a danish nativity play

this autumn, sabin chose to go to something called "mini-konfirmand" at the church next to her school. she had so much fun doing that every wednesday afternoon that she signed up to be part of the nativity play that they were going to put on at the church. last thursday afternoon, there was a matinee of the play at the church. then, today, sunday, they performed again during regular church services. here are some scenes from both...the pictures aren't my best work, as i didn't want to use flash - both because i was so far away it wouldn't make a difference and well, i hate flash.

the church as we approached on thursday at 4 p.m.

it was so beautiful with all of the lights.

and you have to bear in mind that the sun had been set for half an hour by then.

a view inside the church.

sabin played a "julehjerte" - a christmas heart.

it's a nativity that tries to explain the meaning of christmas

for a contemporary audience.

it was difficult to capture everyone standing still.

the whole group.

a little glazed over from the photo session at the end.

a quick shot captured by karoline during the play.

and a couple of gratituous horse shots

from the last weekend of riding lessons 'til january.

it was COLD!

sabin's new warm riding jacket and riding pants came in handy.

they're her main christmas present, but she got to open them early.

it was THAT cold.

she loves zidan at the moment.

she really clicks with him.

his fuzzy ears make him look like a teddy bear.

first snow

it's our first snow of the season and with that, our first snowman. he's kind of a tabletop version...

christmas party at the riding school

on saturday, we got a taste of exactly how many students go to sabin's riding school! and it's a lot! we went for our regular lesson in the morning and the sun was shining on a fine, winter day. sabin rode zidan, who is her current favorite. he's the one that's a little character and likes to hold the whip in his mouth while i help sabin get on. he's exactly the kind of horse we need to get for her when the time comes. in fact, i think we'll even probably try to buy him.

after our lessons, we went out to a little bitty christmas market at a little bitty castle across the fjord. there was a horse to climb on there as well.

then, it was time to go back to the christmas party at the riding school. sabin was part of the st. lucia group. they wore white sheets tied with silver garlands and decorated their riding helmets with silver garlands as well and carried a candle. we all walked into the riding hall in the dark, just by the glow of the candles, singing the st. lucia song. it was so much fun! after that, there were æbleskiver and mulled wine (gløgg) and santa came and handed out candy.

again, it's so hard to get good pictures in the dark.

here you can see the whole group and the christmas tree in the arena!

it was so much fun, it really put us in the christmas spirit.

riding mindy

mindy is a real live registered pinto

this is the second week sabin has ridden her.

she has a bad habit of pulling the bit away and almost jerking sabin right off over her head.

she hasn't succeeded tho'.

another saturday, another new horse to ride

it seems like all of our favorites at the riding school are lame at the moment - lizette has been laid up for a couple of weeks (i knew for longer than that there was something up with her left rear) and now felix is on a rest regime. we also saw that coming, because for two weeks in a row he naughtily refused to canter to the right and would do all kinds of alarming evasive maneuvers to avoid it. i was pretty sure there was something more to it than just naughtiness. but, i suppose that's the way of lesson horses, they're used all day long, probably a good 6 days a week by a variety of experienced and inexperienced riders and they will eventually come up lame.

so yesterday, much to sabin's relief, she didn't have to ride snehvide (snow white), she got to ride a new (to her) horse called zidan. he was a little cutie and aside from biting me while i was trying to straighten his halter (i think he thought i was handing him a treat) and then biting the bridle when i went to put it on him (he actually took it in his mouth and "held" it for me, while i unhooked the halter), he was a sweetie. with the help of a stool, she was even able to get on him by herself. sabin really enjoyed the ride. it was a rare sunny day (november is often sunshine-free), so they got to go out on a "tour," in the fields. sabin loved that. in fact, she just whined that they won't be able to do it today because it's raining.

here they are on the distant horizon. look at that green winter wheat and the winter sunshine!

they came back and cantered and she was just a blur as she went by.

we ride again today at 2 p.m., so we'll see which horse she rides this time.

where are the 7 dwarves when you need them?

sabin's riding snow white on saturdays now. last saturday she fell off for the first time. snow white is a bit zippier and a bit more of a handful than the other horses sabin has ridden. but it was inevitable that she would fall off at some point and she had helmet and safety vest on, so all was fine. and it didn't make her too scared to ride snow white again this week.

snow white totally ADORES jumping

but you can see how we come into a situation where we fall off her occasionally.

it happened again today.

and that's ok too.

because it's how we learn.

but we do prefer felix

jens drew some stamps!

hey moneek, i thought you'd like to see the wintery stamps that jens hage drew for the post office. they were released last week and i absolutely love them. they're stickers, rather than ones you lick, so forward-thinking technology as well. :-)

halloween party

scenes from our halloween party this past weekend....

galloping girl

was playing with shutter priority settings on my camera today. as you can see, i'm not there yet (need giant, fast sports zoom lens next), but i loved the motion in these galloping shots...

loving lizette

we learned this weekend that we could buy lizette if we wanted to. apparently all of the lesson horses are for sale at any time, but at 45,000DKK ($8600), for a 12-year-old with a stiff rear left leg she has to warm out of, it seems a bit pricey, to say the least. so we'll continue to enjoy her on saturdays and sundays. but she is lovely.

and in the saturday lesson, sabin learned a bit of jumping. sabin was the only one who could keep the horse pointed at the jump and keep her from avoiding it at the last second. all of the other horses were totally ducking it because they could get away with it. sabin's doing well, but it could also be a testament to how wonderful lizette is. and of course, they were really just trotting over it, since it wasn't that much of a jump.

latest riding lesson pix

because mom wanted to see our latest riding lessons...

she's riding lisette, the danish warmblood, for both lessons on the weekend now.

they seem to have been made for one another.

you can see how good she sits in comparison to others

they were told to lean back at the canter

they're learning balance,

so that's why she's leaning back like that.

far's giving her a leg up.

it was a bit dusty in the arena.

she likes to ride bareback at the end for the warm-down.

she still sits well, even without the saddle.

very concentrated.

riding outdoors for the sunday lesson.

we even went out on a little tour outdoors.

and back again for a few rounds bareback before sunday's lesson ended.

riding lessons resume

we started back to riding again this weekend. on saturday, sabin rode a new horse named lizette. she's a lovely danish warmblood and my favorite of all of the lesson horses sabin has ridden. if we get her a horse, it will be one like lizette.

my attraction for lizette could be due to her reminding me of our old beloved i'ma susie bar (without the hauling back on every halter and breaking it).

isn't she just lovely?

she just had such a quiet, lovely way about her. and she really made sabin look good.

the lessons have gone from 30 minutes to an hour now and i think sabin will make leaps forward in progress.

it's a colorful life

i don't know if we're just surrounded by color this summer or if i'm just drawn to it at the moment, but it seems that color is everywhere...at the amusement park, in the garden, in our stitching. maybe it's just that nikon totally rocks the color.

we're off to singapore tomorrow around noon. catch ya late next week. unless we send in some reports from the road.

kerrit carrots

the little packet of carrot seeds that came with the kerrit brand horse shirt sent earlier this spring are growing nicely. yesterday, someone couldn't resist seeing if a couple of them were ready to eat.

they were

scenes from mini-holiday in dublin - part 1

we set out for our mini-holiday in dublin. we used my points and had free tickets. but we started our journey on the train. the holiday was for mathilde's sake. you can tell here that she was thrilled...

we arrived in dublin and managed to find our hotel. we then set out in search of adventures. again, mathilde was thrilled and she even stopped listening to her iPod, for about 5 seconds:

so we handed her the camera, hoping to engage her interest a little bit...

and then apparently we just kinda walked away. oh and then it started to rain. and that wasn't fun. but right after that, we found a starbucks and things got a little better. mathilde and sabin discovered the strawberry cream frappucino and that was deemed to be direct from heaven, tho' strangely we failed to photograph it.

after the starbucks pick-me-up, we made our way to the shopping street. mathilde brightened up considerably then. and so did i, because we found lush. we could smell it all the way down the street and just followed our noses.

and then we found a great shoe store called korky's we went back there several times. mmm, shoes.

on the way back to the hotel, sabin and mathilde tried to help this guy with his rope...

we got up to many more adventures, but those pix are on the other computer, so this will have to do for the first installment of adventures in dublin.

ahh, those summer nigh-ights...

missing milton

still a whole month to go before lessons start again and someone is already really missing milton.

last lesson 'til august

last lesson of the season

today was the last riding lesson of the season. and although the day was beautiful, it was a little bit of a letdown. the teacher was late and the saddle room was locked, so we couldn't saddle up 'til after 9, which was when it was supposed to start. then, ten minutes into the 40-minute lesson, the teacher mounts an irish cob, saddled with one of those bareback "saddles," which is really just a fuzzy pad without stirrups. they set off through the barnyard and tinka, the irish cobb, shied and dumped the big ole teacher right off on the ground. she was wearing a helmet, but managed to totally over-dramatize her fall and refuse to move, crying back injury, sending her half-hysterical daughter running for the owner and a big crowd gathering, all while three little inexperienced lesson girls looked on in horror. 

so, instead of riding out on a little tour, they went back to the arena where the shaken daughter had them trot around a bit. they didn't even get to canter, which was quite disappointing to sabin who is getting pretty good at it. she only got about 20 minutes of her 40-minute lesson and was really quite disappointed in the end. 

oh, and just as we had suspected, the teacher was completely fine. she was just a drama queen. which i think was a pretty bad example for the kids. 

lessons start again aug. 1 and we're already looking forward to that.

fried hyldeblomst (elderflower)

fried hyldeblomst

3/4 C flour

1/2 C sugar

1/2 C milk

3 eggs

a dash of vanilla

mix together into a pancake-like batter

pluck hyldeblomst (elderflowers--i wonder if these aren't what we called chokecherries when i was a kid), shake off all bugs and any loose bits (but don't rinse, that wrecks them). heat up about an inch of oil a frying pan. when it's hot enough, hold the stem and dip the flower head in the batter. fry them in the oil 'til golden brown.  dust with powdered sugar and enjoy. we ate the flowery bits and left the stem, it makes a good handle for eating the flowery bits tho'. and it tastes of pure summer.

oh wow gazpacho

i invented a mean gazpacho last evening with bits & pieces we had around here. and it's the best thing for hot weather. you'll have to make everyone in your vicinity eat it too, because it's really garlicky, but worth it.

gazpacho

5-6 largish-tomatoes - peeled and cut into quarters

1 cucumber - peeled and cut into chunks

1 fat clove of garlic

whiz it all up in the blender with a good glug of white wine (yes, i put white wine in everything).

add:

2 TB of soy sauce (i have a great one from the Philippines that has lime in it too--Toyomansi it's called)

1 TB pomegranate sirup

3 TB good olive oil

you could include a red pepper and an onion if you'd like, but i didn't in this batch and it's really good. put it in a jar in the fridge to chill, tho' you could throw some ice cubes in when you blitz and if your tomatoes and cuke were cold,  you'd be good to go eating it right away. totally refreshing and delicious.

twice a week

today was sabin's first lesson in the 40-minute batch on sundays. it's a different teacher with a totally different style, far more focused on getting the kids ready to go to a horse show--there's one at the stables at the end of the month and sabin seems interested in entering a class where you they've laid out poles on the ground, jump-style and you have to follow the numbers in the correct order and ride through it at the trot. they practiced this today with quite a complex pattern and i think sabin just might be interested in giving it a whirl at the end of the month. i guess we'll need a hunt coat!

milton's tongue is hanging out

they've changed milton's saddle since we last rode and i do think it's a youth size, tho' i had no measuring instruments with me.  here's a shot of sabin holding it, if that helps a bit (she wasn't holding very still and my ISO was set too low, so it's a bit blurry).

sabin's doing very well. this group seems to be well-suited to her, tho' they've been riding for longer than she has. she just seems to be a natural. yesterday, when far asked about whether she could come another day, the teacher (same as today's teacher because sabin's regular one was sick) said she could come on sunday morning for 40 minutes or for 30, but she recommended 40, because she was too good for the 30-minute sessions. that made sabin do her little shy smile and that little snort she does when she's proud, but slightly embarrassed.

other kids are all scared and whining and falling off left and right and she just sits up straight and gives milton a kick and gets him out on the rail. she did manage to leave her gloves in the car yesterday and far is gone with the car, so she didn't have them today and missed them a lot. it's a bit hard on your hands holding the reins.

i am a failure...as a 1930s housewife

8 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

i wonder how grandma kate would have scored...

note to the cat

please do not bring a mouse into the house.

especially not if they are only stunned and/or pretending to be dead.

and then please refrain from giving the mouse a little encouragement with your paw, which causes it to run off behind a box where no one can get to it and then run outside yourself due to the high-pitched screams of the child. because that's not good and it takes far a long time to get home.

drifts of hail

climate change is definitely upon us. it's been windy and cloudy and blustery and rainy for two days after a glorious weekend last weekend, but this morning we awoke to this:

the terrace was covered in hail! i've never seen more than a couple of wussy little hailstones in this country, but this we could have shoveled.

it didn't seem to have damaged the garden tho', and the greenhouse is intact. so that's good.

this is a great rhubarb cake

made this a couple of weeks ago (we've got rhubarb coming out of our ears after acquiring a second plant from our neighbor) and have been meaning to post it for your eating pleasure.

rhubarb cake

1/2 C butter

1-1/2 C sugar (would advise 2C if you're using organic sugar)

2 eggs

1 C buttermilk* 

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2-1/2 C flour

3 C rhubarb, diced

mix together butter, sugar, egg and vanilla. Add baking powder & salt to the flour, mix in, alternating with buttermilk. pour into a cake pan (9x13 is good).

here's where it get really good:

TOPPING: 

1 C brown sugar

1/2 C chopped walnuts or pecans

i left the nuts out of the topping b/c sabin doesn't like them--which mean we put just brown sugar on--it sinks into the dough a little ways and comes out fabulous!

go, make this cake NOW, NOW, NOW!

*i actually used sour buttermilk because that's the kind of thing i find lurking in my refrigerator--it was great!

what's for dinner

far's away and so we're eating things for dinner that far might not like all that much. things like carpaccio and a soft boiled egg with steamed asparagus spears dipped in it. and a little salad on the side, made of zucchini made into thin strips with a peeler and then stirred together with a bit of garlic golden rapeseed oil and a dash of balsamic and some garlic pepper, with just a few shavings of parmesan to match the parmesan on the carpaccio. it was the perfect light early summer meal.

i guess i've only got pictures of the asparagus and egg part. yummy.

Unfinished Projects, I Will Defeat You!

Disgusted with my inability to complete tasks that require multiple steps, I recently embarked on a quest to finish some projects. Shortly after turning my attention to these things, I got distracted by some phone calls I needed to make, a few meal preparations, several baseball games and some music that I needed to download. Then, I finally picked up this project I started late last year. Now keep in mind, I'm only half finished. This is going to be the inside and unexposed layer of a double-layer hat. And though I should be some sort of knitting expert by now, the hat looks like it was dragged to another continent in the bottom of a suitcase and wound up and tangled hopelessly in its own ball of yarn. Oh wait, it was.


I feel a sense of victory on this one, because it's the first time I've used two colors. The black yarn is a lucious undyed baby alpaca, almost too soft to work with. And this method of decreasing (or making the round part of the hat that closes up the top) is one I've never done before. I found it quite confusing, but am confident that the other side of this hat will look better. I'm going to knit in the same pattern, with the colors inversed. Now, if I need to figure out how to pick up the live stitches from my provisional cast-on.

When I'm finished, the edge won't curl up like a women's hat. And it'll be too big for Owen.

our latest riding lesson

where sabin canters all by herself, with just a little encouragement (for milton) from her new pink riding crop. she's really making progress! it won't be long 'til she's moved up to the hour-long lessons.

today's lesson

i wasn't so keen on milton. i don't like how he carries his tail. it's probably the half-arab thing. and he was a bit more of a spoiled lesson horse, at least on the saddling (pawing in a rather menacing way when the saddle came near) and mounting (he tried to bite me while she got on), but he was a bit zippier and more fun for sabin to actually ride and that's what matters.

so that was lesson 7.

our half-chaps were brilliant.

fresh strawberry lemonade

fresh strawberry lemonade

1 package of strawberries, hulled (i used 35-30 berries)

the juice of 2 lemons

the best part of a tray of ice cubes

1/2-1 C of sugar (depending on the sweetness of your strawberries)

blitz it all up together in a blender.

pour into a pitcher.

add to it half a large bottle of sparkling water.

serve immediately. make more.

would make a mean margarita with tequila or a daiquiri with rum.