Howling at the Moon

Since a couple of months I have another job. Well, same job but in another hospital. And you won't believe it, but there also are a lot of colleagues that are pregnant or just delivered. I'm a scrub and circulating nurse in the operating room and most of my colleagues are women, so after just three weeks on the job the first one announced her pregnancy. The second one followed a month later. So lots of work for me to do when it comes to making baby presents. Here's the first one.  The pattern is from the book Fair Isle Hake by Natasja Vreeswijk

Last week both my daughters had a day off from school. One of many in a year, as I have told here before. Besides five vacations, variable from 1 to 6 weeks and different holidays like King's Day, the also have around five or six days off when teachers have meetings or seminars. Most of the time my days off from work aren't tuned synchronously with their days off. aren't synchronously at all, so I have to look for someone who can look after them, but last friday we had a day off all together en we went to the Zaansche Schans. The Zaansche Schans is typical Dutch landscape with mills, cows, wooden shoes and the best: the old fashioned Sweets Store. Here are some pictures.   

Just in time to show you the XXL Tompouce that I made with my daughter  for her fiance. Mind you, my daughter is just nine, same age as her boyfriend. They know each other from the day-care center, where they were going to as babies and toddlers. They're in the same class nowadays. My daughter claims they were in love even when they were babies and when I look at pictures of that time they were always sitting next to each other, indeed. So I guess it's the truth. True love.  We cut two hearts out of puff pastry and baked both hearts for 25 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. In a bowl we mixed two parts mascarpone and one part whipped cream together with vanilla sugar and a couple of drops red food coloring for the cream between the puff pastry layers. In another bowl we melted marshmellows (50 seconds on the highest) and stirred a couple of drops of red food coloring through it and smeared it over the upper layer.  Then we cut some strawberries in little ...

Last week I was looking for Plant Pots, because since my plants are thriving well after years and years of dead plants, I can't stop buying new plants. Unfortunately most of the time pots are way more expensive than plants, so I'm always on the look out for nice plant pot deals. In a dollar store I found gold colored pots with a wooden house hanging from it. I cut off the house (I kept it for later use, maybe for someone with a new house or something) and started crocheting a peacock feather, because the colors of the feather suit the gold of the pot. Honestly, I like the result.  ~*~ My Coffee Cake was featured by The Answer is Chocolate ! Thank you, Carol! Albertina Alpaca was featured by Creative Jewish Mom ! Thanks, Sara!

Maybe you remember the Coffee Cake that I made last week, for my daughter's birthday. It was a great success. Not only my daughter loved it (the most important one, because she asked for the cake), but the guests were enthusiastic, too.  Choosing a taste for the topping of the donuts I made for Valentine's day wasn't very difficult indeed: it had to be coffee. The topping is made of white chocolate mixed with espresso powder. The donuts are cake donuts baked in a tin.

Probably you remember the alpaca that I made a couple of weeks ago. A colleague was so enthusiastic about it that she asked me to make one for her, too, but in different colors. Of course I did. I brought it to her myself, mostly because she works in the hospital I worked until three months ago. I decided I wanted to work closer to home, but to be honest, I miss my old colleagues every day. A couple of times I was close to call my old hospital to ask if I could come back, but I'm still working at my job, because I think I must give it a chance. But now that there's a good reason to visit my old job and see my colleagues, I grab the chance.  Anyway, here's another alpaca: ~*~ My Plant Sack was featured by Embracing Change and by Scrapality this week! Thank you both so much, Stacey and Andrea!