Dienstag, Dezember 29, 2009

Geocaching Cookies

Christmas is over, I know.
Still, it doesn't have to be Christmas to prepare a treat for your geocaching friends!
I made them for our "mulled wine event" held at Rostock's Christmas Market on December 12.

Actually, you can use your favorite cookie receipe; any receipe that is good for cutting cookies. So the cookie dough is the easy part ;)

When you're ready, roll out the dough with a rolling pin (or a glass bottle, if you don't have a rolling pin. I don't have one and an empty wine bottle works just as well!).

I came up with 3 different shapes for my geocaching cookies: A "micro cache" film canister, a GPS device, and the geocaching.com logo.

For the micro cache and the GPS device I cut their shapes from cardboard and used a knife to cut the dough into shape.

While starting to cut the micro cache cookies, I found there's an easier way: Use a (juice / water / wine) glass to cut circles, then use a knife to cut the circle into 3 parts, the middle one being the micro cache cookie.

The little GPS devices are hand-cut, sorry. But it's not too much work, really.

What's really easy, is cutting squares for the geocaching.com logos. Just cut the size you want them to be.

Here they are - ready to go into the oven! See the little witches on the right?

Unfortunately their brooms broke off and they didn't look too nice with their chocolate cover, but they were quite tasty anyway ;)

When you're done, bake your cookies according to receipe and let them cool off.


Next comes the fun part: decoration!

I dipped the little GPS antennas into melted chocolate and let them dry before continuing with the names on them. I also dipped the micro cache cookies into the chocolate to make it look like the lid. And guess what: the micro cache cookies are done!

I used Schwartau Zuckerschrift to write the names of the geocachers onto the little GPS cookies according to their "will attend" logs in the cache listing.

I decided to make one cookie per team plus a few "Cacher" cookies for those who would attend without "will attend" log.

For the geocaching logos I used Back- und Speisefarben to dye the frosting. I only made one color frosting at a time starting with yellow (so I could reuse the rest for the red rosting). It was fairly easy to put the frosting on the cookies using a simple teaspoon. Just make sure it is not too runny - use more powdered sugar if it is. After the yellow frosting I made the red one as the fields are opposite each other on the logo and I didn't have to worry about the frostings running into each other. While I let them dry I continued with writing names to my little GPS cookies. Blue and green were easy to do, too. When everything was dry I used the rest of the chocolate to make the circles symbolizing the details on the logo.

The cookies were a big success at our geocaching event. People marveled at the effort and were delighted with finding their names on the GPS cookies. Plus they were a nice treat to enjoy along with the mulled wine :)

(c) TeddyOnTour

What do you think? Wanna give it a try?


Donnerstag, Dezember 10, 2009

Candy Flower Bouquet

Ever wondered what to give someone who already has everything or who doesn't want anything?
I was invited to a wedding in Singapore and the couple didn't want anything as their biggest gift from their friends for them was us coming to Singapore for their special day.
Still I didn't want to come empty-handed, so I came up with the idea of a candy flower bouquet. And here is how I made it:


I bought all kinds of chocolates and candys (about 60 items, all separately wrapped and 2 of each type for the happy couple) and tied sewing thread around one end of their wrapping (about 30 cm per candy using a Cow Hitch knot).


The next step was to arrange 4-6 chocolates into a small bunch and tie them together. I used small pieces of wire which were quite easy to handle, but more thread can be used, too.


Lots of tying...

... and trying not to eat the chocolates myself ;)


Assembling all those small bunches into one large bouquet would have turned them into a big messy bulk, so I cut out a circle from cardboard (the back of a writing pad or any cardboard box that is at hand) and covered it with a green napkin (green paper works as well).


I attached all the small candy bunches to my cardboard circle, leaving a few centimeters between them so there is enough space for all the lovely candy. A large sewing needle works really well here, as one can easily poke holes into the cardboard to pull all the threads that were tied around the candy wrapping in step 1 through the cardboard. I tied several knots to each 2 strands of thread: to the opposite ones, to the neighboring ones etc, to attach the candy really well to the cardboard circle (Don't look at the small holes in the photo! Those were my first attempt to attach them one by one...).
Once all the candy is attached to the cardboard circle, we're almost done!

I used a cheap (green) plastic ice cream cup with a foot (shaped like a champagne glass, but more sturdy, of course) as my bouquet base and put a few cardboard squares on top (not too large so they are not visible).


The finishing touches are Tortenspitze to give it a Biedermeier look and a few fake ivory leaves (a bargain from the swedish furniture store that has been sitting among my diy stuff for a while).
The chocolate hearts are stuck to the bottom of candy like the green one in photo 2 using double-sided tape.
Doesn't look too bad, he?

Now that I am done writing this, I found this website with the same type of candy flower bouquets. They also look nice with one wrapping colour only.

Liked the idea? Create your own candy flower bouquet! It's easy! And maybe share a photo of it?!

Dienstag, November 03, 2009

444 Caches in 444 Days

Yeah, here we go!
As of today, I have been geocaching for 444 days and so far I found 444 caches! That makes it one cache per day ;)



# 500, here I come!

Montag, September 28, 2009

Artsy Weekend Project

Here's my really cool weekend project: a self-made wall tattoo.

I once found this wall tattoo saying "witch kitchen" in an online store, but never got around to buying it...

Firstly, I didn't like the bright red colour that much. Secondly, the bristles of the broom were on the wrong side for what I had in mind. Thirdly, wall tattoos don't stick too well to my woodchip walls.
That was when I decided to do it myself. And here is how I did it:

I used my favorite image processing software to put the bristles on the "right" side. No need to be super perfect as the image will only serve as a stencil. Also the resolution of the product picture was rather low, but this didn't matter much either. After printing it to the proper size (split across 3 pages), I used a pen to draw over the outline (making up for the aliasing effect of my low resolution image) before cutting out all the letters.

Since I had printed it to slightly self-adhesive paper, I could then stick my stencil right to the wall. Masking tape works quite well for this, too.
The next step was to bring the outlines of my stencil to the wall using a simple pencil. Small corrections can easily be made as the dark paint will cover them anyway.

The last step after taking off the stencil was colouring my wall tattoo with the chosen colour and fine paint brushes. This took about as long as the soccer game I listened to at the same time ;) I was shaking a bit every now and then while painting, but changing position and resting my hand to the wall (carefull with the wet paint!) helped quite a bit. Also small shaky bits didn't matter too much because of the uneven woodchip wall.


So this is what it looks like now :). Cool, he?
Actually the hardest part was not to bump my head on the overhead cupboards and to be able to reach over my counter to paint the wall. It might be a good idea to paint a wall tattoo like this one BEFORE adding the furniture :).

The best part about it though: I didn't have to spend a single cent for my cool new wall tattoo! The paint was a leftover from a friend. You need really little for an image like this.

Montag, August 17, 2009

(Almost) A cache a day

One year of geocaching!
Wow, and what a year it has been! Thanks a lot to all those cache owners whose caches I have found, thanks to all the nice people I have met (and probably wouldn't have met otherwise) and to anyone who went geocaching with me!
It's been an amazing experience so far: I have been in the outdoors more than ever before in my life (I think - always been more of a couch potatoe, I guess), I have seen places I wouldn't have seen w/out geocaching and I have shed a few pounds, hehe.

I was trying to have 365 geocaches today, making it one per day. Unfortunately we were caching basically in my homezone all weekend and most traditionals already have a big smile on my map... But 361 is not bad either and 0,9890410958904109589041095890411 is almost 1, isn't it?!

Maybe this one should be my next geocoin?


Happy caching!


Freitag, August 14, 2009

Trackable Items Collection

In August 2008 I got introduced to geocaching. Now I am almost celebrating my first anniversary (Sunday!) and I still love it!
Here's a little gallery of trackable items I have sent out with different missions. I own a few more geocoins I am keeping at home and only take to events or log into special caches.



You can see how far they have traveled until now.
If you see a little box in the bottom right corner, then the item is currently located in a geocache. If there's a little smiley, then it's in the hands of another cacher, hopefully on its way to another cache. Grey icons - as opposed to green ones - mean they haven't been moved for quite some time. Get'em going, fellow cachers!

Mittwoch, Mai 20, 2009

Heartbroken Songs

I figured I have songs for lost relationships. It seems they give some comfort when there's nothing else that can comfort you. I am listening to them over and over again until the pain fades.

Heartbroken Song #1: Against all odds (Phil Collins). Very melancholic.
Later, the song "Almost Lover (A Fine Frenzy)" kept reminding me of that special person...

Heartbroken Song #2: Big Girls Don't Cry (Fergie) - more defiant than sad. Gettin' up again, kickin' his ass.

Heartbroken Song #3 and a very recent split-up: Top of the World (Dixie Chicks) - The lyrics tell a different kind of (love) story, but we've been listening to this song (and similar ones) together in the car...

What are your heartbroken songs?