A couple of years ago I started wishing for a drawing or other creation for my birthday from my kids. I thought it would be a good idea to have these memories at some point. I got a sketchbook exactly for this purpose. – so every birthday for myself and my husband another page (or two) get filled.
This year my daughter made me a family portrait in water color and my son drew me a penguin (my favorite animal).
Isn’t the penguin the cutest?
Somehow my daughter also got roped into making me vouchers for my other presents.
Bach
I got tickets for a Christmas concert in the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco that also includes a part of Christmas Oratorio by Bach (hence the image). And also the tickets for the Matchbox Magic Flute (below). I love the cards as much as the voucher itself and will keep them in the sketchbook, too. Do you keep special birthday cards as memento? What would you wish for if you had to pick an outing?
We always start birthdays with cake for breakfast. This year I even had two cakes (it was actually three total but one we already had at work a day previously). After getting the cake from my colleagues another co-worker stopped by the lab and what do you think – with another cake. Since everyone was already filled up on cake I took the second one home and my family gave me one, too. So lots of cake all around.
Most of the rest of the day was spent as usual but we did go out for dinner followed by the musical play “The Matchbox Magic Flute”. I thought it was great! I wished for it and had the condition that no-one complained. It turned out it would not have been necessary since everyone liked it. Maybe that is something we can do more often together as a family. With everyone having different interests it’s sometimes hard to find something everyone likes.
Last Christmas we were gifted a SF MOMA membership so I thought it would be nice to take advantage of the member event they had tonight. It’s free for members and they have music and drinks and you can wander around and enjoy the art. We don’t go out just my husband and I that often so it was a nice treat.
They also opened up the Amy Sherald exhibition (she painted the Michelle Obama portrait which they also had on display). It officially opens tomorrow so we got a little preview.
It was a nice way to start the weekend. I could get used to it.
Do you have any fun plans for the upcoming weekend?
It’s Thursday and usually I try to do a quick shopping stop before work at my favorite supermarket. On that morning they do get a bread delivery by my favorite baker Morrell’s Bread. Their sesame loaf is so good (and this is coming from a German). The baker is also at the farmers market and opens up the bake shop once a week but this way I can get some of my fruit and veggie shopping done. I started shopping at Monterey market when the kids were little and my husband played soccer on Saturdays Close by. On a Saturday it’s a mad house (at least it used to be) so one has to be patient to get through the isles. Mornings during the week are much better.
Sometimes the selection makes it quite hard to decide on something.
And they have beautiful flowers, too.
I was very tempted to get one of the dried flower wreaths. Aren’t they pretty?
Most of the time it’s Monterey Market and Trader Joe’s or Grocery Outlet. I almost never set foot in our Safeway since I never can find anything I am looking for (and neither can the employees).
Do you have a favorite supermarket? Morning or evening shopping, week or weekend?
After living in the US for 19 years now there are very few things these days that surprise or annoy me but there are two things I still can’t get used to. If you are from the US please do not take this personally. I think that most likely you can find something in any country that would annoy you. For example I find it annoying in Germany that you can’t turn right when the traffic light is red period (unless there is a green right arrow attached to the corner, what almost never is the case). A prerequisite would be that you know differently. Maybe there even would be something that is different when moving to another state? When we first moved here I came across differences almost every day and I constantly compared. I don’t even remember anymore when I stopped doing this. One difference I recently noticed when being in Germany is that plastic caps now stay attached to the bottle. Of course you can unscrew them but they will stay attached on a little corner. It took me some getting used to but you don’t have lids rolling to the ground. This already brings me to one of my annoyances:
Packaging – this is an ongoing joke in our household. Some packaging is so hard to remove. Especially food packaging seems to be designed in a way to make scissors or a knife necessary or makes such a big mess when you trying to open it. Why? Should it not be possible to design it in a way that it actually works for you instead of against you?
The second one is toilette paper – why in the world is it only 2- layers? I am fully aware that I can fold it up and get more layers but really? If you have ever been to Germany maybe you know what I mean. I am not sure how it is in the rest of Europe but 3- or even 4-layer toilette paper is pretty standard. My husband was very excited the other day because he found one with 3-layers – it ended up being so flimsy that it the 2 versus 3 did not make a difference. Maybe it is time for a bidet?
That’s it for today. Do you have anything like that? Anything weird to you that you noticed while traveling?
This Saturday was over way to quickly and I even was already out of the house at 7:50am. I am a night-owl so this time is early for me but I signed up for a class at 8:20am. My gym membership includes 8 classes per month and since I will already miss the Thanksgiving week I better make sure that I take those classes in time.
I spend a good chunk of my day playing with the Cricut again. I want to make a T-shirt for my daughter’s birthday and am going to use iron on vinyl for that. I did choose a picture she hopefully will like and had the Cricut do the cutting. I still need to weed it (that’s what removing the excess is called) and then put it on the T-shirt itself. I also finished up our calendars for next year and the holiday cards. Usually I make one with pictures of the kids and also give it to the grandparents. This year it hopefully comes in time so I can give it to my BIL when he comes to visit. Shipping packages to Europe has gotten so expensive in the last couple of years so this visit really helps on that front. It’s now harder to find good pictures to use. When they were little there were soooo many pictures, now I have to beg them to be allowed to take one of them and then in a lot they make funny faces. I still love the process though. Same goes for the holiday cards. Going through the pictures always reminds me what fun we had throughout the year and we really did make some good memories this year – first on our trip to Germany at the end of last year and then to New York in the spring and not to forget the roadtrip in the summer. I usually use Shutterfly. I already have all our dates saved (I add the family birthdays and special dates on the calendar already), so it saves a little time on that front. I have not looked at any other services in recent years. Maybe I should look around again? Not this year though since the order went out today.
We did end up going to the holiday lights event in Berkeley and seeing the lights was really fun. Most of the shops were already closed when we got there but we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant.
Oh, and my birthday present was picked up today and is now waiting in the garage until my actual birthday (the e-bike). I filled out a bunch of forms already to sign up for the warranty, to get the rebate our county offers when you buy an e-bike and to register it with the bike index what helps supposedly if it gets stolen (hopefully that never happens).
How is you weekend going so far? Do you make photo cards or calendars and do you have a favorite vendor to order from?
One thing I learned over the years is that keeping my hands busy is relaxing me more than any yoga session could do. Since I need to concentrate on what my hands are doing my mind stops running in circles. So election night resulted in this finished Santa hat. It was not worn around school as of yet but I have seen it around the house quite a bit and it brings a smile to my face when I do. Someone on Instagram asked the other day what kind of glimmers we encounter on any given day. I had not heard the term glimmer before but noticing these small, perfect moments that make us feel good really spoke to me. So seeing the Santa hat worn each day is one of these glimmers for me.
When I got home today I also got my Cricut out and made gift tags for the three Advent calendars I am planning to make. It’s so useful. I would not have chosen to cut out the numbers by hand. IT would have taken me forever. This way I just pull up the program on my computer and let the machine do the cutting for me. It’s so satisfying to watch. The white houses are vinyl stickers and pealing out the windows was a little tricky but I am sure it gets easier with time, too. Don’t they look pretty? I don’t have all the little presents together yet, but when they are, they will get all wrapped up and each gets its own number.
I also want to try out to make an iron on for a t-shirt this weekend. We will see if I get to it. I kind of want to go to the holiday kick-off at a local shopping district. They have a very pretty light display on I can use some more glimmers in my life.
What about you? Do you have any weekend plans? Any glimmers you came across recently?
Today was a day with a lot of driving back and forth. First driving the kids to school, then driving myself to work. After finishing there, driving to pick up my son from school and back home. I dropped of my work things, researched where to get a pizza for the pot luck in the evening changed into gym clothes and drove there. One hour gym and back home I went. Changed again and ordered pizza, got everything else together (brownies and drinks) and the kids, picked up the pizza and drove us to the potluck to celebrate the end of cross country season at the middle school. I was really proud of my son that he wanted to do cross country without any nagging from my side! The teachers were great and he seemed to enjoy it. After we had dinner there I drove us back home and now I finally have a minute to sit down and finish my post for today.
At the gym I got multiple questions what the meaning of my T-Shirt was. Do you know the logo? It’s from a German company that already exists since 1826 and was started by Maria Clementine Martin a nun who lived in cologne Germany. “Kloster” is a monastery and “Frau” means woman, so it basically refers to the woman who started it since she was a nun. The main product was a tonic containing 13 different herbal alcoholic extracts one of which is lemon balm that gave it it’s name “Melissengeist”. Melisse meaning lemon balm and “geist” referring to the high alcohol content (79%). You can still buy it today (even in the US) and it is a staple in a lot of German households. It’s supposed to help with all kinds of things like anxiety, sleeping problems, stomach upset, a cold. I think we only ever used it with a headache or muscle ache. You simply apply it to the affected area. Honestly I mainly liked the logo. Blue is my favorite color and it’s white on a blue background.
Are there any household staples in your household I might not know about?
I am still sad about the election result but have to figure out first how to best process it all before I write anything down. I am so tired. Tobia wrote a great post about how to cope with it all and there were some good suggestions. If I wouldn’t have said I do NaBloPoMo this would be the time I would hibernate because I don’t know what to say.
Home here and there 