Homemade

Hello everyone!

This is my first post about a specific topic. I was really worried about finding a good topic for my blog to start with but everything I thought about was kind of “boring”. While being busy with working through my to-do-list for this weekend I thought that it might be interesting to tell you something about my love of homemade things. Besides doing things for university this weekend, I promised a friend to have her birthday cake finished. Although I do not have a lot of time, I wanted the birthday cake to be homemade and not bought at a supermarket or ordered at a confectionery shop. If you do not want your birthday  look like an ordinary Sacher cake you have to dig deep into your pocket and they are not as good as homemade cakes by far. To get the cake finished on Saturday I had to start with the preparations 4 days earlier. For this cake I had to make two different biscuits, two different crèmes, a ganache and had to colour the gum paste. For having the 18 flowers finished it took me about an hour. It is a cake with a chocolate and a caramel crème and a chocolate biscuit. This is what it looked like:

I actually was not content with it because at some parts it was very lumpy. However, the taste was very good and the most import thing – my friend liked it.

Being back from the little birthday party, I wanted to make my Advent wreath. I started at 10 p.m. and worked on it until 1:30 a.m. As I had some evergreens left, I decided to make another one for a friend. I think they got beautiful and there is no chance to buy such a wreath under 30 euros in a supermarket. I paid for the material for both of them about 18 euros and the best thing about it is that they are unique. One week ago I was already searching for ideas for my wreath. So I surfed on the internet and I noticed that American Advent wreaths are often decorated with thin and long candles while in Austria they are mainly thick and about ten centimeters high. I will ask my aunt at our next Skype session about it. This is what they look like: 

Last year me and some of my friends met and we spent a whole day making our wreaths, talking, singing Christmas songs and having fun.

This year we are planning to meet and make our Christmas cookies together. I am looking forward to it and I am going to tell you what it was like.

Beautiful Sunday to all of you!

“I am the happiest when I am on the way between Austria and Croatia – does not matter in what direction”

My name is Monika and I am 22 years old. I am born in Spittal an der Drau in Carinthia where I grew up and finished high school. I am studying languages at the Translation department in Graz where I am living for four years now. I have a younger brother who studies psychology and I work as a telephone agent. 

My parents originally come from Croatia so I raised up bilingually. At school I have learned three more languages: English, French and Latin. As I have relatives in the USA, English was the language that I became the most interested in. The stories about America and the life there is one of the reasons why I am studying English here at the Translation department – to learn more about America and its culture.

This is my first experience with blogging so it took me a lot of time to think about topics I will write about. I will actually cover a lot of various things, mainly my hobbies and topics of the American, Austrian and Croatian culture and what the life of someone who raised in Austria but does not come from Austria is like.

I hope you will enjoy my blog and I am looking forward to your feedback.