Why I want to get rid of my husband...for a week!

It is hard to keep up with blogs and blogging. I sometimes wonder how people keep it up. Last week was again a foody week. I will write about that on "Foody Friday". For the moment the special event foodmaking has stopped for a while. Now I am trying to start again with my sewing and decorating.
But first I want to get rid of my husband! He is going to Italy for his job next week. He always complains that I complain a lot about him going away for the job, if only he knew.
I want him out of the way to start om my granddaughter's room. I have it all in my head how I want it. The problem is that just two years agoo we renovated this room,my sons old room, in a library/ tv room (DH) an ironing room for me.
But now it all has to go again and I don't know where to put all the furniture and washing and formost all the books.

We put 4 bookcases in that room, we have 11 in total in the house and now I need to get writ of 3 of them.

And what about DH chair and his tv??? Oh dear, I wished I had another room availible to make Anne-Fleur's room.

I have seen the room in my dreams. I will be all in white and pink and pale blue.I am going a bit fifties vintage to match the old bed I have.
Thirty five years I kept my brothers baby bed in my cellar to have it for my grandchildren if there ever came one. The bed needed some paint and I just managed to paint it when the baby was born but I still have no room ready to put it in. This house needs a laundry room thats for sure!

This is the bed my parents bougth for my brother Jan, who is my junior by one year. So I never slept in this bed. It is now 58 years old.

So what are my plans for next week.
Point 1: Tree bookcases need to go.
Two will go in the upstairs hall but I actually need to paint them so they would fit the decor. But I won't manage that when DH is in Italy since they have to come downstairs for that and that I can't do alone.The fourth will disappair in my cellar unless my daughter changes her mind about having it.
Point 2: The dresser of the upstairs hall needs to go in the baby room to make place for the bookcases and I can use it as a diaper changing station.

Point 3: The 2 ugly pine chest of drawers that are in the baby's room have to move again to the cats room where they first where taken from so I can put the bed on that place.

Point 4: I need to iron a lot of stuff from the baptism , tablecloths mainely and put all the other clean washing in my newly arranged cellar. I hope I can bear it to do my ironing there.
Point 5: Once all the moving is done I can strip the wallpaper (only two years old) to put a pretty PIP wallpaper up. Luckely it is only two small wall and I like wallpapering.

Point 6: I need to repaint one bookcase, a mirror,a small table and a shelving unit.

Point 7:Then the fun bit kicks in. I can dress the room.The room was freshly painted two years agoo so I don't need to redo the painting. All the stuff I want to put in the baby's room are old thing I have for years.There will be nothing new in it exept the changing pad.

This shell I also want to put in Anne-Fleur's baby room.I belonged to my paternal grandmother and I had it in my little girl's room and now I want to put in in my granddaughters room too.

You see why I want to get rid of my husband?? He can't stand manual labour and he can't stand me messing with paint and things.
And I need him to be away so I don't have to cook his dinner or iron his shirts for a whole week and can get on with work exept the time I need to spend on the cats.

Come have some tea and cakes with me...

Please come in and have some tea and cakes with me. I had un unexpected harvest of the sweetest strawberry's and in the fridge there was still the buttercream that did'nt make it to the muffins on the baptism party.

Look at these strawberry's! Are'nt they gourgous? If only you could taste them.They are so sweet! Sweet strawberry's like these you never find in a store. I only have about 30 but how delicious they are. You just can taste the sun in them.
So I will bake you some fresh cakes and make you a nice cup of tea to go with it.

Don't you love these dainty small cupcakes. I have baked them in my new muffin tin and I know I will use that tin often since these small muffins give people the opportunity to taste different kind of muffins witout being stuffed after the first once.

I have decorated them with a bit of pink buttercreme and a small fondant flower and a little bit of my precious strawberry's.

Are'nt they pretty?? To pretty to eat??

No, please take one or no take two and enjoy!

Here is that fresh cup of tea for you. Mmmm, how lovely!
The recepie??
You think I would forget? I know you folks. You always want the recepie. I had prepared for that. Here we go. It is in grams but I am sure you can put a converter program on it.
This amount is for about 36 dainty small muffins or for about 14 bigger onces.

You need:
250 grams of plain flour
2 heaped soupspoons of real Dutch cocao powder
2,5 teaspoons of bakingpowder
1 ts of baking soda
1 egg
1 ts vanilla extract or a sachet of vanilla sugar
130 grams of fine caster sugar
100 grams of melted butter
250 gram of sour cream or plain yoghurt
75 ml of strong coffee

buttercream
100 grams of butter or shortening ( you need a butter that gets hard when cold)
200 grams of icing sugar
a drop of food color if desired
few drops of vanilla extract or another flavour.

Mix the melted butter with the sugar and the vanilla extract. Mix well. Add the egg. Then you add the sour cream. Mix the flour with the sifted cacao powder, the baking powder and the baking soda and stirr in the butter/sugar mixture. Ad the cold coffee and stirr again.
The small muffins you bake 10 minutes and the bigger ones 20 to 25 minutes on 180° C.

For the buttercream simply mix the softened butter with the sifted icing sugar and the food coloring and vanilla
Let the muffins cool and decorate with a bit of the buttercream and a piece of strawberry and a sugared flower. I used a flower cut from a remnamt of fondant.

Garden Party 2

My son and I with Anne-Fleur in her lace baptism dress. The same dress that her daddy wore 35 years agoo.

As said, I actually had 2 garden party's this weekend. On saterday we had the baptism of our beautiful granddaughter, Anne-Fleur and we had a family garden party to celebrate.
I made a big cold buffet for all the 30 guests. It was magic. The sun was there and there was lots of joy and laughter.
The garden was decorated with all pink pelargoniums and white Hydrangea's en blue Petunia's and Pink heartshape ballons.
On the table I had flowery table cloths and bouquets of pink, orange, red and dark pink roses.

But just let me show you some pictures.

My first attempt at an iced cake I made for this party. Vanilla cake with a chocolate ganache filling topped with pink icing and chocolate hearts and the letter A.Flowery and summery tablecloths with the rose bouquets and pink ballons.The terrace set with tables for 8.

After these pictures people started coming in and since I did all the catering myself I had no time to take pictures of the family. So I give you this picture of the new mom and her little girl.

Today, June 1st, we had another party for 80 people also celebrating the baptism and birth of Anne-Fleur. The fact it was also our 36 th wedding anniversery was of no importence today.Friends and workmates where invated to a party with drinks and lots of fine fingerfood to celebrate the birth of Anne-Fleur.
I made 18 different kind of fingerfood, going from cold pea soup to salmon marinated in olive oil and lemon juice, accompanied by green apple, dryed apricots filled with feta cheese and wrapped in bacon to stawberry's in limoncella and little mini muffins.
All in all about 700 little "amuse geule's".
For this second party with put a lot of small tables all over the garden and decorated them with Kaffe Fassett tableclots.
Here are some pictures.
The garden set for the second party with the flag banner I made for Anne-Fleur.




Lots of glasses for lots of drinks.

The simple snackfood that was on the table for the children. From all the other food I have no pictures because I was to busy making them.

Lots of happy chatting people. After a while all the small tables where put together to make 2 big tables.

The very last and not the most beautiful plate of snacks. Cherry muffins with chocolate cream and a fresh raspberry topping. This was supposed to be the topping for the chocolate muffins and these ones where supposed to get a vanilla cream topping with a fresh cherry on top. But after a beautiful sunny weekend, at six pm, half an hour before the end of the party it started to rain a little. So the muffins where rushed out by my son without the right topping.Only the last ones had this topping. I had baked 70 little muffins and they where eaten in 5 minutes.
Luckely the rain did'nt come true so people stayed a while longer.
It was truly a magnificent weekend but now dear friends, I am dog tired and I am going to put the cats to bed and myself too. Enjoy the garden party. Forgive me but I will not be visiting you tonight (it is half past 11 pm here in Belgium) but will visit you all tomorrow.

Garden Party to come

Hello fellow bloggers,

We are actually having a garden party today so bear with me and come and visit me late today since I am very busy organising this party. We are celebrating the baptism of our granddaugher and I am hosting two party's this weekend. We had one on saterday for 30 family members and today I am hosting another party for about 80 people. I do all the catering myself so come and visit our party's and my garden later today!

Its fun to have a little grandaughter...

In january I was told that our grandchild would be a babygirl. I was very trilled about this. Girls means flowers and pink and doll's and dresses and this is a lot of fun for a crafting grandma!

In the beginning of the pregnancy I bougt fabrics for boys and girls because my son and his girlfriend wouldn't tell us the sex of the baby. But in january the other grandma discovered the secret by chance and since I was pushing them to tell me, so I could make boy or girl things the happy parents to be, told me too.


I kept it a secret for my husband until the day the baby was born. He had no idea that all that pink fabric I was working with, indicated that we where expecting a granddaughter.


A few weeks after I was told my daughter guessed it too. She saw one pink thing in my sewing room and said..so it's a girl then?? I didn't care to lie about it.



My sewing started with this little quilt with a stork. It was to adorn the boxes with sugared almonds that we give here in Belgium as favours to all the visitors of the new baby. As long as I know this is a tradition.We always give sugared almonds. But the last 40 years the almonds are substituted with chocolade almonds that are covered with the same sugar coating. They are packed in beautiful boxes and pouches.

The quilt hangs on an old standing childrens dress hanger.

In front you see the boxes of almonds. These boxes where the " official boxes".
I know my daughter in law who also likes to craft wanted me to make these favours myself but my son was so quick in choosing these brown and pink boxes that I had no chance to think of something to make.

Of course after a while my creative juices began to flow. On the blog of Polka Dot Pineapple I saw these what she call's "moneyflowers".

I changed them somewhat in that sense that I changed the skewer to wich she attached the flower, to for a coloring pencil and put the pencil in a tin flowerpot filled with the sugared almonds.
This was the treat for visiting children.

I also needed something some favours ( we call them "doopsuiker" freely translated baptism sugars) for my groups of patchwork lady's.
After 27 years of teaching patchwork and quilting I am closing down my groups to care for my granddaughter when her mamie has to work and after teaching and being together for so many years, I thought they deserved a special favour too. Of course they awaited a handmade favour.
So I made up these petal bags and also filled them with "doopsuiker" and so the lady's would have a choise I also made some little tissue holders in the same fabric.

When my daughter in law saw these she of course also wanted some of these to put on the "official" tray and I ended up in making about 100 of these favours.

This is only the start of course of what I will be making for Anne-Fleur. Another little quilt is in the making but will have to wait to be finished until after the baby's baptism in two weeks time.
Have a lot of work in the house and the garden to make it ready for this big family do so I will see you back in two weeks time to report on the party.
Thanks for stopping by!

Anne-Fleur

Vorige week zaterdag op 2 mei werden we de trotse grootouders van Anne-Fleur.
Zij is ons eerste kleinkindje en het is een emotionele en drukke week geweest.
Daarom had ik nog niet eerder tijd om dit bericht te plaatsen.
De geboorte was niet gemakkelijk, niet voor Anne-Fleur en ook niet voor haar mama dus daarom moest Anne-Fleurtje een dagje in de couveuse.Maar nu is alles goed en sinds gisteren is het hele gezinnetje naar huis.Binnenkort meer foto's van haar en van de spulletjes die ik voor haar gemaakt heb.

Last saterday we became the proud grandparents of Anne-Fleur.
She is our first grandchild and of course we are delighted. She came on this world a week later then we expected and weight a good 3330 grams with a length of 51 cm.
It was not an easy birth for her and for her new mom so Anne-Fleur stayed in a heated bed for one day. On sunday we took this picture. All is well now and since yesterday the new little family went home together.
It has been a very busy and emotional week and I had no time to post it earlyer. Later when all calmes down I hope to show you more pictures of her and the things I made for her.

Happy Easter tulips

A bit late but still I want you all to have a very nice Easter time.
Easter and tulips for me they go together like peanut butter and jelly.
For these special days I use my Emma Bridgewater , Summer Tulips dinner set. I love the orange and almost black tulips of this design.

This is my Jazzy Tulips quilt.I made it some years agoo but I still love it. It was summer when I made it and I had to buy many yards of fabric before I found the perfect match. One color was always stronger then another one and pushed the other colors out and then I had to buy new fabric but since I bought it online and had to see it in combination with the other colors it took a while before I was pleased with the combinations.

These are my "Ice Tulips". I made them in the same summer as the " Jazzy Tulips" but while the others are all color these are very icey and cool. The tulips look as if they where frozen in time. It would fit my present home decor very well but it resides at my mothers guestroom.

I don't know witch quilt I like best.