finished cap

I finished the crocheted cap for my husband. It´s made of very nice yarns - one is light grayish green cotton and the second one is cream cotton/linen blend. I loved the green, but again, I only bought one skein and when I realized I want more it was too late (or maybe they only had this one piece when I was at the shop, I can´t remember). Unfortunately it´s too hot for the cap now, but I hope he likes it. The photo shows more of the cactus than the cap... of course :).
And I found this photo of my grandma Z during the day of her wedding in 1959. Don´t you love the car behind her? I think cars were so much more beautiful in the past than they are today :). I like that the photo is so casual, no make up or posing. I´ve seen profesional portrait photo of her and my grandpa as newlyweds, and she looked totally different than here. Also, I like her dress, and I like that it looks sor of casual too. I think it´s quite a new thing to get married in a "princess" dress like we are used to these days. Women not so long ago wore pretty ordinary dresses to their wedding, just white (light coloured) and a bit more luxurious. I like that, and I actually wore a very simple and relatively cheap dress to my own wedding too:).

feeling inspired

So, I´ve came across this really cool blog about children clothes and toys filled with beautiful photos. And I thought, wait, I have a cute child too, why not try to take some photos of this cute child of mine, to create similar blog posts? Well, this is what I ended up with:
Even if you have a good camera, taking photos of your child in new pants isn´t as easy as it seems :).

summer wedding

We went to a wedding of my childhood friend - it took place on a beautiful castle. We had to travel quite a lot to get there, but it was nice: we dropped the kid at my parents´and had a little rendez vous :). I wore my black dress I made recently, and I felt great in it. I made a small adjustment on the gaping neckline (ruched it a bit) and it fits better I think. Exactly the dress I needed. I also wore the pearl necklace I blogged about a while ago, and earrings I got from my friend. I have a new camera! It´s pretty difficult for me to use it, my husband wants me to understand the process of taking photos and it´s just too much information for my brain now :). But I hope I´ll learn everything, slowly.

living room changes

Embrace and love the imperfection! We made some changes to our living room/bedroom/my office. We wanted to have some kind of wardrobe in there for our clothes (we sleep on the couch, so it´s also our bedroom). To fit the new (old) piece of furniture in there, we had to move almost everything in the room, which was great, because now the couch is at the wall, and everything is finally at right angles again! I´m not showing the before (and before before...) photos, but this is the best we could come up with NOW. I know it looks like some shabby antique shop bookstore, but I don´t care :). Of course, these photos are also taken in the middle of moving, so it´s a mess. I plan to paint the two yellowish walls gray (as are the other two), and hopefully have the two arm chairs upholstered... some time. I love the corner with the yellow wardrobe and black piano. With my old lamp and vintage (oh yes, I probably can´t help to use this word, too :) doll, it looks like the perfect dirty thrift store and kind of granny chic! If granny chic means "I don´t really care what it looks like, I just need to fit all my old furniture into this room". This room has many doors and a window, so it´s hard to put any furniture in there, but that´s ok. I can live with the unpolished look. I love my yellow lamp (from my grandma), our perfect coffee table, our couch with the crazy slip cover I made. I really like this room! (It looks much bigger in the photos than it really is, due to wide angle lenses...)

mini pietro

How awesome are these kid clothes from the collection "Aňa for minipietro with love"? I love them all and I would wear them myself, if they came in my size :). So lovely (also, pricy...). I am more and more fond of the czech brand pietro filipi, and now that I´ve learnt more about czech designer Hana Zárubová who works for them (more about her later :), I like it even more. The collection designed by actress Aňa Geislerová was lovely too, with its rosy pastel tones...

hair flower

I made this flower to wear on the pony tail/bun. I always like similar flowers in shops, but then realize they only sell them as hair pins or brooches... which I don´t use at all. I want to make more of these, and maybe make them look more "ordinary" :).

bag for a friend

I made this bag for my friend... I just hope she won´t read my blog until I have a chance to give it to her! :) It´s very simple but functional, and I hope she´ll like the design. My favourite is the pocket with the buildings and the little bird peeking out at the bottom. Just a simple tote bag suitable for shopping or carrying various things (I use bags like this all the time and I stuff them with stuff (!) that can´t fit into my purse :).

collage

I made this with my girl today. I just started to cut out characters from newspapers, and than I thought about making a collage. So I did, and I love it. If you look closer you´ll see interesting uninteded and unexpected details like the two wreaths in low right corner, or how the person with spear is extending his hand to the kneeling man...

chocolate cake!

Well, I´m usually not a fan of reading recipes on the net or making the food I read about. I like to look at the pictures sometimes, but mostly I turn to my own recipe books or google something I need at the moment. But the reason I´m posting this is because this is the perfect cake I´ve ever eaten. Making it was a big fun too - I felt like some Harry Potter mixing potions :). It was just magical. This cake is full of chocolate. I LOVE chocolate. Maybe, love isn´t the right word, I lurve it, I guess (Woody Allen, anyone? :). But, I have some issues with chocolate. Sometimes I get this feeling that I shouldn´t eat so much of it. That it´s just sugar and fat, and that you simply can´t eat a bar a day. Not too long ago, I tried my best to stop eating chocolate. For four long days, I really didn´t. Than I realized that life is too short for stupid experiments like this :).
To make this, you need to make the batter and the filling. Both are delicious, but the filling - oh my! So good. I could make only the filling without the actual cake and eat a whole bowl with my spoon :). I´ll guide czech readers here, for the rest I´ll try to write the simplified instructions here.

for the batter you´ll need:
260g butter of some kind
260g chocolate (I used cheap "cooking" chocolate)
40ml strong coffee
280g suggar
4 eggs
260g flour
a bit of baking powder and soda (I told you it´s simplified!)
230g sour cream (the kind you put into sauces)

In a bowl on the stove, over a bowl with hot water (I guess this technique has a name in English...) mix the butter with chocolate until combined. Add coffee. In another bowl, whip suggar with eggs. Mix everything together. In another bowl, mix flour with the baking powder and soda. Add the flour to the rest and than the sour cream. Put it in the oven as you are used to when making cakes! (Ha!)

for the filling you´ll need:
90ml cream (the kind you make whipped cream with)
180g butter
200g "powder" suggar
120g chocolate

Again, in a bowl over a bowl etc, heat the butter with cream and add the suggar and stir for a while. Than add the chocolate and mix it until it´s combined. It´s "watery"when hot, but as it cools down it gets thicker. Let it cool down completely (you can put it in the fridge in the end).
When the cake from the oven is baked, let it cool down, than cut it up twice and fill it like you are used to. I used only half of the amount of everything and made a small cake, which was ok. However, I´m dying to make it again, haha :). When you look at the instructions you can see that it´s just a fat and sugar, plus some chocolate, but don´t let it discourage you! It´s really good.

African art

Few days ago we went to an arboretum (or some kind of dendrologic garden) in Prague and were surprised to find that there is an outdoor exhibition going on. It was an exhibition of African statues from Zimbabwe, and was very interesting! These pieces were made by African artists in village called Tengenenge near the city of Harare. They are made of the stone serpentinit (I hope it´s an international name :). In czech it´s called "hadec" which means something like a snake. The stone is mostly black, sometimes brown or green, and the statues are made by hand only, the artists are very poor, so no mechanical devices are used. The surface is waxed, is beautifully shiny and can stand up to any weather all year long, the material is extremely durable. We were amazed by this art, and the fact that it came all the long way from Africa. Our favourite was the statue of a woman carrying a baby, but I loved pretty much everything. I chose only few favourite photos from many others, because there was so much of it.