♥

Apartment

2012-01-19T09:38:00.000+01:00

You might remember that Christmas and the time leading up to it is one of my favorite times a year, plus all the decorating, crafting and wrapping that goes along with it. New Year´s Eve is ok too, but come January 1st, I crave spring and first flowers and mild weather. Now, I know that isn´t reality (as Dani never grows tired of reminding me "January?! Why, that´s when the real winter only begins!")...but my body and mind, exhausted from lack of sunshine and light simply cannot accept it. So the beginning of the year not only marks the time of good resolutions for the new year, but mainly the whole 'bring spring in' fest. That´s when I take down all the Christmas and winter related decorations and fairy lights and start deep cleaning the whole house. Spring cleaning? Bring it on! It seems that this is the only time a year I´m motivated to really get down to it, de-cluttering included. In fact, our guest-room is full of stuff... there just seems so much of random stuff that we accumulate each year but also a LOT of things from times past, like old furniture and stuff from my sweetie´s school and university days and an assortment of random books from said time. This time I´m chucking it. I´d chuck it all out but I´m including Dani in the decision progress, so we might hold on to a lot more unnecessary things than needed (of course, he might say the same about some of my essential decorating props ;) ). We haven´t even started to go through the basement yet! There are a few things I have to add to the pile in the guest room but then I need to start sorting trough the pile (trash? goodwill? clothes to donate? recycling?...).

Aside from all that, I bring in flowers (or in my case, Dani brought them home for me, Cpt. Awesome that he is!). I love hyacinths, especially the white ones. I think they smell best. They are just so fragrant and turn the whole room into a spring meadow for your nose!

These things really help a bit when getting the gray-day blues out here but thinking that spring won´t come for the next 3 months or so makes me really ~~want to move to a sunny island~~ quite upset. Aalen and the area surrounding it is one area that always blooms latest... it´s just too cold. I´m always fighting hard against the 'Flee! Flee this place while you can!'-urge that´s surfacing particularly strongly within me each year at this time ;).
But one of my resolutions for this year is to actually feel happy about living here. I don´t know, I just have a hard time adjusting to this place and that´s never happened to me before. I felt much more at home in Kensington, MD, SLC or in various different places around the globe. I really don´t get it. The one thing that always saves me from going insane here is Dani (on the other hand, if it weren´t for him, I´d still have my job and not live here at all!). Look, I´m blabbing and rambling on again... and no wonder, I just looked outside where it is only slightly less dark than inside (need to turn on the lights...) and it´s raining!

Well, I hope you´re all doing great. Let me know when/how/if you start your spring cleaning and/or decluttering. Any savvy tips for making it go faster? Making it fun?

Here are some pics to get an impression (hm, I should take a picture of the chuck-out-pile, too...):

Spring! On my table! :)

The kitchen...

...with a close-up of the two awesome, homemade cooking oils Bine gave us for Christmas!

The newly arranged living room. I love it. It´s cozier this way... Yay for moving furniture around!

PS: I´m selling some of my art for the lack of space. It´s old but who cares? I´ll be posting pictures soon.

Mädelsweihnachtsfeier

2012-01-18T16:48:00.000+01:00

... and another picture, this time of our annual, traditional get-together with the girls!

Cookieeees!!
(Dec. 23, 2001)

Christmas 2011

2012-01-18T16:19:00.001+01:00

Well hello there, and happy 2012 to you all!
Here are some belated pictures of Christmas Eve at my parents´ house... . We had a great time, hope you all did too!

Caught in the act...

Bine working hard in the kitchen

Soft kitty, sleepy kitty...

Our traditional family Christmas Eve dish: Hawaii Toast

Presents, presents!

Mom´s candles

PS: And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the best Sister-in-law ever, Stephi!! I love you :)!

Merry Christmas

2011-12-22T21:05:00.000+01:00

Christmas Tree 2011

2011-12-13T18:38:00.000+01:00

Because we won´t be here for Christmas, we didn´t get a tree this year. Instead, we used our little bonsai as our little Christmas tree. All the presents we´ve gotten for each other and others are underneath it (or should I say surrounding it?) and it looks very Christmas-y.

Mini Tree-House Progress

2011-11-25T16:19:00.002+01:00

The little Treehouse all dressed up for Christmas...

You can see some 'before' pictures here in this old post.

Back online...

2011-11-14T12:38:00.000+01:00

Dani saved me. Over a month ago my computer started acting up and freezing at random times (it´s not like he is my toes... so no reason to do that). At first I thought it was my sreen but it was real trouble. After a while it would not even start the my Windows program. My sweet Dani checked it out and came to the conclusion that I needed a new computer or buy pieces of vital hardware (which wouldn´t make that much sense with my old computer). I love new computers ;). I am really stingy when it comes to buying new compuers, though. Just like with cars, I don´t feel like it´s worth to spend money on (c´mon...I´d rather spend it on worthwile things, things that are of true value and last a while. New clothes or fabric or something... girl stuff in general). So Dani checked with his company and every once in a while they throw out used, high-tech, computers and replace them with new ones. Since these computers are their main tools, they used to be VERY expensive. The end of the story is that I got a new (used) computer, 3 times as fast and effective as my old one for 25 € ! Wooo-hooo! (I won´t mention that the tower is almost twice the size of my old one... I call it the Godzilla)

Since my last blog entry, we´ve had a nice Halloween Dinner, had a friend from the US visit for a while and painted some of our furniture, been to the Temple where we met up with Eve and Samuel, and, the Winter decorations are up... the official Christmas additions will come out after Thanksgiving.

Jen and I

Paint party (it all started with the living room table ... and spread)

Mantlepiece

I found this nest on the sidewalk, empty. It was so perfect, so I took it home with me to dress it up.

Yaaaay, glitter!

The World in Orange Hues

2011-10-06T11:38:00.000+02:00

This year´s Halloween / Fall decorations are up. Not much this year, as we´re taking things slowly (, the old-married-couple-style)... just a Halloween Dinner and a Movie type of thing with a couple of friends. October snuck up on me and literally arrived before I even officially noticed! Now the festive season begins, with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and my Birthday in February... what else is there to do when the weather gets bad, the light is gone for what seems half a year and rain and snow are your new pals, and you´re freezing your toes off? That´s right! Eating and decorating save me every cold season, ha ha! It´s more than once (or twice) that I´ve dreamt of being a fat dormouse, fattening up in early fall and then sleeping in a cozy underground nest until the warmth and light of spring wakes me again. Pure Bliss!

So here´s the little Halloween cozyness in our living room. I don´t know why but that color scheme or oranges, deep reds and rich purple with gold and petrol really enchant me:

The mantlepiece (and yes, I used my scarf as 'tablecloth')

I love this scented candle so much... it smells like Kensington, M.D. in fall ;)!

Travel back in time... July 2011

2011-10-05T10:39:00.000+02:00

Some pictures from the past - before things got crazy. A little geological hike with Dani around Steinheim.

Saturday Sun

2011-10-03T23:28:00.000+02:00

Last Saturday was a day of sleeping in, spending time with Dani and winding down. We went for a little walk through the neighborhood and took in the beauty of a warm autumn day. The foilage is slowly beginning to change into red and orange hues now and the air already smells more earthy and rich than during summer. I love that time of year when the season changes but you can still enjoy nature because it´s not cold yet as long as the sun is out. Just what I needed... :)

Sunny hair


The fire-tree

One of the season´s last roses

We saw many Rose Hip bushes

This beautiful cat accompanied us for a while. I wanted to keep her!

3rd Anniversary

2011-10-02T14:15:00.000+02:00

Three years already? Time flies! I love you!

What´s been going on...

2011-10-01T11:26:00.000+02:00

It feels like the last 2 months were a flurry of happy and sad events, shaken up really good in a mixer and spilled out right on top of life. I have lots of pictures and things to post about and although it´ll be a few months late, you´ll still see what´s been going on around here. First, my parents visited for a week back in August. We had fun making day trips and just spending time together. After they had left, my mom called to let me know she found out that my former art teacher from high-school had died. He was a great artist and had inspired me with his take on art and his general view on life. I really liked him and it was just sad to hear the news. The following week I received a phone call from a very worried dad, telling me that mom just had an accident with her bike and that she had a very complicated fracture, bones crushed, and that she was at the E.R. just now. So I packed my things, and went home, to check up on mom (who ended up staying at the hospital for quite some time) and dad and to make sure he and the cat got their meals and to keep the house clean. Dad and I also renovated the little extra room where my parents keep the computer. Decluttering and decorating the space for when mom returns. The Schweinfurt Relief Society had been a real blessing too, as they provided for additional meals and their help! I went home a week later, for my Primary lesson on Sunday, just to return to Schweinfurt the following week to stay there and help, AND it was both my parents´ birthday on September 5. So we organized a little get-together at the hospital (balloons and all) for mom and dad and have a conspiracy of all of us children (and Dani) coming to visit.

Some time during all this, my good friend Chrie called and told me about her dad. They had found out that he had lung cancer. I would have loved to visit her or just be able to do more to help but that next week, Dani and I went on our long planned vacation to the Spanish island of Tenerife. We had been looking forward to it for a while (especially since we didn´t really have a decent summer here) but now that the time came to pack the luggage and just relax, I really didn´t have the right mind to do it. We went anyways and it turned out I really needed it! I kept worrying about home and friends, hoping that mom´s surgery had gone well and that she was on the mend, wondering how my friend´s dad was doing... . But we did have a wonderful time in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, and I loved all the sun and warm temperatures. It was also fun to go on church there on Sunday and to dig out my rusty Spanish. I was surprised that I understood almost everything they said during classes and Sacrament meeting. Too bad we couldn´t stay a few more weeks! We came home and I had barely unpacked and gotten used to being back in the cold weather, when my friend called with the sad news that her dad had passed away and that she was coming back home to Schweinfurt. So I packed my bags again and off I was (I have to give credit to Dani, he hasn´t seen much of me recently and he´s been so sweet about it), back home to Schweinfurt to meet up with my friend and her family. The funeral service was last week and a lot of people attended. I was glad to see that there were so many who came to support my friend´s family. I tried to distract and help a little but I wish I could have done more to lift the burden.

Yesterday, we attended a wedding in Heidelberg (Dani´s friend married a girl who studies there). I´m still stuffed from all the good food there ;). I´m also really looking forward to tonight and tomorrow (General Conference Broadcast) and tomorrow is also our 3rd Anniversary!

As much as I complain and whine about living in a boring village now, I could really use some down time the next few weeks (but I already know that it´s not going to happen as I still need to prepare a lay-out for the Stake newsletter, prepare the next activity day, prepare the next primary lesson, ...) ;).

Now I´ve filled you in on the big things. I left out all the little things but I am sure you´ve had enough to read as it is. Sometimes you just have the need to ramble... . Thanks for bearing with me!

Monday Caving

2011-07-30T22:53:00.000+02:00

Sadly the Daniel-is-off-work-week is coming to an end. I´ll keep posting pictures of our different travels in the next few days. Here are last Monday´s pictures of our daytrip. We visited two caves, Charlottenhöhle and another one I don´t remember the name of. They are located bewteen quaint little villages not far from where we live. I love stalactite caves!

Inside "Charlot´s Cave"

a rock formation called "The Fried Egg"

Our meadow trail (before arriving at the next cave)

There were beatiful flowers on the wayside, like these blooming thistles

The girl with the many hairpins...


A horse carriage was "parked" in front of one of the caves

We saw lots of bumblebees and butterflies on our way

Cave #3, a tunnel cave you could walk through (reminds me of a Hobbit home)

(my caveman ;) )

Tuesday in the Alps

2011-07-30T01:04:00.000+02:00

This week, Dani was on leave and so we were able to spend the whole week together, taking day trips and traveling. Although this summer has been really cold and wet, Tuesday was sunny and warm like a spring day, and so we decided to hop in the car and head south for the day, back to Bavaria and into the mountains for walks, hikes and the scenery. After a 2 hour drive, we arrived at Forggensee, a beautiful mountain lake not far from Neuschwanstein Castle. We had luch at a cute restaurant right on the lake shore (Schnitzel, yesss!) and spent some time at the lake before we headed deeper into the mountains to hike. We took a trail that led us through a winding gorge and on to a mountain ridge. We stopped at one of the traditional cabin inns for cake and then headed back downhill. Dani wanted to take the scenic route home and we stopped at a waterfall on the way home (and McDonald´s... somebody whose name we won´t mention here loves eating to make the ride home appear less boring...*cough, cough*). We arrived late at night, tired but happy! I love Dani-Dates :)!

The lovely restaurant

This is where we sat

;)

The view while eating...

...more view

Neuschwanstein Castle on the other side of the lake, up on the hill

Entering the gorge... the water is still relatively calm here

M-u-s-c-l-e-s-!

higher ground...with rapids below - the place was magic

We passed waterfalls...

...and went behind them...

...and then we reached the gorge´s highest point

;)

A random farmhouse on our way, after the gorge and forest trail

Walking with a view

This was where we had a cake break :)

Dani ordered Cherry Chocolate cake with a raspberry milkshake and I had Applestrudel with vanilla ice cream - yummy!

Our view from the "Gasthaus"

Aalen City Run

2011-07-23T20:41:00.001+02:00

Pictures of Dani´s run today:

starting...

finishing...

free t-shirts for all participants

Personal Beach

2011-07-21T17:34:00.000+02:00

If the weather doesn´t cut it, the decoration has to... .
Happy (un-)summer 2011!

the little beach on my table

Abby´s Birthday

2011-07-18T13:23:00.000+02:00

Pictures of Abby´s 1st Birthday. We all met at my parents´ house and had a late lunch together, then watched Abby unwrap her presents... .

Grandma, Mom, Dad, Bine, Dani & I, Martin, Stephi & Abby, and some of Martin´s friends from Russia

Abby´s Mini-Me Doll I sewed for her Birthday

...after unwrapping her present (and before chucking it in the corner with a smile, haha!)

From Schmid to Pfister to Ewert

I *LOVE* her boggled face expression

Dani cought me ~~stealing~~ sampling dinner

Yummy!


It´s blurred - but this is my favorite Abby-cuteness-moment: she gave me a random kiss on the cheek! I LOVE HER!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ABBY !!!

Tree Home

2011-07-13T19:21:00.000+02:00

Remember this project?

This is the backside so far. It turned from this...

...into this:

To be continued ;)

Strawberry Love

2011-07-12T20:56:00.000+02:00

Today´s Harvest :)

Strawberries and Garden

2011-07-12T10:48:00.000+02:00

The strawberries are getting really big and red now... in a few days I´ll be able to harvest a batch full. They won´t be so many and I doubt they´re enough for a whole cake as long as we don´t have a real garden but I might make strawberry shortcakes for Mr. E. and me in the meantime ;).

My lettuce is all grown up now - ready to be eaten, ha ha ha!

And the little lavender shoot (snipped off of my nice big lavender) got roots and is growing in his new pot. I´ll be able to plant it next year (if it survives winter ;) ).

Addition to the balcony garden:

Frenchify!

2011-07-11T16:30:00.000+02:00

Last weeks´ chair make-over: turn a real vintage chair into a fake-vintage French chair. After sanding it, I put on a coat of vintage white color and sanded some parts down again, for the good ol' look-at-me-I-am-vintage-and-hence-have-scratches-and-chipped-paint-in-random-places-look I reupholstered the cushion-seating part with off-white fabric and copied the vintage lettering, using gray fabric paint and a brush.

And, because I am currently in the vintage French label zone, I turned an empty jam jar into an empty (yes, I didn´t put any in yet), decorative French honey jar. Both vintage labels came from one of my crafty sources online, The Graphics Fairy.

Sock Love

2011-07-02T13:39:00.000+02:00

There´s nothing more comforting than a cup of hot chocolate and wooly sock warmed toes when it´s cold and rainy outside. A chilly fall day and a good book are.... wait! It´s summer! Or so it should be when I look at my calendar. But summer is stubborn and doesn´t act like its good old self at all. One day it´s hot, then 3 days of icy winds and rain and hail and storms. This is where the hand knitted wool socks come in. Last time we visited the inlaws, my mother-in-law gave me (another) pair of (I so love them they are wonderful and cute) socks. She makes them herself for the whole family and every once in a while, when we visit, she´d give them to us - generally in fall and winter. When she gave them to me last month, it was a very hot day and I thought I would have to wait all summer to finally wear them in fall. Not so! These last few days really gave me an opportunity!
Here´s to crazy weather and cozy socks!

Vintage Love

2011-06-25T16:11:00.001+02:00

So we went to the small thrift store on Friday, to donate some of all the stuff which seems to accumulate here in our apartment, out of nowhere. We delivered it. And. I. Found. This!

The book is brilliant, from 1961, originally published in London, but what really made me buy it in the end was it´s vintage awesomeness of a cover design! There´s this wonderful late 50s style design and color scheme going on... eye candy!

This little donkey here is made of the wooliest wool felt and it just stood there on the counter at the cash register and waited for me to pick it up to take to my sister. Yes, I instantly thought of her when I saw this little hand-crafted cutie here... but I´m thinking of keeping it. It looks so cute and cozy on my desk! It must be from the 50s or early 60s too, by the design and look of it. A good hunt! ;)

Patchwork Love

2011-06-24T16:50:00.000+02:00

Just a little table runner that I sewed a while back. The beautiful fabrics are from Ebay (US), because that´s where all the cute fabric comes from ;).

Sneak Peek

2011-06-22T16:52:00.000+02:00

What is this? Here is a sneak peek of my (ongoing) project:

I made these from Fimo clay a while ago and got hungry in the process... my favorite are the little pizza and the burger. I failed to take a picture of the cupcakes and there are a lot more cookies around, too, but oh well.
PS: These are related to the above picture. Any guesses? ;)

Witny´s Wedding

2011-06-21T17:53:00.000+02:00

This past weekend we had the opportunity to attend Witny´s wedding in Greifensee, Switzerland. It was a beautiful wedding at a beautiful location with a beautiful bride and groom :)!

The wedding reception and civil wedding were held at a lakeside castle and after the family guests had arrived, we went down to the lake and waited for Witny, who arrived on a boat, escorted by her father. We followed them up to the castle, where the civil wedding ceremony was performed.

Then it was time for fruit punch and canapés in the castle´s little flower garden. This is where I finally got to hug the bride and congratulate her and her new companion. Last time I had seen Witny was on our Mission in D.C. and later, when she came to my own wedding - I think we started a good tradition ;). She looked beautiful in her dress and veil and with her smart husband among all the flowers and green. I got to meet her sweet parents and one of her aunts. She has a wonderful family!

But there was not much time to chat... brides are on a tight schedule ;). Time for the picture-taking at various locations.

Later, the actual wedding festivities began inside the castle. More food, fun games and dancing galore. And even more food: dessert time rolled around and it was sooooooooooo delicious! Eyecandy and real candy! Another really fun thing was that I finally got to meet Melissa (aka Sister Scofield) there. I´d heard a lot about her and she´d just come out on her mission after I had left and now Witny (aka Sister Weibel) was the common link (well, so was Sisters Baker, Leal, Kajo, Everts and all the other sweeties from the Mish - GOOD TIMES!).

The Sealing was scheduled for the next day at the Swiss Temple in Zollikofen.

Again I have to say, I love weddings! It´s so stressfree when it´s not your own and you can completely enjoy it. (It´s always a plus to not have the flu and fever when you´re getting married!)

The Girls

2011-06-21T01:22:00.000+02:00

A week ago, four of my old friends came to visit over the weekend and despite the cold weather, we still had fun outside, first exploring a mine-turned-tourist-trap and then transporting ourselves back in time to visit a little medieval market / renaissance fair near a castle. I had been there before, a couple of times, but this time it was just us girls. We looked at all the sales booths, climbed the castle´s tallest tower (well, almost all of us, right Jo?), tasted licorice (the real kind = a twig of that tree), home-made juice, ate "Baumstriezel", a sweet treat, and observed our friend Carmen personally examining the exact workings of several torture chamber furniture. We dined out in the evening, at a Mexican restaurant, and took a tour around town in the evening.

We had lunch together the next day, played a card game which belonged to my great-grandma (and which was in the Old German type font... yes, reading is easy ;) ), and finally strolled through a small valley with sweet rock formations nearby, this time with Dani. All in all, it was one fun weekend and over much too soon! I miss you already!

Hale, Hale, and Gardening for Dummies

2011-06-16T18:28:00.001+02:00

Remember my little balcony garden project? Well, a couple of weeks ago it hailed like crazy and my little lettuce plants that had only just developed 2-4 leaves each looked like some maniac had stabbed them with a scalpel. Three of those little plants didn´t make it but the others are growing strong now, at last.
My little radishes survived the hailstorm pretty well, but they couldn´t escape me ;). They were so good in salads or on sandwiches! I just planted the next batch of radish seeds.
As to my pretty nasturtium - well, it lived through the hale, just to surrender to the plant louse invasion a week after.
Only my lavender (finally in bloom) and strawberries (blooming and slowly developing real berries!) have been doing remarkably well... there is a thunderstorm heading toward us as I´m typing and it already started to rain. I hope it won´t get worse and my plant babies will live through this one too!

This it what everything looks like now:

Celebrations

2011-06-07T18:45:00.000+02:00

We spent a very busy 5-day weekend with my inlaws. First we helped decorating and the next day attending my sister-in-law´s wedding reception / party, and then it was my mother-in-law´s birthday. It was a great time but we were beat when we arrived home. I am still tired and feel quite jet-lagged... I really don´t like the long drives there and back again - hurry up, science! Invent a beaming device already!!

First Harvest

2011-06-01T10:57:00.000+02:00

Today I harvested my first batch of home-grown radishes... .

They´re so good on bread with unsalted butter.

My new workspace

2011-05-24T13:57:00.000+02:00

I know this has been a long time but I finally remembered to take pictures of the desk Dani and I built last year sometime in winter. He had a few days off and it was our project. We designed and built two desks, one for him and one for me. We didn´t have a real desk before, just a cheap make-shift DIY construction by Dani, one that made the move from his student / bachelor appartment to here but really wasn´t very practical. There was no space to store things or any drawers, to begin with.

So we got down to business... .We used some parts from his old desk and bought some more wood. I wanted a good, sturdy desk, with drawers and enough space, without looking bulky or cold/modern-ish. The tabletop was particularly important to me, as I´m not only using it as a computer screen surface, but also to draw on and be crafty. Dani´s desk is slightly bigger than mine but in the same style. The desks are made of pine wood and the table top is made from a wooden kitchen counter split in two, so Dani and I have the same table top. We painted the wood pieces with a warm shade of off-white in matte before assembling them. It´s really sweet to be married to an awesome husband like mine ;), I had the pictures of the finished desk in my head and told him all about it, even made some sketches of what they should look like. Again, cottage cozy chic (just because you work on a desk doesn´t mean it has to look like work) and inspiring for writing. Dani then took my crooked sketchbook line art and turned it into a mathematically correct piece of blueprint for us to work on. I am SO glad he was the one to figure out the measurements and angles so everything would fit nicely into our room and wouldn´t fall to pieces once used. I love it! My favorite part (or one of them anyways) is the nifty little hidden keyboard storage behind a fancy curved panel (Dani´s idea, my design). Honestly, I think Dani and I should go into furniture design, haha!
We also bought matching hanging shelves from IKEA to hang above the desks, for extra storage.

Enjoy!

Run, Dani, Run!

2011-05-22T21:20:00.000+02:00

Mr. D. had his first half-marathon yesterday, in the evening. It was held in Mannheim and he and some friends wanted to participate. Needless to say us wives (aka groupies and/or fangirls) had to come to show our support! I´m so pround of my handsome muscleman! It was hot and humid that day and still the boys did well! Here are some before pictures:

...and after:

(...slightly altered - you´d never have noticed the bits I added... ;) )

Pilates

2011-05-17T12:36:00.000+02:00

So a friend asked me if I wanted to join her in a 10-week Pilates fitness class, once a week. It sounded good so I signed up for it and yesterday was our first class. It was strange (I have never moved or worked out like that before) but felt really good afterwards, like I´ve worked out every tiny muscle.
There are muscles in my body that I didn´t know existed!

Eurovision Song Contest - My Choice

2011-05-14T22:16:00.000+02:00

In honor of the annual Eurovision Song Contest that´s being held today, I´m putting up my favorite vintage music video - ever! This is from a country in East Europe and beyond anything MTV could produce these days! It was never part of the Eurovision Song Contest as far as I know but boy, it should have been!
I loved last year´s winning entry song by Lena, but nothing will top this little number here... where do I start? The crazy 70´s sideburns, the hair, the clothes, the most brilliant special effects the world has ever seen (the bearded dwarf man jumping up into the camera´s view, his erratic dance moves, the pantomime´s mouth towards the end, the musical instruments or the all over quality!):

My sister shared this video with my parents and family and we all sat on the couch, laughing hard. I have to say I was so "touched" by this video, I had tears in my eyes, hee hee! Hope you enjoy it, and make sure you watch it all the way to the end - Happy contest!

Bare no more... ;)

2011-05-07T13:32:00.001+02:00

After 2 1/2 years of moving in... finally there are framed pictures on the living room wall. It was SO painful to me not being able to put up pictures. The wall is not very sturdy and when we hung up some shelves on the other side of the room, parts of the wall (well, plaster) came down and left huge, gaping holes and cracks. So we´d decided we wouldn´t put up any pictures in that room, but c´mon, a "living" room without pictures?! So I finally got over the I´m-too-polite-to-risk-the-walls-being-damaged-for-the-sake-of-the-(really small-minded)-owners-of-the-appartment-complex-,while-suffering-daily-as-an-artist-without-creative-wall-space-around-me-feeling and broke into Dani´s toolbox, swinging the hammer of justice and putting in lots of (little) nails. Et voilá:

Finally!

Before and After

2011-05-06T14:35:00.000+02:00

Feast your eyes upon the monstrosity that once was Daniel´s nightstand-gone-desk-organizer-thingy and now is my beautiful nightstand:

First we sandpapered it down, added decorative trim, put on a nice thick layer of white paint, and then exchanged the hideous Waldorf-style knobs for cute, cottage-y ones from eBay.
I love creative weekend projects like this one!

Birthday Tea

2011-04-21T16:54:00.000+02:00

What is better than cake and tea served on cute Polish polka dot pottery?

That´s right: tea and cake for two, with Daniel doing a Sheldon face on his Birthday.

15 April, 2011

Balcony Garden

2011-04-20T21:05:00.000+02:00

Our little balcony plantation as of 20 April, 2011:

The past three days had been sunny and warm and while I was digging in the dirt and potting soil, weeding and planting, I felt oddly at peace and quite like I was soaking up the sun and breeze much more than the little seeds and plants did. I so love the first warm days of spring.

Spring is here...

2011-04-20T14:06:00.000+02:00

... and I´ve planted lettuce, radish, nasturtium and strawberries on our balcony. I miss not having a garden at all and so I am trying the micro-garden version. We´ll see in a few weeks if it worked or not...

There are so many things yet to post, of projects past, latest creations and a little travel log.
Keep checking; I´ll update within the next few days!

Winter Wonder Tree

2010-12-25T16:39:00.001+01:00

We went sledding today and last Saturday and saw this beautiful tree on top of the hill. It was amazing. We took several pictures of that tree and some others. It was covered in frost and snow and had lilttle icicles hanging down from its twigs and branches. It swayed in the breeze and made creaking noises. I loved it!

Noel

2010-12-24T14:21:00.000+01:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone!

You are much missed and loved.

Thanks for making me a better person! :)

2011 - here we come!

Before and After

2010-07-09T11:47:00.000+02:00

A while back I´ve posted this piece of work-in-progress. I didn´t remember to take a picture before I spray-painted the hideous golden plastic frame white. Just imagine this distasteful print, framed by an ugly golden plastic frame for a moment... ouch! Can you hear your sense of style groan and cry with agony?
I decided to turn the whole golden beast into a fancy pinboard/moodboard. Here are the before and after pictures:

A day at Chatsworth House

2010-07-02T01:17:00.001+02:00

It´s hard to pick favorites, when thinking of all the places we saw on our daily tours in England. My favorite area was definitely the Peak District and I loved our hikes and the tours through villages like Bakewell and Matlock-Bath.
We stayed with the awesome Stinson family in our first week and were able to visit many families from Dani´s former mission.
On our second day at the Stinson´s, Dani and I went to visit Chatsworth House, which I wanted to see ever since I watched the latest Pride and Prejudice movie with Keira Knightley (while I love the faces better in this movie, I very much prefer the older, full BBC film version... ok, enough nerdy commenting on movies, don´t get me started!). Dani and I spent a wonderful, sunny day on the grounds and in the gardens of Chatsworth, and of course went inside to see the many paintings and the art collection. There was lots of ohhh-ing and aaahh-ing, strolling and ice-cream eating. My very favorite part, though (aside from the gift-shop... I am a woman!), was the park and landscape, surrounding the manor, the lupin garden especially. Dani and I sat on a bench and watched people pass through it to get to the hedge maze, or to take pictures, and everything was perfect. I think that was the spot, where I decided that Chatsworth would be my new home. I´m not greedy, I could build my own cozy cottage there, right next to the lupin garden, so the Duke and his wife could still visit ~~their~~ the actual Chatsworth House... .

Well, enought said - here are pictures from our day at Chatsworth.

I fell in love with this place. It certainly is a tourist trap, too. But hey, I was a tourist ;). And while I loved spending a day at Chatsworth, I loved our whole vacation time in England. I´ve always wanted to go to England (London too, but that will have to wait until I´m rich and famous - or in another life ;) ), there is just so much history and art there. The architecture kills me (in a good, slow, nice and cotton-candy killing way) and I wish we would have had much more time and actually make sketches instead of taking pictures only. So many beautiful details to take in.

More pictures to come in the next few posts...

Let´s be logical here...

2010-06-30T12:41:00.001+02:00

We´re back home, after spending 2 funfilled weeks in England and while there have been loads of pictures taken, I will post them in my next few entries, along with a short (?) travel log.

Now to the logical part of my entry: this list has come to my mind, while travelling through England... my "Reasons to move to the U.K." vs. "Reasons to stay here". This is what I came up with:

Reasons why England is a sweet place to be:
1. Britain makes the better spies / mysteries (The Avengers, James Bond, Miss Marple, Edgar Wallace novels, Sherlock Holmes)
2. Fish and Chips
3. Many of my favorite Authors come from there (Sophie Kinsella, Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling, Agatha Christie, Shakespeare, Enid Blyton...)
4. English style cut lawns and inspiring gardens
5. Cottages
6. Tudor style architecture
7. Can I say Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan? ;) Dani I love you, too!
8. The world´s most stylish phone booths!
9. The world´s most stylish public mailboxes!
10. Limestone walls of the Peak District
11. The Peak District
12. Chatsworth House (my future home, which I will transform slightly but will keep the gardens and park as they are)
13. The English accent (Derby area) is easier to understand than the odd German that´s spoken here where we currently live!
14. English ice cream tastes like the American one... it helps beat the mission-homesickness pangs I get every now and then
15. Mr. Bean and Shawn the Sheep
16. Public toilets don´t cost anything (mom, our day has been saved!)
17. Lots of OLD, tall, beautiful oak trees
... the list goes on

Reasons to stay here:
1. ... uhmmm....
2.
3.
4. we have the better chocolate?

Mittelaltermarkt Katzenburg 2010

2010-06-10T10:02:00.000+02:00

It´s about time I post the pictures of our fun medieval afternoon of two weeks ago... . We went to a market on Katzenburg (Cat Castle... LOVE that name! I felt at home immediately) on one of the few sunny and warm days we´ve had so far (the 2nd or so).
Dani and I had a blast. Martin and Steph came, too, and once again I was reminded to finally work on the medieval dress and shirt for me and D.. We bought the fabric for it in Holland over a year ago, talk about procrastination... . Anyway, enjoy the pictures and pretend you can smell the campfires, the lovely sweet and hearty scents from the meal and treat booths and the damp grass, drying in the sun. Hmmmm!

Yellow Joy

2010-05-16T23:19:00.001+02:00

Our next DIY is a collaboration between Mr. D. and I... . We need a little shelf / trolley / table for our kitchen and the ones we saw did not make us happy (or our wallet). So we decided to come up with our own design. We talked about what we wanted and Dani used his savvy tech skills and drew up a little blueprint on the computer. This is our goal:

...let´s hope we can actually build it like that. The color will be either warm yellow or a neutral off-white. I am excited. It will fit match perfectly with the new mock-shade curtains I sewed last night (pictures will be added in the near future).

Let me know what you have been up to lately :). Any ideas for another project?

Tin Gold

2010-05-07T10:59:00.003+02:00

One of the fleamarket finds, which I adore: the vintage metal racing car game... . The key to wind them up is gone but I will check the local hardware store. They might have something in their tool section.

Ooooooooohh !!

2010-05-06T11:03:00.002+02:00

Thank you for this fun award, Debbie :)!

The Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspire others in the blogging world.”

Of course, awards come with rules…

1. Put the logo on your blog and/or within your post.

2. Pass the award on to twelve bloggers.

3. Link to the nominees within your post.

4. Let them know they received this award by commenting on their blog.

5. Share the love and the link to the person from whom you received this award.

I'm sending this award on to:

Karen at http://hallofhalls.blogspot.com/, for her fun way of keeping us sisters informed about her life :)

Elke at http://familyofminjas.blogspot.com, for making me take part in her family life. I miss you and the kids so much!!

Bianca at http://biancapkiss.blogspot.com/, for reminding me of the good times in D.C. whenever I see new pictures of her and my District Leader ;) ;)

Sara and Kate at http://nateandsaraolsen.blogspot.com/ and

http://familiacampbell.blogspot.com/, for being examples at how to be fun and inspiring moms :)

Debbie at http://davisfields.blogspot.com/, for being my awesome, creative, blogging cousin, and for keeping me updated with the "Pfister" clan. (Yes, I know your name is Davis now, but once a Pfister, always a Pfister... I know what I am talking about ;) )

Jackie Bootstrap Baker (so, I can´t resist it, but you know who you are... ;) ) at http://bnjatkinson.blogspot.com/, for sharing the same creative vibes ;).

Pres. Wirthlin at http://induna-bigdaddy.blogspot.com/, for letting me keep up with him and his family (, including all the wonderful missionaries from my home-mission and mini-mission in Vienna, Austria)

Jo at http://jopickle.wordpress.com/, for her awesome, quirky, deep, and fun insights and updates on her life. I absolutely love her way of expressing herself!

Emily at http://www.theblackapple.typepad.com/, for her inspiring works and creativity! I adore her style.

For this awesome cake nightmares blog over at http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/, I sometimes feel like rolling on the floor, laughing, when reading about all the cake wreck-y-ness.

For Ana, at http://www.knock-offwood.com/, my DIY hero! If I had the skills, I´d do ALL my furniture by myself!

There are lots more, but I am not listing all of the blogs I enjoy reading. Any blog I read is a good one, or else I wouldn´t be following it (no-brainer). So thanks to you all, for inspiring me to do better, be more creative on so many levels, staying in touch and most of all, making me feel closer to you because the most important thing to me are you, my family and friends! Here´s to living in this century, along with having computer technology and all!

Weekend in Bamberg... undercover!

2010-05-02T21:42:00.004+02:00

Dani and I escaped to Bamberg on Friday and yesterday. It was part of his birthday get-away, connected to a little scavenger hunt I came up with. When you turn 30, you need a little game to feel half your age ;). I created little mock 'International Special Agent' IDs, for Agent D. and me, and based the scavenger hunt on little made-up stories (scenes of crime and mysteries, fun locations), set in Bamberg.

The 'mission' was to visit various sights and get a code for each task fulfilled. In the end, Dani got to solve the code with his code-key. We had walkie-talkies and little plastic toy guns for our shooting contest. Agent D. did a little better on that one (see below) *cough, cough*.

It felt good to just have two whole 'play day dates' with D. in Bamberg, which is only a stone´s throw away from my hometown. AND they speak my kind of German there... what a relief! ;)

Below are some of the many pictures we took (click to enlarge):
"Altes Rathaus", Bamberg

Then there was this cool little tea/pottery/fabrics shop I absolutely adored (mission: take discreet pictures of their multiple goodness and cute displays):

If you look closely, you´ll spot the turquoise-lightblue-ish cereal bowls which persuaded me (and Dani) to take them home with us:

I am also toying with the idea to build a cottage shelf like that with D., except we don´t have room for it in our kitchen *sigh*.

More pictures of the river and architecture:

*Nerd Alert* Christy, this is for you: doesn´t this look like the courtyard of the 3 Musketeers´ headquarter in Paris? ;)

"Knock, knock"

The view from the rosegarden down into the old city:

Just being silly:

Two of the many beautiful entrance doors of all the old houses:

Up on the 'Altenburg' (a castle):
Entrance way

going through...

an old well in the castle´s courtyard:

The weekend went by way too fast. Here we come, Monday!

Have a good week, everyone :)!

Our own little re-fashioned cottage table (and more)

2010-04-29T11:37:00.002+02:00

Here are the pictures promised:

Remember this baby here?

Well, this is what it looks like now, sanded, painted, restored, cleaned:

Then I discovered the beautiful addiction of spray painting, along with the already existing addiction of using paintbrushes and regular paint... .

I didn´t think of taking 'before' pictures, so all you get is the after. This little shelf was dark brown, almost black before...

...as was this wooden flower pot:

and this lampfoot:

I continued painting those frames...

and trying out a fun little thing I saw on another blog: painting bottles from the inside ;). Here are my beatiful Cream Soda fancy glass bottles and one Almdudler bottle:

'D' and 'K' got a makeover too, no more gray paper! Come here, beloved Gold Krylon spraypaint!

And last: one (halfway-)before picture of a work in progress: I found this unbelieveably ugly print on a local fleamarket 2 weeks ago. I can´t believe how anyone would actually hang this up at home. The frame is plastic and a cheesy looking brown-ish gold, or rather...it was ! I spray painted it white, 2-3 layers. It looks a LOT better now, although the hideous painting is still visible. I plan to turn it into a pinnboard, or chalkboard. I haven´t made up my mind yet. Or I´ll paint something to go in it. Pictures to come... :).

I also want to share some more vintage-y fleamarket finds with you in my next post. One is a cool 'tree table' ;). I LOVE fleamarkets (Now I only need to make Daniel love them as much as I do and then my budget will be better ;) )!

2010-04-22T11:58:00.002+02:00

... no, I haven´t fallen off of the edge of the universe, and I´ll be back soon. There´s just a lot going on here. Pictures coming soon!

Spring is in the air...

2010-03-03T16:17:00.001+01:00

Three little goodies that I´ve meant to post a while ago:

1. New decoration to welcome spring and easter
2. A wonderful thriftstore find for less than 5 Euros (I´m in love with that old-school classroom chair and its color... going green is awesome! Ok, enough puns...)
3. A dotted little tote bag (I used the rest of the fabric for a tablecloth that I can never remember to take a picture of)

Happy mid-week!

Nesting or Cabin Fever...?

2010-02-12T10:57:00.000+01:00

Snow, snow, snow... it never seems to stop. I still love it ;). If only it were warm and snowing. It´s the cold I can´t stand, not the snow. So I´m trapped inside all day long and what is there to do (no, TV doesn´t count, there is hardly anything worthwhile watching these days - except for old 'The Avengers' reruns ;) )? Of course, getting all the creative things done I´ve wanted to do for a long time but never took the time. I have to admit that the quilt is still not completed. I need to figure out the edges. But from the last few scraps I made a matching patchwork pillow... and patchy it is!

...And a table runner for my little cottage table in the works...

And I´m still working on my book. I´m far from finished but already revising chapter one ;).

Setting the trend (or table...?)

2010-02-11T14:58:00.000+01:00

So I´ve been in love with the I-see-your-potential-,-little-table-in-the-potato-cellar-,-so-let-me-fix-you-up-and-make-you-come-to-life-again-table, as you can probably tell from the last few blog entries and pictures. After having this idea of working with that old table, and after thinking of the colors and possibilities, and after looting dad´s sanding paper and sanding machine... in short, after having started working on it, I kept seeing these kind of tables around in stores, just larger (fit for modern-day standards) and really expensive. It seems those retro cottage tables are all the rage these days. Looks like more and more people miss that homely feel of a cozy country kitchen and dining area.
Check out these pictures I found online and in stores:

From one of my favorite stores, Butlers:

This one is from Impressionen:

This one is Impressionen too, a more modern touch to it:

These two are from Pottery Barn, for a whopping $999.00:

So far we´ve spent around €20 for paint and paintbrushes, not bad, I think ;).

What we´ve been working on...

2010-02-10T12:00:00.000+01:00

Back in SW over the weekend, we´ve continued working on this beauty here... . Slowly we are reaching the potential of this awesome table and I am giddy with excitement. I love restoring or changing furniture. 3D creativity ;).

Dani and I coated it with 2 layers of off-white paint and it looks great (at least in real life, those pictures don´t do it justice). Now we only need to make it fit into a car and bring it home. Then we can start building a drawer, as the original one is missing. I am wondering if I should paint it off-white too or another color for contrast.

What I´ve been working on...

2010-02-10T11:41:00.000+01:00

Another patchwork quilt. I am slowly running out of fabric. T'is the season to be freezing' <-- and that´s about the only thing that could possibly motivate me to do something like this.
This one is not finished yet, I´m not sure how or what to do with the edges... or rather, what kind of fabric to use. I have none that matches well. For this quilt, I used most of my Walmart stash that I had bought last year in SLC ;). I can´t get over all the cute fabrics they have there and c-h-e-a-p!! It´s almost worth buying another ticket to fly over to the US just to buy fabrics, haha (yeah, right)!

A totally different topic now, I am officially issuing a warning to all those dear to me: never wear really nice, cozy, fuzzy wool type socks at home, on laminate floors, while trying to avoid stepping onto the quilt pattern layed out on the ground (for the lack of a large enough table)... you might accidentally slip and fall like an old lady, landing on your hip and shoulder with a big *thud* that makes the building shake and leaves you feeling rather dead. Hypothetically speaking, of course... .

Sibling-Saturday

2010-01-31T22:13:00.000+01:00

All three of us got together for our first ever sibling reunion. We met at my sister´s place in Erlangen and had fun in the park and downtown. Not to mention the amazing pizza and rootbeer session and 'Halligalli' games :). Good times!

Mini Mes or Boardgame People reloaded...

2010-01-23T20:58:00.003+01:00

Wee little wooden dollies, with acorn-cap berets and french dresses. Acrylics on wooden pegs, coated with glossy varnish.

How I love them! Trés chic!

Craft Project #1 in 2010

2010-01-21T16:47:00.006+01:00

Here it is... my first project of the year. I can´t wait to get back to it next time we are in SW.

So far we´ve only sanded and cleaned it up a bit. Prince Charming helped a lot :).

Hello, 2010!

2010-01-20T12:22:00.000+01:00

Ooooh, a fresh new decade right in front of us... !
Did you all arrive happily in 2010? We had a good time, staying with the inlaws and then my parents over the holidays. And then, of course, resolutions, resolutions. I am almost sticking to all of them ;) (mostly, haha). But what´s better than some worthy goals, right?
I also loved Christmas, seeing dear old friends again and spending time with the family and at my home ward (I miss you all!). We had a jolly good time and it was fun to watch the reruns of the original 'Avengers' with mom (Go, Emma Peel! Mr. Steed!), and to visit grandma and drink her Elderberry sirup, hot, but without her suggested shot of rum ;). I miss granny. These times really remind me of how blessed I am to have such a great family and friends (which are, in fact just my extended family, or so it feels anyway). I am truly grateful for them and all they´ve done for me. And of course, I can´t forget my partner in crime, Dani, who is truly the best (and I still can´t believe I´m in league with the 'enemy' here... a scientist and an artist...an explosive combination, you would think) ;)!

I´ll be back soon with pictures of the latest creative works in progress (one of which started at home - my parents´place- in the "potato cellar', which is basically the garage´s basement. The object of my desires was hidden under piles of stuff, spiders and their multiple webs, and more stuff...).

See you all later :). And I love you!

Candyland Goodness

2009-12-13T14:42:00.001+01:00

For Chrie:

The picture of my little desk tree... in all its glittery, sparkly, yummy, white-and-silver-ish goodness.

Reminds me of an old fashioned candy shop. Hmmmmm :)!

Washington DC Temple Festival of Lights

2009-12-01T15:25:00.003+01:00

Washington DC Temple Festival of Lights

Oh how I long to be there again this Christmas! What a marvelous time it was to serve there.
Sisters, I miss you all terribly and wish you a wonderful Christmas season!
Und natürlich eine schöne Adventszeit für alle meine Freunde hier.

Christmas Decorations

2009-11-23T12:08:00.016+01:00

Here are some of the pictures promised last week. I am excessively happy over the sugary sweet Christmas garland. My sewing machine and I have somewhat of a love-hate-relationship, and it really undermined my sewing efforts gravely this time. The garland took forever. But I am glad it worked in the end ;). Happy Christmas season!

...and one little picture of a mouse resting on my keyboard. I wanted to post this picture a long time ago, but kept forgetting until now. The mouse was made of felt scraps I had laying around the house. Needle felted it in the end to make it more furry. It grew on me :).

Getting Crafty Again

2009-11-19T15:09:00.005+01:00

New projects in the works:
-a Christmas garland (hopefully done by tomorrow)
-framed Christmas-themed pictures on our mantelpiece
-the mantelpiece itself is under some major decoration-construction right now
-cards and presents
... so many ideas but not so much time. I hope to be able to finish a lot of projects within the next four days. Pictures to come ;). I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season.

**It´s beginning to look a lot like Christmas**

The Halloween Party

2009-11-04T16:22:00.009+01:00

Here are some pictures of our Halloween party, including gorry meals ;).

Yay, connected to the Floo Network

2009-10-14T21:49:00.007+02:00

With Halloween approaching, it is hard for me to not become too nerdy about it (hence the Harry Potter reference in the blog title). With our new -fake but absolutely cosy looking- fireplace, we are now able to travel in a fun wizarding fashion: by floo powder. Yes, you can tell I´ve just finished re-reading the final HP book yesterday and am amazed at how much I had forgotten. See, this is the book that I had only read once before and rather quickly too, as I was desperate to know the end. I still love the book. All of them.

We also started decorating the dining room for the Halloween party we´re hosting. We haven´t really planned much yet but couldn´t wait for the fun. I was crafting away while Dani looked up extra spooky foods and meals online. We had a blast looking through some of the ideas and recipes presented.

And lastly, this is for mom. I finished crocheting that little hat for Blythe... and a scarf. It was fun but ugh, don´t look at it closely. I think I am improving somewhat, though :).

The Muffinqueen struck again...

2009-10-06T21:48:00.009+02:00

My muffins are done! Come have some... and the best thing is, they are without calories and you can cuddle with them as much as you like. I´ve always had a weakness for all things sweet, especially cupcakes and muffins. There´s the Muffin Queen design I came up with ages ago, for the Soul Food series of dishware,

and the Tea and Muffins in the Woods painting,
and finally the muffin softies. I fell in love with them but already partet with one. It´s a chocolate muffin for my sister´s birthday (among other things). The cat appeared out of felt scraps, in a muffin making break and never left again, so here is the little cat among her little muffin friends. Wheeee!

Works in progress

2009-10-05T19:54:00.005+02:00

What I´ve been up to today... (to be continued):

Anniversary

2009-10-02T11:37:00.002+02:00

One fun-filled year with the love of my life :). Thank you, Dani!

Sneak Preview

2009-10-01T20:33:00.004+02:00

... a little illustration which is to be published in a magazine. Rough sketch... colors and poses might change. Depends on the editor´s say. But I am quite content with it...

Almost there...

2009-10-01T11:51:00.006+02:00

I am keeping very busy lately, hence my poor excuses of one-line blog entries. My latest creative project needs to remain a secret, as it is going to be my sister´s birthday present. It was finished last night and her birthday is on Oct. 11, so you will have to wait with pictures ;). Now that the thing-which-must-not-be-named-yet is done, I really want to keep it for myself! Oh well.

Tomorrow Dani and I will hit our one year mark. I can´t believe we´ve been married for almost a year now! It seems much shorter ...time flies when you´re having fun :).

2009-09-24T12:02:00.003+02:00

59.5 kg (got a bit slowed down in my efforts after Dani made us a HUGE bowl of Tiramisu, 90 % fat or more, and I couldn´t resist), woot!

Semi Expressionistic Portrait

2009-09-19T14:30:00.004+02:00

***Update*** Dani and I, hee hee. Painted it 3 weeks ago, but only just posted it.

Creative Works

2009-09-18T15:21:00.003+02:00

I feel so creative today and there´s nothing I can do. We are invited to a DVD night at our friends´house and although they are awesome and I am looking forward to it, it seems that every time I have an appointment coming up soon, I feel the most creative but run out of time to actually sit down and get artsy. I need to start finding little projects that take up an hour or less. But my art moments are not so much a moment but a day or several days. And once I start, I can´t stop or else I won´t be in that creative 'flow' anymore. Anyhow, I am trying to have a productive day tomorrow. Saturdays are usually good for that. Daniel can be my muse ;).

The past weeks I spent in my hometown, visiting friends and catching up with them. It´s good to hang out with the old crowd. I also stopped at my former workplace, the US Military Police Station and met with many of the awesome people there again. I miss working there. It was never boring. I think at a regular office job I would go insane with boredom and daily routine.

Here´s to creativity, my life and passion :) *3 Cheers*!

2009-08-24T12:31:00.002+02:00

59.9 Kilos :D! (even after a weekend of excessive BBQ and birthday party food, not to mention the 4 ice cream popcicles I´ve had yesterday, yummmieeee!)

PS:

2009-08-17T09:24:00.011+02:00

Here are pictures of some of the projects mentioned a while ago...

First, my inspiration board (changes randomly, according to mood and weather), full of my current favorite color combination: pale, light stone gray, even a bit muted blue-ish gray + rich, golden yellow hues, a few mustardy ones and some light yellow combinations + white and off white shades = instant joy

...which inspired me to finally 'frame' my Ferret Girl in those colors. The collage is mixed media: inkdrawing on cardstock, yellow fabric sample scrap and white paper doily from fancy cake sheets ;)

Here are my framed pressed flowers:

... and a collage that´s hanging in the kitchen. Made from magazine pictures referring to food and pretty things. I love the color combination and yumminess of the whole piece. Just somtething random and happy for the kitchen:

Finally, my own little dollie, made from the blackapple´s free pattern (the monster is some 3 years old or so but still wanted to be in the picture):

Monday Again

2009-08-17T08:41:00.004+02:00

Wow, have I been having weird dreams lately. That or laying awake half of the night. Summer has finally arrived and it´s so hot at night, it´s really hard to sleep. When I wake up (drained and tired) in the morning, I am so thirsty, I feel like I could empty a bathtub!
But aside from that. The weekly (or, looking back at my entries, the not-so-regularly-weekly) scale number: 59.9 Kilos, woo-hooo!

Good news: Dani re-installed Windows to my computer again. It had been acting up for months and I didn´t have sound on my computer for the past two months or more. It was really annoying. But now everything is fixed and I am excited to carry on ;). I went over the chapters of my book again yesterday, crossing out and changing quite a few things on the printout. Now I have to make the changes in the script too. I just see things better once they are printed out. Nothing replaces real books ;). I am going to work on mine later on today. I also made a new approximate sketch of what the main characters are. I might change their names around a bit. I´m not completely satisfied with the sketch but it has to work for now. It helps me to look at it when I´m writing. Letting their personalities evolve.

2009-08-13T10:48:00.002+02:00

61.3 Kilos. Darn that cheese... (not really, I loved it. That´s the problem. No more fondue until winter time!!).

Travel, Travel

2009-08-12T16:03:00.031+02:00

We´re back home after some weekend traveling. We visited with Dani´s family 2 weeks ago and have been out and about since.

This past weekend until yesterday we spent some time in Switzerland, land of my chocolate obsessions, the mountains and cheese. It was inspirational in so many ways!
We stayed with Dani´s friends, another couple, and I really came to like them a lot. We did a lot of tourist-y things, like sightseeing and buying chocolates and eating cheese fondue. We loved Solothurn (the town our friends live in) and Bern. We also went to see the Temple in Zollikofen.
I love the Alps! While I´ve been to Austria and also know the German side of the Alps, I had never before been to Switzerland and the Alps there.
Monday we went hiking in the mountains by Interlaken. We first went to the 'Lauterbrunnental', a beautiful valley with mountains to the left and right, and many little streams and waterfalls coming down on each side. It is said to have been the inspiration for Tolkien´s Rivendell, the home of the elves. He made sketches of it when visiting there in 1911. From the valley we took two aerial cableways to Mürren, a village not accessible by car, located halfway up the mountains; we hiked for several hours and were mostly lucky with the weather. It rained hard the last five minutes though, and we got soaked ;). I can´t describe how lovely a hiking trail it was, with many wild mountain flowers, ferns, trees and further up, mossy boulders and glaciers around. We drank from the clear, fresh mountain streams and had a sack lunch on a rock that was formed almost like a table. We spotted toadstools on our trail back to the cableway station and smelled the scent of fir trees, soil and rain. Eveline, our Swiss friend was our 'tourguide' and we had a great day. Back in Mürren, we took the aerial cableway back down into the valley. Going down, we didn´t have much of a view, as it was raining hard. I love riding that thing, it is almost like flying. I also learned that on top of that mountain range, at Piz Gloria, the old James Bond film 'On her Majesty´s Secret Service' was filmed. It´s fun to stumble in to places and go 'oh, neat, I´ve seen that before' ;).
I am adding a few pictures here, though in no apparent order. I wish I could write some captions below but just have not found out how yet.

Here you go, 4 days of Switzerland:

Monday, Monday

2009-07-20T15:58:00.005+02:00

Down to 60.2 Kilos! I´ve been working out a lot and haven´t really changed my eating habits yet. The awesome Chrie was here to visit last week, and of course we had a good time (and lots of good food, too!). This week, I want to focus on the healthy food aspect as well, not only the working out part. Next weekend, we´ll be visiting Dani´s parents for several days and I am already looking forward to taking walks at the lake. They live right by a lake, with parks and recreation areas around - great for jogging ;).
Well, I´ve finished up some projects and am going to work on some more. I am really behind with posting pictures of all the things I´m currently working on. Lots of things are alterations of clothes I´ve found in thriftstores in the US or which have been laying around in my room, waiting to be mended. And I still want to sew my own Medieval stlyle dress, for the next medieval fair in Würzburg. Attending in style ;).

...

More to follow - including project pictures!

Sigh

2009-07-13T09:01:00.003+02:00

61 Kilos, 167 cm, not very energized, seeks former pre-marriage weight!

I finally got over my inner slacker and decided it was time to do something. Since October last year I have gained 8-9 Kilos and if I continue at that rate, I´ll be an obese sumo ringer champ (minus the muscles) in no time. So I want to move more, eat less meat, and try to have a sleep routine (I already know that last point won´t work, but it´s all about goal-setting, right?). I am good on the veggie and fruit side but that´s about it ;). So, here we go now. I´ve posted the infamous weight blog entry to make sure I actually stick to my goals, now that I´ve officially informed the world about it. There´s nothing better than a healthy dose of pressure to get me moving! Huzzah!

Lavender, dear Lavender...!

2009-06-24T21:48:00.009+02:00

It´s been raining most of this week and the last and today, while it actually stopped raining for a brief moment, I picked the lavender from our balcony flower bed. I tied it to little bouquets and cut the blossoms off of the rest of them to make lavender sachets. One little bouquet sits on my nightstand, with the relaxing scent to help me fall asleep; the other one is on our chest (that we use instead of a coffee table). You can see the lovely IKEA chair in the background. It arrived today and made me almost as happy as picking the fresh, rain-dripped lavender. Too bad I can´t post a scented sample here ;).

My pretty

2009-06-18T22:38:00.003+02:00

Soon to be mine: the IKEA Stockholm Blad chair. I am so excited. Now people can actually sit down on something other than the floor in our living room! Slowly our home is getting furnished completely and it feels grand! :)

Ode to the Chick-a-dee Tree...

2009-06-17T17:47:00.005+02:00

They cut the tree down! The one that I could see from my kitchen window. It was right there and full of chickadees. They would sit on the outside windowsill and peek in, sometimes pecking the window with their beaks to say hello to me in the morning. I had the blinds down because it was really hot today and I wanted to keep some of the heat outside. In the afternoon, when I had opened the blinds again, it was gone. I spotted the nasty thief down on the lawn, happily hacking away what was left of the tree with his axe and loading it on a truck. I did not even hear him using the motor saw as we have a huge construction zone not far down from where I live and I thought that noise came from there. But no, apparently one of the downstairs neighbors had complained about how the fir tree had been blocking their view or something. How sad :(. I will miss you, chickadee tree!

Travel Log

2009-06-14T21:12:00.038+02:00

I´m back! Physically at least... my brain is still stuck somewhere between the U.S. and German time difference . There is so much to tell but I am not going to write everything here, knowing that it would take hours. Still, I am posting some pictures and am going to summarize our travels and doings for all those who are interested. Everyone else: jump to directly to the pictures! ;)

Day 1: Arrival in D.C., luggage got lost in France, rainy and stormy weather, finding Annie´s home late at night after several detours of getting lost. ;)

2: Attending the awesome Kensington Ward Sunday services and seeing lots of great people again; going back to the Visitor´s Center for the first time in years and loving it, at the same time bawling like a baby because I missed it so much after the mish and suddenly being back again in my old home area. Ahhh, it hurt so good ;). Dinner with the sweetest family, the Pincocks.

3: Luggage arrives in the wee early hours of day (3 or 4 in the morning)... yes, CLEAN clothes and my deodorant! Life is grand! During daytime: 1- THE Thriftstore that we were frequently visiting as Sisters, the best place for cheap vintage and strange and normal clothing and other random oddities of all kinds. 2- The Mall in Washington D.C., the Smithsonians (Air and Space + Natural History museums), buying hot-dogs and ice cream, visiting the Jefferson Memorial and checking out the souvenier booths; 3- Georgetown with Annie and Matt, checking out cute little craft stores and having dinner at an Italian restaurant.

4: Sunny day in Kensington, MD. The V.C. again and the Temple. Meeting with Sis. Moon at the V.C., spending money at the 'This is the Place' Bookstore ;), dinner with the Poetker family and then visiting Emma and her mom. Packing our suitcases at night, Charlie (=Annie´s cat) carefully inspecting them all the while.

5: Flying to SLC, UT. Luggage ARRIVES with us this time ;). Meeting with the rest of the family; Going up to Park City

6: Having brunch and then hiking with the dear Paxmans in the 'Twin Peaks (<-- thought of you all the time, Chrie) Wilderness'.

7: Decorating for my brother´s wedding reception; dinner with my aunt and the relatives; meeting with Mary Pope and her husband :), good times!

8: Martin and Steph`s big day: the sealing in the morning and the wedding reception in the late afternoon, lunch with the extended family in between (all you can eat... and boy, DID I eat!); Meeting SO MANY people who used to live in Germany for a while. It was so great seeing them again. You get so attached to everyone... ; get-together with Laura, Uwe and Ruben in the evening. It was soooo good to see you again. I´ve missed you so much!

9: Church with my grandma and then lunch at her place, with my other uncle and his daughter, dinner with the family.

10: Memorial Day spent with my uncle Klaus, going down into the desert, through Heureka, to an old pony express changing station and campground, havin a campfire, grilled sausage and marshmallows, roasted over the fire :). Simpson Springs desert and then visiting the great Salt Lake. Beautiful day trip. dinner with my cousin Chris and his family, Jennifer and cute-as-a-button Meagan! I miss you already!

11: A day with Christy and Matt (hooray, it was so cool!) downtown SLC, on the endless search for the Ben and Jerry´s Ice Cream place ;), and visiting the Square and the art exhibit there. Neat! Sleeping over at the Marriott for free for a night, dangling our sore feet into the outside hot tub of the hotel, getting sugar high on the ice cream Matt constantly fed us and discussing feet pictures. I laughed so much my cheeks hurt in the end!

12: Martin and Stephanie are heading home for Germany. We spent the day with the awesome Harpers from Idaho! Thanks for the books, you rock! And eating out was fun :)! Dinner at the Lone Star restaurant with my aunt and uncle and family

13: My parents and sisters were flying back to Germany; shopping day at the D.I., in Park City and then dinner with Sis. Hinckley; later: visiting the wonderful Wirthlins. It was so good to get together with them and to see they are doing just great.

14: My brother´s birthday, V.C. Sisters Reunion at Jensie´s place. I HAD SO MUCH FUN :). What a wonderful evening. I hope you are all doing awesome. It meant the world to me to hang out with you again for a while. Long live the combination of Root Beer floats and German chocolate!! Next time the reunion will be at my place, alright? ;)

15: I love Walmart, K-Mart and Target! Meeting one of my husband´s friends, Tua, and having lunch together... the Blue Plate diner it is! Then, making sure the Weight Watchers won´t ever go out of business, by adding the HUGE Iceberg milkshakes to our stomach´s content. It was my uncle´s birthday that day. Later I got together with Andrea, the awesomest greenie in the whole wide world. It was great to see you, my friend! We visited Nate up in Provo that night and then took a detour to the MTC on the way back. Sentimental pictures taken at the entrance, stopped at Taco Bell (heavenly chalupas, I miss you!) and headed back home and to Walmart again. I love those opening hours. Yes, I DO want stores to be open here until midnight or longer!

16: Attending church at my aunt and uncle´s and then having lunch with them.... then: Dani and my roadtrip begins... and so do the few days we´ve had to ourselves. We travelled down to Price to stay with the sweet Arnolds. I love the Desert in a strange way. I don´t think I could ever live there (I´d get a severe 'where-are-the-trees?-fever' within a few weeks) but it is a truly amazing place. So out of this world. I felt like on a whole different planet. Very bizarrly beautiful. I really enjoyed it. Dinner with Arnolds that night :). They spoiled us rotten during our stay there!

17: Daytrip to the desert with the Arnolds, to the St. Raphael river, seing a dinosaur footprint in sandstone, having a picnic, hering the millions of cicadas in the bushes, observing amazing pictographs and petroglyphs etched in canyonwalls and stone by the Native Americans many, many years ago;

18: Rafting on the Colorado River through a Canyon by Moab in the desert, then: Arches National Park, amazing place. We hiked up to Delicate Arch and others and took what feels like a million pictures; back to Arnold´s at night

19: Leaving the Arnolds, heading back to Salt Lake, via the coolest place: Goblin Valley with surreal rock formations, being grilled... it was so hot, going up to the Fishlake Mountains and National Forest (*cough, cough*, there were mostly larger bushes and a FEW trees there...), then heading back, going by little towns who almost looked deserted or like ghost towns but with people actually living there. Reminded my slightly of the movie 'Cars'. Now I´ve seen the rural Utah towns, haha. Fun. We arrived in Salt Lake at my uncle´s place late at night, TIRED but happy.

20: Checking out some bookstores and then packing our suitcases. Time went by too fast. Visited my granny again before we left and then went back to my aunt´s place. Having a luncheon with my Aunt and relatives before she dropped us off at the airport. I drank as much Rootbeer as I could, literally, knowing that I will have it again who knows when... . Checking in and ready for take-off...

21: Landing in Paris in the early noon times, flight delay, waiting, waiting, wanting a shower and bed but instead boarding the plane already, arriving in Munich, catching a train, catching another, arriving at home in our town late night.

22 + ... : HOMESICKNESS, missing my family and friends there on the other side of the ocean. Ouch, it hurts!! Getting used to different sleep rythm (soon I hope, still adjusting here.... it´s never been that terrible to re-adjust to 'normal time' for me before. I am cruelly reminded of the sleep-awake-mess I was when I had rotating night-day-and midshifts working for the police); trying not to freeze too much here, although there is no airconditioning here, it´s the relatively cold weather that gets me, after enjoying the desert climate!

Looking back I recall being busy almost like it was on the mission. But I loved it! I had such a great time and it seemed like such a short amount of time. Well, it was. But I hope that next time we go, we´ll have a bit more time and won´t be as rushed and will get to meet with EVERYONE that time. I am sorry for not being able to meet with all of you. I wish I could have. But our time was limited and with my brother´s wedding, things were really tight. I actually carried a planner with me, that I used, otherways I there would have been no way for me to remember what-where-when. I am getting old ;). Well, I am filled with new inspiration and ideas and I have this long-needed creative flow again. I feel great (except for the tiredness and missing you, of course) and this travel time was a wonderful blessing! :) Till we meet again!

Random pictures:

Last minute preparations...

2009-05-14T09:25:00.009+02:00

Tomorrow will be the last day before we head to D.C. and then on to Salt Lake City and I keep going through those mental lists of what I need to finish and do before we go. We leave very early Saturday morning, so I´ll have to force myself to go to bed very early on Friday (which is impossible for me to do, let alone falling asleep...) and I need to start packing. I have sporadic ideas of what I still need to do but that´s either when I´m half asleep or when I´m in the bathroom (= has always been my place to receive inspiration for some odd reason. I found out that I might be going on a mission in there too. Weird) and by the time I am awake and close enough to pencil and paper, my thoughts are gone.

There is so much to do but I am excited to finally return to my 'old' home of 1 1/2 years in Kensington, MD, and to hang out with dear friends. I can´t wait to do some sightseeing with Daniel, going back to Georgetown, The Mall, the Capitol, the obelisk, the museums, and maybe still catching some of the lingering cherry blossom festival feel :). I can´t wait to go to the Visitor´s Center and Temple grounds again! I can´t wait to fly over to UT and visit my family and relatives and friends again. It´s been so long. I can´t wait for the VC Sisters Reunion I will be attending on the 29th :). I am excited for Martin and Stephanie´s wedding on the 23rd of this month. I am excited for all the craft stores, clothing stores there, with those insanely cheap prices, for the Root Beer and for the Tex Mex foods. I am excited to be able to speak to people and -unlike here where I live- understand all they are saying!

That said... on to the laundry pile ;). We´ll be back on the weekend of June 7, so there will probably be no new posts here until then. See you later :)!

Type, type, type...

2009-05-11T17:01:00.005+02:00

... started with the 3rd chapter of my story today. My fingers are sore from typing today, hence this lengthy entry ;).

Flower picking and cricket songs

2009-05-10T17:58:00.014+02:00

What a perfect Sunday afternoon! It was a very mild, sunny spring day today and Dani and I went into the woods to pick some sweet woodruff to make sirup.

On the way back home, we stopped at one of the many beautiful flowering meadows to look for red clover. I found a lot and picked a whole bouquet full. I am drying it and hope to make tea from the blossoms eventually (=good for us women ;) ).

Dani also picked me a huge bouquet of buttercups, I love these :).

There are only few things that I enjoy more than hearing crickets, smelling the rich and earthy flowers-and-grass scent from the meadows and having the sun shine on my shoulders. Hmmmmm, it´s been a good day!

The awesome weather also inspired me to spring-clean my working desk area and make it all artsy. Here are some snapshots of it:

Play Day

2009-04-28T12:55:00.006+02:00

Sometimes I wake up in the morning with this urge to change my hair somehow (color, length, straight or curly?...). So this morning I felt like I had to cut bangs again but refrained for now (it´s only a matter of time...I can feel the tips of my fingers tingling with cutting anticipation), being distracted by another one of my wigs. I´ve had it for some time but never wore it because it looks too 'wiggy', if that makes any sense. But this morning I played around with it a bit and it was the perfect fun activity for rainy days like today. I felt like an Albino-Anime-Sci-fi-Steampunk-Victorian crossover character, ha ha!
It was all fun and games until I realized the pile of dirty dishes and the to-do laundry pile... . So off with the wig, away with the stovepipe hat, toss the shawl... now it´s on to the more mundane things for me. There goes my sweet escape...

"By George, I think she´s got it!"

2009-04-23T09:47:00.009+02:00

It is done! Completely!
I finished my very first quilt last night.
I am never going to do another one of that size!
It turned out a bit smaller and more crooked than intended, but hey, it´s got personality! And I love it! My baby! It took forever and I got into these flows where I just couldn´t stop sewing, pinning and tucking, until late at night, until my hands and knees hurt. I started cutting the final quilt scraps and start sewing last week and finished last night. I don´t think I could have pulled it through if it had been more elaborate or even (I´m inserting the evil word here:) symmetrical of some sort. I am not good at long-term projects such as this, for I tend to lose interest after a while. I really have to learn patience with these things. Some things I can never get enough, drawing or being creative in general, for example, but sewing a tricky project tends to kill me off in the process. I sucked at sewing in elementary school but it was all by hand so I guess the sewing maching helps now :). We´re on friendly terms now and I am very happy about it. I think my sewing maching has a very kind character and the more I get to know her, the less she plots against me. Anyhow, here are the pictures of my latest sewing quest: the quilt, my beloved travel pillow, my summery casual bag, and my sun-glasses carrier.

"She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, she loves you... !"

2009-04-19T19:13:00.006+02:00

To all the men out there: if you love her, bring her flowers! Even on Sundays, when stores are closed (or at least here in Germany ;) ).

I´m so lucky to be married to the best, awesomest, coolest man ever! He just came back and brought me this sweet bouquet of wild flowers! I love those. Wild flowers are the best ...and so are his many little surprises for me :) !

One Week Vacation

2009-04-19T18:09:00.026+02:00

It´s 'back to blog world' for me, after spending a few days with my inlaws in Dani´s hometown. It was awesome. We´ve had the nicest summery-spring weather imaginable and we had so much fun there. Lot´s of things to do and to see (wedding invitation, Easter weekend, Dani´s birthday, meeting with old friends, ... ). Time seemed to go by much too fast.

Last Tuesday we met with my name´s sister, Chrie, and spent the day exploring Xanten, the cutest old town. There was a mill still in use, which housed a bakery in ground level and you could climb up to the top on ladders and ropes until you could walk around on the balcony outside and see the rotors from the outside (and inside). It was really neat to see. It felt like being transported into another time and place. I loved the windmill and historic part of the city. Right outside of Xanten, there is an archeological park, with ruins and things the Romans left there oh-so many years ago. It´s not as interesting as the Roman architecture in Trier (my most beloved "Roman" historic town) but still amazing. My favorite structure in that park was the remains of an old Roman temple. I felt like a Greek philosopher while inspecting it (and while I know that it was a Roman temple, I still felt Greek ;) ). Really neat. It made me miss the art history lessons back at school. All the pictures posted here were taken either at Xanten or in the Roman historical park.

And the other big news (I am so stoked still!) is that my brother is engaged. He proposed to the girl of his dreams on Saturday (haha, and while I can´t believe it just yet, ...it´s my little brother after all, I am so excited because I love her to pieces!) and she accepted. No date yet but how fun!

Besides all these things, I´ve also been busy creative-wise. I finally started sewing my own quilt (!!!). I had cut the quilt squares ages ago, starting last year in October and November but I never finished the project. For one thing, I didn´t have enough fabric scraps (after shopping at IKEA last January, that problem was solved, ha ha!) and I lacked the main thing: a sewing machine. I got one for my birthday and I was so excited. While I still can´t believe I am suddenly turning into a home-maker by chance, I really enjoy toying around with the sewing machine. I´ve never had any lessons for sewing (except hand sewing in elementary school, and I sucked!!), I am guerilla crafting with it now ;). I made my own cool bag that I took to Duisburg with me and it is still in one piece (with lining, to be extra posh ;) ), and now I finally started sewing the quilt sraps into bigger quilt scraps and I intend to eventually sew them all together to each other to have one big sheet to turn into an actual quilt. On the way back home from that amazing weekend, we stopped at another great friend´s house, and she showed me the quilt her mom had made for her. It was really nice and gave me the inspiration to finally get on and get done with mine. Of course it´s not even close to fancy like her´s but it´s mine ;). I don´t think I could ever get one done that´s nice and even and 'symmetrical' (a word disliked since Math lessons at school). I used a cut-out cardboart piece (from a Wagner´s Pizza package) as template, and while that one had no real symmetry to begin with, you can imagine, how individual the quilt scraps are. Each is almost the same size and has differently long sides. They are unique, they are alive (and I hope the aliveness will apply to the end product too, ... it´s no good if the quilt dies in the process of being created... ). I will upload pictures of it as soon as possible. For now, the 'in process picture' will have to do ;).

Cheers to everyone. I miss you!

Sneak Peeks

2009-03-31T16:31:00.007+02:00

Bits and pieces of fun random items in our home. The painting is hanging in our kitchen, above the stove. It´s little Red Riding Hood, enjoying a cup of tea with her friend, the wolf. I found the bird´s nest in a bush not far from our appartment. The eggs are fake, no worries ;). I bought them at a local bookstore (of all places... ).

There were more pictures but again, the camera´s batteries died soon before their time.

Preview

2009-03-30T18:21:00.001+02:00

...coming up tomorrow: random glimpses of our home; pictures to come!

Haircut

2009-03-28T14:55:00.002+01:00

... here I am. Short and wavy hair :D !

They are out there...

2009-03-22T11:29:00.006+01:00

... those wicked spiders, just trying to pounce on you when you least expect it! The other night, I stayed up late and as I reached to switch off the lights to go to sleep I saw it: a giant spider on the ceiling, eyeing me hungrily from above. I had to wake up poor Dani, who had already been fast asleep, to be a man and kill it for me. I got him a cup and some sturdy paper (the old trick if you want to do the dirty job somewhere else, thus not leaving ugly stains all over the ceiling or wallpaper), but then I had to discover that Dani was on the spider´s side and let it out the window (that´s open all night). I did not believe him when he said that the spider dropped three stories down. After all, it has a good amount of legs and would surely not mind climbing up to me again. I hate those spiders. Why can´t they just be round things without legs??? What am I concerned with all those ugly long legs? Without them, the spiders would look really silly. It´s in the legs. Am I a frustrated woman because my legs are not as long as the spider´s when viewed in proportion? Do I have secret topmodel ambitions? Surely not, it´s only those spiders. Everyone knows they are wicked beasts, waiting to devour you as soon as you cease to pay attention... grrrrrr !

Anyhow, nice long intro, I know. I just love the Gilmore way of dealing with spiders. It made me so nostalgic when I watched that episode a while ago with Dani (I even showed it to mom, just to have her as my witness to verify that Lorelai was NOT the first one doing that to a spider, noooo, noooo, I came long before her trap building ideas, including a glass, diverse heavy things and even packing tape). I laughed so hard watching that random scene in the show. Here is this clip, one of my favorites (with a special guest appearance for Chrie *wink, wink*) :

spider scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGqhWBcguWY

Have a great weekend, everyone! :)

Paper Doll Goodness

2009-03-19T10:01:00.004+01:00

So, no picture of my haircut yet. I have to get one first. (However, it does resemble the paperdoll´s haircut ...what do you make of that Doc Freud?)

Here is the first set of clothing I designed for my dollie. I actually finished it a while ago in February but never uploaded it. And I know, Halloween is over, but I bet it´ll be here again in no time ;).

Bob

2009-03-17T18:59:00.002+01:00

Nothing much to report as of late... except that

- I had my hair cut short to a layered bob
- changed the blog colors (stating the obvious)
- felt sick for the last two days

...

Picture Update

2009-02-24T22:57:00.007+01:00

Finally...

pictures from when my sister visited a while back and the latest pictures from tonight´s Fasching / Carnival party! I love my Peter Pan ;)

Week(end)

2009-02-24T10:14:00.009+01:00

Good times! My parents came to visit this past week and on my birthday we all had a snow day outside. It was great, with snow ball fights and all! I have a couple more bruises now (how come grown ups tend to fall of their sleigh a lot more often than kids? Maybe if I´d had a prep class before... ?) but I´ll survive ;).
Here is a "before" picture of us. We were too tired for an after snow picture.

♥

Apartment

Mädelsweihnachtsfeier

Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas

Christmas Tree 2011

Mini Tree-House Progress

Back online...

The World in Orange Hues

Travel back in time... July 2011

Saturday Sun

3rd Anniversary

What´s been going on...

Monday Caving

Tuesday in the Alps

Aalen City Run

Personal Beach

Abby´s Birthday

Tree Home

Strawberry Love

Strawberries and Garden

Frenchify!

Sock Love

Vintage Love

Patchwork Love

Sneak Peek

Witny´s Wedding

The Girls

Hale, Hale, and Gardening for Dummies

Celebrations

First Harvest

My new workspace

Run, Dani, Run!

Pilates

Eurovision Song Contest - My Choice

Bare no more... ;)

Before and After

Birthday Tea

Balcony Garden

Spring is here...

Winter Wonder Tree

Noel

Before and After

A day at Chatsworth House

Let´s be logical here...

Mittelaltermarkt Katzenburg 2010

Yellow Joy

Tin Gold

Ooooooooohh !!

Weekend in Bamberg... undercover!

Our own little re-fashioned cottage table (and more)

Spring is in the air...

Nesting or Cabin Fever...?

Setting the trend (or table...?)

What we´ve been working on...

What I´ve been working on...

Sibling-Saturday

Mini Mes or Boardgame People reloaded...

Craft Project #1 in 2010

Hello, 2010!

Candyland Goodness

Washington DC Temple Festival of Lights

Christmas Decorations

Getting Crafty Again

The Halloween Party

Yay, connected to the Floo Network

The Muffinqueen struck again...

Works in progress

Anniversary

Sneak Preview

Almost there...

Semi Expressionistic Portrait

Creative Works

PS:

Monday Again

Travel, Travel

Monday, Monday

*Sigh*

Lavender, dear Lavender...!

My pretty

Sigh