26 May 2011

A busy weekend

I'll tell you all about my busy weekend in a bit. But! First things first! Welcome to all those new followers, the counter is up to 26 already, who'd have thought?! I'm thinking a giveaway of some sort should be held soon, as a celebration... Will keep you posted.

Now. About that weekend. I've spent last weekend with friends from the UK, and while I'm still not entirely caught up on sleep, I'd do it again this weekend if it were possible. Had a great time! We picked them up on Friday morning (was in the car by 7 am for my first long solo drive since I got my driver's licence, it was quite scary at times), spent the day lounging in the sun and walking around town.

Because I kinda had to, I made raspberry-white chocolate cupcakes and lemon cake. The cupcakes were supposed to have pink raspberry frosting on them, because they were supposed to be Mana Cakes. Not my idea, by the way. But my reading skills failed miserably, causing me to bring home just one tube of powdered sugar in stead of two, or even three. I discovered this when the shops were already closed, of course, and decided to give it a try anyway. The resulting frosting was.. well, no frosting at all, really. I covered one cupcake in the liquid substance and threw out the rest. (and then I made the guy who demanded cupcakes with pink frosting eat that one. Muhahaha) The unfrosted ones were delicious nonetheless, as was the lemon cake. It's a recipe that I've made twice now and it's such a good, lemony, tasty cake! I found the recipe here. Trust me. Make this cake sometime. It's so good!


Saturday was spent in Amsterdam, where we saw more bars and cafes than actual sightseeing sights. We did take a boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam, which was surprisingly interesting and fun, even for a born and bred Dutch girl like myself. We enjoyed the weather, the sunshine and the sights. On Sunday, they had to fly home again, so in the car we went again for yet another 1.5 hour drive to the airport.


In other news, I received a swap package on Friday all the way from America from the lovely Debbie! We joined the swap on the We Love Lucy group on Ravelry. I'm still working on my package for her, so no details about that, but here's what she sent me! A big box, filled with sparkly tissue paper! Ooooooo!

No, just kidding, the contents of the paper were much more ooo-worthy.

Chocolate, assorted teas, gorgeous smelling soap, bookmarks, and delicious, squish-worthy superwash merino yarn! OooOOooo! I've been so incredibly spoiled! But no worries Debbie, your special package will soon be on its way!

This weekend I've got a trip-that-shall-not-be-mentioned-before-the-swap-parcel-arrives-in-America planned so hopefully, I will have some more interesting things to share very soon. Until then, my friends!

14 May 2011

I'm aliiiiive!

Figured I might have to point that out. It's been aaaaaaages since my last post. And there's been one reason and one reason only for that: my wrist has been giving me tons of grief. No crocheting for me! And no knitting either. And hardly any baking. I've been so bored! So of course, I could have told you about my exceptionally boring days, about the walks about town I've taken on days that were so incredibly ugly that I didn't even bother to take my camera out of my bag. But I didn't. I could have told you about how anxious I was to hear back from my thesis supervisor and how stressed out I was because I couldn't do anything and felt like I should have been doing homework, or something school-related, during those weeks that I had to wait for him to send back his feedback. But! The radio silence has come to an end! My wrist still hurts badly on occasion, but I've decided to just post some general randomness.


My bell pepper plant is doing great! Last week, it got tons of blossoms and he's got two tiny bell peppers growing between the leaves! I'm proud of my little buddy. And I never realised how pretty those leaves can be. Yesterday, I sat and looked through them with the sun shining brightly outside, and I could see all those tiny little veins, and the colour...

Gorgeous. Right?

Speaking of sunshine, I met up with a bunch of friends on Wednesday to enjoy a couple of drinks and eachother's company. Had a great time, but I did have too much sunshine... And ended up with a sunburn. The BF now refers to me as Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer.

And he's kinda right...

Creatively, I've been up to nothing at all, really. I've had some attempts at working with plastic but gave up because it hurt my wrist. The only things I have been doing is make food.



I made a really easy tzatziki (grate 1 cucumber without the seeds, press liquid out of the gratedcucumber, sprinkle grated cucumber with salt, leave for 20 minutes, add to 1 tub of yoghurt, add about 5 cloves of garlic and plenty of freshly ground salt and pepper. Done!) which we had for dinner on Turkish bread with grilled greek chicken, which was really, really good. I had leftovers for lunch the next day with smoked chicken slices (because we kinda ate all the greek chicken the night before, it was too good not to).

For mother's day, I had been doing some baking. I made a strawberry shortcake for the BF's mother because we had breakfast there, and then went to my mother. I made apple cookies for her.

I still have a loooooot to learn when it comes to decorating cookies, but I'm beginning to get somewhat of a hang of it. The most important thing is to be patient, I believe. With these, I was in a bit of a hurry because we were headed out to have dinner with friends and I had half an hour left to do 6 cookies, so I piped the borders and left them to dry for 10 minutes, which really is not long enough. When I filled them, I ended up with little streams of bright red liquid sugar running down the sides. Oh well. Lesson learned!

So. That's what I've been up to! I'll be busy with my thesis the next weeks and hopefully, I'll be able to get some hooking time in someday soon without regretting it for the next week. One can hope, right?