To have a fairy cottage in your kitchen might sound like an great idea, but if you have fairy twins living in the cottage you might want to find a better location, because it can be quite noisy, and at times the smell is unbelievable.

Ebbe reminds me a lot of my son when he was a boy. Besides taking his flying lessons, he is experimenting with recipes for healing potions for plants and animals. Yesterday I had been into town to do the last shopping for the Winter Solstice celebration, and when I returned home the smell in my kitchen was horrifying. To be honest I was very tired, and I wasn’t prepared to get home to a kitchen table field with all sorts of nasty things like; mugs with worms, chopped up bird feathers mix with butter, dead spiders in mint gel, and I will never forget the bottles of rotten apple juice mixed with eggs in my refrigerator. Ebbe had been experimenting in my kitchen, and it was like having a flashback of what my kitchen was like, at the time my son was eight years old. He also went through a time where he was very curious about mixing things in my kitchen. I remember him trying to make poison that would kill ants, or how he created a smelly bomb. I was horrified to find a rotten apple under his bed, that he had been studying to see the colors of the mold that was growing on the disgusting brown apple. I know I sound a bit grumpy, but sometimes the kids are a handful!

Selene’s activities might not smell as bad as Ebbe’s does, but the noise is unbearable. She is turning into a little Dragonian, working all day long on creating things from kaputs. She is always looking forward to the weekends when my daughter comes home. Selene will stay by her side from the moment she arrives, and most of the weekend they are in another world creating jewelries. When Danagonia isn’t here Selene will join my husband in the garage where he has his workshop. She is leaning how to use all his tools, she knows how to switch power sockets, and how to change the oil on my car. She even managed to repair our coffee machine. From time to time my husband complains that his tools have gone missing. Then we start a search in the house, and usually we find the tools in dark corners of the house where Selene has been crafting.

My old cooking journal

I write some of the recipes my self, other are scraps from magazines.

Selene is very fascinated with my old cooking journal, where I save all my best recipes. I have promised her, that I will help her to start her own cooking journal. I have found a nice journal in a local bookshop. I bought the journal and had it wrapped up for her, as a gift for the Winter Solstice celebration. The Winter Solstice has always been very special to me, because I was born on this day. I have also found a gift for Ebbe! Last time I went to Silkeborg I went into a small bookshop which sells antiquarian and rare books. I know the owner of this bookshop very well, and I always look forward to visit him! I asked him if he could find a book about herbs. He had several books on the subject. I decided on a book titled: My Favorite Herb Mixes. The book is a first edition from 1980, so it’s not an old book, but I think it will be perfect for Ebbe to start with! Later I will go to the Whispering Library to find recipes from Nidlongdir, but I think we better start with some human recipes, so that I can help him to get started.

My Favorite Herb Mixes

The herbal book has nice illustrations!

I have written my grandmother’s recipe for pepper cookies on the first page in Selene’s journal to get her started gathering cooking recipes. I hope we will spend many hours trying out all kind of recipes in my kitchen, even if some of them won’t smell as delicious as pepper cookies!

Selene's Cooking Journal decorated with scraps.

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 ½ cup flour
1 egg
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp. Ginger
¾ tsp. Cardamom
½ tsp. Cinnamon
¼ tsp. White pepper

Butter and sugar are stirred. The other ingredients are stired in. Dough rolled into finger-thick rods is kept separated by baking paper. Rest the dough overnight. Cut into pieces of approx. ½ inch. Bake at 200 degrees around. 8-10 min.

The Winter solstice celebrating takes place every year at the Gnomes Inn, and in the garden behind Apple Hold Castle. This celebration is a very old gnomish celebration that goes back to the time when the gnomes still lived in Valhalla. At that time there were no gifts, Santa Claus wasn’t born, and pancakes were a recipe jet to be invented. The gnomes have always been crafters, and they relied on fire for many of their crafts. Fire would provide them with light and heat, so when the dark time of the year came they were afraid that the sun wouldn’t return, and therefore they had a celebration to worship the sun. Later in history the gnomes were sent across the bridge called Bifrost, to live in the human world. Some of the gnomes chose to live among the humans, other preferred to live in the nature. The gnomes’ relationship with the humans was a bit strained, because the humans believed that the gnomes had magic powers, and therefore the gnomes had to be very carful not to get caught by a human. The humans thought that the gnomes were able to make gold and if they could catch a gnome they were sudden that their fortune was done. This was of cause a misunderstanding, because gnomes are not alchemists. The gnomes had bad experiences with the humans, so as time went by most of them retreated into the woods, where they started to build houses in hollow trees, or in old fox caves. A few gnomes stayed behind on the farms. Some humans liked the gnomes and started to treat them better, they provided them with food and beer, to make them stay as protectors of the animals on their farms.

There was one celebration that the humans and gnomes had in common, the humans called this celebration Yule, but among the gnomes it was called the Winter Solstice.

The gnomes, who lived on the farms, liked some of the humans’ customs, especially the part of it that had to do with food, and decorations! So to please the humans the gnomes started to bring small gifts to the human children, in the hope that they would get some of the delicious food in return. In other parts of the world the children had started to believe in Santa Clause, but that is another story!

As I told you the gnomes also liked the humans Yule decorations, so the gnomes on the farms started to create decoration for the Winter Solstice. They traded the decorations with the gnomes living in the woods, and as time went by the gnomes had their own kind of decorations with symbols of the sun. Later they had decorations with moons and stars to honor King Winter. The humans’ think they invented the Christmas tree, but that is actually not true, it was an old custom among the Apple Fairies to burn a large wooden oak log to worship the god Thor. The fairies are known to be very competitive, and this celebration actually turned into the worst disaster in the history of the Apple Fairies. The fairies couldn’t get the oak logs big enough, and eventually they brought an entire oak tree into Leafenheim city and set it on fire, with the horrifying result that the whole city burned down. Only Apple Hold Castle and The Blue Bells Inn was saved. This tragedy made the King proclaim that it was forbidden to burn oak logs! Instead he would provide the city with a beautiful and very rare tree, that the whole city could decorate in the honor of Thor. The next winter the king swung his wand in the garden behind Apple Hold Castle, and a Fir tree fell down from the North Star. The Apple Fairies had never seen a tree like this, they gathered its cones, and the next spring they went around the world to spread the seeds from the Fir tree, to make sure there would be enough Fir trees to celebrate the Winter Solstice in the feature. The King had heard about the gnomes decorations for the Winter Solstice, and sent a knight into the woods to trade some decorations for some Fir cones. The knight came back with a big sack of decorations for the city’s Fir tree. The Apple Fairies are not very good at crafts, so they decided to decorate the tree with apples and flowers as well as the gnome’s decoration. At present time they only decorate their Fir tree with winter roses, magic stars, snow, and fairy dust.

This year the Fir tree at the Gnomes Inn has been decorated with traditional sun, moon and star decorations. The patterns are very old and from the book Dragonian Cave Patterns published by Plotka Hildur, who gathered all the old patterns in order to save them for the feature generations of gnomes. You will find a printable version for human Christmas trees, or for the decoration of your house at the Gnomes Inn. You can also get them at Kaputs & Recycling in the Kaputs Caves in Dragonia.

Happy Winter Solstice!

This is some of the Winter Solstice decorations you will find at the Gnomes Inn.

The cones are decorated with symbols of the sun.

 This is a moon and star decoration in the Dragonian colors.

 You can download the decoration for free at:

www.nidlongdir.com/winter_solstice_decor...

If you would like to share your ideas for building fairy houses and your photos, please join the Nidlongdir Miniature Group at: nidlongdir.ning.com/group/fairyminiature...