GingerBread House
Our Fairy Tale Perfect Housing

My girl has been asking me to make a gingerbread house, and our first one ever came out looking pretty good!

The girls had tons of fun making it....

And it was as easy as buying this 23 kronor box from Anna's, the maker of the best Swedish pepparkakor/ gingerbread cookies!

I was all for doing the gingerbread house but imagined it taking a day or more. When I saw this short cut of buying a prefab yummy house, and envisioned skipping the struggle of finding the perfect dough, and then perfect construction plan, I was happy to lay my money down. The house became an instantly do able project, all fun no hassle. I found my kit at Co Op Forum, but I hear these boxes are sold at IKEA USA. It has the building parts only- 4 walls, 2 roof slabs, and 4 pieces for a chimney.

We made our own icing and decorated it using naturally colored candy from our stash. Gel hearts, and the last of the Sunspire M and Ms from the USA trip.

The Royal Icing for cement was easy, just beat one egg white with 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, and 1/8 tsp of cream of tartar powder. Two of the house pieces were broken, and the cement icing glued it back together nicely.

We made sure we had an extra box of Anna's pepparkakor on hand for my tasty-tasters, who were ready to eat some gingerbread, even though they had to keep their hands off the building materials!

The mom had to assemble the house while the girls watched and munched cookies, but they got to put the candies on.

We thought we did alright for amateurs.

Around town, we have spied these gingerbread creations in the bakery window.

I hate marzipan, and red food coloring, but the marzipan tomtes are pretty cute.

And the cinnamon sticks used for logs are nice touches, too.

Slimminge Skördag - Harvest Festival We live in the south of Sweden, which is a great area with two decent size cities- Lund, an old University Town, and Malmö, an urban center. Plus, we are not all that far from the Capital of Denmark, Copenhagen. But the most notable thing living outside the cities in Skåne is that we are in farm land. Driving to either city means driving past farms with fields of grain and little red barns. The cycles of the growing season are very apparent. We notice the planting, sprouting, and harvesting of the fields around us as a simple fact of our life, in a way it was not part of life in Florida. It is also notable how all the farms seem to be family farms. There is an absence of Conagra mega farms, and there must be policies in place that support small farms. This is so wonderful to see, coming from the USA where Willie Nelson and others have to raise funds for Farm Aid (link) with benefit concerts to try to save the American small family farms. So many have been lost due to poor political policies that favor agribusinss to the detriment of the small farms. Anyway, now summer is peaking, we have been watching the big harvest machines go to work making bales and harvesting the grains. So we thought it would be fun to check out what the farmers are up to by going to the Harvest festival/ Skördag in the small old farming village of Slimminge. It was a rainy day, but we headed out anyway. Slimminge is a very small village, set amongst the rolling hills of Skåne. The view from the festival over the hill tops was lovely. We parked in a harvested wheat filled on the stumble of the straw. There were threshing demonstrations, where they showed how the wheat was cut in the old times by hand with a scythe. Then it was carried by the horse drawn cart over to the old fashioned steam engine powered machine that extracted the grain from the straw.

We got a ride in the horse drawn cart while they carried the wheat bundles from the harvest field over to the threshing machine. The cart was loaded with fresh cut wheat.

The horses pulled our cart

The wheat was hoisted up and loaded into the steam powered machine

And out came husked wheat on one end wheat

Wheat Berries

And Bales of Hay on the Other End and Isn't that guy a dead ringer for Pettersson from Pettersson and Findus? Here is a little video of the process

After the horses were unharnessed from the cart, SwedeGirl got to go for a horse ride There were various old engines and farm equipment on display, and a number of old grinding stones.
The old spelling of Simrishamn, with a 'C', Cimbrishamn, the largest village near SwedeDaddy's childhood home
Now a days things are done more efficientlyThe festival had a small collection of tents with local vendors, a bouncy house, and food.
This was the competition for strongest man and woman. They were cheering this woman on, in the competition of who could hold the buckets up the longest. This vendor was selling linen, and demonstrating how the bundles of raw linen are crushed, combed, and spun into thread. This fellow makes brushes from animal hair. This little brush is made from human hair, just for fun. Most of his bristles are made from goat and horse hair. We met a woman who keeps 35 angora bunnies. They keep escaping and breeding, and they are so cute she just keeps them all. She uses the fur to spin yarn and make felted angora crafts. These were so soft! We bought these little bunnies from her to give Swedegirl's teachers from last year. We wanted to give them a little gift, toys for the classroom, as a thank you when we see them this week at the back to school fika/ coffee. And there was food...Fresh and varied tomatoes, my favorite! The typical Swedish fresh produce selection- roots. A variety of onions, potatoes, carrots, and beets. The apples are coming in! These fresh tart ones were just 1 kronor each.

The BBQ- they went WHOLE HOG. Of course we had some, the smoked pork and ribs were served with apple sauce and this super creamy pineapple relish. And this lady was demonstrating how to make the traditional Spettkak over a cast iron stove. Spettkak means 'spit cake' since it is made on a spit like this. It is like meringue, and made of eggs, potato flour, and sugar. We tried some of this, too. She had some interesting artwork in her tent, including this painting of Nils Holgerssons, a character in a famous children's story intended to teach geography, about his travels on the back of a goose across Sweden after he is shrunk to leprechaun size. Since we have been trying our hand at baking bread this summer, this trip to the harvest festival tied together the process and source of our 'daily bread'. We are grateful to the farmers. And to Sweden for it's support of the small family farmers. There is so clearly a long tradition and deep knowledge of how to work the land here. We were glad to honor their efforts by learning a bit about their work at the festival.

You can learn about supporting American farmers at Farm Aid, just follow the link to learn what you can do to make sure the USAcontinues to have small farms like Sweden does (click for link).

More Snowy Fun

SwedeGirl was still home from school at the end of the week, and I am glad, because we got two days to play together in the snow. There was a sled-able thin layer Wednesday, expected to melt by Thursday. Thankfully, we woke to more snow Thursday, and a steady stream of snow flakes fell as we played outside.

We've learned snow is very fleeting in these parts, so even though I was still feeling a bit sick this week, we made sure we got out in the day light for some sledding. Sadly, there was just a trace of ice when we woke Friday. The winter is so pretty and so much more novel with snow. And I am sure we are loving the snow partly because it is here so briefly.

The House in the snow

Our Street in the Snow

Sledding in the nearby Woods

I think it just looks more dreary out with out all the white sparkle and reflective light of snow. Snow is truly mother natures glitter. But of course, I just make snow balls and snow cones, and rarely have to drive in it, so I have a slanted, rosy view of the stuff. Especially being a Floridian.

The local stream, still flowing but icy
And for our uncrafy craft? Of course we just copied Mother Nature and made snow flakes, too.

Christmas Crafts for The-not-so-Crafty

I got this playdough recipe from blog surfing, off Memories of Mine to Thine. This mama claimed to have perfected play dough, and since I am dedicated play dough buyer (WalMart $1.62 a four pack) now residing in a country that sells it for way more than a dollar a can, I thought I would try it out. This recipe involves cooking it, but I did not read that part and just did it in a bowl and it worked out fine. The best tips was if it is sticky, add more oil, not more water. Here is the recipe. She claims this version is the most efficient and uses the least of each ingredient that it can and still come out well. It came out great for us, and I have had playdough failures in the past with other recipes.

PLAY DOUGH

1 c All purpose flour

1 c Warm (not hot) water

2 tsp Cream of Tarter

1 Tbs Vegetable oil

1/4 c salt

(1 pkg Unsweetened KoolaidFood coloring as desired)

You may get the impression from the side bar, which is full of links to interesting places and activities, that I am a super creative stay at home mom who always has something fun up her sleeve. Well, really those things are reminders to me of what I could be doing, to give me inspiration!

I am no crafty whiz. I do not have a sewing machine, I was gifted some knitting needles but can't seem to get the yarn, instructions, and needles together in the same place at the right moment, and I have tried needle felting and think it's a cool craft I could get into here in this land of sheep and wool, but I need to buy some supplies to get going. I really enjoyed water color painting and had done some nice ones right about when I started midwife school, but I spent last decade on call for birth working 'round the clock as a midwife. That meant I cultivated few other interests or talents during that time. I do have some natural artistic ability, but I am out of practice. I can, however, draw a fairly good picture of the fetus at what ever gestational age it is at, in the current and correct position on your pregnant abdomen if you want me to. And there's only one thing I am really great at sewing, and you have to inject lidocaine first.

We rolled these out and then baked them up.

In my life right now, I am a pregnant tired person whose main recreations are napping and cooking things that involve hefty doses of protein. When my daughter is home from school, which is two days a week, we make an effort to do four things during the day- get outside, make a craft, take a nap, and cook something.

Now I am blogging, I am aware of the many really amazing creative mamas out there who are making felt advent calendars, quilts, and all manner of other beautiful creations. That is not me. It is fun to browse the blogs full of fabric stacks next to the vintage tea cups, but it always leaves me wondering where they get the time and energy! However, the craftiness is inspiring, and helps me get ideas of things to do that are more with in my scope. Reading all those blogs makes me want to do more crafts, but I tend default to the familiar old tried and true crafts of my childhood. For Christmas we made playdough ornaments, like we did in Brownies/Girl Scouts when my mom was the leader! It involved a rolling pin, and an apron, which was enough to satisfy my three year old. I do crafts for three year olds, and can blame the 'low quality output' on the fact that my daughter actually made the thing! Maybe someday I will catch back up on my artistic skills, but for now, this is the kinda thing we make around here. It's a fun start. Maybe in ten years time I will be quilting, too.

We use what we have, like we happen to have water colors, and while that is not the ideal paint for ornaments, it does work! Ditto on using rubber cement on these- we were out of regular glue, and I am sure it would have been better...
I also have as part of my art supplies a HUGE box of glitter my sister gave us, that had been left at her house when she moved in. It is AWESOME to be able to be free, and not skimpy, on the glitter.
The secret to using glitter with kids- play dough. Put trays, and paper, and all that under them, and supervise like a hawk...and rinse everything in the sink to wash away pieces so they do not escape from a trash can later. But then when the little magic dots get spread all over as they always do, roll playdough over it and it will suck it up, and you end up with nice glittery play dough and clean tables and floors.
We used a few non glittery ornaments for gift tags on the cookies we made for the teachers, and the rest of these are awaiting fixative glue so they can go on the little one's tree and not spread the sparkle everywhere.
Here was another skill less, crafty thing we did. We combined a nature walk with our craft activity. We went on a walk and found such lovely and interesting items as a feather, a few rocks, a huge rubber band, and a broken bike reflector (which was her favorite treasure). We came home and used finger paint to paint them, and then of course, used the Swedegirl's favorite- GLITTER- to make 'em special.

Finger painting rocks was FUN, thought SwedeGirl Paint is a lot like lotion

And the glitter was in the bag, so she shook, shook, shook it...

And then we had glittery rocks. She had me paint her name on one, and LOVE on the other. What a girl!