Howling at the Moon

It's almost King's Day, the day where the citizens of The Netherlands celebrate their majesty's birthday. The big day is next friday and because the king's surname is Van Oranje, which means From Orange, basically everything you can think of will be orange. I myself crocheted an orange little crown that fits around my Flemish Giant's ear. So if he wasn't my king bunny before, than now he is.




Look at him, so handsome. Of course you also can attach the little crown to a hair pin and wear it in on your head. 
I altered the pattern a little bit, but you can find the original pattern here!

My friend is expecting a child and asked me to make the Gender Reveal Cake. She doesn't know either what the gender is. Such an honour!   

~Since I pinned lots of recipes on my Pinterest boards through the years, but never made anything from the pinned items, I've set myself a goal to try one recipe per week to reduce the overload~  
This week I took the difficult task on me to make Lemon Macarons. I've made macarons before, just one time, and although those looked like macarons, I found it a bit of an effort to get the right result.  The ones I showed you last week, the Lemon Macarons, looked so delicious and I so love the taste of lemons, that I wanted to give it another try. 
Well, what shall I say... The taste was great and everything I expected, but the way they looked, well, I don't know... 
The one below is the one that looked the best:

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After coffee with a lot of milk (aka Latte Macchiato) my favorite drink is tea with a lot of milk, especially spiced tea, so I was delighted when I found this recipe for Chai Latte!


Can't wait to make it! 

We have our first day of REALLY nice weather today and when I sniff summer in the air, I always think of long sultry evenings with friends and barbecue, or even better: both. And when I think of evenings like that I always get the urge to make lanterns. So I made a few today. 



And while I was busy knotting I made one for my strawberry pot, too. 

You can find a tutorial for knotting here

Another Lalylala Pattern from her book Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies! This time I made the Ladybug.




The ladybug as a pupa. 
I didn't even know they were a pupa before becoming a little beetle, but after seeing it in the crochet book (it's funny, the places where you sometimes find new things to learn) I looked them up, and just like butterflies ladybugs go through four stages: egg, larvae, pupa, ladybug. 


The pattern comes with loose wings and hat with antennae, that you can put on when the ladybug comes out of her pupa cocoon. 
I've made several pattern from the book now, as shown below.



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My Easter Eggs Cake was featured by Sum of Their Stories!


Thank you so much, Julie!!

~Since I pinned lots of recipes on my Pinterest boards through the years, but never made anything from the pinned items, I've set myself a goal to try one recipe per week to reduce the overload~  


Look at this beautiful flower cup that I inherited from my grandmother! The Sesame Cookies that I made this week look so nice on the saucer, don't you think? Inside the cup is written 'August' in gold, because that's the month she was born in. I gave it to her when I was a child and when she died, also in August, a week before she would turn 84 actually, I got it back. I never use it, too afraid to break it, just this time to show you the cookies. 
Oh, by the way: the cookies were great, too!
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I saw this great looking Lemon Macarons and you all know I love lemons, so although it takes a lot of time and effort to make macarons, I will give it a try the upcoming week.

This week I bought a sack of oranges. I don't know how it is in the country you live in, but in the country I live in you can buy one loose orange for about 1 euro or you can buy a sack of ten oranges for 3,50 euro in the supermarket. So I always buy the whole sack, even though I don't know what to do with such an overload. Most of the time, and I'm ashamed to tell this, I eat just one or two and after that I have had enough oranges for a long time. The rest of the oranges will shrivel up underneath a new layer of fruit in the fruit bowl. 
But..., not this time! I don't want to be a person that's throwing half of her food in the bin while other people are starving to death, so in the future I hope to actually use and eat all food I  buy. Never too late change yourself. 
So after I found myself staring at eight oranges that I didn't have the appetite for anymore, I started to search for orange recipes and other uses. 
This is what I used them for, to the very l…

For a fine colleague that will turn 50 soon I made a card myself. Just a bit more personal than a store bought one. 


I made this card with two layers of balloon, that I cut out of white paper. One serves as a background, the other one has the middle cut out.
Between both layers of 'balloon' I've put a piece of cellophane. Before I glued all three layers to each other, I've put some confetti behind the cellophane. 
On the back of the balloon I've attached a piece of cotton yarn and then I glued the finished confetti balloon to a shining and sparkling golden piece of carton.

~Since I pinned lots of recipes on my Pinterest boards through the years, but never made anything from the pinned items, I've set myself a goal to try one recipe per week to reduce the overload~ 
One of the best recipes of this year, I already know now, is this Snack Mix. In the Netherlands people are totally not known with the phenomenon 'Snack Mix', so this was the first time I ate it, but I'm hooked and this will definitely be a regular feature of the Movie Nights my family has every once in a while.

I made mine with a mix of salt cookies, mini pretzels, crackers that I broke in smaller pieces and different nuts. In a little sauce pan I melted salted butter and mixed it with garlic. The melted butter I mixed with the little snacks and the snacks I spread out on a baking tin. I baked the mix for about half an hour on 180 degrees Celsius. Not much work at all, so you see, but the best movie snack ever!

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Since I've two boxes of sesame seeds, it seems like a…

I know, I know, Easter has already passed, but I liked the cake I made for the family brunch so much that I wanted to show it to you all. And instead of eggs, you can put other things on top. Chocolate flowers or such, then it's a spring cake. Or candies, then it's a birthday cake. Lots of possibilities. 
I made this cake with an empty vegetable can. I baked two cakes and cut one of them in 1/3 and 2/3, so I ended up with three cakes with different heights. Between the layers I've put blue colored buttercream, on top I dripped ganache, and after that I decorated the cake with different sizes and colors of chocolate eggs. 

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This month my Alpaca was featured by Ginx Craft! 

Thank you very much!

To decorate the front door for the Easter Brunch that's coming up in our house, I made this Easter Wreath with left overs from the wire bunny that I made a couple of weeks ago and the pheasant feathers that I used last week for a center piece.  The only thing I had to buy were faux eggs. I made hole in it with a screw and threaded the eggs over the wire. Then sticked feathers on the eggs and that was it. About ten minutes of work.

I got this idea here

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My Lalylala Spring Bunny was featured by Creative Jewish Mom and by Scrapality!



Thank you very much, Sara and Andrea!

In my Pinterest feed I got some pins of crocheted 'Nuestra Senoras'. They made me think of a trip to the Spanish Island of Lanzarote, belonging to the Canary Islands, a couple of years ago. We were there in the week of Semana Santa, the week between the last sunday before Easter (Dominica in Palmis) and Easter itself, because we wanted to visit one of the processions in the capital of the island, Arrecife. Like the rest of Spain the Canary Islands are mostly Catholic, so religious days are celebrated with a lot of pageantry.
The most beautiful statue that was carried around was of the Virgin de los Dolores, also called Virgin the Los Volcanes, who is the patron of the island. Volcanoes are found everywhere on the island, all Canary Island are volcanic.


This is what the 'real' Virgin de los Dolores really looks like. Normally the statue can be found in the charming little white church of Mancha Blanca, a small village on the island.


The pins didn't come with patte…

This week I made the French Cheese Soup with Croutons. We all like cheese around my house, but making soup with cheese is something different. It wasn't all oohs and aahs. I was the only one who liked it, although it tastes much like Cheese Fondue. My husband and children don't like Cheese Fondue either, so that makes sense. Anyway, this recipe didn't make the 'To Keep-list'. 

The little Garlic Bread Wheels that I made to go with the soup were a total hit on the other hand. And so simple to make! 
What you need: Cressent Dough Butter Garlic, grated
What to do: Melt the butter Add garlic Smear garlic butter on dough
Roll up dough Bake in oven until golden brown
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Next week I would like to make this delicious looking Snack Mix, as seen at Martha Stewart. Perfect for our family movie night.  On Pinterest I see lots of snack mixes come along, but here in The Netherlands folks aren't really familiar with this phenomenon. People just buy snacks and put them in bowl…

This weekend my family will come over for an Easter Brunch, so I made a flower centerpiece to fill the table. 
What you need: Jar Small vase that fits through the opening of the jar Tulips Daffodils
First I cut the tulips off about 10cm under their head. To stop them from growing, I pierced a little hole just under their head with a needle. 
I filled a jar with water and arranged the tulip heads in a circle along the edges of the jar. 
Then I put the daffodils in the vase and the vase in the jar before they were blooming, so the flowers wouldn't break off because they were too big. After two days the daffodils started to bloom and now the centerpiece is ready to show off.  

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After some vain hope a couple of times I think spring is finally coming to Western Europe. Only a bit of cold weather in the forecast for this weekend and then temperatures will rise, I hope. In my garden some of the flowers came up weeks ago, but only started blooming this week. 

Maybe you do remember Vlad the Vampire that I made half a year ago (wow, six months ago, time does fly, but by the way) from Lalylala. On her blog she does have a free modification pattern to make a Bunny from the basic doll pattern. I didn't make exactly the same bunny, as I embroidered a violin on its belly instead of a rose and used other colors, as pink violins don't exist (not around here anyway).


Spring is coming!


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The little Aphid that I made last week is featured by Creative Jewish Mom!



Thank you very much!

~Since I pinned lots of recipes on my Pinterest boards through the years, but never made anything from the pinned items, I've set myself a goal to try one recipe per week to reduce the overload~

As promised here's the Rice Cake. Not as delicious as I thought it would be, I missed the hearty taste of a crust. Next time I will try to make this as a tart.


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Do you like cheese? I looove cheese. All sorts of cheese, but especially the ripe ones. So when I found this recipe for French Cheese Soup with Croutons I knew I had to make this one day. This day will be somewhere in the upcoming week.

Normally I don't really decorate my house for Easter, but because there will be a brunch at our house for my family I thought the house will look nicer when there's something on the table that has to do with Easter (besides our own Flemish Giant Haasje of course, who's the best Easter Bunny ever!). 

So I bought paper eggs, paint, real eggs and pheasant feathers. The real eggs came in a carton box and the box was what I needed (well, I could use the eggs, too, but not for this decoration project). 
Painted the eggs and let them dry Covered the eggs in Modpodge Sticked the feathers to it Covered eggs and feathers again in Modpodge Put the eggs in the carton box Arranged them on a serving plate with daffodils, a bunny and the rest of the feathers.



I found this idea here