For over a year now I’ve had the kindest and funniest man in my life. As an extra bonus he is criminally good looking! As if that weren’t enough he apparently has a great talent for Valentine’s Day planning:
Oh X-mas Pickle, You Warm My Cold German Heart
It’s The Most – Wonderful Time – of The Yearrrrrr! I realize hordes of people exclaim that they cannot wait for the holidays to be over but I surely am not one of them! We’re in the midst of the Holidays and I’m loving it!
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite US holidays of the year: Great food, great company and remembering all the many reasons to be thankful for make for a wonderful day if you ask me. For a low stress version of the day I opted to forgo the wonderful and very elaborate feast at one of my best friend’s family’s house this year and instead do a low key dinner and relax at zee boyfriend’s home.
Arugula salad, a turkey breast, gravy, boxed cornbread stuffing, bacon brussel sprouts, frozen sweet potato souflee, cranberry chutney that I made the night before and store bought pecan pie with ice cream made for an easy but fantastic dinner! All recipes here. We all lit a candle and said what we are thankful for – which I thought was a sweet tradition to adopt from M’s family.
Every year the day after Thanksgiving I have to travel to New York for a tradeshow. I really despise the schedule for that show but have started to look at it as “how lucky am I to travel to one of the coolest cities in the world when all the holiday decorations are up?!” It seems to work a little bit to get a positive attitude but still…. What always makes having that holiday weekend crushed to a one day weekend better is meeting up with old friends. This year the fabulous Maren showed me some of her favorite places around Washington Square and I chatted for hours with my college friends Katie and her published author hubby Dave about life, love and intercultural coupling. Wish we all lived closer! They also gave me the tip that the Met has a recommended admission fee so I snuck in there for an hour for $5 before flying home.
Oh also, I ate grasshoppers. Did not enjoy their legs in my mouth but the flavor was decent. Only in New York…
Well I’m finally home and brought a nasty cold with me (fail). Sickly, having a cold always makes me really excited about making chicken noodle soup (OMG it’s sooo good) so I giddily chopped potatoes and carrots with my love. Same wonderful guy came over and cooked a green minestrone for me last night. I feel so loved.
Amidst all that my Christmas tree came out and it now even has its very own Christmas Pickle. This is supposedly a German tradition – except nobody in Germany hangs pickles in their trees. Oh America. Thank you for thinking labeling something German will make it a best seller. Alas, I do love my Christmas Pickle sooo!
Twenty more days until Christmas! I still have to make a handful of hand-made gifts and buy some but am about half way done with gift shopping. Got my hand on some German Christmas chocolates and cookies from Aldi (as well as GREAT tangerines! Most of the ones I find in the US have a yucky consistency and have seeds… *tangerine snob*). Hope y’all are embracing advent or which ever other holidays you are celebrating! If you are still looking for gifts, I’d much appreciate if you’d consider my hand-made jewelry. Thanks for reading y’all!
Life’s in Fall Swing
“Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower” (Albert Camus)
As many north of here are dealing with horrific Hurricane Sandy (or post tropical cyclone as she’s now classified), fall is in full swing in Charlotte. Nature is sporting her beautiful dress of red, yellow, ochre and orange and I get to sport my cute fall outfits. Yay boots!
Pumpkins are everywhere! We’ve already carved pumpkins (and they’ve already rotted nicely and are decomposing somewhere on a landfill now). Zee boyfriend masterfully carved his college letter and I free-styled that pretty cute pumpkin face y’all can see on the left. After all that hard work we sure deserved that pumpkin ale! Prost!
Speaking of pumpkins, a handful of my girlfriends and Zee BF and I went to a local fall fest and got lost in walked through the corn maze and took a tractor ride to a pumpkin patch. Was a great backdrop for fall photos and we succeeded in protecting our tasty ciders from those evil yellow jackets. NASTY BEASTS!
So we had premature pumpkins and alas an early Halloween party seemed appropriate. I had received a very kind invitation to attend a swanky houseparty uptown. The decoration was awesome and appropriately creepy for a a horror movie producer. Babies in jars! Eeeeek! Giant spider chasing a cute caterpillar! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!
My costume of choice this year was the Pretzel Wench, which I suggest to include in a future installment of 50 shades of grey (still haven’t read the 1st). Artsy-crafty jewelry maker that I am, I made the accessories myself. And here is how:
Easy-Peasy Edible Pretzel Jewelry Tutorial
Find a piece of string that is long enough to tie around your neck (Advanced: find string in a color that matches your outfit and is long enough).
Select an uneven number of pretzels that have not expired yet (Evil: use expired ones and feed them to someone you dislike. Muahaha) (don’t try this at home!). 5 are pretty but 3 work, too. Don’t use chocolate covered pretzels – they’ll melt!
OK now the secret to make it look awesome and not stupid: String the string through one loop of the pretzel and then out again through the other loop. Weave the other pretzels on in the same manner. Much prettier than stacking them (if you anticipate raging appetite at the end of the night you may want to go with the stupid stacked pretzel version for practicality).
As for the earrings I used looped earring wire that I have from my jewelry making projects. However, if you have any kind of loop earrings they should work just fine. Plop a pretzel on each and bam, you’ve made yourself some pretzel earrings! Now wasn’t that fun?!
Spring Is Here
Crazy to think that only a week ago we got hit by a winterstorm and got almost 10cm of snow when today people are walking around in shorts and flipflops at 26°C! The snow transformed the city into a beautiful winter wonderland and the streets into ice-skating rinks. So lucky me, I got to sleep in! Didn’t have to go to work until noon on Monday and 10am on Tuesday. The sun here is so powerful that it melted the ice on the streets right off – took a little longer in my parking lot but eventually the warmth prevailed – flip flops today.
Sometime during this week the weather changed. I didn’t quite notice. Thursday I stayed home sick with the flu. Hadn’t had the flu in what feels like forever. I felt really sick but in some weird way it was nice to do nothing but sleep and nap and doze and concentrate on getting better. I think a few more days and I’ll be back to normal. Can’t wait to go back to the gym!
I still love love love my apartment. It is hard to believe that I went from no furniture to everything (and more ;-)) in a little over a month. I was heavily anticipating the opening of a well-known Swedish furniture chain. Funnily by then I already had a ton of great home fillings and most even better value than IKEA pieces! Got a great coffee table (ok so it’s officially a bench) from Target for 35$ (reduced from over 100) and so on. Yay! The place really feels like my place and I feel very comfortable there.
Other than that, it’s a recession, baby! The economy is rotten. Most likely I am back to working 40 hours so that is great news! Yay! 🙂