All posts tagged: christmas

Happy St. Nicolaus Day!

Published by Sula H.

St. Nicolaus Day is not the kind of holiday anyone around here would know about. That, however, doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate it. Not that I really care about St. Nicolaus, but I like the presents that come with this day. Of course, I can’t expect any presents myself (nobody here knows about St. Nicolaus, remember?), but I still can have presents for others. So today, with the help of some of my students, I baked some cookies to give away to some of my friends. Now, it’s too late to give them to my friends in time for St. Nicolaus Day, but then – since no one really knows about it here anyways – who cares about such things as getting a present exactly on St. Nicolaus Day? I can give them their little gifts any other time, right?! Well then, happy St. Nicolaus Day!

Bake Sale

Published by Sula H.

I thought, I’d share with you what I got at the bake sale last night. It’s truly amazing what some of my colleagues are able to do with just a little bit of chocolate, vanilla, coconut flakes, flour, sugar etc. I got three pieces of goodness, and all the money went to help a charity project around here. They had a silent auction to sell the cakes and I bet some people spend a good amount of money on some of those cakes. But well, it’s Christmas season – the perfect time for some extra treats!

Saturday Feature: Advent Wreath

Published by Sula H.

Last Saturday I already introduced you to my new advent wreath. So, after it’s been set up and in use for a week now, I thought I’d tell you what happened whenever people saw it. Usually there are several responses, and in the last week I could see them repeated over and over each time I had visitors (and usually I have students and friends visit me every single day). #1 Response: Big “Ahs” and “Ohs” upon entering my living room and seeing the advent wreath (and all the other Christmas decorations). #2 Response: Sitting down/walking around it and admiring it from all different angles. #3 Response: Asking questions about it and its purpose/meaning. #4 Response: Taking it apart – lifting up the candles to be able to admire them better; closely examining each single piece of decoration (pine cones, bows, boxes, twigs, etc. – looks like most of them have never even seen a pine cone!). Can you tell an advent wreath is quite a curious thing around here? No one has ever heard …

DIY: Paper Bags

Published by Sula H.

It’s time for another Do-It-Yourself tutorial, and today I thought to tell you how to make those paper bags that I used to make my advent calendar with. They are very simply to make and quite versatile to use (gift bag, advent calendar, storage, decoration, etc.). 1. You might want to hop over to the PaperCraft Art Creative website and download their template (a simple pdf file). 2. Open the pdf file in your Photoshop program, select the template and drag it onto a new canvas. Re-size and duplicate the template layer and start clipping papers from your digi stash to it. I used one or two papers and sometimes a ribbon to clip to the paper bag. (You might want to re-size the papers as well to make sure the patterns are in proportion to your template.) Once you’ve arranged everything to your pleasing, merge all layers. 3. Print and cut everything, then simply follow the steps of the tutorial of the PaperCraft Art Creative website. Most of it is pretty self-explanatory. I made …

Around Town: Metro

Published by Sula H.

One of our favorite stores around is Metro. I particularly like it, because it is a German store. So it has a lot of things from Germany, but from other places as well. It’s over in the city and even with good traffic (which is rare) it takes well over an hour to get there, but you can get things there which can’t be found anywhere here in town. Things like butter. Or cheese. Things people in other places usually take for granted. Here we don’t. Let’s take butter for instance: How precious can a chunk of it become when it takes so much effort to get it! Once you’ve brought it home safely, you treasure it, and everything you use it for becomes a treasure as well. Like Christmas cookies. Precious simple Christmas cookies. What are Christmas cookies without butter? The list goes on and on … as I said: We do love Metro! Last time I went there because I needed to get candles, and Metro always gets a fine selection of Christmas …

Inspire Me: Advent Calendar

Published by Sula H.

I kept promising you my special treat, and today, finally, the day has come! My first, very own advent calendar. Even though I’m a little too old for something like an advent calendar myself, I’ve always loved having one, and this year, I decided getting one again, after years of going without one. Now, with all the fabulous scrapbook kits I’ve collected over the last year (and especially with my weakness for Christmas kits – I have tons of them and still have more on my wishlist!), I wanted to have a paper based advent calendar for which I could use my digiscrap stuff. Whatever it was going to be, I wanted to make sure it would be large enough to hold some snacks and candies (I got a lot of good European treats from friends that I wanted to use for this). Most important, however, I wanted to be able to store it easily for re-use next year, without it ending up taking a lot of storage space. So, I went on an online …

December Special

Published by Sula H.

December 1. has come and the countdown has started! Can you tell Christmas is my favorite season of the year? I just love sharing the joy of this season with my students and friends. And it’s the only season I actually put up decoration for. So, the last couple of days I busied myself with giving my home a nice comfy Christmas look, and I even made an advent calendar, to help me count the days until Christmas! Today I get to have my first treat – a piece of chocolate and some candy from Germany (thanks to some of my friends in Germany for that). Well then, a merry Christmas season to all friends near and far! Photos of my advent calendar: For a tutorial on how to make this advent calendar, click HERE. Christmas decoration: