Ideas for Mother's Day

Hello everybody, hallo zusammen,

as you all know, it's Mother's Day on Sunday and I thought some of you might still need some inspiration on what to get for your mommis. Of course, you could simply present them with the classics such as chocolate, perfume or flowers, but I'm thinking in a little different direction. As you already know from this post, I'm a huge fan of gifts that are actually no things at all, but mutual activities. This also applies here! Therefore I came up with some fun ideas, on how you could spend a lovely day with your mom, which will (hopefully) stay in your memories for a long time. 

wie ihr ja alle wisst, ist am Sonntag Muttertag und ich dachte, dass der/die Eine oder Andere von euch vielleicht noch etwas Inspiration benötigt, womit ihr euren Mamas am Sonntag eine Freude machen könnt. Natürlich kann man sich einfach an die Klassiker halten und Schokolade, Blumen oder Parfum verschenken, aber ich denke in eine etwas andere Richtung. Wie ihr ja bereits aus diesem Post wisst, bin ich ein großer Fan von Geschenken, die eigentlich gar keine Dinge sind, sondern gemeinsame Aktivitäten. Daher habe ich mir ein paar Ideen einfallen lassen, wie ihr einen schönen gemeinsamen Tag mit euren Müttern verbringen könnt, der (hoffentlich) lang in eurer Erinnerung bleibt.

Seven Sustainable Christmas Present Ideas

Hello you lovely people,

how are you? Do you already have all of your Christmas presents? In case you don't, listen up! :)
As you all know I started to study Environmental and Sustainability Management this fall. Reason enough for me to search for sustainable Christmas present ideas, which make the presentees and the planet happy at the same time. Here come seven ideas, I came up with.

Every Month Birthday Present

Hello you darling people,

last Sunday it was time to celebrate another birthday - mine in this case... ;)
I invited some friend over for brunch (which lasted for about 12 hours ;) ) and really had a fabulous day. For those of my guests who read this: THANK YOU again for joining me! It was a blast!
Of course I got some presents too and although all of them were pretty cool one stuck out especially for me. My oldest (and one of my best) friend Karin gave me an "Every Month Birthday"-present and as I liked the idea so much and guessed you might find it inspiring too I decided to share it here on the blog.

Christmas Tea With Scones And Sandwiches

Hello everybody,

yesterday my friend Silke and I hosted our traditional annual Christmas tea for our friends with scones with jam and whipped cream, sandwiches, hot punch and (of course) tea. Today I wanna share our scones recipe as well as some other tea preparation impressions with you. :)

What you'll need (for about 15 scones)

• 450g flour
• 16g baking powder
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 50g butter
• 250ml milk
• 1 egg

How it works

Mix the flour with the baking powder and the sugar.

Cut the butter into small pieces and put it to the other ingredients in your bowl. Levigate the butter with your fingertips with the flour mixture until it gets crumbly.

Put the milk into the bowl and knead the mixture into a (rather sticky) dough. 

Roll the pastry about 2cm thick and cut out the scones with a round biscuit cutter (about 5cm diameter) or a glass/cup.

Whisk the egg and and coat the scones with it. Afterwards bake them at 210°C for about 15 to 20 minutes.

I addition to the scones we made a variation of sandwiches. Beside ham and egg sandwiches, mozzarella and tomatoe sandwiches, brie and apple sandwiches and butter-cucumber sandwiches we also made tuna salad sandwiches:

As little farewell gifts for our guests we also made Christmas crackers filled with sweets.

All images by Stefanie Reichl

Gift Wrapping

 Hello everybody,

Day 11 of our Advent calender deals with the topic of gift wrapping. I know we run a little late today, sorry for that, but what shall I say: Sometimes life simply gets between you and your blog post... ;)

When it comes to gift wrapping I like to keep it rather simply therefore you won't be surprised that the basis for my packaging is (once again) simple brown paper. 

What you'll need

• brown paper
• gift ribbon out of fabric
• candy cane
• green or red paper
• gold cardboard
• Christmas stickers

How it works

Start by wrapping your gift into simple brown paper.

Put the gift ribbon around the package and tie the candy cane to the gift ribbon. 

For the gift tags I cut out a bigger tag of gold cardboard (about 8,5 x 5,5 cm plus the rectangle with ca. 4,5 cm side length) and a smaller tag of green paper (about 4 x 8 cm plus the rectangle with ca. 3,5 cm side length). Then I glued the green tag onto the gold tag and embellished it with the Christmas sticker. Use a puncher to make a small hole into your tag and fix it with a short piece of ribbon at your gift package.

The only thing missing is the name of the presentee and you are done! :)