For Heki a kindergarten backpack..

My sister and I both ordered a Fjällräven-backpack Kånken from my mom, without knowing from each other.

One of them should be for my nephew Edgar for leisure activities and I wanted a mini one for Irma, which she could use as kindergarten backpack.

Mirjam and I even decided on the same color, navy blue.

I’ve known this backpack since I was a kid and when we were in Sweden I saw that they had a mini version. I didn’t have the time to buy it though. So I asked my mom.

Irma is starting kindergarten in September and since I’m not a big fan of clothing her in Hello Kitty and other popular figures, that she doesn’t even know about, already, I thought the little simple backpack would be perfect.

In my defense I want to mention, that I found out later on, how popular Fjällräven is in Vienna too!

Irma looks really cute with it, but it’s a little annoying that every other kid has that backpack. After all I wanted to avoid such fashion information.

Oh well, now Edgar and Irma run around with their cool backpacks, just Heki still wears the one inherited from his big brother. He doesn’t really care, but I still wanted to make him his own Heki-backpack for kindergarten.

I used Irma’s new backpack as pattern and upgraded it with a couple of tractors - still the boy’s big love.

I may have been in a Christmas frenzy and just couldn’t take clear pictures.

Unfortunately a little blurry .. Hektor got this unstylish, but still individual backpack for Christmas.

This is my first sewed backpack and I think it turned out pretty well.

But of course you can’t deny, that it is self made. Especially the front pocket is crooked as a whole it is a little rough around the edges.

Heki is inspecting his new backpack

Obviously he´s super excited about it ;)

Hektor can’t sit still for two seconds and would rather put the backpack on his head than putting it on the right way. So Edgar had to play model since I wanted to take a picture of the backpack in action.

Here are some more pictures of Edgar with the backpack, with the same “big excitement”, but in color coordinated tights.

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Carla gets a pram chain..

pattern and sewing instructions pram chain

No way the birth rate is decreasing..

Carla is the “new one” in the group of little humans. She was born in December and as a small welcome present I sewed her a pram chain.

My first self-designed pram chain was for Valea and according to her mom it goes down well with her. This time instead of ducks I made a pram chain with a monkey, giraffe and panda.

Here you can find the pattern and sewinginstructions for the pram chain.

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Slava..

In Serbia Slava is a fest that celebrates the day of the family- patron saint. It is the most important fest in Serbia and is celebrated gladly and lavishly.

Other that the usual holidays,every family celebrates the fest of their own patron saint and so on different days.

The family-patron saint is ideally passed on from the head of the family, the father to the son. In any case from generation to generation and not until the death bed.

Now Vladimir’s mom is still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but hasn’t held Slava for years and so Vladimir “officially” took over Slava from his mom this years and yesterday we celebrated Sveti Nikola on December 19th.

Sveti Nikola

Randomly Vladimir has an icon from Sveti Nikola, since he inherited some icons from his uncle. So he rummaged the icon of Sveti Nikola from the furthest hiding place and was allowed to attend our party. 

Actually we want, that Irma can experience the fest too. For little kids these parties are certainly really exciting and we have fun in having a reason, to invite friends and family.

Otherwise we can’t manage to do something like that, since the everyday life turns into routine.

And you can call me conservative, but in my opinion it’s important to have and keep traditions.

Even when you create, invent and live them after your own idea yourself. But somehow traditions keep family and friends together.

If you hold a Slava once, you're obligated to repeat it every year until you pass it on to the next one. You don’t invite just family, but also friends and acquaintances.

If you have the chance to witness the fest, you’ll realize quickly, that it doesn’t have a lot to do with church anymore, but a lot more with 3 days of live music and a lot of Schnapps. Therefor a serious marathon for the host, since you can’t ask people kindly to leave.

The same applies to the guests, if you attend Slava once you have to come back every year, or you're getting rebuked. And that can be really exhausting, since a lot of times more families’ Slava is on the same day and so it turns into a party hopping, whereby you have to eat and drink a lot at every Slava.

Additionally for the future as a guest you have to remember when and where you were invited at. Because for the following ones you won’t be invited but expected.

We had a small Slava, had no live music and only close friends and family were invited. And we definitely didn’t want to celebrate for 3 days, but only limited the festivities to yesterday. Still it was a fun party.

Irma definitely loved to have so many guests at home and ran around merry the whole day and squeaking through the apartment.

So the party was small and nice but quite successful.

From all the original Slava traditions we only kept the icon, a burning candle and the food.

Sveti Nikola, Žito und Kolač

For the greeting we handed the guests uninitiated Kolač, a wheat bread with plait and Slovo, a stamp in cyrillic characters with Christ-Initials NC-XC-HN-KA with the meaning “Jesus Christ wins” and Žito, a wheat mash with sugar and who wants, ground walnuts. The mash is so sticky sweet, that can only eat one spoon of it anyway.

Žito und Kolač

Slava is a fast day and the food that is served is vegetarian or fish. So for me, as non meat eater, perfect. And my sister, who is a vegetarian since I can think gushed about the food still days later.

švedski sto

Vladimir’s mom Mirjana came from Belgrade, to cook all those delicious meals.

She came early in the morning a day before and cooked until Slava started without a break.

Mirjana served

Gibanica (a kind of serbian Börek) with different types of vegetables like potatoes or mushrooms, vegetarian Sarma (filled herb leaves)

Prebranac (baked beans),

Podvarak (a sauerkraut meal, the technically is served with meat) and since we didn’t know, how many people would come mom contributed

Janssons Frestelse (Swedish potatoes-anchovies casserole) and spinach-feta-quiche

Gibanica und Prebranac

Prebranac, Sarma, Janssons Frestelse und Podvarak 

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Pepparkakor..

By all means on Christmas pepparkakor is served in Sweden and by the way December 9th is pepparkakans dag - pepper cake day - since 1996.

If you translate pepparkakor into english, they are called pepper cake.

In the middle biscuits were seasoned with pepper, which was the most important merchandise of the orient back then.

People thought, that pepper had a calming effect and soothed digestion problem.

Today the crunchy spicy biscuits don’t contain pepper anymore, but cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and cloves.

When my mom came to visit, we baked pepperkakor with Irma. The little mouse was really excited to be able to help and to cut out little figures.

You have to prepare the dough the day before, since it has to stay in the fridge over night.

I can remember, nibbling from it when I was a child. My siblings pounced on it too. The not baked dough is just so delicious! My mom had to defend it with her hands and feet, so there was some left over to bake.

For Irma that spicy taste was still new and she tasted just a little bit of the dough. She liked the done biscuits way better.

In the recipe sirap is used. A lot of Swedish baking recipes contain pure and dark sirap, a cane sugar syrup. My mom always brings some from Sweden to Austria, because you can’t buy this here.

I you can’t find cane sugar syrup there is another possibility too. I did some research and found out, that you can substitute Sirap with Golden Syrup (you can order it on Amazon). But honey or corn syrup works too.

Mom’s pepparkakor

5 oz melted butter

5 oz sirap (cane sugar syrup, Golden Syrup or honey)

5 oz sugar

5 oz Farin sugar (brown sugar)

5 oz whip creme

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons ground cloves

1 1/4 tablespoon bicarbonate (natron)

approx. 4 1.4 cups wheat flour

1.     Stir butter, sugar and sirap until it’s smooth and add the rest of the ingredients .

2.     The dough should be quite loose and covered refrigerated over night. The next day it’s easier to process the dough.

3.     On a surface covered with flour roll out the dough. To make it easier, don’t roll out the whole mass, but only part of it.

4.     Cut out the desired figures and put them on a baking sheet covered with baking paper.

5.     Bake in preheated oven at 347- 392F for approx. 5 min.

6.     Store the cooled down biscuits best in a biscuit box at room temperature.. or nibble right away.

Irma decorated a couple of the pepparkakor with sugar icing and sugar sprinkles, which she proudly presented to her kindergarten teachers.

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Little Irma is becoming a big sister!

Now I can make it official: Irma is becoming a big sister! And she still is so little herself!

In May baby 2 will be here and we have a mixture of feelings about that.

But no matter what fears we have, the joy and excitement, of what will happen, is huge. Because unfortunately on child doesn’t make us pros.

Especially I am happy for Irma though. It’s great to have siblings. If you love them or want them to jump in the lake, it’s a special bond that no one can take away.

And since the two of them are only 2 years apart I hope that the siblings love will also mix with friendship.

But this is all beneath the stars.

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