A present to my mother

My mother has a name day on the 24th December and we always remember each other in the family with small presents on the name days, even if in Estonia, in general, people do not care about the name days so much. But in my family we love to celebrate different days and different events:)
This year i made a needle cushion to my mother. It is kind of "a recycled project" since all the materials needed were found at home: a tin, piece of cloth, pure wool, ribbons, confetti...

Quick and easy

Sometimes there is no sweets left at home but I still "need" something sweet to eat:) Then the only solution is to bake something. Some time ago I found one very easy recipe from one of my cook books: "Pie of oat flakes". But I changed it to "Muffins of oat flakes" ("Kaerahelbemuffinid"), the recipe is very easy, one usually has all these ingredients at home and besides it takes only max half an hour to get the muffins ready (so it is probably also good to serve them to unexpected guests). Here we go:
4 eggs
2 dl sugar
2 dl oil
8 dl 1-min (quick) oat flakes
4 tablespoons of (spelta) flour
0,5 teaspoon of baking powder
3-5 tablespoons of cacao powder
Mix the eggs with the sugar, add oil, oat flakes, cacao powder and flour mixed with baking powder. Fill in the muffin forms and put in the oven at 200C for 15 minutes (do not bake longer, be exact with the baking temperature and time! Otherwise the muffins get too dry). Ready to eat:)

Cardigan and pullover

Yesterday i finished a pullover to Märt:
Mihkel's cardigan was finished already a while ago:

I have bought some new yarn, so new things are waiting to be knitted.

More scrapbooking

In meantime I have created lots of new pages in Märt's album and I have finished a small but fat album about trips in 2008. Here are some layouts.

Patchwork quilt

I sewed a blanket to Märt in patchwork style. It was one of the first times i tried patchwork and I think not the last time.

Belated scrapbooking

Recently I have been lucky finding some more scrapbooking stuff even from Estonia and it inspired me enough to put the photos of our trip to Riga from last year in the album. You can see some pages here:

Not good for bodyweight!

Since summer is still few months away it is a right time to eat something yummy like cottage cheese balls (Kohupiimapallid);) You need to mix 2 eggs with 4 tablespoons of sugar, add 250 g cottage cheese (i used Ricotta cottage cheese) and add 100g flour mixed with 0,25 teaspoon of salt and 0,5 teaspoon of cooking soda. Heat the oil and fry the balls ("design" the balls with help of two teaspoons) in the oil. The balls usually self turn themselves around in the oil, if not, help them. When the balls are ready (with nice golden color) put them on the kitchen tissue for some minutes (to make the extra oil come out) and then pour over with some powdered sugar. Ready to eat:D

Some layouts

I have continued to work with Märt's (scrapbooking) album about his 2nd year and here are some of the pages:)

Cooking time

Birthdays usually mean a lot of cooking, at least in Estonia we use to eat a lot at birthdays. Märt turned 2 years old (how time flies!) on the 12th April and i made a cake for that day as well as home-made bread. The cake has usual biscuit "bottom" (made of eggs, sugar, wheat flour and cornflour) and i put raspberry jam and cottage cheese cream between the layers. Simple and delicious! Years ago i often made that kind of cake but i had not made it for quite some years by now as I have experimented with more complicated cakes. Should take it "into menu" again;)

I have baked a home-made bread for several times by now, some people even got it as a Christmas present from me:) It is a rye bread and consists of rye flour, leaven, water, salt, honey and cumins. It needs for 2 days to make it, around 10 minutes on the first day and around 3 hours next day (that includes 1,5 hours in the oven).

Happy (ending) Easter!

Here is a bit different style of art of mine: eggs colored with onionskins and some yarn! This is our only Easter tradition: to color (and boil) the eggs, hit them together (to see whose egg is the strongest) and then eat them. In Estonian we call Easter also for "the holidays of eggs".

Summer wardrobe

It has been ages since I have posted anything here. Well, in meantime we had to send our camera to repair shop because the lens died. So i could not take photos of different handicraft things i made for Christmas presents. In January i had kind of break of handicraft but now i am back:), i have already made some scrapbooking layouts but most of all sewed! Here they are, some of the clothes i have sewed for our holiday in Gran Canaria.