Friday, December 31, 2010

Dear 2010

   Thanks to those who hated me, you made me stronger. Thanks to those who loved me, you made my heart bigger. Thanks to those who worried, you let me know you care. Thanks to those who left, you showed me that not everything is forever. Thanks to those who stayed, you showed me the meaning of true friends. Thanks to those who entered my life, you made me who I am today.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Sew Me Something

Actually, the website is www.sewmesomethin.com by a gal named Rebekah. I personally don't know the her, but I've bought a few items from her and LOVE the products she makes. I learned about her through some other gals who have purchased their purses from her (all military girlfriends / spouses). I prefer buying from home businesses to support the individual and their talent, in addition to buying from someone who supports the military (her husband is a former Marine) :)

My first purchase through her was an ABU purse which has our family nickname on it, a Air Force symbol and the lining is a nice hot pink color..I got this back in late April / early May. EXCELLENT quality! Truth be told, I'm pretty rough on my purses and this thing has taken a beating and STILL looks great! I was on a waiting list for about twelve weeks, which wasn't really all that bad since I had other things going on. By the time it showed up, it was a nice surprise since I had completely forgotten about it (opps!).  I've received loads and loads of compliments on my bag since I've had it even though I can only use it on base (by living overseas, we're not allowed to openly show that we're US military).

A picture of my purse (it's a diaper bag, I got it big cause I carry a ton of stuff with me!)


The second piece from her I ordered was actually a new collar for Izzy. For those of you who don't know who she is, Izzy is my petite chocolate and tan Dachshund that Eric got for me as a Valentines Day present when we first started dating (awww). She's a lil princess and constantly NEEDS attention, loves dressing up (seriously) and is a total baby. A collar I bought her about two and a half years ago finally bit the dust (her neck has gotten too waddly) so it was time to replace it. I hopped on Rebekah's site and saw that she actually made collars! Not only that, but she has two weenie dogs of her own (awesome!). So, after looking through the tons of fabric choices she has, I figured out which print would look best on The Izzy and placed the order. It took about...hmmmmm...4 weeks? I think? I dunno, I lost track due to the hectic month. It showed up in the mail yesterday and Izzy (and I) did a happy dance! 




I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out! Izzy's crackin' me up because she's struttin' around the house since she KNOWS she has some new clothes on. I just placed another order for a collar, but that one will be for Macie since her collar needs replacing. In addition to that, I ordered two dog beds (30x40 measurement) for $10 a piece..NOT BAD!  I'm excited! One is the same pattern as Izzys collar and the other has weenie dogs all over it. Cuteness to the max! 

All in all, I HIGHLY recommend this gal. Great customer service and always gets back to you within the day if you hit her up on Facebook. Her stuff is made with fantastic quality and care AND she doesn't just make Military print stuff. I've seen many many other home businesses that do this type of stuff, but to be honest (and not biased), her's is by far the best quality you can get for your money. TRUST ME! I'm a stickler for quality and I completely trust this gal with the stuff I order!!

Oh, and I ordered  Kindle cover from her, so once that arrives, I'll update this post and a picture of it  :) 

Sunday, December 26, 2010

On a mission

I've been to The Netherlands more times than I can count.....been to Schiphol Airport (near Amsterdam) on a handful of ocassions..assaulted their Starbucks and not once have I ever seen this mug:


Now I'm hell bent on finding it!

Friday, December 24, 2010

Nerdtastically Apocalyptic Christmas

As I was editing the pictures for this blog, I came to terms with how nerdy my family really is.

Last year, I got Eric a Kindle from Amazon.com and he LOVES it. Comes in handy because he's very into reading and it cuts down on him having te physical book. I know you're probably thinking "Why does it matter if he has the physical book?"...well, since we're military peeps, whenever we move, we have a weight limit. When it was time for us to move here, ALOT of the weight was due to books between mine and Eric's collection (mainly his), in which we ended up putting the majority in storage. Since we've been her, Eric has slowly started collecting even more books.. so,the Kindle has put a stop to that.

Now John has the reading bug. Le sigh. It's fabulous that he's into reading and expanding his imagination....I'm all for it! I'm just not up for the hoards of books that are starting to pile up. So, Eric and I did some talking and we figured out that we should get John a Kindle for Christmas. He'd definitely benefit from it considering he blows through books pretty fast, not to mention, most of the books he ends up wanting have to be ordered online since the bookstore we normally haunt at the "local" base doesn't have the best selection.

We ended up getting him the Wi-Fi capible Kindle ( the one for $139 ) in Graphite. So, he should be able to download books freely at home with the gift card we got him, without assaulting our Amazon account.


Funny thing is, I guess before Eric and I decided on getting him the Kindle, Eric actually ordered a few books for him. So, it looked rather silly that John opened up actual books, then he gets an electronic book reader, lol. Oh well...I guess he'll be able to take the books with him to school and such since he won't be allowed to take the Kindle with him. In addition to the Kindle, I ended up getting him a pretty cool little case for it in his favorite color, which is red.


Eric is insanely hard to shop for, aside from the German pottery we just picked up from him. Most of the time with any guy, you can buy them tools, video games, movies, or whatever makes 'em tick and they'd be a happy camper. It doesn't work like that with my husband. He has this knack of buying himself stuff when he wants it (within reason) to where it doesn't really leave anything left to get as a gift. This happens during our anniversary, his birthday and Christmas. VERY frustrating! So, his coworkers helped me out and kept their ears open in case he mentioned anything at work in terms of what he'd be interested for Christmas. Turns out, he was really wanting to get "The Walking Dead" comic book series, which is what the TV show was based off of. After doing a little bit of research, I found the whole collection and they got here in time:

The Compendium One has the first eight comic books in it, a lovely total of 1,044 pages of cartoons. Then I managed to get editions nine through thirteen individually since they weren't conveniently bundled in a Compendium Two or anything.



Last but not least, there's me. Eric got me a white Kindle 3G with Wi-Fi :) It's still in the mail, but at least I know it's on it's way here!


A pretty simple Christmas, but it works for us.

PS: In case you didn't notice...it seems like the main theme for this years Christmas gifts were zombies / apocalyptic scenarios and electronics. Go figure!

Winter Wonderland 2010

Ever since Thanksgiving, it's been snowing on and off over here in lovely Belgium. I absolutely love it! Thing is, we don't have a snow shovel. Or, a shovel in general. So when you drive / slide down our street, you can see the majority of our neighbors have been rather diligent about shoveling their driveways / walkways for their home. Us? Not so much. Here's how our driveway currently looks...keep in mind, it slopes so it makes things a lil more difficult when trying to drive up onto it from the street:


I took my ruler out with me to get some idea of how much it snowed.

 
8 inches of fluff out there! 

I was trying to move some snow out from under my feet, but I couldn't get to the brickwork...but, at least you can see how far my feet go into the snow, lol
Our poor little wood pile isn't liking the snow very much...nor are our trucks!


The wheel on Johns bike:


Icicles hangin' out around the house:

 

Macie, our little Dachshund / Beagle mix, was LOVING the snow! She kept hopping around in it like a snow bunny! The whole time I'm walking around to check out stuff, she would hop around, bite at the snow and run...well...run as best as she could since she's a short / stumpy dog in several inches of snow.


As I'm walking down the driveway, I looked up and noticed the layers and layers of snow that's building up on the rooftop. The Sky dish doesn't seem to like all the snow on it! 


The view from our front porch:


The side yard that the dogs normally get to run around and play in:


Last but not least, a jimmy rigged panoramic shot of my house with the side yard (to the left) and the horse pasture on the right. If you click on the actual picture, it'll come up larger.


The Belgians make me kinda giggle because they say it never really ever snowed here. You'd get a light dusting here and there, but as it seems in recent years..Mother Nature wants to paint their country white. Last year they said it's the worst winter they've had in 50 something years.. not this year is the worst they've had in 100 years. No biggy cause I'm loving it! It's not all that bad if a California gal from the coast says she's lovin' it :) 

Merry Christmas (Eve), everyone!


Thursday, December 23, 2010

Stateside Goodies!

A friend of mine, Stefanie, sent me some presents! I think it's because I sent her some Belgian goodies earlier last month. Yay for presents! Maybe I should make it a habit to mail stuff off to people more often, ha!


I got ahold of her just in case I was supposed to wait till Christmas to open stuff up since they were wrapped up, but she said to go ahead an open 'em up! Good, cause I suck at waiting :)

Some really cute signs for my house! The top one is rather fitting for my Dad back in California since that seems to be the rule : Dad says stuff and we don' listen. Then the shoe sign is cute cause I think we're gonna make it a point to kick off our shoes and stop dragging dirt all over the house. Living in the country has it's benefits, but one of the major drawbacks is the constant dirt that sticks to our feet! The "Life is Short" sign...very fitting. I think if we could get away with it, we'd always eat dessert and nothing else...especially cookies :)


Then there's a sarcastic mug (thanks, lol) and a cute bamboo spoon in the shape of a heart :)


Eric ...being...Eric...lol


Thanks for the goodies, Stef! They're already hangin' around the house :D

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Smash & Grab, Baby!

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll remember the post about when I attended the Bazaar in Germany a few weeks ago in addition to venturing over to Bernkastle to pick up some pottery for Eric. Well, that day didn't end well...so Eric and I figured we'd attempt again sometime in the Spring to return there since the winter weather doesn't exactly make the drive very enjoyable.

We didn't stick with that plan. 

Yesterday, we made our way over Spangdahlem AB to do some shopping since our "local" base isn't exactly known for their wide selection of goods. For the last several days, Europe has been getting smacked with numerous snow storms which has made life a lil more...errr.. difficult for people who aren't exactly experts with driving in those type of road conditions. Since Eric gets to drive to Spangdahlem several times a month, he was volunteered to do the driving since I'm usually a nervous wreck when there's snow / ice on the road. I will say, though, that the scenery was really pretty!




 For the life of me, I don't understand why Belgium only salted one lane of the highway. You could tell that only one side was done, which sucked! Made the drive take ten times longer and people were driving rather stupid to bypass slower moving vehicles. 

 Perfect example of how the roads looked in Belgium. You can see on the left hand side that there's road tracks from cars that passed by, but you could see them slip and slide a little bit when driving through the snow / ice.


Once we hit the German border, the roads INSTANTLY got better! It was SUCH a relief! The whole highway was plowed and salted..so nice! 


Random cow statue I liked when we stopped to refuel:


Once we reached Spangdahlem and did out shopping, we ran over to Bitburg since I was wanting to check out the Polish pottery shop I had heard about. Honestly, I was expecting a decent amount of selection...I was wrong, sadly. When we were leaving the shop, I stopped into a small antique shop that had some really cool little signs and paintings. I fell in love with a pizza paddle that had edelweiss painted all over it! I love love love edelweiss! In addition to the pizza paddle, I found another cute little sign that is rather fitting for our bathroom...haa...



 From there, we headed on over to Bernkastle to attempt, yet again, to invade the pottery shop since Eric was really wanting those bowls and I wanted to get them for him as his part of his Christmas gift. We ended up taking a different route to get there and the countryside was SO so pretty! 



I was getting a little nervous once we actually got to Bernkastle since we started seeing signs with huge red "x"s through them as if they were saying the town was shut down or something. It was a little unsettling considering we had driven the extra distance JUST for that shop and it would've been our luck that it was shut down or something. Who knows...maybe the town was inaccessible due to heavy snow fall or something. Turns out that the heart of the town was shut down due to road reconstruction. We managed to find a parking spot not too far from there and walked the rest of the way in :)



A pretty view of the vineyard:


There was actually a Christmas Market going on in the town, but it was a little on the disappointing side. I guess I'm used to the larger ones from Aachen, Brussels and Brugge. This one mainly had vendors selling food and drinks and everyone was hanging out and getting drunk, lol. I suppose that's really the only thing to do when it's all cold and snowy...eat, drink and gossip!



Got to the store, gathered up all the bowls that Eric had wanted in addition to a a few butterbells that were requested on the behalf of some people, then rolled out! I think we spent barely ten minutes in the place since we were just wanting to get our stuff and head on home. Word on the street was that there was another snow storm that was inbound..and we could feel it in the air, as funny as that sounds. 

Here are the bowls we picked up...Eric's a very happy camper, lol. You can see how large they are (figured that holding one of 'em can help gauge the size)...two of 'em have handles cause they're deemed to be used as soup bowls, lol.



So! Not too shabby! Got to run around the Belgian / German countryside, picked up some TV shows we've been wanting for a while, got some cool goodies for the house in addition to the coveted bowls that Eric has wanted for some time. NO MORE traveling around in crappy weather for a while :)

Day 30 - Car You Drive ( and past cars too!)

The current four wheeled love of my life is a 2006 Nissan Xterra! Her name is "Big Blue" and I got her October 4th, 2006. Yes, I remember exactly when I got her cause I bought her exactly a month before my birthday :) By far the best investment I've ever made and HIGHLY recommend an Xterra! Before I got her, she used to be an Enterprise rental car (very well taken care of), and I ended up getting her for a steal of a deal (she was all tricked out before I got my paws on her, thanks Enterprise!) and she's all paid in full. Decent gas mileage, has nice amount of "umpff" when you need speed up hills and mountainsides, plenty of cargo space, NEVER have had a problem with it... ahh I can go on and on. I seriously love this SUV and I'm positive Eric and I will be getting a second one whenever we go back to the States. 

By the way... the following photos are all pictures I searched for on the internet since I really don't feel like going out and taking pictures of my snow covered Xterra, and I don't have pictures of my old cars. Sorry!


Before Big Blue, I had a 1999 white VW Beetle named Scooter. I guess you can say it was a typical young college person type of car. When I first got her, I was absolutely in love (otherwise, why get it?), but after a while.. she started to lose her cuteness. The O2 sensors always went out ($400 each time that happened), the AC would die (usually during blistering hot days), the cruise control was very glitchy (and scary at times), she wouldn't want to start when I had important things to go to (ohhh like work, appointments, etc), the powered windows wouldn't want to roll down, and the gas mileage sucked. Volkswagens customer service wasn't stellar, which was VERY frustrating considering how much it cost to get the diagnostics done (it was required each time there was something wrong)...so that was one of the deciding factors to get rid of Scooter.  I got her in 2002 and she went bye bye in 2006, lol.


Last but not least, there was Margie. She was my 1967 VW Bug. I actually inherited her from my Grandpa when I was fourteen, but obviously wasn't old enough to drive just yet. So, when I got my drivers license, her keys were handed over to me and she was my pimp ride from age sixteen to twenty..or twenty one. I don't remember. Feels so long ago, LOL. Margie was a great lil' car, despite being an oldie.. she got me around, was very reliable aside from the usual tune up here and there.. my Dad had installed a CD player and bitchin' speakers so I didn't get stuck with just an AM radio. Once I got my paws on Scooter, my Dad ended up holding onto Margie for a while, but ended up selling her about three-ish years ago to an ex-boyfriend of mine who is a VW enthusiast. 

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Day 29 - Hopes,Dreams and Plans For The next 365 Days

A year...what are my hopes..dreams and plans for a year...hmmmm....

I dunno, really. I just live my life day to day! Sorry it's not something extremely "deep" and thoughtful, but, I don't like trying to count chickens I haven't bought yet. I especially don't like counting chickens before they hatch.

Day 27 - My Worst Habit

LOL...this is fitting due to my last post..

I'm VERY forgetful. It's to the point where it feels like my memory gets wiped out or "reset" at the beginning of every week. I have a very very hard time remembering things, especially stuff that's over a month old or when it comes to setting something down and not finding it. I drive Eric NUTS because I always lose my sunglasses, keys, misplace my phone, wallet...purse.... you name it, I've lost it. It'll take me quite a while to find it on my own, so he usually goes on the goose hunt and finds 'em pretty quickly. LOL. 

My office has tons and tons of sticky notes to remind me of stuff I gotta take care of, conversations I've had (bullet points), appointments, projects...pretty much anything you can think of considering I need reminders (all color coded). At least I'm making the effort to remind myself of stuff instead of completely forgetting everything! Ha! 

Friday, December 17, 2010

Day 25 - Guilty Pleasure

I know you're probably gonna laugh, but I don't care. 

A guilty pleasure for me is Polish Pottery. Yes yes, pottery. When I first got here, I thought the pottery was hideous, but after going to Poland and checking out literally the hundreds and hundreds of different types of patterns and such, it's really grown on me. Trust me, I think some of the patterns are totally meant for old ladies (foofy flowers and splotches), but I managed to find a pretty awesome design that seems to fit our home. Chili peppers. Yes, it's random, but quirky and totally "us". 


I'm trying to figure out when I can head back over to Poland and pick up some more considering I need a few more plates and bowls. Of course the pattern I pick is really hard to find..so it's not in any of the Polish pottery shops I find here and there around Germany, lol. Oh well, gives me an excuse to go back and have some perogies while I'm at it :)
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