Hopes, Dreams & Best wishes to You!

Do you have any resolutions for the coming year? Mine is to improve my knitting and crochet skills. And I would like to learn French. And I want to finish a real baking book. It’s never too late to try out something new!

Happy New Year 2013

It is time to pause, cherishing the old and celebrating the new year. Sending luck to our family and loved ones, bake some fortune cookies to warm the heart of a dear friend. Stepping out in style on New Year’s Eve, wrapped in a cosy huge scarf. 2013 is coming! Cheers to a new year!

Christmas Sweater Counting Challenge

While you wait for santa to bring you gifts make sure to take part in our christmas sweater counting challenge. Animals are counted double and if a sweater is owned since the 80ies you can even do triple counting.

Gingerbread House Party

Doing a gingerbread house is not the newest idea of course, but I am doing it every year on christmas with great fun. This year I had the (supposed to be!) glorious idea of baking a complete gingerbread village with many of tiny houses and deers and sweets around, without thinking how much efforts and time-consuming that would be.

Gingerbread House

Gingerbread Village

I had the idea of a village quite some weeks in my head already and was so eager of doing it. Well, no sooner said than done, I prepared double amount of gingerbread dough wednesday after work and stayed up until midnight, because I wanted the village to be finished before saturday eve, when I had some friends over for christmas dinner.

Gingerbread Village

Gingerbread Village

The difficult part was to fix the roof on top without slipping away but luckily for me the hubby came home just in time, to help me out here!

Gingerbread House

Gingerbread Village

Well, after hours of baking and icing and decorating, ahhhh, you can see the results here! The village turned out really nice and cute and all my curses about the gliding roofs are forgotten so far!

Christmas Decoration

Finally, as we get close to Christmas 2012, the Christmas decoration at our house is finished. This year, the two main areas to look at are the entrance and one of our fireplaces.

Christmas Decoration Entrance

Christmas Decoration Fireplace

In the entrance I have put lot´s of wood themed things onto a paravent. I tried to be as vintage as possible there and drove my husband crazy by buying a vintage pair of skis and a sleigh.

Christmas Decoration Entrance Detail

Christmas Decoration Entrance Detail

Christmas Decoration Entrance Detail

As a backdrop of the entrance I used my favorite stockings that I collected from this years vacations. They are mainly Anthropologie from London and the US.

Christmas Decoration Stockings

On the fireplace I have used two ideas. First I recycled the big XMAS letters from last year but this time I covered them with knitwear in order to make the look more vintage. At the bottom of the letters I placed lot´s of deers and bambies that I have collected over the last month. My husband was relieved when I told him that the giant wooden rim is not replacing a chandelier this year but placed in front of the fireplace.

Christmas Decoration Fireplace

Christmas Decoration Fireplace

For the first time I also gave our vintage cupboard in the kitchen a christmassy look by adding a little ribbon to the glas doors.

Christmas Decoration Kitchen Cupboard

Christmas Decoration Tea Pot

Christmas Decoration Etagere

Christmas Decoration Window

Christmas Decoration Wall

Candy Canes

Our house is red and white and filled with candy. I can´t believe there is only one week to go until Christmas and I still have not posted the majority of this year´s Chritmas decoration yet. So take this as a start. More to follow.

Candy Canes