...that was in a nut shell my weekend. And there was fresh snow too!
I can't remember the last time I wore flannel sleepwear. The last flannel PJ's I can remember, are the PJ's I bought for at that time still little M.. They had little duckies on them and she wore them all winter. She posed in them under the Christmas tree at my parents'. It was right before our big move to California. M. was 18 months old and recovering from a double ear infection. And there was snow too then. M.'s first snow ever. She would look at it falling down through the kitchen window of my parents' apartment. She can't remember, but I can - she had to stand on her tippy toes in order to see. Little H. wore the flannel ducky PJ's too, later on, in California - no snow - until she too outgrew them. I can't remember what happened to them after but I do remember both of my girls looked adorable in them...
So, when I was looking for our Christmas ornaments (yes, we did get a tree - an even smaller one than last year) and I came across a bag with among other things a big piece of checkered flannel in it, I knew right away what I wanted to make out of it. Flannel sleepwear - for me this time! I found a pattern in an old Burda I still had laying around, altered it slightly and fixed it in an afternoon. Nothing special, not even pretty but warm and cozy - bringing back those memories!
And then we baked cookies and they too brought back memories. The idea was to bake speculoos. I found a recipe, the spices - the only thing I didn't have was the dark brown sugar. The label said the box contained cassonade, but it was still too blond to make real speculoos which is supposed to be really dark. But never mind - the cookies turned out really good. They actually taste like the Trader Joe's Alphabet Cookies and Animal cookies we used to buy! In case you want to give it a try: You can find the recipe here - I added a second egg and combined 1/2 teaspoon of pain d'épices spices with 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon to obtain 1 teaspoon of mixed ground cake spices, and I added 1 teaspoon of vanilla, just because we like it. We planned on taking some cookies with us to Belgium for the holidays, but I'm not sure they'll last that long as we've been munching cookies all day!
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