a cup of kiez

Ladies-in-Waiting

These ladies, my kitchen matryoshkas, help me when a recipe requires American cup measures.

I love Russian nesting dolls and then in white...well, I was smitten from the moment I saw them.

And now please do excuse us, my ladies and I have to chat over what´s baking for the weekend,

Julie

Week Five: Letting Spring spring!

The Decluttering process started here   and continues ... it´s not just the "Stuff", but things like e-mail inboxes ( yes, some people close to me do know the exact number of items I had accumulated over...oh, let´s just say quite a while).

However, Sunday is not the day to be working my way through shelves or wardrobes...

Kerstin and I went to the Arkona Platz Fleamarket and reserved a stall for the end of May to sell what we don´t want anymore but someone else might just be looking for.

It was a cool day and rained a little inbetween, but still fun to look over what was on offer and enjoy the typical Sunday fleamarket atmosphere- a mix of anticipation and laid back Sunday mellowness.

 

There´s always that chance of a one-off find, but I realized today how much I love the sight of collections...lots and lots of the same thing.

And between all these keys and forks and matchboxes guess who we spotted wandering over Arkona Platz? The lovely Cate Blanchett with husband and kids, obviously also enjoying a day off from shooting her new film.

Still thinking about what springy thing to do this week with typical April weather... hmmm. I think I might know what...and I´ll let you know too.

Have a lovely start to the week,

Julie

Switzerland

 

We are back from Switzerland where we spent Easter with one of my husband`s best friends and his girlfriend. I hadn`t been before and must say I did quite like it- especially Zurich. To me it had  a bit of a mediterranean atmosphere and I just love cities by the water. What really amazed me was that I could hardly understand the language! I was absolutely lost when a waitress spoke to me- I didn`t even get her "Gruezi!". 

However, time there was so relaxing without any thoughts of work and now it`s back to everyday life ...

But the sun´s shining.

All have a brilliant week!

Kerstin

Frohe Ostern! Happy Easter!

Mit diesen von Kindern aus dem Crelle Kiez buntbemalten Ostereiern wünschen wir Euch ein paar schöne Osterfeiertage mit Sonnenschein und Zeit - mit der Familie, Freunden, zu zweit oder ganz in Ruhe alleine. Hauptsache, es ist eine gute Zeit.

With these Easter eggs, painted by kids from the Crelle Kiez, we wish you a lovely Easter Holiday  with sunshine and time - to be with your family, friends, just the two of you or exclusively your Self. Whichever it is, may it be a good time.

Julie & Kerstin

Fisher Price #4

Nearly thirty years ago, hot summer day, backyard in Grimsby, playing with my cousin and my sister and brother with this cool car...

 
These are memories I still have that make it even more special to me. The car was passed on to my little son when my aunt decluttered her attic and he calls it his Bobby Car. Actually he`s grown too big for it by now but he enjoys riding it so much and stashing toys under the seat (you can open it!) that I wouldn`t dare put it away.

And if I do some day it´s definitely going to stay in the family...

Have a good night,

Kerstin 

Week Four: Letting Spring spring!

I was outside at last, not to go from a to b but just to be out there - enjoyed the fresh air, jumped over puddles (and right into them -what else are wellies there for!?), saw signs of life pushing through everywhere and had the first ice cream of the year...what a lovely Sunday.

This week I intend to make room for the new...or make room at all actually. It´s quite astonishing how much STUFF I accumulate over time and I feel the need for a clear out so there´s space to move and breathe.

Will let you know how things went...

Wishing you a good start into your week,

Julie

Fisher Price #3

I hope you`re all well and enjoying Spring. I am, definitely!

Today I would like to continue my little Fisher Price series...

Can you remember these cool park garages? I never had one as a child but loved to play with it at a friend`s house. Hers was slightly different- it had like a roundabout on the roof. We bought this one for my son`s 2nd Birthday on ebay for quite a good price. 

The garage is one of my son`s favourite toys. He can spend ages pushing all sorts of vehicles up and down, it`s amazing. On some days he likes to sit or stand on it, probably because he knows very well I don`t like him doing it. 

My mother-in-law told me that Fisher Price used to offer a life long guarantee on their toys. I don`t know what they`d say if I turned up with this old park garage that had broken because my son used it as a chair... 

Take care and have a good start to the week!

Kerstin

Saving bananas

I had some bananas lurking in the kitchen going darker and darker by the day. Maybe I was waiting for them to go that way because one way of using up brown bananas is baking banana bread. And the best recipe I know for that is (again) by Mrs Lawson- I love this banana bread as it´s not too sweet but just really tasty and aromatic. I like it for breakfast and then it will sit there in our kitchen, not for very long mind you, as it´s just one of those unassuming favourites that you cut a little slice off in passing.

Here´s how to bake one yourself (can´t let those bananas go to waste now, can you?)

Ingredients

100g sultanas

75ml of bourbon or dark rum

175g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda*

½ tsp salt

125g unsalted butter, melted

150g sugar

2 large eggs

4 small very ripe bananas, mashed

60g chopped walnuts

1 tsp vanilla extract**

 

Loaf tin (23x13x7cm or thereabout), buttered and lined

 

*German:Natron

**I use a pack of Bourbon Vanille Zucker

 ...........................

What you want to do before you get started with the actual cake/bread mixture is to put your sultanas and bourbon or rum into a small saucepan, bring to a boil, take off the heat and just let the sultanas sit there covered for about an hour to absorb as much fluid as possible while cooling.

Preheat your oven to 170°C/gas mark 3

Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt into a bowl, combine well and set aside.

I use my mixer for the following but you can just as well use a larger bowl and beat the melted butter and sugar together.

Beat in one egg at a time and add the banana mash.

Finally, add your chopped walnuts, drained sultanas and vanilla, maybe doing this by hand or in slow mixing mode, as you want to avoid blending the nuts and fruits into an unrecognizable pulp.

Add the flour mixture bit by bit, three stages will do and spoon the mixture into your prepared tin.

Bake for 1 hour or up to 1 hour and 15 mins.

Leave in the tin to cool.

Enjoy.

 

Julie

Week Three: Letting Spring spring!

Ok, there is no denying it : while our minds were occupied with other matters, spring tip-toed in VERY quietly and jumped on us in the last couple of days. Though I do have that small impulse to think " Oi! I wasn´t ready yet, I wanted to be all set for you, go away until I´ve finished Letting Spring spring! " I am loving the sunshine far too much to keep that thought around. It´s lovely. Faces seem to open up and it´s so nice to see people have necks again- no shoulder hunching against the cold. 

I showed you my inspiration board I made for Week Two and here is one way I´m letting that breezy sunshine into our home:

Spring branches - it´s lovely to see them flower. I bought two quite large chestnut branches with sticky buds that little nephew nearly picked off full of curiosity. While they were budding they looked like little furry creatures growing and now the quite large leaves are out it´s like having a little tree in our living room. Which I love, of course.

Here a more dainty version..

Quince ...

You can keep them long after they´ve blossomed and hang little ornaments or paperchains ( or nothing at all actually) on them.

My plan for this "Third Week" - yes, I will continue , I´m quite stubborn like that- is to GET OUT.

I am so looking forward to my first free weekend in ages and come rain or shine, I need to get outside again. So, I´ll let you know what it became - puddle jumping or sunshine on freckle budding nose.

Bye for now, Julie

Finding style

Remember that I wanted to start an inspiration folder for our home here? Well, I actually did and I thought you might like to see. 

I´m discovering that collecting and curating images that I feel drawn to and then filtering out what they  have in common is a great way of getting a better idea of what I really like for myself. I can get quite overwhelmed by all the beautiful interior styling, especially in blogs – I´ll think “Oh, I want that! I like that! How about this?”  Doing this “by hand” or “for real” , leafing through magazines and books, made me look a little closer and consider a little longer what the stylist had done to make me “click”.

It´s funny, I really had no set idea what I wanted to go for...

  ...however, in my eyes this is quite a coherent little collection – a lot of white, black and little red accents, often seemingly unintentional. A globe´s colours, the turquoise aqua and green, some orange and yellow but it´s the very pale pink that connects images. In the  picture of the sunny little desk there are pink accents instead of the red and the bed in the top row would be pale and bland without the stark contrast of that dark quilt.

Do you have an inspiration collection ?

Julie