Happy New Year!

In Germany four-leaf clovers, toad stool mushrooms, pigs, and chimney sweeps are symbols of luck and wealth for the New Year and are often given as gifts.

I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year's celebration.  We are heading across the street to our neighbors. Good food, cocktails and fireworks seems like the perfect way to send off 2010 and greet 2011.

All the Best for the New Year (with luck, wealth & health) and Guten Rutsch!

Monica

Turntable Redux

Awhile back I posted about organizing my spice cabinet.  I had to replace the single-tier turn table with a double-tier version to use the space more efficiently.  That left me with one question. What is a girl to do with an extra turntable? Drum roll please...

No more shuffling items around to get that one thing you want that is always in the back of the refrigerator.

Happy Holidays

Wishing everyone peace, love, health and joy!

Monica

Frankfurter Weihnachtsmarkt

We finally made it to Christmas Market in Frankfurt.  It was cold and the gluehwein was hot.  Perfect.

 

I picked up one of the stars in white to hang in the window over our front door.

Lots to do this week. Family is coming over on Christmas Eve (Heiligabend) and on Christmas Day we are heading to Austria for a couple of days.  Things I will undoubtedly become hectic at some point. Like tomorrow.  Will try to remember to breath deeply, light some candles and perhaps have a cookie or two.

Christmas Fairytale

One of my favorite guilty pleasures during the holiday season is to watch Drei Haselnuesse fuer Aschenbroedel (Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella), a film colloboration between the Czech Republic and East Germany.

It is a fairytale with a modern heroine set in a snow covered landscape and accompanied by a dreamy soundtrack.  Over the years it has developed into a classic in Germany and is shown on TV every year between Christmas and New Year.  I wouldn't miss it.

Snow

Last week we had a bit of snow.  Of course it is all gone by now, but I thought I would share some pictures.

It was pretty "warm" over the weekend but temperatures are back to about 26° F this morning and snow is on the forecast for later this week.

Weihnachtsmarkt, Plan B

We had to push the Frankfurt Weihnachtsmarkt to next weekend.  I am at the tail end of a cold and the weather was awful on Saturday.  The thought of pushing through the crowds of people all holding umbrellas just didn't appeal to me. Today the weather was a little better, so we headed to another local Weihnachtsmarkt.

 

A spice stand!  I came prepared with my list and am stocked up.

Couldn't go past this with Sam along.

Hamming it up.

Lebkuchen Nikolaus.

This market was a definite improvement over the one in our town that we visited last week.  Frankfurt is on the schedule for next weekend.

Our town in lights

We went to our town's Christmas Market yesterday.   Honestly the shopping was a little disappointing, actually tremendously disappointing.  No stands with cute handmade merchandise to be found anywhere.There was a lot of Gluehwein (mulled wine) to be had though.  At just about every stand, as matter of fact.  I like the stuff too, but geesh. 

The center of town was nicely decorated though. Paper lanterns lined the main downtown street.

Cityhall... (we were married here)

I had more pictures, but we have my husband has a new camera and I we need to practice.  Next weekend we are heading to the Christmas Market in Frankfurt.  The shopping will definitely be better.

Christmas Cheer

The last couple of weeks have been kind of rough. My dad fell and ended up with a proximal humerus fracture  (the upper arm at the shoulder joint).  It was pretty bad and he ended up having to have surgery to replace the ball portion of the bone.  Not an easy thing at 83.  At least he is at home now.  Now we just need to get him to take it easy. 

So Christmas cheer was a little hard to come by.  We even had snow and I couldn't get excited.  Then yesterday our doorbell rang and one of my neighbors stood there with a little gift bag.   It included a lovely note, a CD with 24 of her favorite Christmas songs, cookie cutters and hot chocolate.

Christmas arrived at my doorstep yesterday.