Apple time!

Last month we took a family trip to Oak Glen for some apple picking, donuts, and cider; it was the best! Astrid loves being outside and loves nature. It was so fun to watch her explore and carry around the same apple for an hour. A month later, I finally get around to going through the pictures! 

A fun time was had by all!

Christmas is around the corner!

It's about this time of year when I start getting Christmas on the brain. Yes, I'm definitely one of those people who watch Christmas movies unacceptably early and start listening to Amy Grant come October (ok ok, I've already listened to her Christmas album once...). I just love Christmas time.

Since we had Astrid, it's been really fun talking about what kinds of traditions we want to have as our own family of 3. We always are traveling to our respective families homes for the actual day, but for the past few years we celebrate just us on New Years Day. I love waking up at home and drinking coffee by our tree. It's the BEST! And now it's even more exciting that Astrid is in the mix. I think she will be really into everything Christmas this year, including the cookies!

In the spirit of Christmas soon approaching, I decided to do some prelimary "research" on what cookies to make this year. So I bookmarked some new Swedish cookies I haven't made before and decided to bake and eat my way through them to see which ones would make the cut for this year's Christmas. It's tough work, but someone has to do it. 

First, I baked these Almond Spice cookies from the famous Swedish cookbook Swedish Cakes and Cookies (or Sju Sjorter kakor in Swedish). I love a good spice cookie in wintertime and these didn't disappoint. Be warned though, they are subtly spicy, not like gingerbread or pepperkakor. They only contain cinnamon and cardamom for the spices - one of my favorite spice combos!

Ready for fika!

I really enjoyed the texture of both the ground almonds in the cookies, and the pearl sugar on top. And don't worry, I didn't eat the entire place of cookies.

Verdict: I liked them! Especially warm from the oven. After I bake through more recipes, I'll do a final verdict of what makes the Christmas Cookie list for 2016 - these are definitely a contender!

Swedish Almond Spice Cookies

3/4 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

2 1/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

2/3 cup ground almonds (I used blanched, slivered almonds and gave them a quick grind in my food processor)

Garnish with pearl sugar 

Preheat oven to 400. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add egg. Combine remaining ingredients and add, kneading lightly. Form into small balls and roll in pearl sugar and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Notes: I found 10 minutes was perfect - the bottom of these cookies seemed to brown quickly. I would check them early. They didn't stick to the pearl sugar easily when I rolled the balls in; I had to gently push the sugar into the dough. If you don't have pearl sugar, I'm sure regular sugar would suffice  but you'd miss out on the crunchy texture that it offers. If you have a local IKEA you can check their pantry section - they used to carry it in the past at ours, but I haven't seen in there in about a year now.

Happy Fika-ing! :)

*This post may contain affiliate links, but all opinions remain my own

A one-year old

You guys. My little girl turns one next week. ONE. How is that possible?! 

She's a little explorer, loves to read, just started figuring out the whole walking thing, and has the cutest little laugh. I am beyond blessed. 

 She loves to jump in this thing!

 Rocking her Swedish bonnet from Mormor. 

It's been a whirlwind of a year! Life is constantly changing and I'm still trying to keep up. Sorry that I've neglected this dear blog for so long. I can't promise to start blogging more, but I'll at least try to post a picture here and there! I hope all is well out there in the blogiverse with everyone! 

It's a GIRL!

We are so excited to welcome our sweet daughter to the world! 

Astrid Karleen arrived on 5/24/15 weighing in at 6 lbs 15 oz and 19" long.

We are so blessed and we love her to pieces!

Solvang / Santa Barbara Vacation

Over Ryan's spring break week last week, we decided to take a long weekend trip over to Santa Barbara and Solvang. It was so much fun!!!

One highlite of our trip: Ostrich Land.

It's exactly what it sounds like - a land full of ostriches. You could even feed them (albeit carefully to avoid them biting you). I love the expression on Ryan's face here, it's like he's having a moment with the ostrich. Precious. 

It was fun to feed them! They also had ostrich eggs you could buy and they were huge!

We stopped in Santa Ynez one morning and had this magnificent view.

This was on our way to Kalyra Winery where Ryan got to do a fun tasting and we bought a bottle that we can both partake in once the babe is born!

On the patio of Kalyra Winery:

And we of course hit up Solvang everyday for fika! We had some great treats everyday, my favorite was this almond-raspberry tart from Olson's Bakery. It was sooooo good. 

And another major highlight of the trip was going to this grand place: Village Spinning & Weaving Shop in Solvang. 

Guess what you guys....I bought my very first spinning wheel!!! This is my trying it out in the shop. I bought an unfinished one, so I need to stain, seal, and assemble it at home. It will be a work in progress, but such a fun one! 

Goodbye Solvang, thanks for the fun trip!

Baby Shower

Last weekend I had a wonderful baby shower with family and friends - thank you, everyone! Baby Sterrenberg is so loved already and we feel incredibly blessed to be so supported by so many friends and family.

Here are a few photos from the fun day!

My super talented sister-in-law made all the adorable decorations (note the Dala horses)!

So thankful my mother-in-law was able to come all the way from Texas!

Had a delicious Swedish princess cake along with scrumptious brunch food!

 My little sister, Maren, flew all the way out from Chicago! So much fun to have her!

We Skyped in Krista, my older sister in Seattle (we missed you!), and had to take a sister picture of us all together. My sisters did a bang up job hosting such a fun shower - it was the best!

It was such a fun day!

Thanks to all who came and celebrated with us from afar! We are so blessed!

Life in a nutshell

Happy New Year, everyone! 2015 is going to be great.

I can't believe my pregnancy is already over halfway done. What. How did that happen so fast? We've been slowly cleaning out our guest room and turning it into our baby room, and it's starting to come together. And by starting to come together, I basically just mean it's become a baby storage room. Definitely have a ways to go with all that, but we have time.

Maybe it's nesting, or maybe I'm just finally getting my act together, but I've been spending my weekends on all of the various apartment projects that have been on my list forever. Among them include this amazing, life-changing, rolling kitchen storage shelf:

[Apologies in advance for the poorly lit iPhone photos that follow]

I'm obsessed with this thing. We don't have a pantry in our kitchen, so many of our cupboards have become a pseudo pantry which just ends up taking away the cupboard space we actually need. This shelf is the best at maximizing the small space. It was pretty easy to assemble - I used this tutorial loosely. We made our version shorter, didn't use the dowels (they would have greatly limited what could fit on the shelves + we haven't had any problems with things falling out without them), and only used two casters on the bottom instead of 4. Now more things fit in our kitchen - it's amazing! It came together surprisingly fast, too. We put it together in a day, including painting and drying time. Ryan was the spray painting master of this project and he did a bang up job.

Another project Ryan and I tackled was installing these shelves above our couch. I think I've mentioned it before, but I have a hard time to committing when it comes to decorating/hanging art. These picture ledges are perfect. They let us change up the decor without having to leave gaping holes in our walls. Win.

And last, but certainly not least, I spent a good chunk of my day off on Monday repotting plants, propagating some succulents, and cleaning our patios. We have two small balcony/patio areas in our apartment but we haven't done much with them other than storing our plants out there. We finally bought a cute plant stand and I salvaged what plants were left. Plus I bought a hummingbird feeder! I've been wanting one for a while, but decided to bite the bullet. I'm so glad I did. I love watching it in the morning while I drink my coffee - it makes the morning a tad more enjoyable [for me, a non-morning person].

Well, I think that's all for now! Thanks for reading the book I just wrote. Hope your 2015 is off to a great start!

Scandinavian Christmas: Day 6

Welcome to Day 6! Today I'm so excited to have my niece, Anna, and one of my sisters, Krista, share this delicious Spritz Cookie recipe - a family favorite! I get to see this two in just a couple days and couldn't be more excited!

Spritz Cookies
By Anna and Krista Palmquist

Spritz cookies are a type of Christmas Swedish cookie that is a part of Swedish tradition. Me and my mom made them because they are yummy and they save well (unless my dad eats them first!). The process we went through to make these cookies is really quite simple. Here are the steps:

1. One cup butter ( no margarine ) 

2. Half cup white sugar

3. Half tsp. almond extract

4. 1 egg yolk 

5. 2 cups flour. (**scant) 

6. A fourth tsp. salt 

Cream the butter , add the sugar and cream thoroughly.

 Add extract and egg (yolk) and then flour . Force dough through cookie press onto ungreased 

baking sheet.

  We make them into little wreaths and use candied red and green cherries to decorate.

  Bake 7-10 minutes in 400 degree oven ( I sometimes use 375 oven ) . Watch them so theydon’t burn --the edges should only be a little bit brown.

**Note : We test try the first ones to see if there is enough flour . We also take a table knife and put it into the dough . If the dough does not stick to the knife you have enough flour. If not , add the rest of the 2 cups of flour.

We hope you enjoy these delicious treats! 

Krista and Anna Palmquist

And then there were 3

Ummmmm we're having a baby!! A tiny little human! I still can't believe it some days. We are so incredibly excited and can't wait to meet our little girl or boy in May!

[Etsy]

There will be a plethora of baby-themed crafting items coming your way in 2015, so stay tuned! 

We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow!

Weekend Getaway

Ryan and I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Chicago! We were there for exactly 24 hours. Red-eye flight on Friday, followed by sister-hangout-time, followed by an awesome wedding, then trip back to the airport to catch our 5:00 AM flight back home on Sunday. Phew. We. Are. Tired. But we had so much fun!

Got to have some sister hangout time! It was so good to see her sweet face. 

And then got to see these crazy kids!

It was so great to spend some BFF time with this girl. Wish we lived closer!

We also got to play some bocce ball! The reception was at Pinstripes, a really neat venue that had outdoor bocce ball courts and everything!

Bocce action shot!

The wedding was perfect. The ceremony was beautiful, the reception was so much fun, and seeing your friends get hitched and so happy is priceless. I just love weddings. I can't believe I forgot to get a picture of the bride and groom! What was I thinking?!

It was quite the trip! And it was so worth it.

Always remember: Memories > Sleep