Happy New Year!!!

First and formost I wish you all a very Happy New Year. I wish you health, happiness and peace.
A lot of festive days have past since the last time I blogged.
In Belgium we started on the 6th of December with St Nicolas day. The day that all good children get presents and candy.For the first time in years we celebrated this again. With our new granddaughter Anne-Fleur it was the ideal year to do so. She is of course only 7 months old and thus not get the spirit of the day. Chewing presents was the big joy of her day! The typical candy, chocolate, fruit and of course the speculaas went to her mom and dad who accepted it gratefully. I think next year she will have her say about that!For the adults there was of course cake.A very simple chocolate cake adorned with the typical Saint Nicolas candy. Golden coins (with chocolate inside), nic nac's ( the small sugared cookies ) on the side and on top and some lovely little chocolate Saint Nicolas plaques I found at the bakery shop.It was years agoo that we had so much snow. I began snowing the first friday of december. So at Saint Nicolas day we took these pictures of Anne-Fleur. She sits on the sled of her dad and auntie that I kept for more than 30 years. She was a bit afraid. It was bitterly cold and her mom did not take her in to the snow before since she had been in hospital ,two weeks before. But I thought we could not pass up this opportunity to get pictures of her in the first snow of her life.She did not enjoy it that much.I think she was even a bit scared of it.

In each case the snow lasted just until Christmas and we had the first white Christmas since 1986 I believe. The next day it started raining and it was all gone.
In the mean time our little kittens grew up to be little white and blue fluff ball's. You can't contain them in a small area anymore! They want to play! Polar Bear is kissing the Steiff snowman. He has found a good home in Holland.

Sadly we have one handicapt kitten in the litter .You see him at the far left in the picture below.

All four bones in his front legs are bent. He will always be handicaped. But the good news is that if he has a good chance to live a painfree and happy life, he will have a loving home with the parents of our Brandaen of with my daughter.
Aren't they sweet?

Trying to snap a group picture is not that easy as you can see!

Shortly after Saint Nicolas day I set up the Christmas tree.
I try to make a different tree every year. That you can see if you look for the post ' Christmas in July'.
This year I used fresh green, covered with transparent plastic pearls, glass baubles, porcelain balls with flowers. Some metal and glass danglely things, some mirrored snowflakes and the collection of Snowbabie ornaments I started for Anne-Fleur. And of course my favorite ornaments of all could not be left in the cellar. My white glass birds are almost every year in my Christmas tree.
Lily our youngest Maine Coon is facinated with the tree .She had never seen one before. She took out one of my green glass balls in the first days. After that she became a good little girl and only sleeps beneeth the tree on the white fleece blanket that is covering the base.

I did not do a lot of other Christmas decorations this year.I only made place to put my Snowbabies out since this year I bought the nativity set of it.

Even the Christmas dinner table was simple but classy. Floral tablecloth in blue and cream with a simple flower decoration and some candles.
This is it for today. Tomorrow I start preparing the New Year dinner I do for my inlaws. They will come on sunday to celebrate the New Year. Today, the first of january will be a day to start preparing, like ironing the table cloth and preparing the cakes.
Have a happy day and until the next time.

Foody friday 's Saint Nicolas Speculoos

Sunday the children of Belgium and Holland celebrate Saint Nicolas. He is the patron saint of the Children. Children put their shoe out with a carrot for the horse of Saint Nicolas and hope that in the morning the carrot will be gone and there will be presents instead.
One of the presents we got every year was a plate full of candy.
The staples where, speculoos, oranges of clementines, golden chocolate coins, nicnac's ( a very small cokie in the shape of letters) and guimove( a sort of sweet) and of corse some chocolade figurines.
My hometown is famous for its very special speculoos.
What is it exactly. Well it is a big cookie, a bit soft and the main ingrediances are, real butter, cinnamon and almonds.On the picture above you see two different kind. The small cookies are the commercially made one. These are very sweet and hard and thin and you can get them in every shape.
The big ones are the ones where my hometown of Hasselt is famous for.
These ones contain almons (the commercial ones don't have that) and are thick and a bit soft.
The Dutch also have a sort of filled speculoos.

Here is the recipie that I got from my great grandmother, Anneke.
Cream 2,5 cups or 500 grams of sweet real butter.
Please do not subsitute the butter for crisco of margerine or something.I is a very big part of the flavour.

Then add 3 1/4 cups or 650 grams of dark brown sugar

Work in 4 XL or 5 L eggs

Then add 2 heaped theaspoons of cinnamon

Then it is time to add 6 cups or 1 kilo of plain four and the right amount of baking powder

Another vital part of speculoos of Hasselt and unique to that is 1 cup or 100 grams of almond powder and 1cup or 100 grams of slivered almond. This time my shop had no slivered almonds so I used all almond powder.

You need to work the dow by hand by now since it is a very heavy dow.

Don't work it to long. Just enough to combine everything. Then put it in the fridge for a few hours or even overnight. Cover it with clingfilm.

Next day you preheat your oven at 325°F or 175 °C.
Take a piece of the dow and make a roll out of it about 2,5 inch or 6 to 7cm diameter

Slice fingerthick slices and put on a baking tray.

The baking tray should be coverded with some baking paper. Just flatten the slices ever so slightly. Leave room between the slices since they will spread.

Bake for 15 minutes.
The cookies should have only a lightly brown rim on the outside. The will be hard after cooling down but when you store them in a tin they should get softer.

You could keep them for weeks but I bet they won't have the time to get bad!
I know they are heavy on the calories but I only bake them for Saint Nicolas and for Christmas.
These cookies are for Belgium and Holland what Shortbread is for Scotland and Chocolade chip cookies are for the USA. Please try them, I know you will love them.

These days speculoos is so popular in Belgium that in the last two years they intruduced a speculoos paste that you can put on bread. It was the winning thing in a tv contest to invent something new and it is a huge succes.
Since this years there is also chocolate with pieces of crisp speculoos in it and there is even Speculoos ice cream.

I also use the paste to mix with buttercream and spread that on apple cupcakes. Yummy!

Tree or more....kittens

I'm sorry I did get of track and left you all waiting for news and a new entry for "Three or more".
But know I have news. This is the best Three or more....We have new Maine Coon kittens.
Let me present them to your.
This is our " Arctic Litter"

This is little "Beluga Whale of the White Witch".

This is fat little " Polar Bear of the White Witch"

Brother number tree is chubby little " Arctic Fox of the White Witch".

And this is brother number 4, the odd one out with his blue coat. He is called:

"Spotted Seal of the White Witch"

All boys and OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH so sweet.

How lovely Christmus will be with all these little chaps running around our feet!!!

A happy mum with her four sons. Still a bit looking a bit ragged but such a good mum.

Tree or more antiques with cats

Ever since we have cats, we also collected art and antiques with cats. You already seen my oil paintings.
This is one of my very first Ebay buys. It's a teapot from the Wood factory. It is a bad example since the body of the teapot is very pitted but I love the shape.

A small French mustardpot with a white kitten as a handle. Usualy you see the milk can with this kind of design so I thought this mustard pot was kind of special

This little piece is made of metal.I think it may be cold painted bronze. I love the little cat with the tub on its side.It's ideal to put your pins and needles in.

This porcelain figure is so ugle that its becomes lovely.I love this one very much just because he is so ugly.

This are two Artd Deco craquelé pieces. The cat in the middle is very royal. In the front you see two little book stands. Both very lovely pieces and also my absolute favorites.

Foody Friday Witch and Pumpkin cupcakes

Let me first of all present you to my own little White Witch. This is Caitlin, the mother of my cattery. http://www.everyoneweb.com/cupcakefairy/ She is born on Halloween night and will celebrate her 6th birthday on Halloween. She is pregnant at the moment and will have her kittens by the end of november. For those who don't know, she is a Maine Coon.

These are not spooky at all, even the witch looks kind of friendly

I could give you another recepie today since you must have found dozens of pumpkin recipies but I thought, why not, maybe this is just the one you are looking for. I promise you they are very moist en delischous.

You need

1 can of unsweetened pumpkin or 400 grams cooked and pureed pumpkin.
1/4 cup or 50 grams of melted butter

1 big egg

1 1/4 cup of sugar or 200 to 250 grams of sugar

1 1/2 cup of flour or 250 grams of flower

1 teaspoon of white vinigair

2 teaspoons of baking soda

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

a pinch of nutmeg and cloves

Mix and devide in to about 18 cupcake papers and bake for 15 to 16 minutes on 375°F or 180°C

I have spread a mixture of mascarpone and sugar on top of it and that was delishous but...I don't advice putting any sugar paste decorations on it since the mascarpone is to moist and the sugarpaste will melt. Just put it on on the last minute before serving.

The witches are made with a silicone mould and then dusted with some sparking powder and the little pumpkins I modeled out of some marsipan.

Enjoy and have a very spooky but fun Halloween.

Tree or more quilts

Some of you already know that I am also a quilter and because I am late ( had a quiltgroup here today) I will just showcase some of the quilts I have made.

We start with a Halloween quilt because it is Halloween this weekend. My own design inspired by the fabric of the border. Handquilted with treads of silver.
And I must show you this one. Ok it is not a quilt but I could'nt pass this opportunity to showcase my little granddaughter in her first Halloween outfit made by me. See the little black cardigan with the black cat brooch( button) and het pumpkin bloomers??

A quilt fo a little girl called 'Diethe'. Very simple and in colour inspired by her birth announcement.

Another child's quilt called ' Animal House'. My own design with all kind of stables and housing for animals. The doors open and the doorknobs are buttons with the animal that lives in this house. The tree top also lifts up and under it live some birds!

My impression of our front garden with the blue fence. The entire quilt is handquilted with hundreds of leave and flower shapes.

"The French Garden" A very fast and easy quilt to make. Contrary to all my other quilts that are entirely handmade this one is made by machine but handquilted

Three or more Tuesday Art Deco glass

Some 10 years agoo I saw this vase in an antiques fair and I was stuck by its beautiful Art Deco form.I had just enough money to buy it and brought it home. I like the shape with the two wings very much so I went off in surch of more vases with wings.
I found a couple more and on those trips I learned that this vase was called " Romeo" and it was from the famous Belgian Cristal factory of Val st Lambert.
I came from there Luxval range. A range of glass that was made during the depression time when people did not have the money for fancy cut crystal.
A few years later I ommitted my search for vases with "wings" and started collecting only Luxval glass. So I came across the little sister of the vase 'Romeo' and found this shape .It has the same wings and the same pattern.It was the sellers of this " Mais" or corn vase that told me the story of Luxval and gave me some information on shapes to look for.
This 'Footballers' vase is one of the most seached after models.You want believe it but instead of finding this in my own country I detected it on Ebay USA. After thinking a while if I should take the risk I bought it and it was shipped and arrived in a perfect state.
After two years I stopped collecting Luxval.Not because I had everything, no, not at all but because I lack the space to place it in my house.

And I do not want to have a collection and then have to store it in the cellar.

On a later date some more of my collection of about 110 pieces.