Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 134

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

I'm not a cook or a baker as you know if you have been here with me for a while, but for one of my advent calendars (I just didn't manage this year), actually almost exactly 15 years ago, I made "Rumschnitten" which translates to "rum slices". They belong to my favorite Christmas treats and are something even I can do if I feel like it.

You can find the original post here if you need more pictures, but here's the recipe (metric).

7 eggs (separated into yolk and egg white)
200 grams of butter or margarine
200 grams of sugar
200 grams of flour
200 grams of grated hazelnuts (I like to use almonds)
200 grams of finely grated baking chocolate

250 grams of powdered sugar
rum (I used whisky because I never have rum at home, but if you want your kids to be able to eat them, just use some other non-alcoholic flavor, it also tastes nice with lemon juice for example)

200° C (preheat!), 10 to 15 minutes.

Cream the sugar and the butter.
Add the yolks, flour, chocolate, and nuts. Without the fluid, this is a pretty heavy dough, be sure to mix well!
Add the stiffly beaten egg white and fold it into the mix. It will feel a little heavy in the beginning, but the dough will be getting smoother, and although it may seem that way, it won't lose much of the fluffiness. Just don't mix too thoroughly.
Spread the dough on a baking tray, about 1 cm high and put it into the oven, for about 10 to 15 minutes.
Mix the powdered sugar with the fluid of your choice - not too much fluid, so it doesn't run - for the icing of the cookies.
When the dough is done, apply the icing, and cut diamonds while everything is still warm.
Enjoy!

How about you? Are you ready for the weekend? A weekend of baking maybe?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week, our spotlight is on Between the Bookends.

Paula from "Between the Bookends" says "I'm Paula, and I'm excited to have you here. This little corner of the internet will be a cozy little oasis for our shared love for all things books and writing.
Think of it as a cozy haven for
- Book reviews & recommendations: Dive into new reads or rediscover old favorites!
- What I'm currently reading: Let's nerd out over books together!
- Book club & Bible study (sometimes!): Grab your coffee, and let's chat!
- Link-ups (sometimes! Quarterly, maybe?), Journaling Prompts, Reading and Writing Supplies and Purchases, Scrapbooking, Digital scrapbooking and Book making (I'm not much for scrapbooking or digital books, but I know many of you are - So we're going to explore away with our Contributor Jennifer Wise from Photo & Story Treasures), and Random Musings - Because who doesn't love a good mix?
- Discussions and friendships: Let's create a community where bookish dreams come true!

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Karin shows an easy way to make a sweet and cozy wreath for your home.

If you are not in Christmas mood yet, I'm sure Lynne's beautifully decorated kitchen will give you a boost.

Amy shares pictures of her trip to Holy Hill with us, so lovely.

Have you ever seen a Christmas tree made from glass bowls? Here's one Ann made this year.

Is December overwhelming for you? Maybe Maria's free December planner printables will help you. 


Let's link up!

You can add links to specific blog posts of yours, but not just to your blog itself. The posts can be new or older and cover any topic you can think of - books, movies, fashion, crafting, thrifting, travel, art ... but only family friendly, please!
Have a look around, visit some of the other blogs and leave a few comments. You might discover something new and exciting!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - Santa Claus

Children have always wanted to know what Santa Claus is doing all year round.
There are different theories. He only gets one day of vacation, December 25th. Santa usually has a beach vacation in summer. He enjoys camping and singing Christmas carols at bonfires. He gets three weeks to relax or to go travelling right after Christmas. What is the right answer?
Let's see what "Santa Claus" from 1925 has to say - or rather show - on this matter (and please don't ask me why I watched the sepia version, I didn't even notice until writing this).

Two children manage to catch Santa when he comes down their chimney and ask him that important question, and although he's on such a tight schedule during this night, he finds the time to tell them.

He starts describing where he lives in the North, "a fairy kingdom bound by vast glaciers, towering ice crags and endless fields of snow", shaken by the North Wind, whose "borders are guarded by Goblins of the deep" (a huddle of walrus in the sea) while "the Monarch of the Arctic watchfully patrols my domain" (a polar bear running and swimming).
Back in his "warm snow castle" built out of snow blocks, he quickly checks toy production and then sits down to work on the naughty and nice list.
Bad news for Billy Smith, because when Santa watched him through his weirdly long telescope, he harrassed a blind street violinist by cutting the leash of his dog which drove some kids to knocking over the violinist's cup for coins. That got Billy a good shaking from Bobby Harrison and his name being scratched out by Santa while Bobby gets an entry for "a live pony and cart".

Next up another product test - no worries, the model train is perfect craftmanship and runs wonderfully!

Then Santa tells the children about training his reindeer and how he found Blitzen as a baby in the snow.
Saturdays are holidays, on those occasions he goes visit the Inuit (of course white people still called them Eskimos back then).
Once a year he gets a visit from the Easter Bunny (you see Santa sitting outside with a bunny on his lap) for a long consultation about which children deserve a nice Easter basket, and a white ptarmigan brings all the letters that children write to him.
He also meets up with fur-clad Jack Frost who makes the snow and ice for the old-fashioned Christmas Santa demands. This is Jack using his magic star wand to create the beautiful ice ferns and flowers on windows in the cities.

On Christmas Eve, Santa climbs into his (amazingly small) sleigh and brings gifts round the world. The Inuit children are the first ones to get theirs.

He also has a warning, though. If you have a chimney that isn't cared for, he can't get into it which means the children in that house don't get gifts (at that point der Dekan urged me to check our chimney while Gundel, several years older and wiser, just looked at him smugly).
Then he says goodbye to the children and heads back to the North where he and his helpers have a well-deserved rest.

The film starts with saying "Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Kleinschmidt present a fantasy actually filmed in Northern Alaska" and ends with "Merry Christmas to all - and to all a Good Night. The End. Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Kleinschmidt".
Who are the Kleinschmidts?

German-born Frank Emil Kleinschmidt emigrated to the USA at the age of 22 and went to Alaska four years later where he raised three daughters with his first wife.
He was an explorer, captain of a merchant freighter and an official photographer and cinematograph for the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, he was even arrested and imprisoned for espionage.
He made documentaries of Arctic hunts and expeditions since 1909, for example during hunting tours for rich tourists, and he also returned to Alaska after the war.
In this case, Mrs. Kleinschmidt is his second wife Teresa Evelyn Fillion, called Essie, who went on expedition with him.

So it's not surprising that parts of "Santa Claus" make you think of one of those documentaries showing people, animals, and the landscape of the North.
Maybe he used some of the material from them or they just gave him the idea to take a Santa Claus costume along for the outdoor shots sometime and then do the studio shots with a different Santa who reminds me a bit of vintage creepy Santa and crying children photos. It's probably the beard whose look has changed a lot in modern times.
According to Wikipedia, Kleinschmidt toured the US around Christmas showing the film and I bet children were shocked by the fact that Santa spent a lot of time watching them through his telescope.
I wonder how much Essie contributed to the film.

The mixture of real Alaska and Christmas narrative makes this a rather charming watch.
By the way, did I fail to mention the tiny fairies dancing and singing Santa to sleep? 
 

Sources:

1. Lea Stans: Obscure Films: "Santa Claus" (1925). On: Silent-ology, December 24, 2020
2. Stella Dagna: Captain F.E. Kleinschmidt's Arctic Hunt. On: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 36, Pordenone, 30 September | 7 October 2017
3. Frank E. Kleinschmidt on Wikipedia
4. Margaret I. MacDonald: Capt. F. E. Kleinschmidt and His Sojourn Among the Animals Peculiar to Northern Climes. In: Moving Picture News 5, 1912, 14, pages 18 - 19 (via The Internet Archive)
5. Captain Frank Emil Kleinschmidt on Geni
6. Frank Emil Kleinschmidt on Find A Grave

Create a snowflake!

I have mentioned several times that I'm not a crafter in the sense of what we call "Basteln" in German. You know, the kind of crafting you learn as a kid. I was the kid who didn't learn it.
One reason was of course - sorry for repeating myself - my strained relationship with glue. Another one was that I had no patience whatsoever for glueing halves of wooden clothespins together to make coasters or struggling with straw to create a crooked star.
I wasn't proud of most of the abominations I was forced to produce at birthday parties or in school - except the owl picture I made by glueing (!) on beans and seeds from a kit my godmother gave me to keep me entertained while I spent a few days with her once. That wasn't all bad and my mother indulged me by hanging it up in a corner next to our wall phone, so you could stare at it while talking.
I still wonder myself where I was hiding my patience (for some crafts) which suddenly seemed to come out in full force when I was already over 40. Okay, there had been a few years of intensive knitting before, too.

My snowflakes or stars cut from paper also weren't heirlooms worth keeping. Usually I went overboard and a last fatal cut destroyed everything. Not that it traumatized me, but I had friends who were practically pros at that kind of stuff and somehow expected me to join in the fun ... that they had.

I can have my own fun with snowflakes, though - virtual ones. Some of mine have been out there for years and I even recognize one or the other.
Do you know the website SnowDays - "It's Always Snowing Here"? Since 2003, millions of virtual snowflakes have been created on this site, about 20 of them are by me, the oldest one from 2010. You can search for them by the name you used and you can save your flakes as image, transparent or as a GIF.
I keep forgetting about this page, then I come back, make one or two flakes, forget about it again, then Flash went away and the site was down for a while, but came back - and so did I!

This is the flake I made today, #15,074,414.
Will you try it, maybe with your children?

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 133

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Tonight is St. Nicholas's night when he goes around to put goodies in children's shoes.
That's not a tradition in your country? Here in Germany, we grow up with the legend of St. Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, who's the reason for children (and often enough grown-ups, too) finding their shoes filled with chocolate, fruit, nuts or even little presents on the morning of December 6. If you don't know the legend, but are interested, follow the link to a very old blog post of mine.
While St. Nicholas - Nikolaus in German - inspired Santa Claus (when Dutch settlers brought Sinterklaas to the USA), he's not the same for us here. We have him and we have the "Weihnachtsmann" (literally "Christmas Man") in some regions and the "Christkind" (literally "Christ Child", the "Christkindl" has also inspired Kris Kringle) in others, just like the Dutch have De Kerstman (same translation) for example or the British have Father Christmas.
In my house, by the way, the role has been taken over by others. Maybe not as saintly, maybe not as competent, but they were and are doing their best.

Ponder / Greebo / Gundel / Der Dekan

How about you? Are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week, our spotlight is on Conversations with an Older Woman.

Penny from "Conversations with an Older Woman" says "My reasons for setting up this new blog is that everything changes, which is no bad thing. I am now writing from the perspective of someone approaching 80 (79 in June) and I have questions such as: how do we negotiate older age; what are the next steps during these latter years; and how do we spend these last few years (yes, I am saying that) to the best of our ability. Indeed, the key question to think about is, how do we make these years the 'best of times' whilst also acknowledging and dealing with our ageing bodies.
So naturally there will be some posts on health issues, but I will also continue to write about films, television, books and visits to art galleries - one of my favourite past times.
Occasionally thrown into the mix will be a post on style, rather than fashion. Plus, if I feel like writing about something serious and/or political I will. I am not separating that out from all the other posts. Always remember with these posts I [am] aiming to generate discussion rather than alienation and discord.
I won't, by the way, be keeping to a timetable as although I like a deadline I also need to concentrate on my health and fitness, plus I have a lot of other writing to do. But there will be a minimum of 3 posts a month and maybe even more.
So, here's to a future that I view optimistically, written by a stylish (rather than fashionable), engaged and curious (about what will happen in the next few years) older woman!

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

If you like seasonal books, you may want to have a look at the list of Christmas books that Lisa put together.

Rena is reminding you that getting your affairs in order may also include your social media and blogs. I'm guilty of procrastinating in this matter myself, are you?

Mireille is sharing some of the favorite things in her November.

Do you need Christmas gift ideas that don't break your budget, but still impress? Nancy has some for you!

Digital well-being is more important than ever these days. You will find a lot of tips and good advice in Melody's post.


Let's link up!

You can add links to specific blog posts of yours, but not just to your blog itself. The posts can be new or older and cover any topic you can think of - books, movies, fashion, crafting, thrifting, travel, art ... but only family friendly, please!
Have a look around, visit some of the other blogs and leave a few comments. You might discover something new and exciting!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - A Christmas Dream

As mentioned on Monday, I want to give each of my December posts a Christmassy touch, and of course that also goes for my selection of silent movies.
Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote about my "Little Lord Fauntleroy" marathon, whose 1980 version is one of Germany's beloved Christmas classics, and how I didn't have the patience for watching the silent movie version with Mary Pickford (how things have changed), so that would be an obvious first choice, right? Wrong. Like the book, that version doesn't end with a Christmas feast.
But are there any silent Christmas movies at all? Luckily, I found two pages which listed several for me and I just needed to pick.

Let's start with something short by a good old friend - Georges Méliès.
It's "La Rêve de Noël" from 1900, "A Christmas Dream".
Usually I would give you the plot, but there really isn't one.

The children are asleep and dream of
Christmas while the nanny keeps watch.

Dance of the toys - granted, some of them are a little
weird and the jester loses his shoe, but ok.

Angels dropping gifts in the chimney. I guess Santa
needed a little break and they offered to help out?

Kids (and the verger?) ringing the bells while
people come out of the snow into the church.

See the old man with the beard? He and another
beggar had been out in the snow, mostly ignored by
the wealthy people entering the building. When he
comes inside, the servants try to throw him out, but
the Christmas spirit made the host drag him (quite
literally) back to the table to give him food and drink.

The children have woken up, it's time for gifts.
I have no idea what kind of gift that huge cat
head is, but I definitely want that!

Gathering around the Christmas tree.

So this dream consists of vignettes which annoyed some people who missed a plot (you may remember narratives were not yet a big thing back then, so I'm not sure what their problem is).
It actually made me think of a picture book for children showing random Christmas scenes that has come to life.
Méliès even included two scenes with poor people as if he wanted to remind us of what Christmas is about.

I'm not saying that it was a masterpiece and there was a lot of (not that amazing) dancing, but I liked seeing the costumes and the lovely sets that were so typical for Méliès (even if they made me wonder about the time we were in).
So I didn't regret investing those incredible four (!) minutes.


Thank you to Sarah Cook for the post "Old movies: a celebration of Victorian Christmas films" on "Film Stories", December 6, 2022!

O Lego tree, o Lego tree ...

... your candles kept falling ohoff, o Lego tree, o Lego tree, they really drove me nuhuuts."
Actually, this project went rather quickly. Although some of the steps had to repeated for the different branch levels, it wasn't boring at all, maybe because I did it in several rather short sessions.
If you wonder, I let den Dekan join me in two of them, but the first time I forgot to take the camera to the table and he left me when I went to get it, and the second time I had the camera, but the batteries decided to die just that moment when I was about to take a picture of him checking the bags.
As there wasn't a box for him to sit in, he got bored rather quickly and left the room after making my desk chair crash by trying a new wide jump record from its top.

Here's the tree now. I really like it.
At one point, I thought I had make a big mistake and took the single levels apart from one another, but in the end I found that it needed an open ring instead of a plate in one spot (which absolutely made sense if you're not a numpty like me 🤪).
You can make one big tree or a smaller and a really small one, therefore there are pieces left over and I had grabbed the wrong one.
And of course I kept losing the candles until I finally got smart enough to leave them off until the end.
If you make the two trees, one of them has the candles and the other has all the baubles, red and other colors. On the big one, the baubles are all red per the instructions. Not on mine. I put them where I found space. Much better.

When exactly the tradition of the Christmas tree in private homes began isn't known. It was not unusual for different cultures to bring evergreen into the houses in winter.
There are several records for fir trees being put up without them being called Christmas trees explicitly before, but in 1527 the term turns up in an existing document.
Whatever the exact year is, the Christmas tree had been around in German speaking regions for a long time.

Since the mid-18th century, it was mentioned more and more, and in the 19th century, the tradition had already spread to Austria and then went to New England, England, France, Italy, The Netherlands, and Russia.
At first, trees were decorated with sweets, apples and nuts some of which were painted in silver and gold. The children were then allowed to plunder the edible decorations off the tree.
The legend goes that a glassblower in Lauscha, a town which is still known for its glass art and Christmas ornaments - which now come in all kinds of shapes from traditional to very modern - couldn't afford apples and nuts for his tree and made them from glass instead. True or not, the first written record of glass ornaments is in an order book from 1848.

You may also have heard the idea to hang a Christmas tree from the ceiling - upside down to save space - for example to discourage pets from getting into it.
That's actually not a new idea, but I don't even want to get into the theories who did it first or maybe not or why.
It's not something I'm going to be doing as I have high ceilings and have no interest at all at having someone put a hook up there for me, but mostly I just don't like the look. I want my tree on the ground where der Dekan and Gundel can wreak havoc easily. It's fun for the whole family, and after I made sure they can't get caught in the string of lights, I'm fine with picking up gnomes and "pineapple slices" all the time even if I moan a lot about it!

This picture is from last year,
I'm behind with my tree decorating.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

Nostalgia - Advent calendar

I didn't manage to do an advent calendar on the blog last year and there won't be one this year either, but like last year I'll be trying to stick to Christmassy themes in the posts that I will have.
What would be better to start with than the history of the advent calendar?

I already wrote about that in 2010, but I think it won't hurt to go into again.
The idea of an advent calendar first emerged in the 19th century, but not in printed form. People made chalk marks on the door and children cleaned one off every day or they hung a religious picture on the wall every day.
There are other ways to count down, like Wichern's advent wreath which had 24 candles instead of just four like today or advent candles like this one.

There are different opinions on when the first printed calendar came out, 1902 or 1903. 
Anyhow, they didn't look like the ones we know today yet. They were from cardboard on which children glued little pictures.

The ones we know, with the pictures behind little doors, came up after 1920. At first, the calenders often showed a village, town or forest in the snow. My first one, which I used for several years until the cardboard doors had really suffered and didn't want to stay closed anymore, had a forest scene with critters and of course glitter. Glitter was a part of Christmas. The door for the 24th was a double one which I thought was fabulous.
I got such a calendar again as a grown-up and used it for several years, but sadly it got lost or I might still be using it now.

The ever popular chocolate filled calendar came out in 1958 for the first time. I had one or the other of those, such as my Discworld calendars.

Nowadays, advent calendars come in all kinds of shapes, with pralines, toys, vouchers, even jewelry!
They come as puzzle and adventure books, audiobooks with a story for each day, as online calendars or on the radio. I admit not having given up hope yet to win something from my favorite online calendar which has a giveaway for every day.
I also love my Jacquie Lawson online advent calendars and am looking forward to the one for this year which is a Christmas village. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just love them for the mood.
And of course I got handmade advent calendars and I made them myself (never a hand sewn one because I was allowed to quit the optional craft class in school before I had to learn how to make one of those).

This year I decided to go classic and vintage inspired by getting this calendar.
I usually avoid buying new things with glitter, but hadn't even noticed it had glitter when I ordered it. Also, for an advent calendar - I admit I was surprised in a good way, and of course I don't plan to throw it away at the end of the year, but keep using it.