The last day of this year

Two days ago I received a wonderful little package from my beloved Lilibeth, containing an enchanting postcard and a most beautiful bookmark with golden letters the word BIBLIOPHILOS printed on it. Oh dear, you’re right, it matches me perfectly!

Yesterday I drew the first designs for my first Steampunk evening dress. I’m still not sure about the colour, just that the embroidery will feature fair roses, rose hips and boughs. I think I will draw a more defined version soon, copy it and colour it in several colours I have thought of and then ask and see what looks best.

This evening, Bambi, the Imp and the Goblin will show up here to celebrate the last hours of the year with fireworks and raclette. I hope I’ll find some new year’s resolutions for myself to accomplish!

So have a nice evening, party or not, and don’t forget to make your new year’s wishes at midnight!

Preparing for… New Year’s Eve

Picture from weheartit.com

Fast away the old year passes,
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!
Sing we joyous, all together,
Heedless of the wind and weather!

I left the falalalala thing out as it looks rather ridiculous when written.

The 31st of December is New Year’s Eve!

Or Silvester, as we call it in Germany. Or Hogmanay in Scotland.
The last remaining hours of the year passed always had something enchanted in my eyes. Just imagine – one single day to hold a whole year full of adventures, emotions and events!

Here are some of my New Year’s Eve traditions:

• When I was younger, my mother and I used to light a bonfire on the hill behind our castle to burn the conifer boughs and the advent wreath from our Christmas decorations and little sheets of paper with those things that we liked and didn’t like in the passed-by year written on them.
• If you don’t like firecrackers, you may like the idea of using sparklers instead. They are quite save in use and look great!
• Speaking of firecrackers: I’m not really fond of the large, loud ones without any visual effects than smoulder. The tiny ones that fizz into the air to act like little fairies are way more interesting to watch, just like the small volcanos or spirals. That these are way more save that the large ones is something that I won’t even need to mention, I guess.
• Our traditional New Year’s Eve dinner is raclette, normally with white mushrooms, ham, salami, pepperoni and other cold meat and potatoes, combined with bell pepper, cucumber and other vegetables when out of the oven.
• Dinner for One is the usual sketch for New Year’s Eve in Germany. It’s often aired a couple of times before midnight so that everyone can watch it, even the children that should be in bed early (as if…). They are often showing older films from the 30s to 60s during the day, something that I highly appreciate as I love the way they are speaking!

But no matter how you celebrate this last day of the year 2009,

I wish all of you a Happy New Year 2010!

Intermezzo: Retrospective

Wonderful time-related picture from weheartit.com

The year 2009 is nearly over. A lot of things happened and I’ll do my best to do my very own review of the year passed by.

• First of all, I started this blog. I think I’ve been quite a good blogger, without months of absence between posts, but there are things for sure that I can improve next year.
• The biggest change in my life that has happened this year is the fact that I’m at university now and also moved near my Alma Mater – to Marburg, living (most of the time) happily ever after with Bambi and the Satyr.
• Related to university, I bought a notebook, pretty a grand step for an idiot like me when it comes to such gadgets. Now I can watch my favourite fairy films while being a mermaid in the tub!
• The Goblin and I finished our relationship after three years as a couple, but remained friends. It didn’t work anymore, and as I was heading off to university and to live over 100 miles away it seemed like a bad idea to try to restore the tie – again.
• With Hollis, I finally found my great Lolita companion that I can take with me wherever I go! He even went to university with me during the first days.
• I got my wonderful Lolita pen pal Lilibeth! My dearest! It’s always a pleasure to receive your letters as well as answering them, and I hope our friendship will last though the next year as well as it did since we found each other. And I’m so sorry that I can’t accompany you at the Emilie Autumn concert!
• I saw Coppelius – twice! And twice they were splendid! I’m really looking forward to the next festival season to see and hear them again.
• Last, but surly not least, I finally took Hedgefairy as a name for myself and it still fits me very well.

So Christmas is over…

… for this year! But there will be others to follow…

And I’ll be more prepared next time, I swear. I didn’t have one present ready on Christmas Eve, what a luck that I didn’t hold my Yuletide dinner like the years before, a blessing in disguise! But next year I won’t be moving while I should stitch and sew. ^^

The CONDENSATOR

Yesterday, belated but oh-so-great!, I got the most stylish gadget Christmas present ever from the Imp: A Steampunk USB stick! I love the “grandfather’s clock” design and it’s even got “Holly” (another nickname of mine, as I can be as thorny and feisty as holly sometimes) burned-in on the other side!

As for my other presents, I got two  pair of knee-high socks in dark red (nearly matching my new cardigan), an ironing board, a luxurious woollen “feather” duster, a biscuits shaping-tool with changeable letters for names or phrases and cute magnets for Marburg, where I happened to bring my last pieces of furniture to today. Oh, and the illustrated-by-Paul Kidby Discworld novel The Last Hero that I had wished for so long!

Good-bye ’til then!

On the first day of Christmas…

Well, I know that the first day of Yuletide will be tomorrow, but as I’ve got to use the Goblins computer, it will be today that I wish you a

Very Merry Christmas!

I Hope I’ll be online again soon.
Live happily until then,

Bonnie

Gingerbread House’s Kitchen

Christmas time – even if it is shortly before the holidays themselves – is a grand time to try new recipes.
The most unusual Yuletide pastries in my family are butter biscuits and hazelnut or coconut macaroons, but I leave these entirely to my beloved grandmother. I’m more the type for fairy cakes and muffins, so today I want to share one of my favourite recipes that can be easily altered for Christmas.

Orange Fairy Cakes

You’ll need:
120 ml soft butter
160 ml sugar
170 ml flour
3 taespúnóga (Irish for teaspoons. I just like the word.) of baking-powder
125 ml orange juice
2 teaspoon of vanilla flavour (I prefer real vanilla of which a pinch may be enough)
2 eggs
3 teaspoon of grated orange skin
Grated orange skin for decoration

Mini muffin moulds (will make 12 fairy cakes, but I normally use normal muffin forms. You can’t have everything, can you?)

For the cream:
60 ml soft butter
90 ml icing sugar
1 table-spoon of orange juice

For the Christmas feeling you may add:
Cinnamon to the cream
Gingerbread spice to the dough
Wine spice (or spice wine, directly. They sell pretty good ones at renaissance fairs, at least here in Germany)

1. Preheat to 180°C and prepare the mould with muffin paper cases. Mix the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, orange juice, vanilla, additional christmas spice and eggs until the dough seems smooth. Intermix it with the orange skin and portion the dough into the cases. Bake for about 20 minutes until the cakes look golden-brown. Let them cool down.
2. Smooth down the butter with a stirring gear and stir in one half of the icing sugar, then the orange juice and then the remaining half of the sugar. Add the cinnamon (not too much!) and decorate the cupcakes with the creme and sprinkled-on grated orange skin. You could also add a big (non-edible) sparkly star on each fairy cake, just on the top.

I think they’re obligatory, especially with the name of this post:

Gingerbread Men

You’ll need (apart from a decent gingerbread man-shaped piece of cardboard to cut around):

125 ml soft butter
60 ml brown sugar
90 ml sugar beet molasses
1 egg, slightly beaten
280 ml flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 table-spoon ginger powder (or fresh ginger, but you might need more of it, then)
1 teaspoon natron
1 table-spoon raisins (or something similar for those who don’t like raisins, like me) for the eyes

For the icing:

1 egg white
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
155 ml icing sugar
Various food colourings (you can go for the ready ones from the supermarkets or use juices like beet, orange, cherry etc. for the hues)

1. Preheat to 180°C and cover two baking trays with baking parchment.
2. Stir butter, sugar and molasses to a cream and intermix the egg by and by. Fill the mass into a bigger bowl.
3. Sift flour, baking powder, ginger powder and natron and intermix it slowly into the butter cream with a spoon. Work everything to a smooth dough with your hands and knead it for about 2 minutes on a floured surface. Roll it out to about 5mm and put it in a cold place for 15 minutes.
4. Cut out the gingerbread in whatever a shape you like. For a house you may use rectangular pieces, every other form can be made with a cardboard dummy. Put the figures on your baking tray and add the eyes (additional: noses) and bake for 10 minutes.
5. For the frosting, stir the egg-white until it is foamy. Add the lemon juice and the sugar by and by and work everything to a smooth mass. Put the cream in several smaller bowls and add colour. Fill the masses in icing bags and draw clothing, mouths and hair.

Sadly, I can’t upload any pictures today as I’m working at the Goblin’s computer, sorry for that. But hopefully my notebook will arrive before Christmas…

‘Til then I’ll stay your faithfully

Bonnie

Christmas Decorations

University has been keeping me busy through the last weeks so I sadly couldn’t find the time to write anything – shame on me. But since today, 10 AM, it’s winter holidays! I’ll take the chance to share my musings about decorating for Christmas. If you haven’t done it yet, it is finally time to do so!

I’ve got to admit that I’m not that much into blinking kitschy plastic deco when it comes to Christmas. Here are my alternatives:

I’ve come from the woods…

Paper mistletoes. Very eco-friendly. ;)

A very natural style with beeswax candles instead of fairy lights, walnuts and apples for Christmas ornaments and thick, woolen socks at the fireplace. Oh, and don’t forget the mistletoes! Kissing beneath them is a most lovely tradition that is maintained way not enough and we’ve even got the one show above (I couldn’t get real ones, so I drew them) in the flat share, but no-one has been kissed beneath this far…

It was a dark and cold night…

I’ve always been very fond of the classical Victorian style of celebrating Christmas and as I am a little bit Gothic, too, I indeed like the idea of a slightly creepy, dark version of the festivity: Colours like dark, nearly bloody red, all shades of grey and worn down absinthe green would create a nice, whimsical feeling when the lights are turned down low and the clouds are covering the winter sky.

Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy

This one is for those who can’t get it sweet enough: Forget about the boughs of holly and take sugar canes instead, cover your tree in bonbons and fairy floss, bake biscuits with lots of sugary frosting and the cutest stockings you can find.

Deck the halls with boughs of Holly

The classical way. I’d go for a nutcracker and gingerbread, a large Christmas tree, Christmas crackers, silly old-fashioned hats, ornaments in shapes of ballet dancers and hoofed animals and loads of chocolate! You could also hang up garlands with Yuletide wishes in pretty antique letters or holiday cards.

-18°C outside, icy storm winds, crunching dry snow beneath my feet when I’m roaming the streets, holidays and a seelie grin on my face. Life couldn’t be better sometimes.

Let it Snow!

It’s Christmas time, no doubt. Yesterday I went to the Christmas Party at the Oriental studies (a cute old childrens hospital with a grand inner courtyard and stone cherubs at the gate) and afterwards climbed the hill to the castle with the Satyr and strewed some fairy dust on thresholds. I came home at about half past three and had a peppermint tea before going to bed.

When I woke up this morning I met the Satyr in the kitchen who told me to look out of the window and then went to bed again.

And guess what? It snowed!

It’s this beautiful out there, thick white flakes are trembling down from above, covering the street and the small old houses. Imediately I called my mother who told me that there is snow at her home, too, and this hopefully means that we’ll have white Christmas!

(I didn’t really have the time to take photos, sadly, but I will find some tomorrow, I guess).

10 Pleasures in December

1. The Moomins. Goth, how I love them. My favourite book is Moominpappa at Sea as it is whimsical, gloomy and childlike at the same time.  I also liked some of the stories of Tales from Moominvally very much, especially The Fillyjonk Who Believed In Disasters, The Invisible Child and Cedric. If I ever traveled Finland, I’d surely pay a visit to Moomin World. And I think the Moomins would make a great Lolita pattern… Hm.
2. Christmas/ Yuletide. Of course! I love decorating, dreaming of how I would have celebrated the holiday if I were born one or two hundred years ago, baking and cooking, Christmas carols and the TV AM programme that is stuffed with literature adaptions, cute Christmas episodes and carol videos on MTV.
   
3. My new Chambers. I love my new bedroom, it is grand. One’s got to go through the kitchen to reach its old-fashioned wooden door, its windows point out to very an interesting street, the warm trembling-in light of the street lantern illuminates my dreams when I lie in bed. It’s HOME, nothing less.
4. Harps. They sound grand and even look great (well, but instruments are very decorative, anyway). And I think they make a very lolita instrument.
   
5. River Woods. I guess that the last collection of this East Coast inspired manufacturer will be the only brand I’ll ever wear. I love their interpretation of the still continental influenced America with all the wool (no cheap poly or acrylic!), soft cotton, corduroy and flannel and the toned-down colours they use.
6. Snow. White powdered sugar that lies on every thing, a thick blanket that cushions every step, swirling, surreal patterns of coming-down snow flakes when I look up to catch them with my tongue. Snowball fights and snow men.  And a great possibility for a photo shoot featuring mufflers, woolen berets and thick scarves. I hope it will arrive here soon… Let it snow!
7. Velvet. The winter’s fabric par excellence.I think about getting some velvet curtains for my windows and I definitely need a velveteen dress until Christmas!
   
8. Pizza. We’re going to get some for brunch later, and the pizzeria is just some houses away. Yes, I’m finally a university student. *g
9. Guys with earrings. No studs. They remind me of pirates, steampunks and leprechauns. A comic character of mine – a very disenchanted elf named Fullmoon – had lots of earrings, too, maybe he was the starting point… I really should draw him again.
   
10. Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. I’m reading it at the moment and I hope to get through it until Yuletide. And I really like Dickens’ way of writing.
    

1500

Thank you for exactly 1500 views on this blog (today at 1 PM)!

I’m sitting at the University Café at the moment, using Bambi’s notebook to surf and still have 44 minutes left until I’ll have to leave for the Preparatory Grammar Seminar.

Yesterday I went into my home for approximately the next three years for the first time.

I love it.

The house itself is from about 1920 and so is the door of my room and the kitchen door. The kitchen itself is hardly more than some cupboards, refrigerator, sink and hearth and we’ll have to put the fold away table into the vestibule for meals, but the flat is simply cute, though.
I’ll get my own computer here on Friday – the laptop may be neat, but I couldn’t find the card reader (if I has got one and I don’t own an extra reader, so…) at the best of will.
Right in front of my two windows that are pointing out to the green street, across from a book shop illuminated by a red star there is a street lantern, it’s light beaming gently into my chamber so that I don’t even need light at nights – which is a little impractical as long as I don’t have any curtains (make this until Saturday).

So that’s it with a little update for now, I just wanted to share my bliss. ^^

See you soon,
Bonnie