Speculaas

Growing up my mom made this version of Speculaas for us all the time. It's not the same as the hard, almost gingerbread like stuff you buy at dutch stores but more a soft cookie square. I remember taking several of these to school for lunch when I just couldn't stand to eat another sand which. Not that it's healthy by any means, but I just loved it enough that I could eat several pieces at a time.

Speculaas

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup butter

1 tsp almond extract (can be substituted for vanilla)

3 cups flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. cloves

1/2 tsp. allspice

2 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

2 tbsp. evaporated milk

1/2 cup slivered or shaved almonds

• Mix the first 5 ingredients together
• Stir together flour, salt, soda, and spices and add to butter mixture while stirring.
• Place in a greased 9x13 inch pan and brush with evaporated milk. Sprinkle almonds on top.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown.
  
  

Brayer's Book

I've been working on a cloth book for Brayer for Christmas all week. It's taken hours but I'm pretty happy with the results. The only thing I don't love is the binding, but I really had no idea how to do one for this particular book so I just went with it. This is one of the few Christmas presents I've made that I can share with you before Christmas so here it goes!

front cover

not a huge fan of the last page either, but by this point I was sick of embroidering words so I just used a fabric marker.

Advent Calendar

I've been meaning to share this advent calendar for a while but kept forgetting to take a decent picture of it. Not that I got a decent picture of it now but still. My mom made this for me, it's a copy of the same one we had growing up and I love it.

Every pocket has a little felt cutout of something and along with the calendar is a devotional book. Each cutout coincides with the story that day and in the 25 days you go through all the major stories in the Bible. I love it because the kids think it's so fun to put the cutouts up and that way they get excited about something that isn't candy.

Thrifty

I was telling my sister in law yesterday that I've become a bit of a coupon clipper lately. It's true, it really is. I donated a pocket of my wallet to coupons. The ones I am planning to use on that specific shopping trip go back there and ones to save for another time go in the main pocket. It's the only way I can make sure I actually use them and now that I'm in a regular habit I'm noticing that we are saving a ton of money.

I especially love Superstore (aka the Real Canadian Superstore... basically a huge grocery/department store) because most weeks they have a spend $250 get a $25 gift card free. We eat all our meals at home, not kidding, I can't even remember the last time we went out to eat, so our grocery bills are pretty high so spending $250 is no problem at all. The only problem is fitting all those groceries and 2 kids in the cart and keeping said kids happy for the amount of time it takes to buy all those groceries. Thank God for free bakery cookies!! I've also decided that when baby #3 comes along I'm doing my grocery shopping in the evening with either no kids, or only just one. My mom used to rotate between us kids and take just one of us. We all looked forward to the week it was our turn because it was one on one time with mom and because we always got a treat. I'd love to keep that tradition going with my little family.

Anyway in light of all my mom-typical coupon clipping I thought I'd share the couple of websites I often get my coupons from.

www.save.ca
www.flyerland.ca

At save.ca you just pick out what coupons you want to use then they mail them to you. It usually only takes a week or two and they tend to be pretty good coupons if they are things you normally buy. At flyerland you just pick your city and then the coupons tab and you can print out coupons they have. This one comes in especially handy if I want a Michaels coupon and we've already brought the weekly flyer out to the recycling.

So there you go... I'm a coupon clipping mom who sometimes sews her own kids' clothes out of daddy's old work shirts. I'm just gonna call myself thrifty :)

Winter, Surrogacy, and Pouches

We've hit full blown winter here and I just don't think I'm ready for it yet! Growing up I always loved winter but since having kids of my own I don't enjoy it like I used to. There's nothing like spending 10 minutes getting one kid bundled up only to have him come back inside 5 minutes later and then half an hour later wanting to go back out again. I never say no because the last thing I want is to deprive my kids of outside time but honestly some days this gets exhausting.

In completely unrelated news my best friend is very likely to be implanted with someone else's embryo's!! Sounds weird right? Well she's actually doing an incredible thing by being a surrogate for another couple who can't carry their own kids. It's something she's always wanted to do and about a year ago she heard of these people who were looking for someone so they started talking. Fast forward to today and they've harvested eggs from the donor mother and will be fertilizing them right away! You can read all about it on her blog at A Surrogates Journey It's pretty cool to follow along with what's happening even if you don't know anyone involved.

And in more unrelated news I sewed up a couple more zipper pouches the other day, the previous ones are in my shop and today I've been working on a mother/daughter apron set for a custom order. Busy busy!!

Cozy Cowls

I really have no idea what exactly constitutes a cowl, but that's what I'm calling these. Travis has this sweet fleece tube thing for his neck that he wears when it's cold biking, or walking, or waiting for the bus, whatever and it's just SO WARM. I have to admit I'm often responsible for stealing it. Anyway, Brayer's winter jacket is not designed well at all and the zipper and Velcro up near his neck scratch his poor chin up something fierce when he wears it so I figured why not make him a cowl too? I whipped this up in literally less than 5 minutes so of course I made one for Kaed too. The best part is that they know it's just like daddy's so they love it! We were out and about for about 2 hours the other day and neither of them tried to take it off once. Perfect! What a great solution to all the issues involved with a scarf on little kids.

can I also just mention that I have no idea when this kid grew up... where did my baby go??

seriously how cozy does that look?

In other news...
I totally forgot to get my hiney in gear for the Sew Mama Sew! giveaway this year and was totally shocked and disappointed when I saw the post announcing it's start. Last May I swore I would be on the ball and get mine in on time but of course, I forgot again.

I did, however get around to entering a bunch of giveaways and what do you know! I won something! Woo hoo! I was so very excited and am so very thankful to Pauline at fat-connection for sending me some fabric! I can't wait to get these in the mail and I'm extra excited that they are coming all the way from Singapore! You can read her post announcing her winners here

Snowed In!

We got totally snowed in this weekend so we've done a lot of relaxing, watching movies, and of course making things.

Travis made the boys each a pair of little bootie moccasins and I made these little zipper pouches. I also made the boys some fleece cowls to keep their necks and faces warm when they want to go out in this insane weather, hopefully they want to keep them on.

I think I'll be putting these pouches in my shop although I'm not totally decided on that because I kind of would like to keep one for myself too. We'll see I suppose!

Pepernoten... as promised

Pepernoten is a hard spiced cookie that is directly related to Sinter Klaas. Sinter Klaas is a Dutch (and a few other countries) winter holiday celebrated on December 5th. Sinter Klaas is also where us North Americans got the basis for Santa Clause. You can read more about him on Wikipedia. (And as Michael Scott said: "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information." )

Anyway here's the recipe to this awesome dutch treat.

Pepernoten

3.5 tbsp butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 tbsp. milk

1 cup self raising flour

1 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. cloves

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. anise seed

1/2 tsp. ginger

Cream the butter and sugars together. Add spices then add the flour and milk and stir until combined. Start with only one tbsp of milk and slowly add the second if you need it. You don't want the dough to be too soft.

Roll into small marble sized balls and lay on cookie sheet. They don't expand much so you don't need a ton of space in between each dough ball.

Bake 10-15 mins at 325 degrees or until golden brown. These cookies should be hard, not soft.

*this recipe is quite strong... if you don't want to be quite as spicy, cut all the spices down a bit. They also don't have a strong anise flavor so I wouldn't be opposed to adding a bit more anise seed.

*the cookies will stay good wrapped and on the counter for a long time.

My Favorite Mug

Every morning I have a cup of coffee and every morning I have it in this cup

I got this cup when I was probably about 13? 14 maybe? Anyway my friends and I were all a little obsessed with Micheal W. Smith's "Friends" and one time I saw this mug at the Bible Book Store in my town and just had to have it.

The cup is kind of cheesy but I love it. It's the perfect shape, perfect size, and it's just one of those things that makes me happy.

It also makes me think of all my teenage friends and how much I still love them. And that makes me think of my two amazing friends from high school who I still talk to every single day, on a now year long thread on Facebook, and who I still get to see a couple times a year. Ash, Brand, you two rock.

And yes, I had whipped cream on my coffee this morning.