Statistics and Sinterklaas celebrations (includes baking!)

[beelikej]

There was an article in the newspaper with statistics about people's height and weight in The Netherlands over the years.

Guess who's exactly the average height?

(Not so much the weight I think, but haven't been on a scale in years, so haven't a clue, really;)
FYI: 167,5 cm = 5'6" (180,9 cm = 6 feet)

PARTY-TIME!
Sunday my family celebrated Sinterklaas; the offical Eve is December 5th, but since we all live in different parts of the Netherlands we always get together in the closest weekend for gifts, poems and surprise packages...

This year I was secret santa for my brother Hans and he asked for tigerfeet. Not kidding; that was the only item on his wishlist. Dork. I made him a surprise gift in two parts: first he got a parcel with tiny bits of tiger in it; ears, a bowtie and a tail. In the poem "Sinterklaas" challenged him to wear those during the unwrapping of everyone else's gifts to earn his big tigerfeet. Bwahahahaha.


I wrapped the fluffy tiger feet in candy covered paper and hid them at the bottom of the box.


Then I covered it up so it looked like the box was empty.


I splashed the box with fake blood and added a half eaten arm (with tattoo sleeves).


Finishing touch was a tiger head trophy (munching on a skeleton of Pete, featured in the poem as the tigerslayer) and some other gruesome items.

There is a link below to photos of my brother's response:)


Of course being the nutters that we are, my family doesn't stick to the rule to only buy something for the one person whose name you drew. We go a little crazy. Here are all the presents I'm bringing to the party.


I'm also responsible for all the candy \o/
(Including marzipan and chocolate letters for everyone:)

BAKING!
In between building the surprise package and writing poems I baked 'Pepernoten/Kruidnoten'. From the dough I also made a letter for Ruben, because he's not old enough yet to enjoy the traditional chocolate letters Sinterklaas hands out. *points at icon*
Here's a step by step:

Adding butter and milk to the specially spiced flour (cinnamon and nutmeg are the main ingredients, I bought it ready made;).


Didn't quite get a clump of dough as promised, so I experimented with adding a bit more butter and milk. Eeep.


It worked out in the end and I managed to roll the dough into little balls, pfew.


For my first batch I rolled the letters by hand, they turned out funny, ahem.


So I tried again and cut the letter out with a knife: much better. \o/


It actually looked a little like a chocolate letter:)


Ruben munching on his letter, look at that face!

Want to see more? Here are tons of pictures of our Sinterklaas party (in my photoblog;)

Comments

[aerynvala.livejournal.com]

you and your family and your holiday celebrations are totally my favorite part of the holiday season. I love you sharing these with us :)

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Ahw, that's so nice to hear:)

[sillie]

Love the present you made. All nice and gruesome. :') Also, those pepernoten and letter look yummie. :D

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

That surprise gift worked out so well (even more so because I thought it was a complete failure while I was working on it). I still surprise myself with that baking thing:)

[tanisafan.livejournal.com]

Your brother wearing the tiger ears is now officially the best part of my day, haha!

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

\m/ You know, after he finally got his precious fluffy tiger feet slippers, he wore them for the rest of the day :-D