Mia's Memories: Season 1 Episode 2 Part 1/2

Dear friends,
I had it all planned out this morning: We were to all come downstairs like perfect little angels, help make pannenkoeken, eat them gracefully, and help clean up like perfect children. Next we would get freshened up, (although most of the "freshening would have been done while we were in our pajamas) and we would, while dressed in stylish wonders, go on a bike ride, and I would pull our little puggle in the doggy trailer. And naturally, I would be filming all of this.

It was all perfect, the only problem was that we dropped off our "little puggle" at a kennel so that we could go to Belgium. In terms of movie-making, this was a perfect chance for an interesting topic. I have only made one "episode" of my "TV show," but I was beginning to figure out that if I tried to plan what to film, where to film, and what interesting things we could do, it never happened because aside from my parents being the bosses, life, I have found, is too unpredictable for me to plan ahead.

I woke up this morning, hopeful for an interesting day, and my hopes became reality: our day was VERY interesting. But not all of my hopes were fulfilled. In the Belgium I had dreamed up, the entire reason we had went was to film, and although my parents were more than willing to stop to film, my actors were less excited, although cooperative.

I have come to find in blogging, movie making, and in plays, that my family members can never value the characters that they play more than the people they really are, and although very irksome at times, this is to be valued, I think.

All that is to say is that I learned a lot today, and although I hoped to present more today, life in my family cannot be tamed, and I have to "go with the flow" without resistance.

Knitting and Homeschool: Two VERY Different Pieces of News

Hello! A very dear friend generously gave me some very interesting yarn before we moved.  Our dear friend taught us how to use the yarn and Sadie and I started making lovely ruffle scarves with this special yarn.  Two months later, we are here in the Netherlands, and we are finding the same special yarn everywhere!  If our friend hadn't taught us how to make the amazing scarves, we would be in a pickle!  And it would be an especially painful pickle, because the scarves are incredible.

I love knitting! And this new pattern will help me be able to continue cranking out scarves with zeal!

In other news, you may already know this, but in the Netherlands, education for children is compulsory.  Therefore, you need to seek special permission to homeschool here and it is not certain that you will be given permission.   On Wednesday, my dad met with the local officials and we were given permission to homeschool!
To celebrate, of course, we had to bake something!   We brought with us from home a limited number of cake mixes so we only use them when there is something to celebrate!  The cake we baked was featured in Mia's Memories (see previous post) Season 1 Episode 1, and I forgot to mention why we made the cake in the episode.

So, now we will be homeschooling for this next school year, which we think is wonderful!  And tomorrow is Saturday! Who wouldn't be joyful!

Mia's Memories: Season 1 Episode 1

Hello! I'm sorry for the delay in posts, but I do hope this post makes up for it. You see, the main reason for the delay is because my sibling have been working tirelessly on our TV series - Mia's Memories -  so we've all been preoccupied.

This episode, the first one, is by now means a classic. It is full of errors, poor footage, but it is real. The entire movie really happened and we didn't do every thing we did for show. We would have done it anyway, and most of it is by no means acting. I hope you enjoy it, as we all worked so hard on it. We hope to complete the next episode in a week or less.

From Budgeting to Movie Making: My Day

My day started out normal enough. I drew up a diagram for my budget and scheduled the use of every Euro from now until Christmas.  I also tackled another movie trailer for an upcoming movie that I'm hoping to make.  Normal things... right?  Well if you find this odd, I am certainly glad that I didn't include what I did for the rest of the day:~)

As for budgeting, well, every day if we complete our chores, we receive 1 Euro.  A Euro is equivalent to $1.30, however, this changes daily and currently the value of the euro is going down. . . c'est la vie! Compared to my mom in chart-making, I am abhorrent, but I used this opportunity as an experiment to practice making graphs, charts, etc.

50 45 35 30 Slippers 25 20 15 SoEfS 10 7 Owl in Flight Earrings 5 4 Orange Owl Earrings 3 2 1

I’m Saving Up For:

·      Slippers (spending) 25 euros

·      SoEfS (code word for: Christmas) 12 euros           

·      Offering

·      Various attractions (spending)                  

·      Owl in flight earrings from pewter shop (spending) 5 euros (OwlinFlightEarrings)

·      Orange owl earrings from Claire’s (spending) 3 euros (OrangeOwlEarrings)

·                                                         

Weekly Distribution of Funds

Sunday	Offering
Monday	Spending
Tuesday	Christmas
Wednesday	Spending
Thursday	Christmas
Friday	Spending
Saturday	Christmas

Well, that was a lot of work!  Now for our movie trailer. . .enjoy!  

Something I've Been Working on...

Hello! Usually, on Fridays we have "field trip" days, where we go explore the Netherlands, but today it was heavily raining, and we decided to go to the library and stay local.

My mom has been reading, and in the meantime, we children got seriously into a round of Catland. As you probably know, in Catland our stuffed animals have their own blog, Not Yet Caught. In this world, we tried to bring their blog to life, but in the end it got shunted aside to a page on my blog instead of existing on its own.

So, Sadie, Ella, Abe and I have started saying that in Catland, their blog is hugely popular, blah-blah blah, so eventually it became that our stuffed animals would post couplets on their blogs- TV shows that had only two episodes, and I worked on a trailer for one of these couplets.

I am a very poor movie maker and we don't have very good resources here to make a professional looking film, but it'll do for my purposes.

(I would have posted it on the Not Yet Page, but it was simply too fun an opportunity to miss!)

I look at Grass in a New Light: I Learn to Mow

Hello. I thought to start out this rather odd post, I'd play a little guessing game.




Can you guess what this is?

Good job! You're right, it's grass. This post is about how I started to look at grass in a whole new light.

I guess I got a little further away from nature (and grass!) when I realized that I was allergic to it. Before then, I was a plant-o-maniac, and my room looked like a green house. Although I had not a green thumb, but a black thumb, I loved plants and every dying plant made me want to cry. I dreamed of trimming the hedge all by myself, mowing the lawn, etc. however, then I realized that I was allergic. I tried not to let it sap my enthusiasm, but it stunk.

Well, now to the optimistic part. As we moved here, we got a garden that required a lot more than weeding and mowing once a week. It was a miniature maze garden with beds of dwarf cherry trees, peonies, and other beautiful plants.

The maze needed trimming.  The peonies needed to be staked.  The weeds were simply overtaking the lavender.  And of course, the lawn needed to be mowed.

So my mom, already busy with homeschooling and housework simply didn't have enough time to take care of our garden, much less the grass. So, we got a lawn mower and I was given the honors.

I loved it!

Although our lawn mower is manual, and has its faults, this is just one more useful activity that I can choose to spend my free time doing.

Pizza!

Hello! For the past few days I've been asking my mom if I could make homemade pizza, but for one reason or another, we couldn't. But today my mom offered the idea and I immediately snatched it up!  I ran into the kitchen and searched for a recipe. After much thought and advice from my mom, I selected a recipe that we've used before and enjoyed.

First, throw together all the dry ingredients.

Then mix 'er up...

Add the water...

Add the oil and honey...

After you mix it... let it rise.

Spred it out...

Bake the crust, throw on some toppings, bake it again and there it is!

Just look at the glory of that pizza! I am passionate about (cheese) pizza, and this pizza was a huge hit for me! My family is happy and full, we finished off our night by watching a couple episodes of Rick Steve's travel shows. What more could one want?

(For the recipe, go to here for a nearly the same recipe, or email me at miasusan@comcast.net for the differences)

Bye!

Hot Cocoa: Then and Now

For my family hot chocolate stands for many things. It stands for Christmas Eve, opening the gifts we all made for each other, it stands for cold winter days, when we're chilled to the bone from playing in the snow, and it stands for fun times shared with our stuffed animals.

Today my mom is making our classic hot cocoa mix, and I'd like to take this opportunity to compare our hot chocolate making process before we knew that we were moving, and right now.

The first time I posted about this was in November....

Oh Yes! I used my delightful Mug! Bless you hot cocoa mug!

Oh man! November CAN be bleak! But June in the Netherlands can be bleak too I guess...

The Second time I posted about hot cocoa was on A Photo Guide to My Day. Yes... but unfortuanately only the first twenty pictures are of making hot cocoa.

The third and last time that I posted about the hot cocoa was on My Day in 20 Minutes.

Today, for snack during homeschool, we had hot cocoa and some delicous rolls with chocolate chips in them. The hot cocoa is still as good as ever, and I'm dying to have another mug full. In the meantime, I have several book reviews to write!


Tot ziens!

(pronounced: tote zeens)
(translation: good bye in Dutch)

Raindrops on Roses

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things"


Perhaps you recognize this verse from the movie, The Sound of Music. I love these beautiful words, but I, like my family, don't really feel afraid of storms. As one of my favorite books, A Wrinkle in Time,  states, "Wild nights are my glory!" and I most certainly agree.


Tonight, I was working on a homework assignment when Sadie, Ella, and Abe came in. You see, my room has become the headquarters for al of the children's meetings, and although I'm proud of it, at the moment I was quizzical and slightly annoyed. Then they pointed out the storm. 


It was a big one, with great gales of wind and water sloshing everywhere. In our genes, there is a love for storms, so we got out our stuffed animals and started making camp for them in the open window sills. 

Next, as a result of the open windows, we got cold so we piled into my wonderful, queen, bed. Sadie and I wrote and Ella and Abe chatted through their stuffed animals.

As I said before, we got cold, and after the blankets did nothing, we went to go get a help that we could trust... hot cocoa! We sipped our hot cocoa, chatted, and basically thought about the Sound of Music, and what we used to do when we drank hot cocoa.


What can I say? I've already said it in this post and in another post: bad weather = need for comfort. Although I love storms, one of the reasons I love them is because of the ways I attempt to get comfort through them. As I said in an earlier post called Comfort Food, sad times call for comfort food- which for us depends on what exactly seems comforting at the moment.


Tonight for dinner we're having 

• Tortellini Soup
•  Good Old American Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
• Hot coco!

I know... it's nothing fancy, but for a rainy night... it'll do. 

Altogether, this meal was a hit for our family, and we are all thoroughly comforted and full!

Pannenkoeken Recipe

Hello! This is Mia Susan posting to you live from the Netherlands. The Netherlands has had a great influence on my whole famiy: the way people conserve energy, the way the Dutch  conserve space, and so forth. However, today I must say that food is the main topic.

Firstly, I must state the difference between pancakes and pannenkoeken (pan-uh-koke-uh.) Pancakes are a form of flat cake that are sweet, cakey, and are usually served with butter and syrup. But pannenkoeken are similar to Swedish pancakes and crepes in the way that they are large, flat, and served with stroep. (strope) Stroep is Dutch for syrup in the way that pannenkoeken is Dutch for pancakes, but, as with pannenkoeken, there is a critical difference.

For one thing, stroep is much thicker, sweeter, and a drizzle is more that enough for an extra sweet serving. If an American put the normal  amount of syrup for them in stroep on pannenkoeken, well, after all their teeth decayed, it wouldn't  be pretty.

Recently, my family found the most wonderful pannenkoeken recipe ever, and we like to serve it with Nutella, powdered suger, stroep, and the occasional slagroom (slog-room) or whipped cream.

You will need :

•  A non-stick pan the size of your desired pannenkoek (makes 1 large/ 2 medium/ 4 small)
• 1 cup flour
• salt
• 2 large eggs or 3 medium eggs
• 1 cup milk 
• at least 1/4 cup butter or margarine

Put the flour and salt in a bowl, make a well in the middle and add melt the beaten eggs. Mix into a smooth batter. Add the rest of the milk. Melt half the butter in a heavy skillet. Pour the batter into it. Turn the pancakes frequently, each time add some butter. They should become golden brown and crisp at the sides.

Enjoy!




These pannenkoeken have sustained us through some pretty hard times, and I know they'll do the same for you! I like to add a ton of powdered sugar, Nutella, and a drizzle of stroep, and then I like to roll it up, put lots more stroep on the top and cut it up! Now that's my kind of taco :~)


(No credit to me!!!!! All credit must go to our genius cookbook, Dutch Cooking by Helen A. M. Halverhout!)

Not Yet Caught

Hi! I'm sorry that I haven't been posting lately, but we've been really busy lately. For one thing, my mom is being very serious about homeschooling, and in the spare time that we children have, we play our favorite game, Catland.

This game is, in actuality, a world, and our stuffed animals are key. Right now, the AbeLand soldiers are taking a leaf out of Hitler's book. The only ones brave enough to resist
are our seven favorite it animals. However, resistence comes with a cost, and everyday the dictator of Abeland sends his minions out to capture our stuffed animals. But everyday our stuffed animals escape yet again, and they gave hope to the planet by way of their blog Not Yet Caught, and so, for fun today, Sadie and I made an actual blog which we all could post on our animals' behalves.

This was all fine and dandy, but my parents put their feet down. I could barely manage my blog and my puggle's blog, and so I probably shouldn't get a third, they said. So, I decided to organize the information tthat we published on Not Yet Caught instead of blogging.

With that said, I'd just like to apoligize for being a bad blogger, and give out a few email addresses.

1. amywhuffer@gmail.com this goes to Ella's favorite stuffed animal's email. Ella loves getting emails, so feel free to record this bit of information.

2. kittymeowie@gmail.com this goes to Kitty's (my BFF, or stuffed animal) email. Feel free to ask any questions.

Bye!

Mia

P.S I'll publish a page with more information A.S.A.P