Letters and culinary adventures...

Gosh, I really wish I could skip Christmas like last year, just get away from all that stress and chaos!! I've been pretty busy with lessons and had to sacrifice some of my precious weekend time to the preparations... sigh... And in the evenings after work all I did was preparing Christmas cards and packages... BUT! I'm really proud of myself that I'll actually get everything out before Christmas, it's probably the first year EVER when I managed to do that... Maybe I'm more organized or maybe I'm in a better mood than usual, whatever it is, it feels good ^^ I won't show many of my outgoings, because some stuff is still on its way, but yeah, there is some mail I've sent and received in these past weeks and some delicious stuff I made and/or ate ^.^

 

no mail art mood at all... yawn... but I did my best with the content, as always ^.^ 

 

 the cream I cooked for the cake below, it looked interesting to me ^.^ 

 just the cake, freshly baked 

 voilà ~ chocolate chips fudge cake... looks mehh, but tasted wheeee ^0^ I didn't whip the other cream long enough though, so it was kinda fluid... but yummy...

 German children start with beer pretty early... hehe... NOOOO, it's just a lemonade commercial! I'm addicted to the lemonade made by the local breweries now, I haven't drunk beer in a loooooong time after discovering the lemonade ^^ 

I decorated an envelope with Glagolitic letters ~ it (probably) was the oldest Slavic alphabet developed by a scholar named Constantin (later Cyrill) in the 9th century and was the base for the first written Slavic idiom ~ Old Church Slavic... Later the students of Cyrill and Methodius (his brother) brought the scripts and the idiom to other Slavic areas and also developed the Cyrillic alphabet that is used until now for Russian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Serbian. blablabla... 

 A veritable culinary adventure ~ me & crazy friends went to Frankfurt just for a Chinese all-you-can-eat ^.^ And discovered this cute Taiwan tram!! I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to visit Taiwan again next year, but I don't even dare to think of it too much yet, because I'm afraid that it won't work out... sigh...

well, we had hotpot ~ we got this pot with normal and HOOOOOOOOOTLIKEHELL soup (the amount of chilly peppers is mindblowing, we couldn't get them out soon enough to avoid the explosion of our heads after the first spoonfull) on a gas stove

then we put all kinds of stuff into the soup and cooked it ~ we could choose from a huge buffet with meat, seafood, vegetables, tofu and other stuff

then you could just pick what you wanted and eat from your own bowl with sauces you liked or without ~ my favourite stuff: squid, tofu and enoki mushrooms ^0^ unfortunately that was the moment when I realized that the normal soup contained cilantro... I almost puked... so I had to stick to the HOTASHELL version... 

there was plenty of other stuff to eat, like cute little buns (baozi) ~  they taste better when I make them though ^.^ 

sweeeeeets ^0^ in the upper right corner is a fried piece of dough (youtiao) which I haven't tried before... Since I love all kinds of savoury dough, I loved youtiao too ^^ the rest is fried banana with a crust and different kind of sticky rice balls (mochi)

this was my own Christmas present for myself... I've been thinking of buying proper artist pencils (I only had watercolour pencils so far and well, it's just not the same thing) and now I finally did ^.^

 I must admit I have to figure them out yet, but so far I had fun using them, even if the result wasn't exactly what I expected, not to mention 'artistic' ^.^

presents from a friend who went to the Philippines for business ^0^ hard to tell what I like best ~ the wire binder is VERY handy and the lip balm feels terrific and tastes like mint candy... I need to remind myself not to eat it... 

see my Maura labels ^0^ they're awesome ^.^ the stamps are quite interesting too, they celebrate the 100 years anniversary of the Sorb peoples association in Germany ~ yep, there are native Slavic peoples in Germany! not everybody is aware of that ^.^

I drew something from a Bamu & Kero book ^^ They are so cute and I thought my pal might feel like having a cup of tea while reading my letter ^^ 

a good mail day ~ the present is unopened yet ^^ I'm so silly, I know.. Postcrossing card, Philippines card from my friend and a great letter of my youngest penpal ^.^ 

gosh, they have such beautiful stamps in Russia!! seriously, I'm so disappointed about German stamps most of the time... all they got for winter season is Maria and Jesus, terrific!! =.= 

mail/postal service-related stamps from the Philippines ^.^ 

turrón from Spain... yummm... 

well, I've been wondering what the hell makes macarons so popular (while being SO expensive) for YEARS and now I've tried that caramel-fleur-de-sel thingie and gosh, it was like heaven T0T totally recommended!!

I've baked toffifee-muffins with moulds from one pal and the recipe from another and felt in heaven again... I love my pals ^0^ 

more unopened Christmas mail (Denmark has beautiful winter stamps too =.=) and a letter from one of my favourite places on earth ^^

yeah, that package isn't opened yet neither ^^ then two more cards from Taiwan, yay ^0^

and finally, some of my outgoing Christmas cards ^.^

well, if you scrolled down this far ^.^ ~  I'm wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, even if I feel a bit grumpy about it all, but yeah, I sincerely hope that you have beautiful holidays and enjoy yourself ^.^ Go out and make some snow angels, if the climate allows it ^^ Have a nice holiday whatever you celebrate!  Do spend time with your beloved ones and eat something nice ^0^