My Vienna – #1

After some years of using Instagram I’ve come up with quite a collection of pictures and snapshots. Many of them not very unique or with any other purpose than documenting a single situation eventually on facebook. Like “look I made carrot salad” or “me and my husband at …”. But then there are some few pictures I really like and that can stand for themselves I think.

As I live and work in Vienna, many of my pictures are taken in this city so they come with kind of a theme naturally. I’ll just put my favourites from the past few years on display right here – and, as I am choosing to throw the “#1” behind the headline, I set myself the goal to make more “better” pictures and less “look I have a life” snapshots. So I hope there might be more soon.

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Passion.

I designed this poster for a concert of some dear friends in Germany. Made mostly by treating paper really bad and a copy machine.

My inner child.

Stop making sense.

A very new illustration from yesterday…

Still here

Oh – my – god. I haven’t blogged in such a long time. I can give you a set of good reasons like our honeymoon in May, our move to a bigger appartement and all the many, mind numbing, exhausting things that come with that or a beautiful summer with lots of outdoor time and good friends. But all in all there would have been time for this blog somehow. But sometimes “life is what happens, while you busy making other plans”.

But with our new appartement taking shape, the summer fading away and a more indoorsy feeling in my head I will end my long break from my beloved digital playground and will soon be back with some more interesting things than excuses.

Afterall I managed to attend my new tumblr profile quite regularly, so maybe, in the meantime you want to look at that: A stream of consciousness

See you soon!

A late easter note.

Like every holiday Easter has come and gone in what seemed the blink of an eye. I’ve been quite busy the week before easter, baking cupcakes and cakes, tinkering on surprise eggs for my oldest nephew and making bread to be consecrated at the Easter service. My absolute favourite this Easter were those cute little bunny cupcakes you see above. I came across the idea at Created by Diane and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Finally I chose this really yummy vanilla cupcake recipe and topped them with mascarpone mixed with vanilla and sugar. They tasted really excellent and everybody loved those cheeky little bunny bums .

Another thing I really couldn’t wait to make this Easter was a traditional paschal lamb cake, or in this case paschal rabbit. In Austria these soft, white, sugary cakes are baked especially for the days around easter. In my family they usally just were topped with some icing sugar and mostly ate for breakfast. Since this tradition had stopped now for some years I was eager to revive it. I found this quite lovely recipe on the web and coated the bunnies with a mixture of egg whites and icing sugar. Topped with some sugar flowers they really looked lovely I think. And they also tasted really good.

Last but not least I made this easter surprise eggs for my oldest nephew. As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I really fell in love with the idea by not martha to disguise easter eggs as chocolate filled surprise eggs. You sould really take some time to make those, keeping in mind, that they need some time to harden at each step. But just stick to the instructions over at not martha’s and you’ll be really fine!

 

Doctor stitching who?

Some presents need somewhat longer in the making than others… and some really need too long. I started this Doctor Who crossstitch cussion for my dear sweetheart last fall, determined to finish it till Christmas. Sadly I couldn’t achieve that goal and had to give him a half finished David Tennant Doctor as well as missing nineth and tenth Doctor under the Christmas tree. And it took me, including some procrastinating I have to admit, until today to finish it. But here it finally is and I think it’s awesome!

I’m quite hooked on crossstitching, admiring the neat projects that you can find around the web for some time now. With some patience patterns can be found everywhere on the web, but I collected some of my favourites over at pinterest. And if you don’t want to get stuck in a project like this for over half a year like me – there are some people out there who really know about cool crossstitching and might serve to some of your handmade needs: Check out lovely Mrs. x&x facebook page – I saw many of her designs now and she’s a real cross-pro!

Easter egg picks.

I’m working on some things at the moment, but none of them is ready to be shown on this blog yet. So, in the meantime and to break my resent silence and just because there is so much lovely stuff all over the net right now: My favourite DIY easter egg picks.

Message in a egg – I found the first one some while ago and I think it’s the perfect combination of the always beloved fortune cookies and easter eggs. Write your secret easter message on a small piece of paper and hide it inside a beautiful coloured egg for your loved ones. Find a deatailed how-to on oh! craft.

Chocolate easter surprise eggs – This is my absolute favourite! The idea is just too awesome and I really can’t wait to make some chocolate surprise eggs of my own soon! I always loved, and honestly still do, chocolate surprise eggs but I never could think of any easy way to make them at home. So check out this neat instructions over at not martha and surprise your folks big time!

Silhouette easter eggs – They are around the web for some time and I remember wanting to make some of those last year. I hope to find the time this year because, honestly, they just look adorable, don’t they? Find instructions at Le Papier Studio.

Tattoo easter eggs – Temporary tattoo easter eggs were always the high achievers goal in my family. After we had dyed lots and lots of beautiful colourful eggs my father used to dig out all the leftover easter egg tattoos and the most talented and trustworthy easter egg dyer was appointed to carefully put this fragile pictures on the eggs. It always was a nerve-racking task for the chosen one as well as for the rest of the family who was carefully watching the procedure and giving lots of good advice. As you might imagine, this mostly ended in a minor controversy, leaving the tattoo delegate offended in his skills and the rest of us with the silent plan to get nominated next year and to show everybody how it’s really done! This is always one of my brightest memories when I think back on my childhood days and easter and so temporary tattoos for easter eggs always hold some kind of fascination for me. The one on the picture above are really beautiful as well and a clear improvement to the very infantil designs of the 80’s and 90’s. So maybe I will choose myself this year trustworthy and show everybody how to make real lovely tattoo easter eggs!

For more crafty ideas go over to my pinterest board.

Lemon & strawberry-chocolate cupcakes.

For my birthday I made these lemon and strawberry-chocolate cupcakes. They turned out quite delicious so I just want to share the recipes with you:

Lemon Cupcakes
for about 12

• 250 g butter at room temperature
• 200 g sugar
• 5 eggs
• 2 big organic lemons
• 250 g flour
• 2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 pinch salt
• 100 g icing sugar

Mix the butter and sugar until creamy. Add one egg after the other and keep mixing. Add the grated lemon peel. Combine the flour with the baking powder and the salt.  Stir into the egg and butter.

Divide evenly into cupcake cups and bake for about 25 minutes at 180° C.

Mix the juice of the lemons with the icing sugar and brush the warm cupcakes with it. Let them cool.

The icing:

• 500 g mascarpone
• 20 g icing sugar
• 1 organic lemon

Mix the mascarpone with the icing sugar, the grated lemon peel and the juice of the lemon. Decorate your cupcakes with it.

Strawberry-chocolate cupcakes
for about 12

I found this recipe at the Curvy Carrot’s blog, but adjusted it a little for my needs. It also showed, that the dough wasn’t quite sufficient for 24 cupcakes, as mentioned in Curvy Carrots blog – I could make about 14 normal sized cupcakes with it.

• 9 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 cups cake flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 8 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup milk

I also used one of my all time favourite icings using basically just cream cheese and mix in some kind of flavour. I wanted to combine the chocolate cupcakes with a little strawberry so I used:

• 400 g cream cheese
• 3 or 4 tablespoons icing sugar
• 3 or 4 tablespoons strawberry jam

Just mix everything together and decorate your cupcakes with it. Enjoy! :)

A birthday.

It’s official – I entered my last year of my twenties! And I did with lots and lots of amazing presents, beautifull flowers and delicious food. Thank you all for the past amazing days, especially my ever patient and caring partner in crime. This birthday-girl wants some couch-time now, goodbye!