Time for some serious celebrating!

Guess why?

...My 2012 jewelry collection is done! The designing part of it, at least. Most of the items are already in my possession (and boy, am I wowed by the results), only a few items still need to be produced. If everything goes well, the whole collection is complete and ready to sell (including decent pictures, updated website, web shop and all that stuff) halfway around November. Lots of work to do of which I can't wait to start with.

To celebrate, I bought myself a few 'congratulations!' presents. Okay, I'll admit it was just an excuse to buy some of the new products in the shop where I work, really. The place has been remodelled recently and the collection has expanded with loads of awesome goodies, I just want all of them! Life ain't easy working there, way too much temptation ;).

A tiny baking tin for pies: because everything I bake has to be eaten by only two people and I want to bake quite often, normal pie tins are often too big. Even the best apple pie or cake gets boring after eating it for several days in a row... So this size is perfect!

Le Creuset (you probably know them from their cast iron cookware) has some fantastic (oven-resistant) ceramic mugs. I already have two big mugs and two espresso mugs in my possession, but since a few weeks we also have mid-size mugs in the store. I couldn't resist!

I made some apple sauce, so easy to make and so incredibly tasty!

And I've been walking around again hunting for mushrooms. And I found them...

...even though most had already been destroyed unfortunately.

...except for this humongous fungus! (yes, I just hád to say that).

Okay, recipes!

For the tiny apple pie, I took half of the following (Dutch) apple pie recipe:

- 250 gr flour
- 175 gr butter
- 80 gr sugar
- 2 eggs (1 1/2 for the dough, 1/2 egg for on the pie)
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- a pinch of salt might be a good addition

The dough is made by mixing everything by hand (less dish washing to worry about) and letting it chill in the fridge for half an hour while you peel and prepare the apples. Apparently, the cooling is necessary because the butter in the dough needs to be cold when you put it in the oven. The warmer it is, the earlier it will melt during baking, resulting in a less crisp crust. At least, that's what I read and I think it makes sense ;).

For the pie filling, you'll need to mix:

- 1 kg apples, peeled and cut in parts or slices
- 50 gr sugar
- 70 gr raisins (I usually leave those out because J. is not a big fan of them)
- 3 teaspoons cinnamon

Put the 2/3 of the dough in the baking tin, put the apple mixture in, then use the remaining dough to make small, diagonally crossing stripes on top of the pie. Brush the remaining egg over the stripes, and bake the pie in a preheated oven for about an hour on 170 degrees Celsius. Yum!

For the apple sauce, peel and cut several apples in pieces, put them in a pan with a layer of water (I fill the pan with water up to about halfway the apples, but usually less water is used). Add sugar and cinnamon (for 1 kg of apples: 100 gr sugar, one big teaspoon cinnamon), let the apples boil until they have become soft (usually about 20 minutes). Use a masher (Dutch: pureestamper of stamppotstamper) to make the apple sauce less lumpy -that is, if you want it to be.

Third batch of items: check check double check!

And I'm almost done with my collection for this year! It is going really fast now.
This batch of designed products consisted of pendants and one business card holder, making the total count of finished items (assuming they will all come out the way I planned) at 11 jewelry designs and 2 product designs. That means I've already hit my target collection for this year, which was 10 to 12 jewelry designs. Ánd I still have time to design maybe one or two extra items in my fourth and final batch this year. Whoohoo!

Aaaaaand... my business cards arrived! I designed them myself and am quite happy with the result, especially because I'm not that big on graphic design. Meaning I usually hate designing graphic things, and that I'm just no good at it. But the cards came out nicely so I'm really glad. Like the pics of my second batch of designs, I'll post a picture of them soon, I promise ;).

These days I've been grossly neglecting my challenges, because I was just too busy with my product designs. They were already late and I had to order them before the weekend, or my whole year schedule would fall apart. I want to order a fourth batch right after I've received the third batch, but the fourth batch has to arrive at least a month before the holiday season, so, considering that it takes 3 to 4 weeks before an ordered batch arrives, my schedule is quite tight.

But I made up a bit of the neglect by going to a falconry show at Falconcrest and shooting some niiiiice pics. Not that it was difficult with that kind of models. Those birds are so beautiful!

I also loved the interaction between the birds and the falconers.

It's too bad the birds were moving too fast for me to capture them mid-flight. I'm not that good a photographer yet, trying to take pics of their flight resulted in these kind of pictures.

See the white blur? Yes, that's a bird :p. Speedsters, I tell you.

This weekend, there has been a small-scale Tuna festival, Noche de Tuna (not "tuna" as in fish, but "Tuna" as in Spanish student troubadour music group) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Several groups were here from Spain and Mexico, together with the Eindhoven groups (one male and one female group). Since I'm in the female group, La Tuniña, of course I participated as well, and right now I'm still recovering from fatigue. It was a lot of fun, and there will be another 'Noche de Tuna' next year. But now, back to work!