Posts from — April 2010

When I was at the Ambiente Fair this February I discovered these little Momiji dolls at one of those stands. They caught my attention as they were so small and beautifully painted. As you couldn’t buy anything at the fair I wrote down the name of the dolls and the other day I’ve found the website lovemomiji.com.

Actually Momiji dolls are small handpainted resin dolls with a whole in the bottom where you can find a piece of paper on which you write a wish or a greeting. I am neither a fan of dolls nor of girly cuty things but I’m a big fan of things that grant you a wish when you think of it very hard. So as I checked out the site I’ve found a big bunch of those adorable dolls that come in all shapes and colors. All of them have names and…. yeah you can say they have character as well. I couldn’t resist to buy 2 of them.

The girl with the curls is Mika and the smiling geisha is Little Star. As a girl with curls with an obsession for stars it was obvious that they had to be mine. Mika came in a tin together with buttons and stickers and she likes spiderman and New York and Little Star likes caterpillars and pie charts (this is not something I’m making up. That info is on the packaging!). Star was wrapped in a plastic bag (very tasteful though) and came with a button. I took them on a photo shoot today and they became instantly friends :-)

Mika was designed by a German girl named Nina Zimmermann from Bremen. She designed a set of 6 dolls called “Itchy Feet Collection“. Most dolls have a japanese look but there are some, e.g. by Camila de Gregorio which don’t look asian at all. This here is the “I don’t care bear”.

They even have a Coco Chanel inspired doll and one that looks like a toadstool (another favorite which is not yet produced).

There are Momijis for everyone and I wonder why they’re not so popular here. They make a lovely gift.

So my posse of japanese wishdolls are right there on my desk keeping me company and make me smile when I see them. I still have to make my wish but you know… think well before you wish for something. It might come true. It needs to be something really good and that’ll take some time.

Ah, and there was something that caused a full body goose bump today when I looked at the plastic bag from Little Star. On the side, very very tiny was written “Franco made this for you”. Franco is the name of my brother! I checked the packaging and the website again and again but there is no info who designed this little doll. Now I HAVE to believe that serendipity was involved :-) Only explanation that comes to my mind.

Check out the website or their blog and discover the whole doll collection. You won’t be disappointed.

All week I was excited to get this done. 17th of April 2010 is the day Martin’s dad celebrates his 70.birthday and we were invited to a little party. In his invitation he wrote he will serve camomile tea in case someone shows up with presents but he didn’t say he didn’t want cake. As I already had fun making Martin’s birthday cake last year I took the opportunity to make another one for his sweet dad. He and his lovely wife are traveling a lot these days and end of June they’re going to New York and there was my theme.

I ordered white and light blue fondant, a food coloring pen, a cookie cutter abc at Tortissimo and looked for a recipe for original New York cheesecake in the internet. Additionally I cut out a small shape of Miss Liberty and a skyline. My vision was to have a blue statue on the top (not in 3D as my modeling skills are limited) and a small skyline around the cake. As I never made cheesecake before I bought a “cheesecake help” at the supermarket for just in case (and a tube of white decoration which I thought I needed, too)

Last time (or better said: every time) I baked a biscuit I failed. The cake wouldn’t rise and cutting it in half always ends up in a great crumbly mess. So learning from my past experiences this time I bought a pre-made base and just cut it smaller. JUST because while making Martin’s cake I realized that the 500 g pack of fondant doesn’t cover a regular 30cm diameter cake. Lesson learned. From a thin piece of cardboard I cut a 20 cm diameter circle and cut the bottom into shape.

I cut all 3 pieces of pre-made cake, stuffed the bottom in the pan and poured the cheese cake mass over it. The recipe was 4 packs of cream cheese (I took 2 and one pack of curd cheese), 1/2 cup of sugar, 3/4 cups milk, a cup of sour cream, 1/4 cup of flour and 4 eggs. I didn’t realize the recipe was measured in cups so it cost me some nerves to convert. HOW and WHY do americans calculate with 3/4 or 1/4 and what on earth is a cup?!?!? I’d understand xy of fl.oz. or pounds or whatever but CUPS?! I wish I had these kitchen matryoshkas that I’ve found at a cup of kiez blog this morning. They would have helped me a lot! Before adding the 2nd biscuit and mass I drowned a penny from my last trip to New  York just as a little add-on. The one who gets the penny will have loads of luck :-)

After baking for 45 minutes the cake looked like this and my first association was “Looks like the San Andreas fault!” which is fine as they’re last trip was California so there was a connection to it. It didn’t matter anyway as the 3rd biscuit was covering it so nobody would see it anyway.

Rolling out fondant is something I couldn’t manage the first time already and when I ordered it I didn’t want to invest in proper equipment. After this session now I think I definitely should as making these theme cakes is so much fun that I will most probably make more of them and having proper tools to work with will make this work less tiring. I didn’t really remember how I did it the last time so I took a glass to roll the fondant which turned out to stick like hell. My second try was a porcelain cup – same result. THEN I realized that it doesn’t stick on my silicone mat so I took a roll of plastic wrap and was happy that it was the right decision. Only thing I realized was that my intention to cut out Miss Liberty failed due to the details that I couldn’t manage to cut out so I decided to take the Empire State Building instead.

Rolling the fondant over the cake wasn’t a big deal then.

Cut out the building from the fondant and centered it on the cake.

The shape didn’t seem to be too obvious so I colored it with a food coloring pen.

Cut out the skyline to place it around the cake. I fixed it with water. Note to self: don’t do this again. Water on fondant – not good. For the next time I have to find out how to do it properly because what happened the day after when I presented it to Martin’s dad – the white fondant underneath the blue skyline looked kinda wizened. Not too bad but still my eye didn’t like that so much.

I cut out the letters from the rest of the white fondant and colored them with red food color that I still had and this is the result:

I think it turned out pretty nice and he was happy when he received it. The party yesterday was fun and the family members that I’ve met for the first time where beautiful to me and welcomed me to the family in a very warm way. I felt at home and happy and I’m grateful to be part of this lovely bunch! Happy Birthday Dietmar!

This week was nice. I went back to work and had more or less good days! YAY! I am my normal happy self and have a birthday cake in the oven that needs to be decorated. Martin’s Dad will celebrate his birthday tomorrow and he’ll receive a theme cake. I was so excited about it all week that I dreamed of cakes every night. :-) Check out the full story on Sunday.
The quote of this week is taken from a nice little notebook that I’ve won from Compendium Inc. and it’s so positive and strong that it cheers me up instantly. So I’m sharing it with you today and hope you’ll have a stupendous weekend. Spread the love!

When I stumbled over this website Cardboardlove many moons ago I found it so incredibly beautiful I had tears in my eyes. Yes, I’m like that sometimes. I’d rather cry over something heartwarming than over pain. There is this guy writing declarations of love to his girlfriend on a piece of cardboard, takes a picture and posts it.  He writes the sweetest little things, meaningful, cute, simple and you believe every single word.

Such a simple act can be so powerful. Definitely a website that will put smiles over your face, run over to your significant other and tell how much you love him/her.

I wish them the very best forever and a day. And you guys I wish a fabulous good morning and Wednesday. Shoobidoo.

That is the claim of “Anatomicals” – a producer of the funniest toiletries I’ve ever seen. I’ve found this brand in a cute little internet store called Bertine and chuckled all the way through the gallery of their products. “snog me senseless” turned out to be a lip balm, “help the paw” a handcream, “i’m a woman, hear me snore” a sleeping mask. Too funny. I ordered the hand cream and shampoo (for the name look at the image. I dare not write its name here. You can’t imagine the spam comments I received when I blogged about the **** and your blog journal…!)

I could not resist. On the bright colored packaging label you have a text that explains the product in a humorous way. Everything is made with natural ingredients, smells very good and is not animal tested. Their range contains body care for women and men, remedies (herbal patches) and accessories.

These are definitely products seeing and smelling them put you in a good mood. In Europe you can buy them directly in their shop or at Amazon UK, in the US you can buy them at HQ Hair. Too good!