"Blumen!", K-town Freshmarket, & August Happenings...

Yay mail!!!! I have been waiting for this package for about a month. Nothing excites me more than high-end ingredients for The Sugar Queen's magical kitchen!!! Nielsen Massey is one of my absolute favorite companies for quality flavorings. To me, their vanillas represent the best in quality and taste. Try chocolate chip cookies with the Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla and you will never be the same. Dana was kind enough to bring this box of goodies home to be during his lunch break. I'm making cupcakes for Crystal's baby shower this weekend, so I am thrilled to get these flavorings!!!

The month of August flew by.... I still can hardly believe that it's over. We managed to cram a whole bunch of furniture into this house, catch several festivals, and as always-- projects!!!! I want to do my best to give an update, because I've edited a TON of photos in the past few days... figured ya'll could enjoy them!

When D and I were moving furniture one weekend, we passed by this field near Weilerbach. This seems so normal to me now, but I realized it would be something my stateside friends and family would appreciate... particularly my dad. There are Germans who grow an assortment of flowers in fields by the road... then come the right time, the field is full of blooms! You can park by the road and make your way through the fields to pick out your favorite flowers. Then you drop the appropriate amount of euro in the coin box and take home your fresh blooms!!! I was SO excited!!!! D & I bought a gorgeous bunch of gladiolas that looked so lovely in our clean house. Chelsea R. - I wish you had been here, because we would have gone and spent the day among the sunflowers!

The same day we had to drive to a city near Bahn to pick up the new queen mattress. Along the way we passed this field. I was in awe of how the sky touched the fields full of wheat. I definitely made D pull over so I could get some shots. I'm really glad we stopped, even though I was forced to make friends with a rather large arachnid.

Paula & I spent alot of time together toward the end of August. She had come to me with the prospect of making pillows for her couch out of these beautiful linen towels she bought at a bazaar. We went to the fabric store near Globus and bought these awesome brass buttons to sew on front. Then it was time to break out the sewing machine! I was so excited for her and how the pillows turned out. Especially with the lace.

That day I didn't have my fabric yet to recover my pillows, so Paula, Jen, & I made another fabric trip to IKEA the next week. "WHAT?" you say... "IKEA HAS FABRIC??!?" yeah.... this was news to me too! I loved their prints and it was much cheaper than the fabric store near Globus. I wanted such a clean look for my living room particularly since we're painting the wall behind the couch a med. dark gray. I spent a day by myself lost in sewing land making the pillows for our couch. My hands hurt from hand stitching them shut... without a thimble. (Now I completely understand why my mother always had one...) Totally worth it though!!!! I was thrilled with the result! One house project down!

Paula had also told me about the fresh-market in Kaiserslautern. It's held every Tuesday and Saturday morning year round! You can get so many awesome things here! A fresh produce lovers dreamland! It was a blast walking through the different booths. I bought the most delicious peaches I have ever tasted in my life. Seriously. So delicious that my husband was & is STILL hooked on peaches. YUM! I was a bit shy about taking photos because I didn't want to get yelled at by German farmers.... and I think in order to be the photographer I want to become, I'm gonna need to shelve that fear A-sap. But some of these turned out fun! Thanks P for taking me on such a fun food adventure!

LIBRARY NEWS
The library is coming along!!!! My fairy-god-mother Amy was kind enough to pass along some furniture she was getting rid of. Including a perfect mad-scientist table! So I was finally able to move all of my mess from the dining room table to the office, where it belongs. Now my calligraphy-ing can be tucked away in a small corner of our apartment. Now I just have to organize! *sigh* Pinterest, here I come.... We were also able to commandeer an espresso machine from RYS. For $20!!! It's not a fancy one, but because both D & I worked at Starbucks, we know the in's and out's of pulling espresso shots & steaming milk. Which means we macgyver our own lattes. I love it! Particularly since we can buy the fancy syrups at Globus... and I can have an Amaretto latte on a daily basis! Heck yeah man!

WHY TILE FLOORS ARE NOT YOUR FRIEND...
We have had more broken glass in this apartment than any other place I have stored in my memory. From the shattered glass that comes in the mail to the shattered glass on the kitchen tile floor, you take serious risks running around our apartment barefoot. D feels alot better when I wear house shoes. I can't figure it out though...  I wonder if we simply have more glassware here? or if tile floors are really that bad. Either way, when P was over the other day, I was making us lunch and managed to cause this catastrophe. Brand new bottle of balsamic vinegar. Gone. Finito. Destroyed. Not to mention our kitchen reeked of vinegar... Not my idea of a good smell. P helped me clean it up though... what a trooper. So as much as I'm trying to be extra careful... accidents still seem to happen. So my conclusion is that tile floors follow Murphy's Law, despite your over-attentiveness at avoiding disasters.

MACARON OBSESSION LIVES ON
P went into France a couple of weeks ago and was kind enough to bring back macarons for me! I was so unbelieveably thrilled. These things disappear in our house like magic. There one minute, poof.... gone, the next. I have been dying to try out a new recipe soon, I just can't manage to have time on a day where it isn't rainy and overcast (a macaron no-no). So meanwhile, this will have to hold me.

Tonight is date-night and D is cooking! I'm jumping up and down ecstatic! I'm going to try my hardest to be good and NOT micromanage. I'm going to take deep soothing breaths and just "let it go...". He's making a gnocchi dish so this should be fun! Tomorrow I head to O-berg for my escape day with Jen! Saturday is Crystal's Baby Shower and Sunday D has an honor guard detail bright and early in the morning. Typical jam packed week at the Wollschlager's... I hope everyone enjoyed the update! There is so much more to come! I miss and love you guys!

The Furniture Craze & A Weekend Road Trip

NEW FURNITURE!!!!! Due to our house full of family coming in October, I've been given the green light by D to finally get the house in working order. This is our latest addition bought off Ramstein yard sales for a grand total of $75.00!!! I was pscyhed! Huge thanks to Alisha and her husband for hold things for us until we found transportation! and a HUGE thanks to Miranda Snyder for allowing us to borrow her Ford F150 (man, it made me homesick!) to transport the chair to our apartment! I have been dying to purchase an over-sized chair aka chair-and-a-half for our living room. We have one at my house in Garland and it's been my reading chair all my life. I badly wanted to continue the tradition in MY home. Now my wish has come true! I'd like for you all to know that this morning's 'cuppa coffee and reading session took place in this chair. It's also ginormous. I can sit with my legs out in front of me in a pike position and only my ankles hang off. SO EXCITED!!!! We also managed to purchase a queen bed, and got some freebie pieces from our PCS-ing neighbors. So I have my work cut out for me as far as refinishing goes. I'm thrilled! Next stop: Toom, Practikur, & the BX!

Last weekend the weather was gorgeous. And because D is solar powered we decided to take a drive and go on a mini road trip to the Bad Durkheim area. For those of you who don't know... this is SERIOUS wine country. I have NEVER in ALL OF MY LIFE seen so many vineyards. The rows and rows of grape vines as far as the eye can see. Of course in our driving adventures, we just go and wind up in the most random places and hiking up to monasteries for lunch. You know, just a day in the life... lol So here are all our pictures from our trip!

"Hey check that out! a random castle! I want to go! Wait..... how on earth do we get there? Wanna find out?"

This was the Abbey we were trying to hike to. We saw it from below, and made a command decision to get up there... Actually truth be told, we had a bet going. I bet Dana that this was the castle you could see from the Autobahn (the 6) and he bet me it was something altogether different. I lost. Sad day..... Limburg Abbey (as it's really called)is a ruined abbey near Bad Dürkheim, at the edge of the Palatinate Forest in Germany. In the 9th century, the Salian Dukes from Worms built a fortress on the Linthberg as their family seat. In the early 11th century, the fortress was converted into a monastery with a basilica. It existed until the mid 16th century. So old!!!!!

This was our view when we finally reached the top of the Abbey. I was speechless! It look like we were viewing Oz and the emerald city was in the back. This is where we stopped sat on a bench and ate our picnic in front of this amazing vista.

We decided that hiking all this way, we should take a peek inside... Apparently it's a venue for concerts and plays. They have events going on all summer long! There's a show with "The Five Tenors" coming up that we are going to try and catch.

The door on the left went up to the tall tower photographed above. It was locked gosh darn it. I REALLY wanted to go up to the top!!!! Clearly I need practice in breaking 9th century locks. Date night next week maybe?

When we first drove up to the area, there were lots of parking attendants. We figured something was going on, but low and behold, its a wedding! Can you imagine having your reception here??? Jesus. I can already imagine all of the chandeliers in the trees and twinkle lights... and candles... Thank goodness that ship has already sailed... whew! I managed to catch a papparizi shot of the bride & groom plus some of the wedding party with my point & shoot. It cracks me up how D and I always end up witnessing some random couples wedding.

I was so proud of D! He was actually taking pictures with my camera! It's not his thing, but he knows how important it is to me. I thought he did a pretty great job!

This was the outside/front of the building... makes me wonder how awesome it would have been back in the day. I can imagine riding up to this place at night on horseback and completely being in awe of it.

aaaaannnnddddd the castle again. I was absolutely fascinated. It doesn't look real to me. I still can't get over the history here and how far back it goes... which is completely evident in the architectural styles. Poor D, he has to deal with me diving head first into architectural lingo. He'll be an arch major by association soon! I just know it!

Random path signs along the way.... I'd love to see where these lead... maybe to the random castle?!?

Limburg from a distance. This is what we saw originally and wanted to get up there... although we were at the bottom of the valley.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip! Our lunch of cheese, fruit, hard-boiled eggs, and chocolate completely filled our tummies. It was after this adventure that we were supposed to head to IKEA, but we forgot we were out of VAT forms. I'm not about so spend excess money that I can save with a VAT form, so we turned around and came home. Thanks husband, for adventuring with me, even though I was wearing the wrong shoes, am a know-it-all, and take WAAAAAYYYY to many pictures. You're the best.

We are headed to IKEA this evening to pick up some wall shelving units. If you've kept up with the blog then you've been privy to my whining about us not having any storage more than you ought to. It is my goad to have these shelves remedy 75% of this problem. Coupled with our free furniture, we might be in great shape soon. I promise to take lots of pictures and before/after shots. Should be an adventure.

Tomorrow we are headed to a fireworks show/festival in town about two hours from where we live. It's Paula's birthday on tuesday, and since Brandon has to work, we wanted to celebrate with them this weekend. What better to make you feel like it's your birthday than the most amazing fireworks display EVER? So I'm really excited about that. I just pray that the weather stays as beautiful tomorrow as it has been all week. I'm kind of freaking out.... there's so much sunshine!

I wish you all a FANTASTIC Friday full of unexpected pockets of happiness. I miss you..... more than you could know! Lots of love!