Gifting money

Those who know me in person, know I don’t like gifting money in a plain envelope. I feel it’s too impersonal and lacks creativity. So when SweetieS started school this last fall and all the parents agreed that we would give money when it came to birthdays, I went on Pintrest to get some ideas.

So far I have “toilet rolled” a few and made “piggy banks”.

- how do you gift money?

First signs of Spring

and what a better way what with a glass of refreshing Sangria?
When I visited Portugal many years ago I was introduced to Sangria, a refreshing drink based on red wine. During the trip I found variations with white wine, rose and champagne! We quickly realized that the sangria based with rose wine was our favorite.
I had yet to try to make it myself though. So when I got the chance this past weekend, I gave it a try…
According to my Portuguese friend, the Portuguese version is usually made with Portuguese liqueurs, most commonly “Licor beirão” (flavors of seeds and herbs) and “Liqueur de Laffon” (orange flavors). And Sumol (Portuguese sparkling water) to top it of. These liquids are not available here in Norway, So I opted for liquids with similar qualities. I ended up with “St.Hallvard” for the herbal liqueur and “Cointreau” for the orange liqueur . To replace Sumol I just used a cheap lemon/lime soda.
To give it the Sangria look and feel, I added some sliced fruits. Here is the ingrediencies I used:
- an apple
- a lemon
- a lime
- an orange
- a bottle of red wine ( I just used a bottle of Italian red wine I had laying around)
- 4cl St.Hallvard liqueur
- 4cl Cointreu liqueur
- 1,5l lemon/lime soda
(add a tablespoon or two og brown sugar if you want the cocktail even sweeter)
I was recommended to mix the fruits and alcohols together and let sit for at least a few hours. Add the soda just before serving.

Chilling….

a kind of a bullet journal

or should I call it dot journaling? It’s been a while since I last blogged about my planner. Mostly because I have forgotten….spent too much my researching my newfound love for bullet journals. New for 2019 is the use of dot journaling or bullet journaling as many call it (though as far as I have understood the term is overly used)
For now, I have the same weekly spread throughout the month, but I am thinking about changing it more frequently. And new with my dot journal, is the use of monthly covers. I like that the monthly cover sets the theme for the month.

my January and February cover and layout before the pen

I’m not true to the Ryder Carroll bullet journaling style as I don’t use the all the bullets and the yearly, monthly, weekly and daily drill down. I just jot down what I need to remember, when I need to remember it. Very plain and simple. My planner is still a place for my memories as I still don’t feel I have time to sit down and scrapbook, so I will be going for a weekly layout that allows me to put in a picture or two along with some extra notes.

The result is still two pages weeklies….but now I can change out the layout from month to month, or even from week to week. Since I still use a ring planner, I can move/add/remove pages as I feel like. I use dotted pages I downloaded from wellella. Thank you! You made my transition into dot journaling much easier. This way I get the planner pages I need/want and just the amount of creativity I want.

-do you bullet journal?
-what is your “style”?

Knitting up a storm

Winter is coming, no doubt about that. Yesterday I woke up to a thin white blanket covering the streets infront of my house. Not long until I will be shoveling snow again.

In preparation for winter, the girls need a layer of warm clothes to wear with their overalls. I concluded I would use the Drops “Starshine” pattern and make my own pattern on the yolk. For the pants I started with the pattern for “Power leggings” but didn’t like the shape of the finished pants. So after recommendations from a good colleague, I ended up using “Winter wolf” for all three sets .  I bought Drops Karisma yarn when they had a sale earlier this year. I even made a set for my niece, hope she likes it.

For the waist I followed a youtube video on how to knit an icord.

For my niece I used the colors “dark purple” (uni color 76) for the pattern and “rose” (uni color 80) for the rest. She got two pair of pants as I made that one first with elastics in the waistline. I used 5 skeins of the main color for the sweater and 5 skeins for the pants. for the accents I used 2 skeins.

for my niece….

For SweetieL I used the colors “light denim blue” (uni color 30) for the pattern and “navy blue” (uni color 17) for the rest. When I was almost done , SweetieL requested the waist cord to be in a different color. So she got to choose from some yarns I had in my stash. She was still not happy with the end result until we added the pom poms. On this set I also used 5 skeins of the main color and 1 skein for the accents for a total of 12 skeins of Karisma.

for SweetieL….

And the last set, for SweetieS, I used the colors  “light grey green” (uni color 69) for the pattern and “sea green” (mix 50) for the rest. SweetieS got her set in a bigger size. So for her set I used 6 skeins for the sweater and 5 on the pants in addition to the 2 skeins for the accents.

the picture doesn’t do the color justice…

These would make great Christmas gifts, but the girls need these garments now. Not in a few weeks….so will just have to go shopping for other gifts for Christmas.

Before I forget., Drops is having a sale on all alpaca yarn. 14 different alpaca yarns to choose from and beautiful colors. With 30% discount you can save some $$$. The sale lasts thruout the year, so stock up while you can.

- what are you knitting these days?

- any knitted Christmas presents?

PJ masks birthday party

FYI: picture heavy post…

This years big happening was the girls birthday party with their kindergarten friends. This year we opted to have their birthday party together as they have many common friends. With over 20 invites handed out (and we only invited the girls) I was a bit nervous as to how many would be coming. Luckily “only” 16 girls came.

The invites was made using a template I found online, thanx to Pintrest. Here to be exact.. The Oh my fiesta webpage is a great resource for birthday printables, and ideas. So do check them out for some great ideas. I did some reasearch on comic book fonts and guidelines. I wound up using the font “Comic book” that can be downloaded from dafont.com for free,.

and here are the invites…

With the invites sent out, I started preparing all the other stuff I wanted for the birthday. First thing of…a picture to make a large target wall for the girls to throw sticky splats at. I did some surfing and found the “bad guys” from PJ masks and using the poster print function in my pdf software Adobe Acrobat Pro, I was able to blow it up 400% (!). Now came the hard work, assemble the 16 A3 format sheets of paper. It took about two evenings (after the girls had gone to bed) to get it together, reenforce the back so that it doesn’t easily break.

puzzled together, now for the holes…

The biggest challenge was how to make a temporary stand to hold it up. the finished poster measured about 1,7meters wide and 1,2 meters high and was too big for one adult to just hold it ut. With stuff we had around the house we were able to make a stand that I could staple the poster to.

pretty happy with the result…

For sticky splats (“klistreklæsj” in the Norwegian version) I had filled latex gloves wiith water, some with just plain water and some with colored water. Just fill, tie and cut of the exccess part of the glove.

I wanted all the kids coming to be able to dress for the PJ masks theme, without adding pressure to the parents to buy themed costumes/clothes for the party. So in advance I had put in orders for PJ mask sets which consisted of masks, bracelets and a cape. Since I knew I was going for the PJ masks theme, I had put in orders already in February. You never know how long packages from China will take. I bought mine from these two sellers on AliExpress: Shop3271008 and COS Store.. In my attempt to gift the sets to the kids, I had wrapped them in for each kid to open its own set. For the “seals” I printed some PJ mask pictures meant for cupcake toppers on some sticker paper and punched them out using a hole punch.

gifts for all….

To make sure that the kids would sit at the table and not run aimlessly around, I had put together an activity pamphlet for each kid. Just a little google search for some coloring pages, connect-the.-dots and some mind-activities, all PJ masked themed of course. Together with a table filled with coloring penciles, the kids sat longer at the table and not just for the food. On our latest UK trip I had bought Kellogg’s Froot Loops.. Paired with elastic string, the kids could make their own edible necklace/bracelet.

activity folder when sitting at the table

The last thing I prepped before going to bed…decorating the cakes. I had baked the cake earlier (thank you Gunhild for the supertasty cakes, recipes in Norwegian can be found in Gunhilds blog. Chocolate here and carrot cake here) and they had been cooling down for the most of the day. Just needed to wip up some frosting. Well one cake didn’t take much work as it was a carrot cake with frosting, we just called it sticky splat cake since the frosting looked like something sticky. As for the the other cake I had to put in some more work as the request was a gecko cake. I had printed out a gecko silhouette and cut it out using my trusty Gyro-cut tool. Great when cutting out shapes.. I used the negative as a template when adding the green Wilton sugar sprinkles.

yummy yummy, both tasted great

After two hours of 16 kids running around the house, I was ready for a break. But no rest for the weary….We had to get the house ready for the family coming to celebrate the girls. By evening all members of CasaR were popped and ready for bed.

Thanks to all family and friends who made the day great!