Easter Foods

My favorite Easter meal is breakfast. Whole family around the table, cooked ham, horseradish, boiled eggs, sweet bread...What are you eating on Easter?
See more about our and some other Easter European traditional foods on EastOK Europe.
Happy Easter!

Smallgarden - the dream shop

 I am happy...and a little bi jelous it wasn't me who opened this shop.

Smallgarden – with repertoire consisting of unique clothes, design objects and accessories for children - started as an initiative filling the gap on the market. Design shop where people can find stylish and quality clothes, accessories, toys and furniture for the little ones in the family. 

Owners of this shop strongly believe that creative visual environment in childhood determines the personality, creativity and further interests of the kid. 

The aim of Smallgarden is similar to that of Bag of Pretty: to pass the works of the talented local artists to a broader public interested in creative children's design and to introduce some less known foreign designers to the Hungarian public.

Some Hungarian designers in the collection are alredy known to BoP reader: Marbushka, Eszterda, Manuela as well as foreigners, eg. Makedo (you know I am a big fan).

I am particularly happy they have Tattyoo temporary tattoos. I'm getting this for the boys as soon as the weather gets warm enough for them to show their biceps.

How I saved our car seat cover

After 3 years of use our car seat looked like this:

until I did this:

 

leather knee pads. My fingers are pierced and hurt, but I love how it turned out.

Nutella is cure

Spring was already here and then winter hit us again. It was a shock you can only survive with food.
I've been playing with the idea of homemade Nutella for quite a long time. My attitude was sort of a 'why bother, the store bought one is perfect". But recently we started reading the labels more. Let me tell you, there is less and less products on our shopping list every day. We make our own bread, cheese spread...there is almost no packaged ham or salami that is not full of preservatives that are NOT GOOD.

So anyway...Nutella...In this make-it-at-home mood we decided to give it a try. There are numerous recipes online. The basis is obviously hazelnuts, but then there are varieties with chocolate, almonds, etc...we went with what we had at home and took it from there. I liked the Browne Eyed Baker recipe because it seems pretty simple and the ingredients were really basic (if you ignore the hazelnut oil and use your regular vegetable one).

Here is how we did it:

Ingredients:

2 cups sweetened hazelnuts (I buy the sweetened version sometimes, because they are already roasted and ground, and because I am lazy)
⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (I guess flavor is much nicer if you have hazelnut of walnut oil on you, but I wouldn't go buying it just for this purpose)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
handful of kids chocolate cubes (ours was Schogetten for Kids)

 Process hazelnuts in the food processor until it sort of becomes moist. In the beginning it looks like it's never going to happen, but then id does at one point. This is not the most entertaining activity you could wish for, especially if your food processor is not self standing and can not be used continuously for more than a few seconds, but it can be done. I attach photos below as evidence.

After hazelnuts are processed you add everything else and process some more, until the mixture is compact and starts looking and smelling like Nutella. I tell you, the smell of processed hazelnuts is nuts:)

(Note: If your hazelnuts are not sweetened, you will need to add sugar!)

 You can either store it in an airtight container, I hear it will last up to a month if refrigerated. OR you get daddy to make pancakes/crepes and just eat it all.

I think it is obvious which one we chose this time...

Have you ever made your own hazelnut spread? Please leave a comment, I am dying to know!

Happy Macaron Day 2013

For more macarons go here and here.

I am awesome T-Shirt

As the title says, I think I am awesome! My whole life I was freaked out of sewing with knits. I started a while ago with some upcycles and it really wasn't that bad at all. But to make a T-Shirt was impossible to imagine for me. I thought I needed a serger, my machine isn't good enough and that I would fail miserably. But reading all the sewing blogs out there and seeing how people do wanders without sergers and any special equipment I though it is time to give it a go. Plus, what is the worst that can happen? T-Shirt turns out to be a disaster, I wasted a little time (not the first) and fabric (I upcycle anyway, so no biggie).

But I didn't fail:)
I am quite happy with the result. There are some things I will do differently next time, but in general, this is a perfectly wearable piece of clothes.

It is a little loose on him, but he loves it and he'll grow into it in no time anyway. I made it a bit longer than the pattern suggests. This T is made of two old T-shirts of mine. I used the old neck ribbing. Dana from MADE did a tutorial on this recently if you are not familiar with the process. I also made cuffs bigger and wider.

Pattern from Tank Engine (free, available in sizes 110, 120, 130). It is in Japanese, but there are photos if you are new to sewing, otherwise you will figure it out for yourself, it is a 3 piece pattern. The pattern lines up real nice and is very easy to work with.

What do you think?

Are you following my Free Sewing Patterns board on Pinterest yet?


Linking to The Train To Crazy

Tini clothes

Baby I started a nursery and he is not too happy about it. He cried a lot, so they asked me to bring in his favorite toy, but he had none so they told me to bring something in anyway. I went home and picked the softest plushie we had and hoped it would work and he'd accept his new friend. And he did! The bonded instantly, and he's been sucking on his ear ever since.
When I cleared out the closet this weekend I found some tiny clothes I just new I wouldn't be able to throw away and on Sunday night I decided to make a surprise gift for the new friends. Ilija is already into dressing, always trying to pull socks onto his head. I can tell you he was really pleased with what I came up with and it made him laugh out loud.

Blue vest is on the sheep because Ilija went nuts when I put it on his friend and started screaming NO, NO, NO! He loved the little overall but hated the vest for some reason. If I could see into their brains for a minute or two...

What do you do with the clothes your kids have outgrown?

Liebster award for Bag of Pretty

Yesterday evening when I checked out the blow I was in for a nice surprise from Valentina from Studio13. 
Some of you may know Valentina from the Carnival series I did a little while ago. The best thing about blogging is I get to meet creative mama's from all around the world. This time I am getting some traffic from Slovenia, because that is where Valentina is from and she was kind enough to put Bag of Pretty forward for the

Here is a little about what the award is all about:
This award was designed to be a blog award in the "pay it forward" fashion. Once you've been nominated, you award it to five blogs that you like that have fewer than 200 followers, to encourage new visitors to visit these blogs.

The rules for accepting this award are:
You need to thank the person who gave you the award and link back to their blog. Post the award onto your blog. Give the award to five bloggers who you appreciate that have fewer than 200 followers. Leave a comment on their blog letting them know that you have given them this awesome award!

Next you need to PAY IT FORWARD!


And now for my selection of five (some of this blogs might have more than 200 followers, not everybody displays the followers on their page, but they should be followed nevertheless:) Enjoy!

Buttnumbered pants GIVEAWAY

 Hi all!

Thanks to Dana from Made this little project of mine became very popular in the last few days.

And since my little guy wore it twice before he grew it out I decided to give it away.
If you have a 6-9 months old and you like these, enter now:)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Shoes

Many people who know me now might not be aware of the fact I really, really love shoes. If you love shoes too, jump over to EastOK Europe, where I talk about some Eastern European shoe designers. Some kiddo shoe designers are in the selection too.

Gucio
EFFVA
LaLa Shoes

Aren't they the cutest?

My Two things - again

I can't believe it's been a year already! And here it is again, Dr Seuss' birthday is tomorrow! I want to show you a project I did for the boys last year, originally posted on Budapest Moms.

Exactly a year ago today, P & I stood wondering

How did it get so late so soon?
Its night before its afternoon.

We sat there with P

We sat there, we two.
And I said, “How I wish
We had something to do!”
So all we could do was to
Sit!
Sit!

Sit!
Sit!
And we did not like it.
Not one little bit.
And then
Something went BUMP!
How that bump made us jump!
We looked!
Then we saw him step in on the mat!
We looked!
And we saw him!
The Cat in the Hat!

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, more places you’ll go.

So we read…but this was still not the project I needed so badly to do for Dr Seuss Day.


Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!


I could always print out the Cat in the Hat and stick it to P’s T-Shirt, but I am not too fond of cartoon characters on clothing, or anything else to be honest. I am more for subtly pointing out the obvious.


I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”


And really, my troubles were all gone when The Cat said:

  I will pick up the hook.

 You will see something new.

Two things. And I call them

Thing One and Thing Two.

These Things will not bite you.

They want to have fun.

Then, out of the box

Came Thing Two and Thing One!

Original illustration from The Cat in the Hat

And immediately it hit me. I have two boys. It is late. I need a project, and I need something easy, fast and funny.

From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.

So after they went to bed, I made these:

I created a template in Picnik  but Picnik is gone now, so you can try using Ipiccy to create printables from scratch. Picnic didn't have that possibility and my background turned a bit greyish, so if you use my downloads be aware of that.

I printed them on iron-on paper. Don’t forget to print it in mirror image, otherwise it will be backwards, which can also be fun sometimes…
After that I only had to iron it on a white T-shirt and a onesie I had for the boys. It is really important to do the ironing on a stable surface, so you can press the iron as hard as you can. The harder you press it, the better the result will be. An ironing board is not the best choice, although I did this on an ironing board yesterday.
And here they are, on Dr. Seuss’s birthday. My Two Things 

Will you try this?

If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.