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It's been an awesome week. My custom rubber stamps from simon's stamps came in the mail today and I'm in love!! There are only some minor German bureaucratic things I have to figure out before I can open my shop. I'll talk more about it in a separate post next week.
I finally got a proper solution for my broken Expedit desk. I love the shelf + desk combo but after the desk's leg broke off due to some minor kitty incident I temporarily added some desk legs my dad bought a while ago. It worked out okay but it didn't look very good and it wasn't very practical either. I finally decided to buy the Alex drawer unit. I love all the extra storage it adds to my sewing table and Lina loves sleeping on it :)

My seedlings are doing great and the first batch of zucchini plants is already planted in my parents' garden. I can't wait to harvest the first zucchinis in a month or so!!
Remember how I promised I'd try to take a picture of the cinnamon pull apart I made for our knitting club meeting last week? Well it's only a quick instagram snapshot but looking at it makes me wanna make another one. Anything with cinnamon never seem to survive more than a day around here.

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There's so much going on around here lately - lots of soil, fabrics and yarn!
Lina loves hanging out by my sewing machine - though she prefers sleeping on my phone than any of my new creations. In case you should ever find yourself in my apartment looking for your phone - look underneath Lina first. Also speaking of her, I've been suspecting her of playing with my seedlings for days but I've never caught her do it. Just soil on my floor or desk from time to time... I guess the picture of my zucchini seedling with one of her hairs on it proves I'm right.

Have I mentioned that I love growing plants? Like 'from scratch'? Sure, buying commercial plants and harvesting the first vegetables after a couple of days sounds tempting but I prefer growing my own plants. So far my zucchini and basil seedlings are thriving. The sorrel seedlings have yet to reach the sunlight but they are only two days old - no worries yet. Have you ever used some of those 'pop-up' seedling pellets? You pour water on it that is soaked up and you can put your seed in it. They came with the containers I bought so I figured I could just as well give them a try. I'll let you know how it works in a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow is a public holiday (Ascension Day) in Germany so I'm looking forward to a lazy day at home. My future apartment mate (she's moving in in June - can't wait!) is coming over tomorrow and we'll cook something and get to know each other a little better. It's gonna be rad to have a 'like-minded' apartment mate!! I'll introduce her on the blog once she's moved in and we know each other a little better :)

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The other day I started some spring cleaning in my kitchen. I didn't take any pictures yet but my kitchen shelf is super clean and organized now. I bought some ikea food containers when we were at the h+h to store expensive yarns (I don't want any moths among my fibers...) but as I was reorganizing my baking ingredients they came in pretty handy to store nuts and cupcake decorations etc. Guess I'll have to buy some more containers for my yarn next time I'm at ikea.

During the spring cleaning I found three opened packages of walnuts. Whoops, I didn't know I have that many! Naturally I wanted to get rid off the two halfway empty bags so I decided to make walnut bread!
I didn't find any recipe that matched the ingredients I had at hand (it was about 9:30pm and I had no desire to leave my warm and cozy apartment just to get some walnut oil) so I had to improvise.
I ended up using four different kinds of (mostly whole wheat) flour (all aaaalmost empty bags!), dry yeast, water and oil, some salt and many chopped walnuts. I just mixed all the ingredients together and added olive oil until the dough felt right. I might buy walnut oil to taste the difference but the result with olive oil was pretty damn good, too!

Next time I make it I'm gonna write down the ingredients I used and put it into my 'approved recipes' book. I love baking bread and finding new recipes/combinations that work is so much fun!

Besides my bread baking adventures I don't have much to share. I'm working on a big and exciting project that is taking up much of my time and energy but it's probably gonna be a couple weeks before I can share the exciting news. Spring has finally arrived in my bedroom; the orchid I bought when it was pretty much dead started to bloom in my favorite shade of pink.

My kitty wasn't very convinced when I started exchanging my winter clothes for summer clothes. She prefers using the opportunity to sleep in my closet instead. Well I guess she's right and I can wait a little longer... if you follow me on instagram (@froggeddesigns) you might have seen that the clothes to yarn + fabrics ratio in my closet is almost 1:1. Luckily there's a lot more space in my yarn boxes now than it was last year. But I'm looking for projects to use up some of my worsted weight leftovers. Any pattern recommendations?

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It feels like spring around here. We've had a couple of sunny and warm days that were real mood lifters. Remember my 'to do list' for March? I've made some real progress these past days; I filed my taxes (woohoo, feels so good! I've had this one on my mind since last fall and everyone in Germany makes such a huge deal out of it though it's no biggie at all if you just sit down and do it instead of just talking about it for months.), handed in an important paper, organized my craft shelf (I'll post a room tour soon, promised!) and started looking for a job.

Studying and painting my nails seem to go together so I've had many different colors these past days. Also I finally figured out the perfect raspberry banana smoothie. I treated myself to a new lipstick and it's officially my favorite - I've worn it every day since I bought it and got so many compliments. Also, I ran (at least) one mile a day since Saturday. It's only been five days but I feel so much better already. I love running because you don't have to feel bad for eating lots of cake afterwards ;)

Lina seems to have realized that spring is on its way, too; she's been super active lately. She used to just sleep on my bed/chair/windowsill all day long but lately she's been playful and active. Her favorite time to play of the day? The second I go to bed to read a couple of pages before I fall asleep. As soon as I lay cozily in my warm bed with a hot water bottle she starts running across the apartment and leaves a trail of destruction.

What have you been up to?

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Life is good. Classes are over but I still have finals every 2-3 weeks. But since I'm known for my procrastination skills I have lots of time for some fun stuff. Like baking and taking pretty food pictures. Have you watched Parks & Rec lately? I loved Ben's explanation of a 'foodie'!

Among many other things, I baked golden toast (SO good. Seriously. I'm never gonna buy toast again. Ever.), cinnamon buns and apple crumble (it was gone so fast I couldn't take a picture). I can't wait for spring - don't get me wrong, I love winter but the lack of sunshine in the past months is seriously influencing my mood. I've been trying to surround myself with colorful fabrics and yarn which seems to help a little but I wouldn't mind spending a couple days somewhere sunny and warm.

My sewing machine was pretty busy lately (isn't the wrist pincushion my mom gave me for Christmas adorable?) - I made a couple of gifts and some small bits and pieces. The owl pillow deserves a whole blog post. Sadly, my beloved sewing machine decided she doesn't like thick seams and stopped working properly. She'll be picked up today and sent halfway around the country where hopefully she'll get fixed quickly. I guess I'll be back to knitting and spinning for the next couple of weeks before I get her back.

I finally got back into reading! I went through three novels in the past two weeks. I'm thinking about doing a book report every 2-3 months... what do you think?

Last but not least, a cute picture of Lina because how could an 'around here' blog post not include at least one picture of a cat?

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I love starting the year with a new planner. I've had the moleskine daily pocket planner for the past four years and I'm super happy with it. I love having an entire page per day, it's small enough to always stay in my purse and the quality is awesome. I got the Le Petit Prince limited edition this year.

I'm getting back into work mode. Of course Lina is trying actively to prevent me from getting any work done by either laying on my laptop or my notepad. Sigh... At least she doesn't like my new yogi tea chai classic. It takes about 20 minutes to prepare but it's really worth it.

My friend B. gave the the cutest hello kitty kleenex box ever. For now it's in the bathroom as a sort of decoration because the tissues are too cute to use. My roomie Felix didn't complain about them (yet...?) so they're staying there for now.

Other than that, I've gone back to eating (somewhat) healthier after weeks of regular baking and eating waaay too much. I ordered some yarn on Christmas Eve and it finally got here. It's GORGEOUS! Two skeins of malabrigo chunky and one skein worsted merino. Now I just have to decide on what I wanna knit next...

My homespun yarn is far from perfect but I'm getting to the point where the yarn starts to become usable. I'll dye it and probably ply it with a thin industrial yarn to give it more strength.

I won't be able to post much in the following weeks because I have my finals in February so I better start studying. I need a certain amount of adrenaline before I have enough motivation to start studying productively. I guess four exams, one 15-page paper and a full schedule that doesn't leave much time/energy to study after class is enough pressure to make me panic even though my first exam is in four weeks...

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Happy first of Advent! The fourth Sunday before Christmas is the official beginning of the holiday season in Germany and I couldn't be more excited! Listening to Christmas music, lots of cookies, cozy afternoons at my parent's and making gifts. Of course I started doing most of that stuff weeks ago but it's official now.
My mom started decorating her house this weekend and we found some fun stuff. Aren't those Christmas hats fun? We bought them a couple years ago for a Christmas family portrait. The cat really seems to like his - he patiently waited until I had snapped a couple of pictures before he took it off. We also made some wreaths; The one in the picture is the raw version of the one we gave my grandma. Of course we decorated it before we gave it to her ;)
Unfortunately, mine was too big to transport it safely on my bike so it's still at my parent's. But I'll take some pictures as soon as I have it. Lina loves sitting at the open window watching what's going on outside. Temperatures below zero and snow on the windowsill don't seem to bother her at all. And she's very reluctant to understand that I don't enjoy low temperatures inside the apartment...

Baking Days

Here are some sneak peaks of some of the Christmas cookies I've baked with friends and family. Sheepish cookies, gingerbread, nice company, six cookie jars full of delicious things and a curious cat to keep us company. What else could you ask for?!