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 .