It's a beautiful day...

"It's a beautiful day... don't let it get away..."

This morning, on my way to work...

The evening before...

So it’s the evening before my 40th birthday…

How do I feel? Worn out; after all, it’s only a few days since Jan’s birthday, we started narrowing the choices for secondary schools for him, Christmas is knocking on the door timidly (baking, packing parcels with biscuits for the family, making Christmas cards...), I should rehearse for a stage play (I know my text only fragmentally), and then of course, the trip to Iceland, whereat I give myself hell because I want to finish off a whole lot of things I didn’t manage to do in the last few days and weeks.

Actually, this has nothing to do with my 40th birthday, hen?
Ah, but the schedule is tight and every now and then, someone remembers I’ll be 40.
So what?!
I don’t believe that I’ll feel any different tomorrow or the day after that.
Maybe relieved that day X has passed and noone cares anymore.

Which TV ad is it then that says “Grow up. Not old.”? Oh, but I don’t think I have grown up. And I don’t plan to.
Adults are responsible, that’s okay. But many adults seem to have lost their humor, the ease, they are somewhat withered, and that’s something I don’t want to be.
Basta!
No, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up ;-P

Reykjavik minus 6 days

Wow, folks, I can’t really imagine that this time next week I’ll be in Iceland.
How come I’ll travel there? Must have been around this time last year that I found an advertisement by Icelandair, short trips to Iceland, 4 to 5 days, excursions could be booked, too. Jürgen gave it a glimpse and said, “Well, what a pity. You already made your wishes for your birthday and Christmas this year.” And me, cheeky: “Okay, but I’ll have another birthday next year.”

That’s how easy life can be. Actually, I had wanted to travel there at the end of January, but my dear husband thought it no birthday present if I was going then, and thus, I’ll be there in late November.
I can’t really imagine to escape all of this pre-Christmas whirl for a few days. Maybe I will believe it when I’m there. So many scheduled things before Christmas! At least most of our Christmas baking is done, without the side effect of us feeling sick when the scent of biscuits is in the air ;-)

Last Wednesday, I had baked Christmas muffins after having baked “Baked apple” muffins for the kids (although I couldn’t tell why the muffins had that name, they simply tasted apple). Anyway, the whole place smelled of sweet biscuits to an extent that we had to aerate to keep us from losing our appetite to really eat them. Unbelievable...

A birthday cake (not only) for kids

As if we wouldn’t eat more than enough sweet food during the next few months…

It was Jan’s birthday, and I baked the same cake as every year: a hazlenut-chocolate cake.
I got the recipe from a baking dish I bought several years ago; it had the right size for a teeny weeny cake, but I just multiplied the amounts to fit for one pack of ground hazlenuts.

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You need

200 g butter
200 g sugar
4 (whole) eggs
200 g flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
200 g hazlenut meal (I doubt that’s the right term for ground hazlenuts?)
100 g chocolate dropshalf a pack of chocolate flakes (approx. 100 g)

Stuff for decoration

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Stir butter, sugar and eggs until they stop making this odd grounding noise.
Add flour, baking powder and hazlenut meal, stir well.
Add chocolate.Fill in a form of 26 cm diameter. (Of course, you could use any other form but then you’ll have to test how long it’ll take to bake.)

And that was it!

Takes 25 – 30 minutes at 180 °C in a convection oven to get a nice brown color and can be decorated after cooling. And decoration is the most important part – at least for Jan! Each and every year, the decoration has to be different, to be created with chocolate, marzipan, icing and food color...

8th birthday: crocs on a river bank (icing, crocs were made of marzipan).

9th birthday: cake with a therizinosaurus (marzipan dino, green dots are pistachios).

10th birthday: This is supposed to be the Hockenheim racing course... (racing track contours and cars made of marzipan; this year I bought the chocolate letters – exceptionally).
Jürgen helped creating this, because the stupid marzipan was so sticky. Anyway, this year’s cake was less artistic than those of the last years, but as delicate as ever, although I replaced melted chocolate by a fat chocolate coating (dunno what that is called in English).

Fall

Went hiking on Sunday. The trees that arch above like a cathedral can’t seem to let go off the leaves.

Half of the foliage of the beeches on the ground, whispering as you shove your feet through it, half of it still on the trees, changing it’s colour to yellow and copper brown, to fall down and join the leaves that went down first.


And yet, to enlighten the hearts before the winter comes and covers the scenery in shades of grey, muddy brown and pale violet, the leaves glow like fire in the sunshine.

I can take pleasure in every season, but somehow, I like autumn best…

Beeches... silver and gold.

Retrieving cats

This morning, the cat is a clown.

Did anybody say that a cat won’t retrieve things? They will. My cats did so quite eagerly, at least as long as they hadn’t reached an age, when they where too distinguished to do such childish sports.
But Sika is only 2 years old, so that’s still okay.

Our house has an open staircase, so she brings soft toy balls for us to throw down the stairs into the basement for her to retrieve. Sometimes, she even brings them back up. ‘Cos, often she waits for us to go down to collect the toys. No, my dear!

She should rather move her body; since the temperatures went down outside, she gorges like there’s no tomorrow and kind of looks like Queen Mary II (the ship!): slender in the front and a little baggy amidships...

Rainy November day

Today, these leaves on the bonnet of a car were the most appealing sight outside. The weather was a drab, overcast sky with all nuances of rain. Well, after all, it’s November.

The right weather for books or some needlework. Actually, I had intended to do some patchwork, but then I made the mistake of walking into a shop with a large range of knitting yarns. It has been very long since I’ve been knitting, but when I saw the yarns and some of the pieces they had knitted from those... to make it short, I went home with 4 clews of yarn and the determination to knit a shawl, because I feel as if I get the sniffles and I don’t want to be freezing in Reykjavik. At least, it doesn’t take too long to knit a shawl.

As if I hadn’t got enough yarn at home... I’ve been hoarding that, just as I do now with books and fabric. But my deceased Granny used to say (at least my Mum said so): “Wool doesn’t eat money.” She had knitted for farmers during WW2, for the sake of nutritive payment...
Anyway, as long as the old wool won’t be eaten by moths (which is not the case up to now), I could still knit it. In times of adversity.

I’ll report about the wool and what becomes of it later.

Strange...

Good to know ;oD You Are 80% Weird

You're more than quirky, you're downright strange. But you're also strangely compelling, like a cult leader.

How Weird Are You?

Idyll

I spend too little time outdoors. Any time I manage to take the time, I see so many wonderful things that I keep asking myself why the heck I can't do this every day, at least for half an hour: Go outside and enjoy what I see.
Leaves, on the lawn behind a white picket fence.

Is it Kitsch? Or is it just romantic?

Woof Nanny provided a link to a site where they sell oddments to give away as presents, like silver jewellery with mottos, and also vintage glass bottles with frills: At-Choo
I liked the idea of the glass bottles, even though they are a) quite campy and b) quite expensive. But they provide good inspiration for one's own ideas, imho.

Example: Pearls of wisdom... (genuine pearls in a vintage bottle)

November

Yesterday morning while driving to work, I turned the car to take a few pictures: A small fog bank lay over the alluvial land along the river Kinzig, and the sun shone dramatically through a grove by the creek Laache as if to announce the arrival of the gloomy month of November...