2 ATCs, a card and a goody bag....

Our postie is an ambitious man. One of his ambitions was to get everything into the mail-box. If it didn't fit, he made it fitting. This did nothing to improve my mood or the contents of some little parcels and large envelopes....Now, I am proud to say, that he does a good job. With a mixture of complaints and little rewards I have persuaded him to ring the bell when he's got things that don't fit into the box, and not to reduce their size by folding and /or squashing. Well, yesterday he rang, and brought me a large manila envelope and a pile of post. The big envelope contained a *goody bag* from Alma and a lovely ATC from SusieJ. The goody bag was full of die-cuts, card toppers, stickers, ribbons, lace, charms etc, and in addition a beautiful card with a yummy cup-cake on it, and an ATC with a rose on it, one of my favourite flowers. Sue's ATC has a wonderful coffee-cup button on it; it's probably good that I dodn't have too many buttons like that or I would be sewing them onto all of my clothes....Thanks Alma and Sue for thinking of me, and brightening an otherwise cold and grey weekend. It's good to have friends.

A Damsel in Distress ....

in distress inks! Made some distressed cards yesterday evening, 2 *secret* ones which cannot yet be revealed and three just for the fun of it, and it is fun. To anyone out there who hasn't tried all those lovely things from Tim Holtz, I can only say, try it!

Giving in to temptation - or more tags - again! - and a birthday card.

I tried not to. I didn't want to give into temptation. But I HAD to do it again. It has definately become compulsive - making tags with the new colours of Tim Holtz distress inks. I love the pastel shades, and it is just a good feeling to rub them onto the paper and see the effect as they blend. This time I used ceramic paper, a specially coated, very smooth and non-glossy paper, and the colours crushed olive, crushed glass, Victorian velvet, wild honey and forest moss (for stamping). I decorated them with the ususal eclectic mixture of everything-within-reach - charms, gem-stones, pearls, paper flowers, glossy accents, crackle accents, stickles, acetate butterflies, clock faces etc. The card - which went to Maria Bubbles - has been stamped with an *art-nouveau* style stamp from LaBlanche, and decorated with the the same bits and bobs as the tags. I had fun making them all, now I think I should perhaps clear up a little before starting the next ones!

Fleas, cakes and playing games.

Yesterday I visited a friend who lives in a village called Lintorf not far away from here, takes 10 minutes to get there in the car, traffic permitting. My friend and her Mum both live there. It was beautiful weather, ice-cold but with sunshine and blue skies, made a nice break from the cold, grey winter days. We started the day off with a good natter over breakfast, which lasted nearly 2 hours. We were planning on baking *Buchteln*, yeast cakes filled with jam, so I made the pastry so that it could rise, and then we set out for the flea market which they hold about 4 times a year there. Was a tiny market, but lots of interesting things on show; the usual household bric-a-brac, used books (we found some good ones!), records, toys, old china - you name it, they had it. And some stalls selling new goods, which ranged from life size animals to put in the garden to cheap sponges, ball-point pens and batteries which did NOT look as if they would have much energy left in them. And of course, all the stalls selling goodies to eat - sausages, coffee, bread and rolls, fruit, spices, nuts and dried fruits of all sorts, and - pop-corn!! It was soooo nice to walk home clutching our buys with a big bag of warm, freshly popped, sticky corn. We bought crystallized ginger, burnt almonds, salted cashews and Japanese crackers, too. After we had walked through the park back to my friend's place, I baked the *Buchteln* - recipe at the bottom! There are dozens of different recipes for them, this is just my one. You eat them hot with vanilla sauce - or icecream - but they don't taste bad cold, either. After eating our fill we played cards for the rest of the afternoon, drank coffee and ate nuts, ginger and crackers to keep up our strength. All in all a lovely day in good company, almost like a mini-holiday.



My recipe for *Buchteln*:
500 gramms of plain flour
Dried or fresh yeast
Milk
about 50 gramms of melted butter
Sugar
Pinch of salt
Jam or drained, preserved fruits
I egg
Cinnamon and sugar to sprinkle on top

If using dried yeast, mix with the flour, 100 gramms of sugar, the melted butter, the salt, egg and about 3/4 cup of luke warm milk. If using fresh yeast, make a well in the flour, crumble the yeast into it, add a tablespoon of sugar and a little luke-warm milk, leave till it bubbles - about 10 minutes - before adding the other ingredients. Mix using the dough hooks of the beater till it forms a smooth, slightly sticky dough. Knead through, cover with a cloth and leave in a warm place for about 1 hour to rise. When the dough has about doubled in size it is ready. Divide it into about 12 pieces, and press each piece flat with the palm of the hand on a floured surface till it is about the size of a small saucer. Put a teaspoon of jam or fruit into the middle, and then pull all the edges together and twist them in the middle so that the jam cannot run out. Place the dough balls into an ovenproof form, pour about 2 small cups of luke warm milk over them and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake in a preheated oven (180°) for about 30 - 35 minutes till well risen and crsipy on top. Serve hot with vanilla sauce. Guten Appetit!

Birds of a feather.....

It all started when I saw some pretty birdies made by Sue Bubbles on her DC Gallery. I asked Sue if she could send me the template for them, which she did, along with a pretty brown birdie (first picture). And before I knew what was happening, others fluttered along and joined the merry throng. Two flew away again to my neighbours before I even had a chance to whip out my camera, but I managed to get pictures of the others. I wonder how long they will be staying with me before they find a new home?

....And even more distressed tags

I don't know what it is that is so fascinating making tags at the moment. Perhaps the fact that I get to play with all my lovely distress inks, and stickles and gem-stones and crackle-varnish and glossy varnish and...and...and. There are not many things in this size which can be decorated and played with so satisfyingly. On some I have added mini film strips of old family photos, on others I have distressed the photos with alcohol inks and stuck them behind TH fragments. It gives lots of possiblities to try things out. All of the tags are in remebrance of different members of my family, some of whom I think of gladly and others who I would rather forget. But family cannot be chosen, you have to live with it and get to grips with it or, as a last resort, just turn your back on it. Oh, and the owl tag was just for fun.

Weather antics, buttons, beads and blog awards....

This morning I rolled bleary eyed out of bed. Nothing new, I do it every day. Staggered to the coffee maker for my first fix of the day. Looked out of the window. S-N-O-W!!! I was soooooooooooo sure that it was over and done with. Yesterday we even saw tulips and daffodils and flowering orchids. OK, it was in a garden centre, but it gave us HOPE. The weather was nice. The sun was shining. A bird was sitting in a snow-free tree trying to remember how to warble. And then SNOW!!! Again. I will not write what I said on seeing it, suffice to say I swore fluently in several languages congruently. Then I decided to make the best of it, made another bucket of coffee and headed for a long soak in the bath, with Dead-Sea salt crystals and mandarine essence (It's supposed to make you lively and alert). Well, it smelt nice, anyway, the soak helped my aching joints, I could hardly hear them creak as I rolled out of the tub afterwards. Went back into the living room and looked out of the window. YES, of course I had got dressed first. Surprise, surprise! The snow was gone. The sun was shining. I looked again, it could have been a fata morgana induced by coffee, Dead-Sea salts and manadarine essence. The snow WAS gone. But I could see a patch at the back of the field, so I hadn't imagined it. As I am writing this, the sun is shining, a bird is making a noise like a rusty bike-pump outside, and there are some dark clouds on the horizon waiting to throw snow or rain or sleet at us as soon as we look in the other direction.
Yesterday and the day before I was staying with a friend. We had a nice *old-girls* weekend - ate nice food, played all sorts of games - including snakes and ladders and ludo -*when ye do not become as the little children* - or something like that, went for a walk in *Schley's garden paradise* (wonderful!) and the best thing of all - we sorted out her button box. The garden paradise faded into insignificance at the sight of all those wonderful buttons, pearls, pins etc. Giant butons, tiny ones, wooden ones, shiny ones, jewelled ones, humble ones, pearls, beads, lovely little antique cards with wool on them, a giant mother of pearl shell - in a word - scrapper's paradise. Last night I spread them out on the sofa, let them run through my fingers, drooled over them, started making plans what I could do with them etc. And today, they are still on the sofa so that I can enjoy them before they go into my *treasure tins*. I'm not expecting visitors who might want to sit there - and anyway, there's plenty of room on the carpet!

And about those blog awards - well, something got atarted there.


There aren't enough people on Scrapbooking to give all the awards to that we have to keep giving on to 3 or 5 or 10 people, not to mention all the likes and dislikes, shoulds and should nots we have to admit to. So, now I have got this *Happy award* from Ann
and now I have to list - once again - ten things that make me happy. Here goes:
1. Looking at stash
2. Buying stash
3. Getting stash as a present
4. Playing with stash
6. Cash for stash
7. Drooling over new stash
8. Making mini books with stash
9. Recycling stash
10.People who like stash.

I am still thinking about which victims are going to get this blog award from me, perhaps for the umpteenth time, so WATCH THIS SPACE!!!