Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

It was not easy or convenient but we have a christmas tree!

Pictures with it decorated to come!

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

Our first Thanksgiving

I will save you the details of how hard it was to find all the ingedients and move straight to the main event.

The Turkey: We managed to find a 12 pound turkey in a nearby city and thankfully it fit in our oven...it is very small in case you were wondering. It was a true eye opener for me having to clean it out and seperate the skin from the meat to season (I read that on the internet since I had no idea how to cook a turkey). I rubbed herb butter in between and added some salt to the skin to make it crispy. Please let me know if there is a better way to do this. 

"Oh help me please, my hand is in a turkey!"

After hours of cooking and a near drop of the turkey, it was finished. We let it rest and then Stephen got to carving.

The first Spanjer turkey...."can you tell I have been in that sweat box of a kitchen for a awhile?"

I decided to make all the traditional dishes (at least traditional to my family), and am pretty pleased with the outcome.

We had sweet potato casserole....this was probably my least favorite dish, but not too bad. The topping lacked a little sweetness, but it was one of our friend's favorite dishes. I guess I tend to have a sweet tooth.

I made the traditional southern dish, Green Bean Casserole and it turned out great. We unfortunately don't have the fried onion things to put on top, but Ritz crackers were not a bad substitute.

The stuffing was not too bad either, bread, cornbread, veggies...you get the idea.

Since you cannot buy the cranberry sauce over here I had to make it from scratch. It was actually incredibly easy and turned out way better than the can version. The recipe I used called for fresh cranberries, orange juice, and brown sugar. It was one of my favorites from the meal.

Traditional mashed potatoes...not much to say about them.

 And the ever fattening, yet delicious, deviled eggs!

We had four friends over and ate until we could not fit another bite.

 Well there you have it, an American Thanksgiving in Germany. Hope you all had a nice holiday as well!

Oh the Lazyboy!

Okay so we have this lovely Lazy-boy in our dining room, it is well, how should I put it, not my favorite piece of furniture. 

For a while I was stumped, I mean what do you do with this thing, slip cover it....thought about it but the weird stretchy slipcovers you have to buy for them scare me a little....I mean how can a single piece of fabric stretch that far? (No offence if you own one and really love it, I have never owned one so I would love your feedback if they really are the cat's meow!)

So I decided I would recover the mustard brown corduroy with a fabric I purchased when a store was going out of business. They did not have many choices left so I took what I could find. It is a very heavy weight fabric though so I am not complaining. 

It was not a very hard project in the end accept for the tufting...it was a bit time consuming but worth it in the end. I found a tutorial randomly online here about how to cover buttons without a fancy machine and it worked like a charm. I couldn't find whatever sting it is you are supposed to use so I ended up with floss attached to washers on the back...I won't show you the trainwreck on the backside of the cushion, luckily that never shows.

So all in all not bad for a cheap solution. Sorry the pictures are a little grimy looking, it has been very grey here lately.

Happy Birthday Dad!

H  A  P  P  Y

B  I  R  T  H  D  A  Y

D  A  D  !  

y o u r  a  m a n  o f  m a n y  t a l e n t s .

"Fakesgiving"

In honor of the real thanksgiving tomorrow (which we will be celebrating...pictures to come), here are some pictures from Germany's "Harvest day" which we celebrated at our church.

Steffi's creation...very festive!

She made this arrangement in a pumpkin. 

The girls with our newest edition (Rebekah, our British friend, on the far right end)

The kids did a special presentation for us at the end.

Big A was not slapping them....but it sure looks like it!

Semi awkward, but not bad.

Happy Thanksgiving from Germany! 

"It brought me to my Knees!"

First off I would like to thank my dear friend Anita (seen in the picture below) for her continued thoughtfulness in trying to make me into a gardner.   

Anita and me in Basel Switzerland (near to where she lives)

This past May she very kindly bestowed upon me some lovely plants she started growing from seeds. I was ever so delighted to oblige and attempted to keep the two tomato plants and one pepper plant alive. I am not the best at remembering to water my plants every day....I mean people have lives, but somehow they survived for a time and even produced a couple little vegetables or fruits (that is an argument for another day).

As you see below we received one ever so cute pepper and thought we better eat this thing after months of "watering". At the time Anita said she was unsure as to what kind of pepper plant it was, but I am pretty sure I know now!

Deceptively cute, isn't it!

Stephen decided we should both take a sliver to try it.....I think he forgot I am a girl! My mouth is burning just thinking about eating that tiny pepper. I literally was sitting on the ground drinking milk out of a coffee cup...it was that bad!

Ridiculous, I know!

 Thought you would enjoy!

Goodbye Sheena!

Sheena (fellow softball player and friend) who I wrote about in an earlier post headed off to college a couple weeks ago and to celebrate we had a team breakfast at a local restaurant. It was a nice Saturday morning with the girls + Sven (one of our coaches). Enjoy the pictures.

Sheena and Maria

Evelyn, her daughter Zoe, and Anita

Evelyn's other daughter May and Claudine

Anita, me, and Sven

Together at the field

Swiss Indoor Championship!

Last weekend we had the pleasure of attending the Swiss Indoors Tennis Championship in Basel, Switzerland (a 25 minute drive). I am not sure you can call the qualifying tournament an actual part of the championship, but it is much easier to get tickets to and a lot less strain on the pocket book so I am counting it!

Sorry we are looking a tad....greasy, it was a saturday is my only excuse.

Some of our close friends Ralf Widmann and his wife Margitt (you may remember them from the wedding) were headed their to watch Stefane Bohli play and we could not pass up the opportunity! I know what you are thinking, "I have always wanted to see Stefane Bohli (Swiss competitor currently ranked #233 on the ATP Tour, who has in the past hit with Roger Federer) play tennis!" 

Stefane Bohli

My exact thoughts! Okay, but lets be serious, no one has ever heard of this guy including myself, until last year when I found out that he is Margitt's first cousin. All of a sudden I was very interested.....I mean we are basically related, how can I not go and watch him play, right? So that is what Stephen and I did. He was playing the qualifying tournament to get a spot in the main draw so we took a Saturday afternoon off and headed to cheer on our "almost cousin"!

It was a great match and he defeated a higher ranked American player (I know a little sad, but we couldn't root against our "almost cousin").

Stefane's Opponent

Altogether it was a nice day and now we are great friends with our "almost cousins" father...even if we didn't get to meet up the Stefane, maybe next time. 

Spring Rolls that almost made up for their ridiculous price tag.

We ate some delicious Spring Rolls and finished the tournament off by watching a not so exciting upset between another low ranking Swiss player and a decent Uzbekistan player.

"I love Spring Rolls!"

And just a little bit more proof of how famous our "almost cousin" is, we basically know Roger Federer!

Stefane and Roger Federer