Advent of 2013

We were simply ecstatic! In November 2013, there was a call for children to participate in a drawing competition. The winning picture will grace the front page of the December Sports Newsletter. We just couldn't resist trying it out. Nevertheless it was a wonderful surprise to find Baby A's picture greeting us one morning when the post was brought in. Hurrah!! :-)

The winning entry to the Christmas edition

Erlenbacher Pottery

A pottery party for Baby A

April was indeed the month for parties. It's back to Baby A. Like last year, this party was again planned around "craft". However, unlike last year, we decided to partly outsource the "craft" part to a professional potter. :-)

Frau Hartwig and her husband run a charming little pottery art center, called Töpfereiwerkstatt Erlenbach in the middle of Odenwald. First, a bit of geography lesson. The Odenwald is shared by three states. This patch of beautiful woodlands and some parts even of geographical wonder lies snugly between Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. To be more exact, Wiki will tell you that "the northern and western Odenwald belong to southern Hesse, with the south stretching into Baden. In the northeast, a small part lies in Lower Franconia in Bavaria." And if you are even more interested in some unnecessary details, Wiki goes on to describe it as "the Odenwald lies between the Upper Rhine Rift Valley with the Bergstraße and the Hessisches Ried (the northeastern section of the Rhine rift) in the west, the Main and the Bauland (a mostly unwooded area with good soils) in the east, the Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin – a subbasin of the Upper Rhine Rift Valley in the Rhine-Main Lowlands – in the north and the Kraichgau in the south. The part south of the Neckar valley is sometimes called the Kleiner Odenwald (“Little Odenwald”)." But enough of that..

Back to the party/pottery...

Our breakfast set ready for the next phase of
baking and glazing

What a perfect way for kids to have fun when they are allowed to get up to their arms in muck... er.. I mean clay!? :-) For two hours they kneaded, rolled, pounded, cut, brushed, painted and produced beautiful works of art out of boring blocks of clay. Using their creativity, the children each produce a breakfast set comprising of a plate and a mug. Then, the breakfast set will be baked, then glazed, then baked again. All of this to be done by Frau Hartwig later. So there was a waiting time of 3 to 4 weeks, before we could actually see the finished art. It was all very exciting for the children, as the color they have used was not exactly like the end product! For their hard work (sprinkled with laughter.. occasional complain.. and songs) what was better for lunch than fresh baked pizza out of their stone ovens served with fresh crisp lettuce salad?!

Getting cleaned up and ready for lunch

Stairs leading upstairs where lunch was served

3 crows in a row...

Some finished pottery with paint in buckets

Each is individualized, fun and unique! 

In progress for baking, and glazing.

Waiting for a coat of paint.

More pieces of art in the courtyard.

More shapes and colours...

..as a guardian angel..

.. as Art deco for any gardens..

...for livening up any space... 

We ended the day back at home, as presents still needed to be unpack, birthday song still needed to be sung and cake to be eaten. All in, what a wonderful day it had been...

..as statement for any tree..

..or just for a good laugh!

Pirate Party!

Arrgghh!! The Invitations... 

Another year comes, and what do you know? Baby M turns 5 and once again it's time to party!!! This year, like every little boy's dream, we have chosen the pirate theme. We have the invitations printed out, and the edges slightly singed to get that "piraty treasure map" look. Oh yes, make sure you do this outdoor. The smell of burnt paper is strong! When I was experimenting with something small, I had my concern neighbor knocking on the door... She smelt a pungent paper burning, and came over to check. ;-))

The message in the bottles, all ready to go...

Both Baby M and Baby A helped out with finishing off the invitations. We used old plastic smoothie bottles, filled them with sand from our sandbox in the garden, and seashells we have picked up from one of our holidays. It was quite a messy task with two kids vying to do more than the other. We had quite a bit of vacuuming to do afterwards. Still, they caused quite an excitement when we distributed them in the kindergarten the next day. :-)

Bottled "sea" water for the pirates"

We did pirate crafts to get the little pirates properly geared up for the party. There were paper swords (transformed from old cardboard), telescopes (made from kitchen towel rolls with a surprise picture I drew on pieces of tissue on one end... We had pirate ships, cross bones, sea monster, etc.) and pirate hats!

The pirate cake

For food, we had mini sausages with pretzels, multi-colored chewy candy the shaped of sharks, fruit slices, chocolate muffins and a chocolate Birthday cake. Yup, I got out Baby M's Playmobil and glued them onto the Birthday cake. The kids were really amused! 

A pirate pinata ready for a bashing,
and pirate ships ready to sail off.

In the garden, we played an obstacle game (accompanied by a really funky pirate CD I found), did the usual pirate "canon" fight (actually aluminium paper wrapped ball) - had lots of giggles and laughter. Then followed by a modified round of pinata bashing. Modified because I turned it into a football instead of the usual bashing up with a stick. Baby M was concerned that someone might accidentally get whacked on his/her head. And finally a treasure hunt! I found party treats paper boxes the shape of treasure chests, gave the kids a treasure map to start the hunt. They were led from spot to spot with only pictures as clues. We had a lot of running.... and happy shinning eyes at the end of the hunt.

Now, we are looking forward to the next party...

Peppercress

Actually quite an eye catcher!

Eating out at McDonald's is definitely one of the kids favorite dining experience. We don't mind that so much anymore as over the years, the Happy Meal has evolve with options for a healthier choice of food. We have the kids picking fresh orange juice instead of one of the soft drinks, we offer them a generous dollop of tomato ketchup to go with their fries and nuggets. However, we just can't stop them from choosing one of the many plastic freebies. (Have I mention "useless" freebies?!). We have a whole box of them.  Just when we thought we have had enough of them, there... in February, there was a whole new selection for even more. But this time, we ACTUALLY could put them into real use!

Viola ! We started growing peppercress in the wheelbarrows! What a laugh, what a treat for the eyes.. and what a yummy spicy zesty addition to our salad (or soup or sandwiches!)

Busy gardeners... yummy!

Ready for picking...

Oh yes, from next month onwards, we are upgrading the kids to the adults' menu. So no more plastic freebies...

"Faschings" Muffins

Cool muffin toppers for the "Faschingsbuffet"

Today, Baby A's class threw a "Faschingsparty". Whereas WIKI will provide you a good description of "Faschingszeit" - there ARE different cultural/historical interpretation even within Germany, let me put it together from the point of view of children what Faschings actually mean. Think of it as mixture of carnival and Halloween! Whereas WIKI will tell you that the "Faschnacht" period actually started on November 11, the highlight for children is the last two weeks (it officially ends on Wednesday, February 13). It is a time where parties will be held, both masked and otherwise. In other words, it's great time for kids to play dressed up!

For Baby A's party at School, we decided to use different toppers to reflect just that. Based on Catch My Party we had pirates, princesses, cheerleaders and cowboys decorating the muffins. As usual the toppers were a hit and a laugh!

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.