Hallo!
Hi!
The Christmas/New Year-family gathering in Illinois is over and we all arrived safely at home via various ways.
I’m going to start the new blog year with one of the best blonde jokes I have ever read! I guess, everyone has a little blond in them. ;-)
Currently busy with my freelance work. Have been writing and translating texts for an upstart security company, and that will continue into next year, but I’ll try not to neglect the blog too much…
When I did not sit in front of the computer, I tried my hand on some Christmas baking. Thanks for the German Christmas baking book, mom! The butter cookies are really yummy, but I probably miscalculated the conversion into Fahrenheit; tF = tC+32*5/9 or is it 9/5?? Anyway, some got burned a bit. Kirin helped cut and decorate the cookies, but I had fun with the food coloring too.
I had more luck with my Apple Pie, one of the top 10 dishes in America according to Betty Crocker, even though I disagreed a bit with Betty on the crust and used less Salt and some brown sugar to sweeten it. Then some real home made whipped cream instead of the ice cream and the feast began.
Next, I am going to test my skills on a German speciality called “Christstollen”. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it, I never knew exactly why it was named Stollen, and that it represents the Christ child in swaddles, together with other baked Christian symbols during Advent season, like the pretzel. We did, however and with amazement, discover a Stollen as a German import at Safeway, ready for the buying! The icing was all wrong, but the rest was gone in three days.
To all C-64 fans: Look what I found!! Wow! *jump around the room* I still can remember it like yesterday, when I came home from school and always switched on the “bread box” first to start the background music. Nostalgia at the push of a button!
Didgy survived the last winter without a dog house, but I always feel sorry for her out on the porch during these bitterly cold high desert nights. So, I built her this little hut out of a piece of left-over plywood. The entry is a bit crooked, but I do not have a wood file (yet) and had to somehow negotiate it holding the circular saw in my hand. The shower curtain sky lights are not all that great either, but all in all, I’m pretty happy with my engineering work. A yet to follow paint job would improve the look further and should seal the cracks, too.
Unfortunatly, the kids seem to like the dog house more than the dog. I once caught Didgy coming out of it, but other than that the other barking and crawling “dogs” play in it.