Two of my favourite places to visit..... And the winners of the Pay it Forward Giveaway!!

Now it's time to let you know a little bit more about me and the things I like.....

I love to travel, if I could I would do it all the time!!! I like all the places I've visited so far, among them Berlin, London, several places in Spain, Germany and Italy. But ofcourse I have some favourites..... My favourite city to visit is Paris and my favourite province/country is Ontario, Canada. It's been so long since I've actually been to them, but with a little luck I'll be making trips to both of them in 2009.... !!!

My love for Canada started 11 years ago: I was 18, turning 19, and visited Ontario, Canada for an International Youth Exchange Camp of the Lions. My I turned 19 during my visit and my hostfamily was so sweet: they had actually ordered a birthdaycake for me!!

Since then I have been back twice, the last time was about 7 years ago shortly after Lisa moved to Waterloo. Then 5 years ago Lisa came to visit me with her friend Andrea.

Now I have booked my plane ticket and I will be visiting them in June 2009!

I'll be going to Canada for two weeks in which I would like to stay one week in the proximity of Waterloo, where Lisa lives, and for the other week I want to rent a car and drive up to Montreal.

On the way there I want to stop at a small place called Sainte-Marthe...

I have already visited the beautiful Niagara Falls all the times I've been in Canada,

but probably will go there this time too!!!

If you have some suggestions of places that I should visit, please feel free to mention them here!

My other great love is Paris....

I lived very near to Paris for 6 months when I worked as a hotel receptionist at

Disney's Sequioa Lodge Hotel at Disneyland Paris. During this time I lived in Magny-le-Hongre and tried to visit Paris as often as possible.

It's been almost 7 years since I came back to Holland and I haven't been back since.
I am however planning on going to Paris for a long weekend this year, so when I saw this list of things to do in Paris over at Dorie Greenspans' blog I printed it out immediately!

Again for suggestions feel free to leave me a message!! I have already done the touristic things like visiting the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, Notre Dame, etc.

Now on to the most important part of this post: the winners of the Pay it Forward Giveaway.

I used the Random Integer Generator to come up with 3 lucky winners.....

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:3 13 1
Timestamp: 2009-02-21 00:35:18 UTC

Congratulations Marie, Peggy and Steph!

TWD Rewind: Black and White Banana Loaf plus a Pay it Forward Giveaway

First of all let me apologize to those of you that came here today looking for
Devils Food White Out Cake that was picked as this weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie
by Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater. I didn't make it....



I hope to be making this recipe someday in the near future, as it is featured on the cover of Baking from my Home to Yours, but for now I couldn't.
I was missing one essential tool for this recipe: a thermometer that reaches up to
180 degrees Celsius and my budget was too tight to buy one this week.
So I asked our allmighty TWD-leader Laurie if I could please do a rewind.
Lucky for me her answer was:

Marthe,


Feel free to do a rewind. No worries there.
Thanks for asking in advance though, I appreciate it!


xo~ Laurie




So this week I made the Black and White Banana Loaf (pages 232 of 'Baking from my Home to Yours' by Dorie Greenspan) that was made by my fellow TWDers earlier and picked by Ashlee of A Year In The Kitchen for the 5th of August 2008. The recipe can be found here.




I substituted the nutmeg with cinnamon and added 1/3 cup of
toasted pecans to the chocolate mixture.

I accidentally ended up with a bit more than half of the batter mixed up with chocolate,
which is why my loaf is so dark.

Also I had way too much fun swirling and got carried away,
so the marble effect is a bit lost due to over-swirling...


O well... At least it tasted great! Can´t wait to let my coworkers try this one tomorrow!

A while ago I saw a post over at Natalia's blog about a giveaway called Pay it Forward.
I entered, thinking I would never win since I never do win anything, but guess what... I won!

I thought Natalia's explanation of the giveaway was perfect, so I just copied an pasted it here.....

I did change the dates ;)

There are so many lovely giveaways in blogland, bloggers eagerly commenting and abuzz with the excitement of winning an unexpected gift, but that’s it. Someone wins, and then the generosity comes to a screeching halt and we go on with our lives. Nice, but lacking in momentum.

This giveaway is a little different, however, because the “receivers” are also to become “givers”, if you will. In fact, that’s the most important rule of the game…

The rules are simple: I will send three people who leave a comment on this post a handmade gift within the next 365 days. I am willing to post anywhere in the world, so don’t let that stop you from commenting.

The catch is that you must have a blog and be willing to do the same thing….
The original rules stipulate that it’s to be the first three to leave comments are to win
a little love, but I don’t so much like that because it makes it seem all “rush rush”
and “hurry” and “let’s be in a race to be winners!”, and this isn’t about competition or running
to beat anything or anyone.

So I'll randomly select three winners out of the ones who will answer to my post by February 20st at 23.59 Amsterdam time and I'll announce the winners February 21st.

P.S. Check out my new blog: My Sewing Adventures....

Awards.....

A while ago Shelby of The Live and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch bestowed the honour upon me of giving me another award: Triple Award! Upon reading her post I felt extremely flattered that a warm an friendly person like Shelby wrote such nice words about me!





Yesterday I was lucky enough to receive two awards from Peggy of Pantry Revisited, the first one being the Triple Award and the second one is the Über Amazing Blog! Award.


So here are the rules for both awards:
1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

There are a lot of great blogs out there who also already received these awards. Therefor I tried to pick 10 people out of my favourite blogs (and whom are also regular visitors to my blog) who hadn't already received these!!

And the nominees for the Triple Award and the Über Amazing Blog! Award in no particular order are...... (I know, very corny but I just couldn't resist using this line!!):

• Marie of A Year From Oak Cottage
• DP of Blazing Hot Wok
• Steph of Obsessed With Baking
• Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes
• Liz of Cake or Death
• Maris of In Good Taste
• Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina
• Kristin of This Week In Baking
• Wendy of Pink Stripes
• Jamie of My Baking Addiction

P.S. What do you think of my new look???