk on saturday.
The wooden thing in the third picture was used as a stage. Years ago I saw a performance of Shakespeares "A Midsummer Night's Dream" there. It was so beautiful and magical.