Felix and Mickie in Germany

The last weekend in January we spent in Bonn, Germany with Rob's Brother William and his wonderful recently expanded family. We also ended up having an unexpected Carnival night out and then horrid hangover! Here goes... 

Introducing for the second time (see here) Felix Clark! 

Oh and let's not forget the new big sister
Hannah in her very cool London shirt!! 

Rob and his munchkin!

We only spent two days in Germany but crammed a whole lot of fun into it! Felix was huge for being only 4 weeks old, he was almost wearing clothes for a three month old!!! 

Our niece Hannah had grown up a lot since we last saw her! She was so much fun and full of energy. She was talking to us in German and singing to us in German-accented English, but still understood everything we said in English. It's so impressive to watch her learn in two languages! I read her The Tiger Who Came to Tea several times and was glad she enjoyed my choice in literature (I highly recommend this children's book). With family all over the world it means so much to spend time like this with those we do get to see. Luckily Germany is only and hour on a plane away! 

As for the more adult entertainment... on our second night there we went out with William and another couple of very good friends to a Carnival party. Carnival in Bonn is a huge deal, it is the Mardi Gras of Germany and we were there the week before so we managed to catch a few of the festivities. This includs dressing up like anything ridiculous (in our case four eskimos and a hippy), drinking lots of beer and listening to Mickie Krause (a German Robbie Williams type pop star)! Mickie was awesome and has become one of my most played on Spotify! Here are the best shots from the night before I stopped remembering (whoops):

A very normal group of people during Carnival!

I have been to Germany 4 times before and
this is the only photo I have wanted! 

Carnival!

Krause!

It was a fantastic trip and we cannot wait to see the whole Clark clan again soon! 

Gingerbread... good enough to eat!

I mentioned in my Christmas 2012 post that I baked an insane amount of gingerbread for Christmas Jumper Day at Save the Children. I really need to share this recipe because it is one of the best and most consistent recipes I've ever made. The original is here but below is how I adapted it to make these adorable men and Santa hat stars!

Each with their own unique Christmas Jumper! 

Gingerbread Cookies

Makes 25 5inch diameter rounds

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1 3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1/2 cup molasses

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (optional) 

1 batch of buttercream frosting

food colouring

Method
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves until well blended.

In a large bowl (KitchenAid's great for this) beat butter, brown sugar, and egg on medium speed until well blended.

These were my favourite, so cute!

Add molasses, vanilla, and lemon zest and continue to mix until well blended.

Gradually stir in dry ingredients until blended and smooth.

Divide dough in half and wrap each half in plastic and let stand at room temperature for at least 2 hours or up to 8 hours.

Preheat oven to 375°. Grease cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Place 1 portion of the dough on a lightly floured surface.Sprinkle flour over dough and rolling pin.

Roll dough to a scant 1/4-inch thick.Use additional flour to avoid sticking.

Cut out cookies with desired cutter.

Space cookies on the sheet 1 1/2-inches apart.

Bake 1 sheet at a time for 7-10 minutes (the lower time will give you softer cookies).

Remove cookie sheet from oven and allow the cookies to stand until the cookies are firm enough to move to a wire rack.

After the cookies are cool you may decorate them any way you like. I made up a batched of buttercream frosting and coloured it red, green and white. Then piped the gingerbread men's sweaters free hand anyway I felt. For the stars I filled in one point with thin red frosting then with a thicker nozzle piped the white trim and pompom on top. 

Christmas Season 2012

Rob and I had our first wedding on 2 December 2006 and we seem to begin our Christmas celebrations every year with our Anniversary, which makes for a very long but very merry Christmas season. It's probably lazy, but instead of writing individual posts for all the interesting events that went on over Christmas and the New Year, I've decided to simply combine them all into one post. So here goes...

We celebrated our Anniversary by decorating the house for Christmas and getting our Christmas cards written. Part of this decoration including our Anniversary gift to ourselves, a new TV stand! It's amazing how much more space we have in the room and how much more STORAGE we have! We've only add three small drawers and shelves with this unit but it has made such a difference to the amount of storage we have for entertainment!

Our living room all dolled up for
Christmas and our new TV stand! 

The weekend after our anniversary we thought we should get some good use out of the new living room and decided to host a Christmas Movie night. This was really only in part to show off the new TV stand, my friend Gillian and I had actually planned it well before we even looked at TV stands as a day where we could watch our favorite Christmas movies without having our cynical husbands roll their eyes the whole time. However, we failed and the day ended up including our cynical husbands and also our friend Bex who had, up until that day, avoided pretty much all Christmas movies!

We made egg nog (or something like it) and hot chocolate, baked and decorated gingerbread and ate a lot of chocolate and popcorn while we watched Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, A Christmas Story and Nativity!. It was a fun and relaxing day which really kicked off our Christmas nicely!

Our gingerbread guests!

Bex, Gillian and me with our gingerbread creations!

Rob with his cookies!

My 'pinterest' like cookies!

I ended up creating another much larger batch of gingerbread for Save the Chidren's (my work) Christmas Jumper Day the following week. You can see pictures on my recipe for Gingerbread post. I made over 50 gingerbread men and stars for my team which were decorated with Christmas jumpers and Santa hats. It was a great way to buy friends my first week at a new job! 

After all the excitement of starting a new job and Christmas related events, I was really looking forward to our low-key Christmas with Rob's mother, step-father and cousins in East Grinstead. There were six of us, no children and we spent five days around Christmas doing nothing but eating, drinking and playing games. On Christmas Day we spoke with family all over the world and at one point had a Skype chat with people in the UK, Germany, Australia and Thailand! I was given a beautiful painting of hyacinths from Rob's mother and a Kermit the frog hat from my mum (which, if you know my love of the Muppets is the perfect gift). Rob received a huge stainless steel pot which we desperately needed to make soups and large batches of pasta! All-in-all it was a fantastic Christmas but very glutinous and I've been trying to work off all the weight ever since! 

The cute English fireplace I sat next
to for five days of Christmas fun! 

Our Christmas eve meal of Salmon in puff pastry
and other assorted salad and seafood! 

Everyone enjoying Christmas Eve!
Amy, Lee, Will, Sue and Rob 

Too much Christmas! Me with my Kermit Hat
and shirt trying to digest all the lovely food! 

We had a very calm few days between Christmas and new year, where we went to dinner with friends from my old work and watched lots of TV. On 29 December, bang on schedule, we welcomed our new nephew Felix Clark into the family. He smashed the previous birth weight record held by Rob entering the world at nearly 10lbs! I've written more about when we visited them late in January but this was our first photo of him and it really rounded off the already amazing 2012 year nicely. 

Felix Clark, our nephew! 

I would love to tell you about our New Year's but unfortunately Rob and I acted much younger than we are and drank far to much to remember anything... as such I will just say that we started 2013 off with a clean slate and nothing but fond memories for 2012 :) 

Happy New Year everyone!