Hi guys,

again, we have been very busy. We spent the weekend at Ann's family and had an awesome day on Saturday at the Holidaypark. We made tons of pictures and really need to keep up with our posting. So many stories, so little time....
One thing I have to say upfront: I went on a roller coaster, although I am horribly afraid of heights and have not been to an amusement park for 17 years! You can imagine the horror :)
The pic of it is really funny, me and my distressed face.
Happy Monday and look forward to some fun stuff.
S.

EuroCityFest Münster 2011 - Christina Stürmer

What kind of drinks will you serve?

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2011-03-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

Choosing a date

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Okay, you somehow managed to survive telling your family and friends and the entire world that you are going to get married. You know how many people will be invited. You've decided to make the big step, but did you think about a date?

This is one of THE decisions.

When will the big event take place? Um, we don't know? Not a good answer. Time to make some final choices. Now that sounds easy, a year has 365 days, there must be a day, you think. You don't want to marry during the week right? I mean people are working or have kids in school and you don't want anybody to say, I cannot come, I have obligations. So you have Saturday or Sunday, that leaves you with about 110 days instead of 365. Then you have to make sure it is not a national holiday or any holiday of anyone's religion, not Christmas Eve, Hanuka, Easter, new Year's, Kwanza, 4th of July...blablabla. There are so many holidays and some of them might be Saturday or Sunday. So less than 100 left.
Now it starts, depending on the area you live in, the weather might be an issue. Not in Fall, too many thunderstorms, not in Summer might be too hot. Spring? Well, no, it might still be cold. You could go for a general choice: Do you want a summer or winter wedding? A beautiful wedding in the cold or with sunshine?
While we're at it don't forget your friends' birthdays or your family's birthdays, your birthday, your parent's anniversary.....are you really planning on planning your wedding day for the rest of your life? Come on!
If you want it easy just decide on a date and the list of people coming might cut to half. However, in that case you might acutally find a date the both of you like, which is hard enough, and, more importantly, a date to memorize. No, don't! Not a 08/08/2008 or 11/11/2011. Those are not nice dates, that is a bad bad joke!
We were egoistic. We got married on one of our friend's birthdays. It was a Saturday, it was July 19th 2008. It was a nice summer day with sunshine, well at least for some time. Who said summer weddings are a safe bet? No, it was no special date for us until that day of course!

Wednesday Love

2011-03-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Today's Wednesday Love will differ a bit from the previous ones. Instead of showing you websites we like or posting things we really want to have, we want to share some of our favorite places and things we have seen or already own.
My personal Love is our old house. I lived there most of my life and 2003 we sold it. My parents had it built 1985 and it really was a home to my family for quite some time. It looks a bit different now, but I just love having a look at old pictures once in a while.

Of course if we have one home, we will also share the other home. This is where I met my sweeties family, who still lives there. This is where Ann spent most of her life:

We're both huge fans of Sarah Bettens. She is a brilliant singer and songwriter and if you ever get the chance, you have to see her live! Last year at L-Beach we both were able to take a picture with her. Awesome!!!!!

Also we both love the beach and can't wait to go to the North Sea in summer and hopefully to California by next year. These here are also pictures from L-Beach last year:

Another place we really love is Berlin. It is one of the best towns in the world. I have been there numerous times and 2007 was our first trip together. Even today I still find something new whenever I am there. It is a beautiful city. This is a definite to do for everbody: Go see Berlin!

During summer we sometimes go for a walk in the botanical garden here in Münster. It sounds as if we are old people, but it is quite romantic and perfect if you like taking pictures as much as we do. Sadly they are having financial difficulties and most of the greenhouses are in danger of collapse. We took many of the pictures when you were still allowed to enter them.

This was just a start. There are so many other things we love and enjoy. If you like you can see them in a new Wednesday Love next week.
S.

Saturdays Sacrament

2011-03-19T12:18:00.000-07:00

Alright, we have already spoken about the major steps in even getting engaged and announcing this to the world. Now you have to start with the real hard part, the Preparation!

You might be wondering about todays thing to consider before getting married, but this is just a tiny part in a long row of decisions that have to be made before the big day:

Who will you invite?

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This might be surprising to you that this question pops up so early. Well, every other thing that needs to be planned for the wedding, if it ever takes place, depends on this important fact. Will it be a small ceremony just with family and closes friends? Remember the announcement problem. Whomever will not be invited will question your friendship. But you don't want to have it too big do you? I mean we haven't talked about payment at all yet!

You will want the living members of your family, your father, mother, siblings, sure. What about aunts and uncles? What about grandma and grandpa, if they are still alive. Are they still fit enough to come and stand through the whole celebration?
What about the part of the family that is just ignored all the time and only receives occasional Christmas Cards? Do they have to be invited?
And remember both of your families will be coming. Do they like each other? Have they ever met before and if not would it be good to get through this first encounter before your wedding day? It would be a real disaster if the big meeting was on the actual wedding day and both parties would not like each other!

The friends are a lot tougher. Who really is your friend and of whom do you think: "I really don’t want them there". Who invited you to their wedding and therefore should really be invited? What about those friends that can't stand each other? You know his or her friends on one side and then your own friends on the other. And we're sure everyone has friends, whom are really important to them, but whose other friends will never get why you like each other. Also, remember too many friends - too many mouths to feed. Then again, be prepared to lose those people you don't invite, they might take it personal.

Please think again, does this really have to be celebrated with others? And do you really want to pay for others to have fun and make fun of you? Do you like your family? Do you actually have friends?

Our decision took quite long. In the end we invited a whole bunch of friends to the ceremony, and of course our parents, but only aunt and uncle from one side of the family and only one sister was able to come. The first list of people to invite was done almost 2 years prior to the actual wedding day and was reviewed again and again. This is why this really should be one of the first things to think about and rethink as often as needed!

Wednesday (well Thursday) Love

2011-03-17T13:20:00.001-07:00

Sorry, we’re late. But here we go, a new edition of Wednesday Love

A new chance to show you things we love. Last week we had a bit of an artsy day, today it is rather random.
First of all, here is something really sweet. A man writing a blog full of information for his future wife. It is kind of like a manual, I think a lot of relationships would work a lot better, if they had one.

Another love, especially of mine, is El Paso, Texas. It still feels like my second home whenever I see the pictures, although I have not been there since 1991. I just have to see it again. You have never heard of it? You think its just sand? You can view the true beauty of it here.

Right now I could really use some Texas sun, I mean its sun that shines over 305 days a year!

We both don’t have drivers licenses yet, but one day we will. And that day, we will have to buy the best car in the world: a Mustang! This car is a true dream of mine!

Just look at this beauty!

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Although my sweetie would probably prefer this kind of Mustang:

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Yes, she loves horses. It is her everyday love!

Last but not least, we do want to share a website of high importance right now.
Although it has nothing to do with our blog, we would like to guide you to a page where you can donate money for the people in Japan. It is a horrible disaster and a time to show that we can help with every penny. We already donated and hope it will reach the people in need as soon as possible:

Betterplace.org

That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by.

Your Bedroom is your Castle

2011-03-15T13:27:00.001-07:00

I always wonder how some people’s bedrooms might look like. Is it just small and simple without any decoration? Or is it stuffed with little souvenirs and memories? Might there be a king size bed, is it wood or metal, are there nightstands….

We have rearranged our bedroom quite often in the 4 years we have been living in this apartment. We started collecting items that might give it a cozy feeling. Today we want to share our favorite bedroom pieces with you. All these things sum up the good feeling we have when going to rest at night.

As the room is really small, we didn’t want to put too many things in it. Otherwise it will stop being cozy and start being claustrophobic. We also started a color theme that makes the room appear a lot more soothing. We covered everything in lilac, light blue and a bit of rose.

The vase of this beautiful fake flower reflects the purple and in the background you can see both of the colors we used to paint the walls.

Also, we believe plants, no matter if fake or real, really bring a room to life.

Matching the color scheme we found a light bulb, which was colored with blue stripes and in the standard IKEA lamp it looks really neat:

Thanks to this our colorful bed sheets don’t cause an overload.

Left to the bed we have this nightstand with a cute little music box. We received the frame you see as a gift for our wedding, which is why we decided to fill it with wedding pictures. The lamp again is IKEA, the grey shade matches the wall color perfectly.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound ground meat (250 gram)

6 slices of diced crustless white bread/toast

1 egg

flour

salt, pepper

butter for the pan

1 frying pan, 3 bowls

Mix ground meat with egg and diced bread. It should still be moist, you might not need all of the bread. Add salt and pepper for flavor.

Grease a pan and preheat.

Now roll small meat balls and flatten them. Cover these in flour before adding them to the pan.

Fry about 5 minutes per side. Afterwards put them into a large bowl.

Best served with mustard, pickles and mashed potatoes or potatoe salad.

The serving above is enough as a side dish for 2, but trust us, make at least twice the amount, because they are addicitive!

We hope you enjoy them as much as we always do!

Münster–the place to be

2011-02-17T10:53:00.001-08:00

Our header already tells you that we live in Münster, well in a suburb of it. And although we have shown you our appartment and a bit of the area around here, we never added pics of this beautiful city.

Me, Sabrina, I moved here in 2001, because I started studying at the Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet. In 2007, when Ann finished her apprenticeship, we got this appartment and obviously stayed here. Despite wanting to maybe move to a bigger town like Hamburg or Berlin, we are still here. Probably because Münster is a like a very big village and has many beautiful spots. See for yourself!

This is our cathedral, the main sight seeing spot:

The picture is of the Northern side of it.

Most people take a picture of the front, but as it is constantly under construction, we only have a good shot of this side.

Oh, and we have the big lake in the middle of town, the Aasee.

This is only a very small part of it. We’ll try to get some better pics this summer. It is a great place to just hang around with friends or alone with a cool drink!

And here are some further impressions, you might notice, we have a LOT of churches…this is the Überwasserkirche:

And a lot of water

Our channel, in some parts you can even swim!

And finally, our “castle”. It is the administration of the university, but still very beautiful from the outside!

Maybe one day you’ll stop by to have a look around. There is so much more to see here. Like the museums (see our “The Night of the Museums” post), or the Zoo ( we will be posting Zoo pictures soon, we have millions) or the night life…

Saturday's Sacrament: Things to consider before getting married

2011-02-14T11:13:00.001-08:00

A lot of people stumble upon this blog through our wedding video. Understandably, many people want to see how others celebrated and are looking for inspiration. Others already started planning and encourage themselves once more by watching these cute little videos showing the best moments.

Well, as beautiful as weddings might be, they are a lot of hard work. And to be honest the biggest test for young love is the time from proposal to surviving the honeymoon. Don’t get us wrong. We really love each other and once in a while grab our album with wedding pictures and drown in memories. But the time to get there was not easy. In general there are a lot of things you really need to consider before getting married. Here is one:

The Proposal

The first reason not to get married is quite obvious: someone has to ask THE question. Who will it be? And how and where? The fancy restaurant thing like in the movies with bended knee and the ring? That's a bit cheezy and your honey will know what it's all about long before you even enter the restaurant. And what if you then decide not to ask for some reason. Maybe he or she starts nagging on you or the food or the crappy violin player. Maybe your ex walks by and causes tension. You never know. Or maybe the good old "hide the ring in desert" type of way? But wait, didn't you see several people choking on these in several shows and movies? You don't want to kill your partner, although it says till death do us part, but that's kind of early.

And also any other type might go horribly wrong. You don't ask that question while you're buying milk or just sitting in front of the TV watching some splatter movie. You don't ask in front of friends, a "No" would just be too much. Oh, and never, NEVER ask in a stadium, concert or any other big occasion with hundreds of thousands of people. This really puts a lot of pressure on your partner to say yes and maybe not mean it, leaving you standing alone at the altar. Or what if you get a "no"? You'll be damned for life. Known as the one who got a NO. That would just be too humiliating, wouldn't it?

Basically just asking THE question is just too complicated and can ruin your life forever, so don't even start

Luckily we got through that in a quiet moment on a nice September evening:

(It says “Will you marry me"?” in German)

Brown and sparkling

2011-02-08T12:42:00.001-08:00

As you might have noticed, we like to decorate our appartment and are big fans of home improvement. Shockingly we have never shown you our favorite items in this place. Actually, since we have been living in this appartment, since 4 years now, we started to evolve our style.

When we first moved in together, 2007, our ways of decorating a place were very different. Me, Sabrina, I was still the poster and weird wall painting type. I tried loads of different colors, had a horrible taste in curtains and my decoration contained of CDs, DVDs and candles. Whereas Ann was more the type of artsy pictures, with decent colors and pink.

Throughout the years we grew together and started to realize that there really are things we both like and our appartmentstarted to really look like…well…. us!

One of my favorite pieces is a beautiful wooden deer head I got for Christmas 2007 from my lovely wife. This is me unwrapping it:

It was hanging in several places in the living and dining room and right now resides right above our big brown couch. Beneath it we have a lamp, which makes it even more sparkly!

By the way, his name is Edward.

Sleep and poodles

2011-02-05T09:28:00.001-08:00

Last December we finally decided to get a new bed. Our previous bed was 1,40 m, our new one has 1,80 m, so a decent size for 2 people. And we sleep really well in it. We already had the mattress 6 months prior to buying the bed….but it is a tough decision which bed type you want and also which color.

Anyway, here it is our beautiful new MALM from IKEA.

We’re pretty sure, sometime in the near future it will be aoblogatory to have at least one MALM in each appartment or house!

Additionally to the awesome bed, we also got a lot of new bed linen. The picture shows the poodle set from the H&M at home collection. It might seem a bit cheezy, but it is really comfy and we love it

Oh, we also have another one from that collection, here is a impression of the cheetah print, lovely, isn’t it?

Christmas Meal Part II.3

2011-02-03T11:03:00.001-08:00

We already got quite far. You have your first course, the meat, the stuffing and extra corn bread. To round it all up, we also had some delicious side dishes and some gravy/sauce.

Okay, for the regular gravy, we used the ready made. Of course, it is quite simple to have self made gravy, but to be honest with the turkey and the other stuff, you have more than enough to worry about. And actually, with that dinner no one will care about the gravy

Just make which ever you like and another treat on the table is done.

Now let’s move on to the first side dish. It is really simple. It can also be bought ready-made, but is so much better home made:

Mashed Potatoes!!! (serving for 2)

Ingredients:

1 pound potatoes (500g)

1/2 cup milk (1/8l)

1 Tbs butter

Salt and nutmeg

a masher and a pot

Heat water in a large pot. Peel the potatoes and dice them, yes, we dice everything….

Add potatoes to boiling, salted water (add salt once it starts boiling, otherwise it will take forever). Let them cook for about 15 minutes.

Rinse potatoes. Add butter to the hot pot. Afterwards add potatoes and milk. Heating is no longer required. Take a masher and mash the whole stuff together until it is a homogeneous mass. Add salt and nutmeg until you think it is fine.

There you go. Easy self made mashed potatoes and another serving to fill your plates.

Christmas Meal Part II.2

2011-02-01T13:20:00.001-08:00

Here we go, the main course, the thing everyone is waiting for:

The Roast Turkey!!!

Ingredients (serving for 2-3 people):

1 onion

2 celery

1/3 cup butter (75g)

1/2 cup sausage meat (200g)

2 Tbs parsley

3 tsp thyme

3 tsp dried sage

salt, pepper

3/4 cup chicken broth (200ml)

1 baby Turkey or a chicken of about 4 pounds (1.5-2 kg)

3 Tbs butter or grease

a very large pan

a turkey bag

First of all make sure your Turkey or chicken is clean and does not contain its insides anymore. Now rinse with water and season with salt and pepper from the in and outside. If you bought a frozen chicken/turkey let it unfreeze for a day.

Dice onion and cut celery into small pieces. Preheat a pan with butter and simmer vegetable in it. Now add the sausage meat and fry for 3-4 minutes. Add herbs, salt and pepper.

Preheat oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit / 175 degrees Celsius.

Remember the corn bread recipe? Take half of the corn bread and cut it into small dices. Now add corn bread dices and chicken broth to the mass from the pan little by little, making sure it is moist, but not too wet. If you don’t need the whole bread dices, eat ‘em

Now fill the turkey/chicken with the corn bread stuffing and sow together afterwards. Stick the wings underneath the chicken/turkey and tie legs to it.

Take the large pan, preheat with butter or grease and fry chicken/turkey from all sides. This is quite a mess if you are not used to it, so careful!

Afterwards put chicken/turkey into the turkey bag, for this 2 people are actually quite handy as the thing is heavy.

Leave the birdie in the oven for about 2 hours. If available stick in a meat thermometer. The inside should have about 180 degrees Fahrentheit / 80 degrees Celsius.

Now enjoy, it is so delicious. We already made it three times!

Here you can see the complete meal. At the bottom of the picture you see the meat and the stuffing. And here it is, the TURKEY

Side dishes will be presented next time.

Isn’t he cute?

2011-01-31T10:52:00.001-08:00

Yes, we know you are waiting for the next part of our Christmas dinner. As life is constantly interrupting our blog time, we thought we’d give you something to smile in the meantime.

You were probably wondering whether Mr.Bear gets along with Pony. See for yourself

Christmas Meal Part II.1

2011-01-25T12:02:00.001-08:00

As promised we proceed with the presentation of our Christmas dinner. Yes, we know Christmas is over, but there are always occasions to have good food! So today we’ll start with part 1 of the main course.

Before the main dish can be cooked you will need to prepare the corn bread. It has to rest for a day, therefore it is also good to minimize the effort at the actual serving day. It was not only used as a side dish for the soup, it is also the stuffing for the Roast Turkey! So, you might want to use twice the amount

Ingredients:

1 cup flour (100g)

2/3 cup corn flour (100g)

1 tsp baking powder

1 Tbs sugar

1/2 tsp salt

4 Tbs oil

1/2 cup sour cream (100g)

1/2 cup milk (100ml)

1 egg

a casserole

a big bowl

Preheat the oven at 200 degrees celsius / 390 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease the casserole with vegetable oil.

Now grab a big bowl and throw in all the ingredients at once. Yes, this is an easy one! Mix well with a wisk or hand mixer and fill into the casserole.

Bake for about 25 minutes. Check if inside is done before taking the bread out of the oven.

Now let it rest for a day for the stuffing. You will need half of it for a Turkey serve for 2 people. The other half can be served with the soup or just eat it right away and bake a second one. It’s not that hard, is it?

Hope you like it as much as we do!

Christmas Meal Part I

2011-01-23T12:11:00.001-08:00

Today we are presenting the first course of our Christmas dinner. We had 3 in total. No need to tell you that a lot of our time was spent in the kitchen. However taking a look out of the kitchen window, anyone was happy to be at home:

Quite some snow.

Anyway, the first course was: carrot-orange-soup.

Ingredients:

1 Tbs oil

1.5 pounds diced carrots

2 diced onions

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp fresh ginger or ginger powder

3/4 cup orange juice

1/2 cup cream

4 cups vegetable stock

1 tsp dried thyme

2 bay leaves

salt and pepper

one large pot and a hand blender

Preparation: Heat oil in a large pot. Add diced onions and garlic powder and steam together with ginger powder and carrots. Deglaze by adding the vegetable stock, I always use the ready made, but if you want to brag you can make your own

Now add thyme and bay leaves and cook for 25 Minutes. Afterwards you can remove the bay leaves and start with the fun part. Blend the stew with a hand blender, careful, I always have a lid between me and the soup. Once you have a homogeneous mass you can add the orange juice. If you are preparing the soup a day before, like we did, you can leave it at that and do the next step before serving.

Add the cream and spice with salt and pepper. Et voilà, this is what you get:

The thing on the left is corn bread, we will add that recipe next time when we introduce the main course

Christmas 2010

2011-01-22T10:12:00.001-08:00

Since you have already seen that we did have a white Christmas, we bet you would like to know a bit more of our Christmas Eve.

This year we got a new fake tree. It came in 2 parts, so setting it up is really simple. The best thing about it is that it has the lights included! All you need to do is put it together and add the decoration. We love it! Here’s a pic of the whole living room:

Ann also got some new stuff for a real nice decoration of our dining table.

Note the moose

It was a nice and romantic evening with real good food and awesome gifts! Especially the 2 books of the “for dummies” series and Ann’s new “pet” made the day.

Yes, it’s a unicorn and it’s FLUFFY!!!! And we named it “Pony”. Yup, we are special

Wondering what we ate? Post will come soon……

2011 already?

2011-01-21T10:51:00.001-08:00

Hi everybody. You were probably wondering why we haven’t written in such a long time. Actually we did want to post something in fall. We went to the town’s fair and wanted to take loads of pictures for a new post.

Well…..then our camera broke. Right after taking the second picture. It was a very sad day!

Luckily there is Christmas and now we have a beautiful bridge camera. It is so awesome!!!! Just wait and see

In December we had the wildest snow storms here. It did not stop snowing for about 3 days. It was the perfect scenery for the first pictures with our new cam!

Isn’t this absolutely incredible?

In our town, everybody has 2 bikes, so we just had to take the picture. And is'n’t that a perfect snow angel?????

Anyways, now that we have this beautiful camera and are actually capable of taking loads of new pics, we will be posting more!

Spookytime is coming

2010-10-22T10:30:00.001-07:00

Don’t you just love October? Since Ann was born in California and I lived in Texas for 4 years, we both are very fond of American holidays. Luckily Germany is taking over these holidays one by one. Halloween has definitely found its way into German life and we are happy!

We are already working on our costumes and have some really cute Halloween stickers with witches and pumpkins and stuff.

Even our small local bakery found its share on Halloween. Isn’t this bat adorable?

Mini - Food

2010-10-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

Being in a relationship sometimes leads to trouble. Sure, this is nothing new, but we are talking about the really essential things in life:

What will we eat?

This can be a real challenge, if one has the urge for burgers and the other for hot dogs. But no worries, there is an answer to your queries: mini food.
Last time we couldn't decide what to eat we got ourselves a nice selection of tiny things: burgers, hot dogs and Schnitzel. So great! The cheeseburgers were only buns, meat and cheese. We improved them by adding one slice of tomato, a tiny bit of salad and some hamburger sauce. That really made our day. The hot dogs were topped with some curry-ketchup (a very German thing) and were great as well. I wonder why you don't see that so often. It is absolutely perfect. Oh, we also had some mini pizzas the other day. The only thing that's missing is mini chicken and mini steak :)
Oh, not that you're not hungry already, here's a pic:

Time is priceless

2010-10-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

Hey guys.
So, we didn't post in a week....shame on us. Reason for this is, I (Sabrina) had a 2 week vacation. This was the first time in 9 years that I had 2 weeks off without anything else to do. During my time at university I was always busy with some paper or book, but this time it was just off time. This really felt good.
We slept long and then had a nice breakfast. We went shopping and to the market. I love it! We went out for lunch and my sweetie's family came to visit us. It was really nice to have some real time together. Now that I am back at work I notice how much time of my life is spent there. Only having the evenings together is not a lot, if you are used to having a lot of time. I just can't wait for my next vacation :)
This week is still very exciting. Ann started at university and is sitting in a course right now. So proud of her! Also we started looking for a new appartment closer to town, but we are still working on our little redecoration projects. Our newest idea will be posted soon, once it's done :)

Spice up your life!

2010-10-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

As we have found several comments on our wedding video asking whether we are still a couple, we have come to think. Well, sure we are, why shouldn't we?

Fact is, we have been married for 2 years and almost 3 months now. We have been a couple for 4 years and 5 months and today we know each other since exactly 5 years! And one reason for this must be that we are both completely insane and enjoy really simple things in life. No, we are not talking about waking up next to each other every morning or the first cup of coffee of the day - although those are really good things! We are talking about little things that give you a break from everyday life.

For example, last week we went to a different supermarket than the one we usually buy our groceries at. This might sound weird, but it makes you feel as if you are entering a whole new world. Our supermarket has everything we need for our regular life, but going to a different supermarket can be exciting! You can get groceries your supermarket does not offer. We got the most awesome microwave Pancakes! To you Americans out there this is nothing special, but in Germany it actually is. Although you can get pancake mixes, readymade pancakes are very rare, so these were a real treat for us! Also we got some cereal we cannot get at our store, mini sausages and other small things. Okay, now you think we are insane, but try it! Check out a completely different supermarket once in a while and you will see, it makes you feel better :)

Another thing we like to do is getting dressed really nicely just to go shopping in town. Getting dressed for no special occasion can also help spice up your life ;)
This was our Outfit last week:

Hopefully we will be going to the zoo sometime soon, also something to take a break from life ;)

Introducing another family member

2010-09-27T02:15:00.000-07:00

Since you have already met Mister Bear, we would like to introduce you to the first plant that ever survived a summer in our living room, our bamboo called Bambus (that's German for bamboo, very creative, we know).

We have tried several plants. The problem is that, as we are living in the roof, it is very hot in the summer and very cold in winter, especially in the huge living/dining room. Our orchid survived for about 1 year, our eucalyptus only made it a few weeks. They like it cold and I guess the heat killed it. Also our beautiful kitchen herbs only made it about a month, so we are very proud that Bambus has survived this summer. We got it last year on a sunny winter day at IKEA. Some impressions of how cold it was:

December 19th it will be with us for one year! Maybe we'll get a second one this year :)

10 reasons for early Christmas shopping

2010-09-21T22:50:00.000-07:00

1. No crowded shopping centers as everyone is still saving money.
2. You can buy things little by little instead of having to spend loads of money within one month.
3. You still get everything in "normal" and for the regular price instead of extra extra special Christmas editions.
4. You can find wrapping paper that is not used by hundreds of others.
5. If someone tells you about something he or she really wants to have, you don't have to memorize it for the next three months.
6. You might still be able to take a few days off, giving you plenty of time to really think about things to get.
7. You can buy hot bikinis and sun glasses instead of the usual scarfs and socks.
8. Although you always tell yourself you will have everything done by December, Christmas Eve always arrives earlier than expected, so you better start really early.
9. If you get a gift certificate instead of buying something, you have great chances to actually use it before Christmas to get something your sweetheart suddenly wants to have.
10. The surprised and envious faces of your friends, who are in a total haste December 23rd as they haven't found anything yet, while you rest in your chair drinking eggnog.

We love shopping!!!

2010-09-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we went on an absolutely awesome shopping trip to Bremen. We got up early and took the train with a stop in Osnabrueck to have some delicious McD breackfast, yummy!
We went to this shopping center, yes, it took quite a while, but they have made their way to Germany. Sadly, most still lack a good fod court. The Waterfront in Bremen has a nice foodcourt and we stuffed ourselves with a Kentucky bucket!!!! This is the rear view, nice isn't it?

But our main goal was to go shopping at Primark. We didn't even know they had nice guy's clothing as well, so we both ended up finding loads of stuff. We have never seen so much stuff that was actually affordable and decent looking at the same time!
We did get a few things. Here is the princess of shopping with our bags in front of this beautiful river right behind the Waterfront:

What can we say, it was a great day, we had loads of fun and spent 2 and a half hours at Primark. Christmas shopping in Bremen is already on schedule!

75.000

2010-09-08T23:14:00.000-07:00

OMG!

I just saw that we have reached 75.000 clicks on our youtube wedding video. This is unbelievable. I still remember my sweetie sitting at the laptop trying to get the video done. It took forever and cost a lot of nerves.

Initially it was meant for my big sister. She lives in Dallas with her husband and could not come to Germany for the ceremony. We actually had a webcam that enabled anyone to follow the whole show, but that exact day, my sis had Internet trouble and could not see the whole thing. We felt so sorry and I was so sad that my wife made this video to have her take part.

Back then I thought, maybe we'll have 1000 clicks one day and now this little "family portrait" is being watched all over the world. I cannot say how proud I am.
Thank you so much!!!!!
Greetz,
Sabrina

The Night of the Museums

2010-09-05T01:48:00.001-07:00

As said in our previous post, this weekend we had this Museum Festival here in Muenster. The really cool part is that participating museums are open Saturday until midnight and they are all for free. The pic at the top is our town's museum, the Stadtmuseum. It is right in the city and shows an exhibition of the history of Muenster from the first settlers through the middle ages, Napoleon, WW II...
Although we do like culture, a lot of things were not that interesting for us, but the middle ages section was nice. Also the little models of town showing its development were very impressive.

We only made it to 2 museums, because we decided pretty late that we are gonna go. But I have to say after living here for years, we finally saw those two museums we have always wanted to see. And we have to say the second had some really beautiful pieces. It's the Museum for Lackkunst in Muenster --> a museum of Lacquer Art. It shows the evolution of lacquer art for the last 2000 years. The most impressive definitely were from Japan and China, mostly tobacco boxes and little bowls. The buildung itself is also very impressive, see:

As we don't go out in town at night that much it was actually really good to see how crowded it was. Finally just being in town and something is going on everywhere. I know in bigger cities that is normal, but not really here.

We totally forgot how beautiful everything looks at night. So we are ending this post with the rear view of one of our shopping centers, the Stubengasse.

Enjoy :)

Boring Sundays...

2010-09-04T02:05:00.000-07:00

Hi there.

Do you know this feeling? It is Sunday and you have no idea what to do? For those who live in countries with open stores on Sundays: in Germany stores are closed on Sundays. Only on special occasions you may open your stores on a Sunday. Like tomorrow. We have this little Museumfestival. It is actually quite cool. At the Erbdrostenhof you can hear Opera while you are shopping, I just love it. But I am getting off topic.

Last Sunday we weren't that lucky. It was raining all day, so, going to the Zoo was not an option. Instead we decided to finally clean up our - what can we call it - all purpose room. It's the room with our spare bed, our laundry and our closets for all our stuff. And it is the room we sepnd least time with. That's why it used to look like this:

And this is how it looked from the inside:

And now we've cut it down to this:

It's really unbelievable how much crap you tend to keep. You always say to yourself, I could need this one day, but to be honest, you never will. We finally made it and got rid of things that we will never ever take a second glance at and it felt really good!
So, if you are bored on a rainy Sunday, use the time and tidy up your life ;)

We love pink....

2010-08-28T01:54:00.000-07:00

We promised, we'd be posting some more and here we go.

Some time ago we decided not to spend any more money on this apartment, because we are not going to stay here forever. However that does not mean, we cannot buy accessories or redecorate a few things. For the longest time the color scheme of our living room was light blue and brown, a little bit of a sea breeze.
As fall is coming closer and it is time for cozy things, we decided to change a few things to the oriental look. Sadly we did not take before pictures, but these are some pics where you can get an impression of our sofa before the improvement:

<--here you can see the pillows we had arranged

on the right is the whole sofa, I am sure, my sweetie is very distracting (in a good way), but try to focus on the couch :)

Just to stay fair below is also a pic of me with our little fellow on the "old" couch

And THIS is how it looks now, isn't it nice and comfi?

Of course we bought some matching accessories, tadaa:

As sweetie is a great painter, her task for the weekend is to paint some pics matching our new color scheme, so we gotta go to buy some colors. See you soon!

1 Year goes by so fast

2010-08-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody.

Can you believe it? You post something and think, sure, soon I'll add something. Then suddenly a whole year is over. Unbelievable. And so much has happened!
Last year September Ann went on a trip to Rome with her history class, so sad we couldn't go together, but hey, seems like it was a hell of a time:

Beautiful, isn't it???

As a welcome back gift I made this barbie cake for my little princess:

And she finally finished school this year and wore the most beautiful dress ever at prom:

<-- this is a pic of the both of us

Also we went to the first ever L-Beach in Germany at the fabulous "Ostsee". Just to give you an impression of this wonderful time. 3 days, 5000 women and a beach :)

It was a blast!!!

Currently we are bothing working, but in October sweetie will start here at the university, we are very excited!

And we'll be posting a lot more. There are so much more fun pics we want to share and new recipes we tried.

OMG!

2009-09-27T11:21:00.002-07:00

We are very bad bloggers!

But life was and still is very stressfull.
Sabrina has been working fulltime for a while now and is very happy with her job.
Well, and my finals are just around the corner, meaning I shouldn't be hanging around on the internet, but studying (which isn't that much fun...)

But I have a few plans for this little baby, so stay tuned and spread the word ;)

CSD '09 the day B4 the parade

2009-09-02T10:52:00.001-07:00

Of course we had really good food. In Muenster we don't get chicken buckets or good Donuts that's why we took the chance:

It was delicious!!!!

Christopher Street Day 4th-5th July 2009

2009-09-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

And of course we went to the Christopher Street Day in Cologne this year.
We had a great Hotel:

The bathroom was wonderful:

That's us on the 19th of July 2009

2009-09-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

food on our first anniversary

2009-09-02T10:35:00.001-07:00

Our first anniversary - in our favorite restaurant

2009-09-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Update!

2009-09-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

Wow, we haven't written anything for ages.
Well, what happened. I, Sabrina, found a job in May in a Call Center and I like it much better than expected. In July we celebrated our first anniversary. My first niece was born today. And my sweetie went on a trip to Rome with her class, also today. Now I'm sitting in front of the TV with Mr.Bear, waiting for a message from my wife, because her plane just landed...

Boring walls?

2009-04-19T03:38:00.000-07:00

You get bored of your walls? You have thought about one of those wall-tattoos, but couldn't find one you like?
How about doing one yourself?

A few month ago we painted our dining area white to put up some wall-tattoos.
I don't know what we were thinking!
I hated most of the designs. They just looked cheap and really crappy.

So, what to do? We bought green and lilac paint and voilá. Our own, individual wall tattoo. It even has some kind of story:

Here some details:

White Radish Soup

2009-04-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

After watching an episode of 'Mad about You' where Paul and Jamie try to find a Sunday's activity, my wife and I decided on our own new Sunday ritual. We do something in town and then we come back home and eat soup.
One Sunday we went to the botanical garden and afterwards I made the first Sunday´s soup:

White Radish Soup with marinated red radish

Actually it´s horse radish soup, but our grocery store didn't have any, so I tried the thing with white radish and it was good!

Quick info: in German the liquids measurement is milliliters, I transferred it into cups. On the Internet I found a site where it said 1 cup equals 250 milliliters. If that´s wrong, please let me know and I´ll change it!
The oz, ounces, are also from the Internet, 1 oz is supposed to equal about 30 gram.

You need:
a large pot
a hand blender
for the soup:
9 oz diced potatoes
5 oz diced spring onions
1 garlic clove
butter for frying
salt
pepper
sugar
~1/2 cup of dry white wine
2 cups of water
3/4 cups of chicken broth
1 cup of cream
1-2 tbs lime juice
1 1/2 oz white radish
for the marinated red radish:
6 red radishes
4 tbs olive oil
2 tbs water
1 ts maple sirup

Heat the butter in a large pot. Chop the garlic. Sweat garlic and sliced spring onions in the pot. You can also use grained gralic, add about 1/2 ts. Now add the sliced potatoes and spice with pepper, salt and sugar. Deglaze with the wine and then fill up with water and chicken broth. Stir in cream and cook for 30 minutes.
In the meantime peel the white radish and grind it. Wash the red radish, dry and slice it. Mix olive oil with water and maple sirup and marinate the red radish with it.
When the soup is done blend it with a hand blender and add lime juice and white radish. Now season the soup with pepper, salt and sugar. I used about 2 ts of sugar to underline the taste of the lime juice.
Pour into soup plates and use the marinated red radishes as topping.
Enjoy!

As an appetizer it is enough for 4 people.

Perfect morning

2009-04-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

Want to start the day with vitamins and vitality?
Then start it with our breakfast, yes, we eat it every morning.
It's not only healthy, but also low fat and also perfect if you're on a diet.

Plain Yoghurt with banana slices and ground wheat germs

This is the perfect start for a day. The banana contains essential vitamins and minerals, e.g. kalium which is good for your muscles. The wheat/cereal germs provide essential fatty acids and protein - very healthy, also good for muscles.

You need:
3 tbs plain yoghurt
1 sliced banana
1 ts ground wheat germs

Throw it all into a bowl, stir and enjoy!

Introducing Mr.Bear

2009-04-15T07:42:00.001-07:00

Mr.Bear says Hello!!! There he is, our cute, little...oh, sorry, big Teddy Bear. He is an important member of our family. Right now he is not only our cuddle toy, he is baby and pet substitute in one and very affectionate.
Yeah, we really love him, we even took him to Berlin once. Here you can see him in the arms of my beautiful wife.

She brought him into our family. It was a gift from a close friend of her family when she was not even a year old. I grew to love him quickly. At the beginning of our relationship we still lived in different parts of Germany and she let Mr.Bear stay with me until we moved in together! Yup, she must have been pretty sure about me ;-)

You might be seeing him on other pictures as well, we really try to take him with us wherever we go. Right, Mr.Bear?

Right!