Howling at the Moon

Every now and then we have a family movie night in our house and this time I made the Hazelnut Orange Carrot Cupcakes to go with the coffee and tea. We all loved them, so I guess I will be making them again some day.  ~*~ We've have some hot days here in april, and I mean really hot for april, as in 28 degrees Celsius hot,  and what I really wanted then was Coffee Frappe, but it was only this week that I came across a recipe. Could have actively searched for it of course, but before I had thought about that, I found a recipe by coincidence. So..., Coffee Frappe for next week!

One of the things that was on the to do list a couple of weeks ago for my other blog , was inviting one of my friends over for coffee and lunch by sending her some flower seeds in an envelope as an invitation.  I saw this idea here , but thought it would be nicer and more personal to not just print out an envelope template, but draw flowers on the envelope myself. I bought some seed packs, cut and folded the envelope and drew the flowers that are supposed to come out of the seeds on it.  

As told earlier this week, when showing you the orange crown that I crocheted for King's Day, worn by our bunny, it's King's Day today in The Netherlands. King's Day is celebrated on the birthday of the king. The whole country turns orange, from clothes to balloons and from food to decoration, sometimes variated with red/white/blue. The surname of the king is Van Oranje, which means from orange, and the colors red, white and blue come from the Dutch flag, which from top to bottom is striped red, white and blue.  My 8 year old daughter really wanted to bake a cake for today and made her own design: orange on the outside and red, white and blue layers on the inside. On top she wanted to have red, white and blue vanes and orange banners. I just helped her a little bit here and there, but she made it mostly all by herself! Love it! Three layers of biscuit Vanilla buttercream Marzipan Ganache

One of my best and oldest (oldest in how long we are friends, not oldest in age) almost has her birthday. She loves cats, and I mean LOVES cats, and is a sort of shelter for all neighborhood stray cats. It began with one and now she has six that are permanent residents in her house, besides the cats that just walk by to get food and then stroll further to the next house. So what other mochila could I make for her than one with cats?  And for the attentive reader: I've made this bag before, indeed. For my daughter's birthday, two years ago, I made the same Cat Mochila , just other colors. ~*~ My Hanging Lantern was featured by Creative Jewish Mom ! Thank you, Sara!

And here's a picture of one of the many, many Chai Teas that I made this week! Such a great recipe this is! An absolute recommend!   ~*~ My muffin tin was rusty and old (not that strange after twenty years of frequent use), so I bought a new one a couple of days ago. That means that I was on the look out for nice cupcake recipes this week and I found this one with hazelnuts, orange, carrots and cream cheese. Sounds like a great combi! You can find the recipe for this Hazelnut Carrot Orange Cupcakes here .