More Free Stuff: A Cookie Recipe, A Card, And A Book

Earlier this week a friend who lives in Idaho asked in an email if we had snow yet. The answer is yes, a little bit, but mostly what we have is cold.

It’s a good time to stay inside and get some work done. I mentioned making calendars a couple of weeks ago as a seasonal activity. The calendars are all printed and cut. Here are about half sitting on the cutter.

They have been wrapped in Christmas paper.

The ones for mailing also have a white outer wrapper and are waiting to be addressed.

That pre-Christmas task is almost finished. Earlier this week I completed another one.

Every year I bake Speculaas for a Dutch friend to be delivered on St. Nicholas’ Day. Traditionally they are made with a mould, and look like this,

but I don’t have a mould so mine look like this.

Instead of rolling out the dough, cutting out cookies, then re-rolling the dough to make more cookies from the scraps, I treat them like refrigerator cookies. I also have an allergy to cinnamon, so I use allspice in the recipe instead. The year I changed my recipe, my Dutch friend thought the cookies were the best ever. I never told her about the substitution, though I guess she might find out now! If you are interested in trying my recipe, here’s a pdf.

I usually pack the cookies for my friend in a small decorated tin, but I did not have a Christmas tin this year, just one that formerly held Turkish coffee. To make the gift more seasonal, I decided to make a card.

I found this design on-line.

It is from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The original is a colour lithograph produced by the Wiener Werkstätte in 1911. I assumed the image was available for personal use as the page had the following buttons.

The card shows St. Nicholas carrying Krampus. Krampus isn’t part of the Dutch tradition but I thought he would serve as a stand-in for Black Peter. I cleaned up the image a bit and designed a 2-up layout, so I have a spare card I can give to someone else. The layout is for 8.5 x 11″ paper, but should print on A4. If you would like to make a couple of cards for personal use, you can download the pdf here.

I also completed another odd job this week. I made replacement crayons for two copies of Affluenza. One of the crayons in a copy I sent to MCBA was damaged in transit. It was simpler to replace the whole set so that the colours co-ordinated than to try to guess what “light blue” meant. I already needed to replace another set, as staff in a gallery had managed to drop and break all three crayons from another copy of the book.

Here are pictures of the stages.

And finally: Ginger Burrell has posted another Christmas one-sheet book.

It’s called Christmas Giggles and is suitable for making with children over the holidays. You can download the book from the Midnight Musings blog where there is a link to instructions for cutting and folding the book.