Christmas Eve!

Homemade Advent candles

Today is the highlight of the year for every child in Germany, as Christmas presents are unwrapped today and not on Christmas day morning. This year's Christmas will definitely go down as one of the most memorable for us all. Not because it's the best, most vibrant or most fun, rather... it's on the contrary. The entire family (with the exception of Papa O), had caught the highly dreaded stomach flu. Call it gastroenteritis or Norovirus infection, they all meant the same thing. It knocked out the entire family like a beautifully game of domino <*sigh*>.... In short, we have completely missed Christmas! :-( 

Anyway... Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Christmas Countdown Dec 22

Erika's homemade gingerbread house!

Two more days till Christmas! We picked up our gingerbread house from our favorite baker in town "Erikas Backstübe". And oh my! She does some of the yummiest bread, buns, pastries, and cakes in town. This however was specially ordered and made only for the Christmas season. But what's the history behind gingerbread house? Well, to sum it up... spice ginger which originated in the Middle East was brought by explorers back to Europe in the 11th Century. It became popular in Germany, with its heart in Nuremberg (that's Germany's gingerbread capital of the WORLD!), and became even more wide spread and popular when the brothers Grimm wrote Hansel and Gretel. :-)

Christmas Countdown Dec 17

Baby A's winning work of art!

Yesterday we emailed in our entry to FM4's "Best CD wrapping competition". FM4 is an Austrian English-German based radio channel. They had released some of the best music selection in the world, and we are avid listeners. So naturally Daddy got Baby A to get her hands busy. She just sat down with a big jar of ironing pearls, and put together a Christmas tree all by herself, based entirely on her own imagination. It was amazing. I helped to get the mirror image of FM4 in, and did the ironing. And viola! Here it is..

Today we got an email telling us we have won one of the 10 "Sound Selection No 27" CDs!! Yeah....

For the complete story from FM4, check out this link "Alles eine Frage der Verpackung" .

Christmas Countdown Dec 8

Our fundraising waffle stand 

Once a year, Baby M's kindergarten would hold a little fundraising project for Nuestra Seňora de Guadalupe in Abancay, which is a parish/community partner of the St. Laurentius church. This year it's held to coincide with the first day of the Christmas market held by the town of Weinheim. The cheerful mummies (and daddies) helped to set up the stand, some volunteered to "work" the shifts and others provided the required waffle dough.

Early midday crowd for some yummy
pre-lunch snack!

Hungry pig awaiting donations

Here's the recipe we used:

• 500 g Margarine (room temperature)
• 350 g Sugar
• 4 sachets of Vanilla sugar 
• 12 eggs (medium sized)
• 2 pinch of salt
• 2 bottles of lemon extract (optional)
• 1 kg flour
• 1 sachet of baking powder
• 1 L milk

[ Note: In case you are confused with the amount of vanilla sugar, 1 sachet/packet equals 8 grams. ]

Christmas Countdown Dec 7

Miniature chocolate muffins

It's Christmas party at Baby A's school! For the buffet, we've made 48 little chocolate muffins, decorated with vanilla icing and topped with 48 delicious panna cotta based berry gummy! Children always do love anything small and who could actually resist chocolate?

Christmas Countdown Dec 6

Stockings waiting to be filled!

Happy Saint Nicholas Day! May your "Nicholas boots" be filled to the rims with goodies!

As a custom in Germany, children will find small treats such as fruits (normally mandarins, oranges or apples, or nuts, and sometimes of special candies and cookies. In Baby M's kindergarten, one of the teachers/caretakers/parents/grandparents will impersonate Nicholas. He/She will be dressed up like a Bishop (minus the horse in this case). The children were asked to bring Stockings weeks ahead (as you can see, it's taken a more modern approach as opposed to the traditional boots). They will be asked if they have been good. Sometimes Nicholas will pretend to check his golden book of records, and the children will receive filled up stockings. This task would already been done secretly on Dec 5, when the stockings mysteriously disappeared. As you may notice, Saint Nicholas is very similar to the modern day Santa Claus! :-)

Christmas Countdown Dec 5

Artist: Baby A (December 2011)

This was put together by Baby A for the town library (I helped to cut and hot glued them together). It was chosen for display on December 6 (Saint Nicholas Day) last year. Baby A was terribly proud of it (and us of her!). As you can see, we have the ever lovable Om Nom as a Santa Claus, a Unicorn, a dragon, and lots of books (as should a library be) and presents. The cardboard and the box were entirely recycled from one of our many Amazon cartons.

[ Note: Tonight, being December 5, both Baby A and Baby M will be cleaning their boots in anticipation of the arrival of the Saint Nicholas tomorrow - the bearer of treats! ]

Christmas Countdown Dec 3

Artist: Baby A (November 2012)

This year Baby A and Baby M made an Advent Calender for their Oma and Opa. It comprised of 24 colored envelops, stringed together, containing little craft works. One of them is that drawn on an A4, black and white, and multiply folded to fit into the envelop. I liked it so much that I took it out again, have it scanned and the graphic slightly sharpened. (The original, I diligently refolded and resealed.) Then, Baby A worked on it with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo VI. Using simple commands, she filled the picture up with colors. She loved it, and is finally convinced to allow me to connect her Bamboo pen tablet, which she got for her 7th Birthday, to her PC.

Christmas Countdown Dec 2

Artist: Baby A (December 2011)

This was intended to be a Christmas card painted for the Grandparents. Baby A painted it last year on a piece of cardboard. Being reluctant to part with it before making a copy, I have it scanned it. Now, it'll stay digitally available... for good. :-) December 2 was also the first day it snowed this Autumn/Winter. So we found this picture fitting to the season. And... Happy First Advent!

Christmas Countdown Dec 1

Artist: Baby A (December 2011)

Today is the first day of December and all children in Germany can now officially do the countdown towards Christmas. For this Blog, Baby M and Baby A will join me putting little things together. Something special for each day. They'll probably end up more craft like posts, but we'll see....

We have chosen Om Nom to head the countdown. Why? Because this little candy eater is as much loved last year as this. Enjoy....

Butter cookies... prelude to Christmas

Yummy butter cookies

Christmas is all the reason we need to stuff ourselves silly with delicious cookies. Nothing is more delicious than Oma's butter cookies. (She's our queen baker!) Using her recipe, the kids and their daddy spent an afternoon kneading, cutting, decorating, baking.. and eating (I take a back seat when it comes to baking cookies :-)). We used a variety of cutters, some traditional Christmas motives, some not (there's a Unicorn in the left hand corner). There was an elk cutter we got from IKEA, and a cute little mushroom cutter. At the end of the baking session, however, all there was left were a couple of crumbs. As usual, our cookies had very short life span. It's out of the oven, quick cool down wait, before they were all gobbled up. Normally, by end of November, Oma would then bake and supply us with generous monster sized boxes of our favorites. :-)

Autumn ramble.. and celebrations

Next to Spring, Autumn is one of my favorite time of the year. The kids would probably say "winter" because of the highly anticipated Christmas presents. But Autumn is definitely more fun even if we do need to do a bit of raking in our own backyard! Everywhere is a jumble of glorious gold and brown chaos. There'll be chestnuts to gather and beautiful leaves to collect. And there is no sound more delightful, than the sound of leaves crunching under our feet as we ramble through the woods. Autumn also means a lot of festive celebrations. 

A ramble in the woods

In Germany, we celebrate the "Erntedankfest" on the first Sunday of October. It closely resembles Thanksgiving. Although we do not actually celebrate this at home, most kindergartens and schools generally make a special day of it. Baby M made apple juice from the apples harvested in the kindergarten's orchard, then all parents (grandparents and guests) were invited to a lunch of vegetable soup accompanied  by homemade juice. Baby A's school did something similar, combining that with Halloween. 

In November, the children will be looking forward to St. Martin's Day. The highlight is a procession of children with candle-lit lanterns. Although St. Martin's Day falls on November 11, the procession in our town has been fixed to the nearest Saturday, thus November 10 this year. With the route arranged before hand, all street lights along the way will be turned off punctually at 18:00. Led by a horse rider dressed as St. Martin, we will be accompanied by a couple of marching bands. There will be a giant bonfire and sweet buns for all children made in the shape of St. Martin at the end of the procession. At the moment, everyone is putting on finishing touches on their lanterns. (More of this in the next Blog).

Kaya and Gruyère

Fusion food doesn't come more extreme than this...

Kaya is a rich "coconut egg jam", made primarily of coconut milk, eggs and generously flavored with screw pine leaves (or "pandan"). This "jam" has its roots in the South East Asia. It is most popularly found between buttered toast, often taken at breakfast or tea time. 

As it was something I had enjoyed as a child, I had made sure to have a continuous supply of them since residing here in Germany. So it is no surprise that both our kids find it as a delicious, creamy spread, that is heartily devoured for breakfast. 

This combination however, it entirely Baby A's. With her weekend Brezel, she'll spread a thick layer of Kaya (imported, naturally) over butter, and have it topped up with layers of Gruyère. For us, Gruyère is considered to be the best Swiss cheese. It is slightly sweet yet slightly salty, with a flavor that varies widely with age (we like it aged!). But put them together... WOW! Baby A really enjoys the explosion of taste... Yup, this means, she eats and we stare...:-)) 

Creamy Kaya on buttery Brezel

The ultimate breakfast topped with mouth watering Gruyère

Scary muffins for School Buffet

Baby A had a Halloween/Autumn party in school this week. In Germany, Halloween was generally unheard of before 1990. Later, like Valentine's Day (or Grandparents Day for that matter - I bet you've not heard of this one. It's sort of vaguely "celebrated" on October 14) it's now a commercial success. For children, it's just another reason to dress up and party.

Some German families, normally in new residential areas, do organize among themselves for a couple of hours after dark of "Treat or Tricking" (Here, they'll say "Süßes oder Saures"). It's pre-arranged, so the children would actually know which house to go to. The area where we live in, we are not very much into it... yet. (So ask me again next Wednesday).

Yesterday, I baked 2 dozens of chocolate muffins for Baby A's party at School. In class, they'd carved pumpkins and made pumpkin soup. Other mums volunteered to varied the buffet. As Baby A wanted chocolate, she got 24 gooey chocolaty muffins. We don't do scary.. so sticking eye balls or amputated fingers were out of the question. Instead, we went "funny-scary-yummy".

A quick google later, we came up with this simple to do combination. You can download the spiderwebs template from the Country Living website. The kids loved it, especially the webs and the funny toppers. (And I'm pretty sure they've gobbled down the muffins too.)

Muffin toppers

Ready for the party!

Old (BIG) box, new toy

A recycled AMAZON box (and egg cartons)

We got a delivery of something huge last month. As usual, the kids were completely ecstatic, excited with the  implication of its size, and what we could actually make out of it. First, there was a loud discussion on what it could possibly be. I told them we could only make one thing out of it, so that led to the second heated discussion. Then it was decided that I'm going to turn it into a little house, complete with two garret windows. While I was busy with a pair of very sharp scissors and a hot glue gun, I got the kids started on creating pink flowered creepers out of old egg cartons (painted in pink acrylic paint), and some colored pipe cleaners.

And here's the end result. It's now sitting in the playroom, sometimes used as a reading house.. but more often simply as a place to hide.

  

Recycle.. recycle..

We are continuously on a recycling mode. Ever notice that children can never have enough toys, and their attention paid to the latest never lasted more than 2 weeks? What other better ways, in addition to saving a couple of bucks now and then, than to encourage them to come up with something new from a pile of "old"?!

Over the years, Calafant had been producing cardboard-based toys. We found it absolutely cool, and had been using them in various occasions. It was proven to be very popular for children birthday parties and we had been using them as very engaging distraction during large adults gathering (imagine garden party with 20 adults and 6 energetic tots). So one of our many recycling attempts was producing absolutely colorful, fun-filled (dare I say gorgeous?!) new toys out of cartons.

A castle fit for Fillys, Fairies and Fawns
(and other creatures of the enchanted Forest)

A pirate ship for the brave and adventurous

The children and I spend at least 2 weeks cutting, glueing, arguing, and finally assembling all the bits and pieces together. Today these "works of art" are centerpieces of their rooms. And because they're handmade, future upgrades are always possible! :-)

The Om Nom Craft Party

Welcome to the Om Nom Craft Party

When Baby A turned 7, she wished for an Om Nom party. I was momentarily loss for words as I scrambled my brain to come up with something practical. Both being sort of creative freaks, Baby A and I quickly came to the decision to turn it into a craft party with the hungry green guy as the center theme. So that was it!

Lemony magical muffins

We had "hand crafted" Om Nom invitation cards, an Om Nom chocolate Birthday cake, Om Nom lemon muffins topped with magic mushrooms, an Om Nom pinata, and had every possible surface covered with smiling Om Noms! The party was a rolling success, and for Baby A.. her BEST EVER !!!

Birthday Om Nom

Colorful edible crafts - giant cookies with food coloring

Under the Sea Birthday Party

Yummy fish baits (party favors)!

When Baby M turned 4, we decided to throw an under the sea Birthday Party. Fortunately we had a rather mild Spring in Germany this year, so we could actually let the children run free in the garden. We played the regular favorites like fishing and catch. A great idea I picked up from the Birthday in a Box - and it's played like musical chairs, caused a lot of tumbling around and laughters. Instead of fighting for chairs, children were fighting to crawl through this cute little killer whale, and who ever is caught in it wins a prize. (Naturally we made sure everyone wins. ;-))

Hungry baby orca

And what is a party without the obligatory chocolate munchies. The children were especially taken in by the little sharks on the Muffins, and just couldn't get enough of the smiling Octopus I placed on the birthday cake. I made a "Maulwurfkuchen", loosely translated as a "Mole Cake". It's a delicious German torte - imagine a giant Oreo, only this is a chocolate cake with a creamy Banana centered surprise.  

What a catch!

Party room...

Octopus on a "Mole Hill"

Schönau am Königssee

This is our first real holiday in Bavaria. Sure, we've been in the state of Bavaria a couple of time, but it was more of passing through, and not really staying on for more than 2 nights. So this year, we decided to spend our summer holiday in the Berchtesgaden of the German Bavarian Alps. It is located near the Austrian border, and has some of the most spectacular views we have ever seen!

Haus Hubertus

The three most important elements for any family holiday - fresh air, lots of space and endless activities, were all fulfilled here. We have booked ourselves into a half-board hotel. With breakfast and dinner settled, all we needed to do was to concentrate on the activities. We visited the Salzbergwerk in Berchtesgaden. It is one of the oldest and biggest salt mine in Europe. It has been turned into a huge fun-filled family destination, complete with slides, train/boat rides with impressive multimedia experience.

Charming little town of Schönau

Then, there were castles to visit. We picked the one right next door, in Schönau. The Berchtesgaden Royal Palace was used as the summer residence/hunting lodge of the Bavarian Royal family. Because it was used primarily during the hunting season, it's more roughly fitted out, not at all the normal grandeur one expected. [Note: So, if you are a hunting freak, like all weaponry of sorts, and admire mounted trophies of furry four legged nature (and stuff animals as table ornaments), this might be a stop for you. We only found this out later when we were half way through the tour. I don't know about you, but as we were on holiday, we tend to do a lot of things spontaneously without doing much of background reading... thus this element of errr... surprise. ;-)] Later, it served as a monastery of the Augustiner.

The courtyard of the monastery

Caught on display of a shop in
Berchstesgaden. What a nice change
from your typical garden Gnomes!

About 30 minutes walk away is the very much visited Königssee. The walk through a canopy of trees along the river was refreshing. The destination was a typical letdown, when we came face to face with McDonald's  and a gigantic, fully packed parking lot... with thousands of tourists crawling around and hundreds of shops peddling souvenirs and local cuisine! Arrghh! Don't get me wrong, the lake itself was beautiful. The commercialization was anything but.

The live and bustling Königssee

Take the back route, by pass the tourists.. and here you'll
have the purest tranquility of the lake!

We skipped the boat ride, thus skipping the trip to the St. Bartholomä, a famous pilgrimage church located on a peninsula along the lake shore. [Note: Ah yes, we tend to skip these "tourist traps". Well, we had even skipped Gondolas ride, the BOTH times we were in Venice!] Instead, we took a nice scenic walk around the lake. Here are some breathtaking pictures from another route we took, via cable car to the peak of the Jena, then hiked downwards towards the middle cable car station.

At the peak of Jana - absolutely amazing!

A breathtaking view of the Königssee!

All pure nature

A cheeky little raven trying to steal lunch

And of course, we also visited Salzburg, home to one of the world's most famous composer - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Needless to say, we visited the Mirabell Palace, explored the Old Town, picnicked along the Salzburg Residenz, and walked along the Mozartsteg, which is an Art Nouveau bridge for pedestrians. Baby M was very taken in with the hundreds (if not thousands) of Love padlocks fixed to the sides of one of the bridges we crossed. He insisted on closely examining each and every one  of them. We had a hard time  tearing him away.

Street performers (not shown here) at the
entrance of the Mirabell Palace

Mozartsteg

Mozartplatz

Love padlocks on one of the bridges
in Salzburg

Right in our backyard was the high ropes course cum climbing parks to romp, climb and explore. Baby A did the course with Daddy. As Baby M was too young/small we hung around and played. We swam almost everyday, and there were excellent programs for children. Baby M was even allowed to join in the campfire on the last day. It was the kids' first bonfire, so they had an absolutely wonderful time roasting marshmallows, and grilling sausages!

All in all, we had a wonderful time. We are already planning ahead to try someplace new next Summer. But for now, we'll stick to somewhere familiar during the Whitsun school holiday... :-))