The Mystery of the Purple Flowers

We have these flowers in our garden. The grow very tall like sunflowers and are just as gorgeous in their way. But I have to admit I don't have a clue what their name is...

I stare at them each day because they are so different and beautiful! I have never seen them before. I am super happy that we don't have to do anything to our garden because the land lady does it all. I would have killed it all for sure by now :-)

Do you know what flower this is?

Take care,

Me

Parent-Child Relationship

I've started to work through our Venice pictures today. I came across two pictures that seem to perfectly show how the relationship between a pre-teen/teenage kid and the parent is:

On one hand you have the loving and cuddly side. The kid leans in to the parent, enjoying the love that is given to them. S/he accepts what the parent offers and harmony is all around them...

On the other hand, you have the situations in which the parent and the kid do not agree on anything! The kid wants to be independent and doesn't always make good choices... The parent watches on and in the end just wants to strangle them! Maybe some sense will come back to the kid... as if! :-)

I do have to admit that for the most part we enjoy those "strangling" moments! And just fleeting moments they are! Before you know it they are gone and the good times are back! 

In retrospect M and I often laugh about the stupidity from either her side or ours (but mostly hers! we are after all the all-knowing adults! LOL) that contributed to those tense moments! 

Take care,

Me

Horrible Morning!!!

I am normally an easy going person in the morning. But not today…

The list of “awful” things that happened in a span of 1 hour is long:

1. I woke up at 07.30. My morning routine is missing by now 30 minutes!

2. I break a glass as I am trying to pour my orange juice.

3. I can’t find my Iphone. I looked everywhere for it… I must have left it at work! I hate that!

4. I get a call from work. Then another, and then another. A crisis that has to be dealt with because of stupidity!

5. I mark my white shirt with a blue pen! Whatever, I am still wearing it! It’s only the size of a pin head. Unfortunately it is right above my heart. I wonder how noticeable it is?

6. I am out of diet Sprite. And all I have at work is warm water.

7. And as I am getting out of the car, I look down at myself and notice that my white shirt does not only have the pin mark but also some orange spot that is more noticeable than that stupid pen mark! I don’t have a shirt to change into with me and have to wait until lunch to do change. Crap!

8. Oh, and I am still trying to make up the 30 minutes! :-(

I so want to go back to bed and start the day over…

I hope your day starts better than mine!

Take care,

Me

The Ever Changing Weather in the Alps

Sunday afternoon gave us one of the more powerful (but short) thunderstorms that the Alps are known for.

We left for the commissary (5 minute drive) and the sun was shining. The temperature gage read 27 degrees Celsius. By the time we got there, these clouds came rolling over the Zugspitze. The lightning was beautiful!

You can see the rain falling on this one...

We were 5 minutes into shopping and we heard loud thunder and rain. P called us on the cell phone to let us know that large hail was hitting the window. She closed all the windows and let down the wooden shades for extra protection.

We were at the register paying for our groceries when we looked outside and the sun was shining again.

Here is how it looked like right after the thunderstorm.

Steam was rising off the asphalt! The temperature gage was now reading 16 degrees Celsius.

The fire department was all over Garmisch. 15 minutes of hard rain flooded quite a few basements and roads, as well as damaged trees that had to be cut down. Thank goodness our house and basement were just fine!

Take care,

Me

Something New For Dinner

I was watching German tv last week when I saw the tail end of a new Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial. Normally I don't pay much attention to commercials but this one caught my eye because the cream cheese was brown. Could have been a trick on the eyes... but I am sure that it was brown! You don't want to know what I was thinking :-)

Anyway, today M and I stopped by Tengelmann's on the way home from dog school. We only meant to turn in our recyclables but ended up walking through the aisles to get some things for our sandwich dinner. (We both don't feel like cooking!) If you remember the end aisle in the store is the refrigerated area. M was looking for a specific cheese spread (something with egg!) when I saw that they had Philadelphia Cream Cheese with Milka chocolate!

Hmm, of course, I picked up a tub to try for dinner!

P didn't like it. It isn't Nutella after all! I didn't like it because it had a funky after taste. M didn't like it because it reminded him too much of chocolate pudding. He can't have that on bread! It just has a weird texture... Yuck!

I feel guilty for saying this but I don't think we'll be finishing the tub. I can't toss it out because someone else like S might want to try when she comes over. But I can see that it somehow ends up in the back of the  fridge where M will find it 3 months from now. He will open it up, make a disgusted face and toss it. So maybe we should toss it now... that way he won't have to face a moldy chocolate cream cheese later on :-)

Is it available in the States yet? Would you try it?

Take care,

Me

Memorial Day Weekend

How was your long weekend? Mine was fabulous. It started early on Friday. I decided to leave work a couple of hours early. I found an IKEA paper bag filled with home made muffins (so good!), flowers, two cards and a set of blank cards in front of our door. What a wonderful surprise! A very good friend of ours dropped it off while we were at work. I love getting surprises like that!

I also got to talk to my dearest friend or as P would put it my “soulsister” before her move to SC. But that’s not all…

Nope, not at all! We went for a walk downtown, celebrated a birthday, went to the Soldier Show in Oberammergau, had wonderful ice cream from our favorite store, “finished” a project with P, watched a couple of movies, hugged and kissed my family (a lot!), ate Indian food and shopped for some clothes!

What was my favorite part, you ask? Being with my family every minute of this very long weekend… I wish it didn’t have to end!

Take care,

Me

P.S. I kept on forgetting to take the camera or my iphone except for the time that we went to the Soldier Show. We got there a bit early and we started to play around with the iphone camera. IThey aren't great but I love every single shot!

No tutorial today!

I didn't work on any tutorials today. I was really productive though. I made three tops today. One for P, one for J, and one for my sister S. I know that P's and J's fit but I forgot to make a photo of it.  S didn't have a chance to see hers yet because she is still at work. I really like her top and I hope she will too. I will get pictures later on when they actually wear their tops. 

I also wrote detailed instructions down for a friend of mine. She wants to make a little tote for her son. She also needed help cutting the fabric. 

I also had to cram in a bit of work at the office otherwise my boss would have complained :-) 

Tomorrow we are driving to Nuernberg to visit our family. There will also be a huge fabric market. Some people might think that I planned our family visit around the date of the fabric market :-) I wouldn't deny it...  I'll post some pictures of it if I remember to make photos.

So have a good weekend and I'll see you next week.

Our new Baby!

I was trying very hard to keep up with posting a tutorial every day. Alas, I wasn’t able to on Thursday or Friday. You see, we had an addition to our family. No, it’s not what you thought – no baby - but a new vehicle. You see, when you leave overseas and you buy a new vehicle, it normally get’s delivered by the agency to your place of duty. That can take some time. Last time when we ordered the Jeep, it took about 4 months from the time we place our order. This time it took a lot less but that’s because we decided to pick it up from the customs warehouse ourselves! We left around 01.14 a.m. on Friday morning with a rental. M and I drove up 8.5 hours to Bremerhaven. We picked up the vehicle, turned in the rental and came back down. We made a little detour to Wiesbaden to pick up a very good friend of ours who had sold his car up there and needed a ride back down. We didn’t get back home until 10.32 p.m. It was a very long road trip. But well worth it - it cut off about 1 month of delivery time!

We couldn’t have done it without my sister’s S and my really, really good friend J. They took care of our three little ones and I am forever grateful to both of them. Life sure is good when you have a sister that is also your friend and a friend that feels more like a sister!

So on Monday I am back to regular tutorialing. With that I leave you to ponder if that is even a real word? J

No Photos

I have been sewing and sewing and sewing. Yet I have not one photo! I always seem to forget that I need to take a picture of my finished project. I need to remember to make a photo as soon as I have finished it regardless what time of day it is. :-)

Ta Da for Now

K