Christmas in Nebraska

(too dark) -

(too many clouds) -

(not enough clouds) -

YAY! The money shot! Click to enlarge!

This was at the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge. Lots of lakes, geese, duckies. In autumn and spring, you can apparently see gazillions of migrating snow geese. Possibly even bazillions. Who needs a white Christmas when you can go out and enjoy nature at 50 degrees?

(In other news, loot was received, good food was eaten - vegetarian Thai stuff, and German potato salad - where's my HAM? -, church services were visited on Christmas Eve (they had a computerized screen for song lyrics at the front. Hubby was mesmerized. What will those Methodists think of next?) - and Christmas lights in people's front yards were looked at.

None of them had 150 penguins in their front yards, though. We've seen them. They're somewhat creepy.

Country Club Plaza

First some art exposition in Mill Creek Park, all about Love (by Mackenzie Thorpe):

Then some shopping at the Spanish style Country Club Plaza outdoor shopping center, 'til they turned on the Christmas lights:

Xmas at our place

Gifts: bought; collapsible Ikea tree: decorated; packages: sent; 5 kinds of different cookies: baked!
Bring it on, Christmas!
I've never been done as early as this year. Feels all funny. I even started making beaded star ornaments out of sheer boredom. No Christmas hectic?!

I think there's another 4-5 cookie recipes I need to try out. Also, I believe a few ornaments need to be rearranged. Yikes! SO stressed out!

Well the weather so far has been lovely, mostly sunny and in the 40s, what else can you want. We'll go up to Nebraska for Christmas and I hope I'll get some good shots of the Missouri river. Last year there even was a bald eagle!

Office window

Instructions for paper snowflakes: http://highhopes.com/snowflakes.html

Kitty waiting for Santa...

Enjoying the nice weather

Monkeyface Tree!

Have a funkylicious Christmas

This is what I'm listening to right now: '70s funkmaster Bootsy Collins' album "Christmas is 4 Ever". Cool to groove on while baking cookies!

Heavy Drinking

A recipe straight from the German Embassy website. They sure know how to party!

MULLED WINE (Glühwein)

Germans enjoy Glühwein or "Glow Wine" quite a bit around Christmas and New Year's Day. A favorite place to sip a warming glass is outside at the Christmas market.
(makes 24 glasses)

Ingredients: 2 bottles red wine, 1 cup sugar, 3 cups water, 1 lemon, sliced, 20 whole cloves, 6 to 8 cinnamon sticks, 1 orange, sliced for garnish.

Directions: Mix water, lemon and spices and simmer for an hour. Strain. Heat but do not boil the red wine. Add wine to hot water mixture. Ladle into cups and serve with half a slice of orange.

Prost! Well then, after a sip or two, you may want to offer some to Santa as well. After all, he has such a tough job each year, and a bit of alcohol will keep him nice and toasty on his sleigh. But don't let him get electrocuted on the train tracks!

Santa and Rudolph gettin' it on...

Ok, this is just SO wrong (and yet SO hilarious). Those horrible/kitschy/adorable hairdryer-operated, inflatable obscenities, err, Christmas decorations that have been popping up in people's front yards for the past couple of years? You ain't seen nothin' yet... yesterday at Walmart, we ran into this beauty:
It's the "Animated Deer Pulling Santa from Chimney Christmas Airblown Inflatable, 6' " (that's 1,80 Meters for you folks in Europe). Rudolph reaches down and pulls Santa out. Now at some point halfway in between, it just starts looking weird... And then, Santa goes back into the chimney, and, oh no! Rudolph has to sloooowly pull him out again. Strangely mesmerizing, and it's such a steal at $44! Man, if only we had a front yard...

In other news, presents have been bought, packages have been sent, and the first Xmas card has arrived. Yikes! Some people really don't know the value of procrastination.

Maybe we should try this one instead

Aaah, Christmas. The eternal question - real or plastic? (at least if you live on the left side of the Atlantic; in Europe, people can still rightfully declare you insane if you put up a plastic tree). We, of course, have been enjoying our Ikea collapsible tree for the past 3 years or so (after I noticed that I'm allergic to whatever chemical stuff they spray on the real trees in America to make them last longer). The main problem with the Ikea tree was that after a year in the storage area, it smelled a bit musty. Since I'm not a big fan of artificial pine tree smell, I "febrezed" it. Now it smells like fresh laundry. Wonderful. A freshly laundered tree.

Here's another alternative I found on the Internet: The Christmas Tree Poster! As the website proclaims: "At almost 6 feet tall, the Christmas Tree Poster is so realistic visitors might even be fooled into thinking it's real (assuming they've been hitting the egg nog all afternoon)."

Let the festivities begin!

Look out your window, KC: It’s snowing like crazy!

Today's headline on my local newspaper's website!

Second headline: an ominous sounding "Maybe it’s time to start worrying again."

Duh-duh-DUHHHHH!!!

I always find it funny how much crazier Americans seem to go over a little winter weather. Granted, the weather DOES seem to, sometimes, in some places, be a little more nasty than what I'm used to from home. Where I come from, you have to sing a song ""Yay, yay, yay, the first snow", as soon as you see the first snow flakes of winter. We like our snow. We don't worry about it.

(Me, I don't like snow THAT much, really. I could spend years in a nice warm place like Florida and not miss a thing. But then, I also don't like sauerkraut much).
So, it's been snowing almost all day out there. The cat didn't seem to mind it too much at first (on the balcony), but then suddenly he was in somewhat of a hurry to come back in - "What the hell, guys?!!" - my thinking exactly. A couple of days ago, it was still in the 60s and sunny, and today it's about 15 degrees. Blah.

Lawrence, KS

We went on a shopping trip to Lawrence (about 40 minutes west of Kansas City). There's a ton of arts- and- craftsy stores, pottery, hippie *scored some Japanese incense sticks there*, and foodie places (e.g. a European market featuring German Milka christmas chocolate for 5 bucks, oh hell no!).

Basically like a miniature Seattle (including the good coffee, and the druggies begging on the streets). Got some nice little Xmas gifts there, had some Greek food @ The Mad Greek, and particularly loved the Blue Heron home furnishings store - I could just move in and live there! Tord Boontje paper garland lamps, colorful paper star lanterns, asian inspired sofas, pretty candles...

Next time, we'll have to eat at Local Burger (we couldn't find the dang place yesterday!) which has things on the menu like elk or buffalo burger, quinoa-millet pilaf and "cup of love" juice. Hmmh.

Pictures taken from the car on the drive to and from Lawrence:

Christmas in July *ok, November*, part II.

Yeah, I don't know either, it's one of those wacky traditions of my husband's family. Apparently, a kind of "all-aunts-and-cousins" Christmas is being celebrated after each Thanksgiving, since everyone's in town anyway for Thanksgiving.

Since W and I are "back in the home land" now, we got to participate in a wild and wacky random drawing of Xmas gifts (themed "anything you can use up within a year"). Mostly foodie gift baskets (with the exception of a much coveted, huge pack of beer and something unspeakable in South Park-Cartman shorts (it was, actually, a sack of bird seeds). With various people almost fainting from the hilariousness (and me somewhat pining for a drink), we did score Suzie's nice gift basket containing nougat chocolate and a ton of coffee, tea and hot cider implements, and something else containing a lot of suspicious looking, powdered seasoning mixes. Will try out and report!


Anyway, having turkey twice a week, but without any leftovers, left us oddly unfulfilled. Where are the leftover sandwiches with gravy? Am I going to have to cook a turkey myself now? Meh, maybe a small one.

Side dishes I made for Thanksgiving: Stuffing (the boxed kind. What can I say, that's what I like best), Maple-Ginger Glazed Sweet Potatoes, Maple Roasted Carrots, and my favourite: Orange and Ginger Cranberry Sauce:

12 oz. whole fresh cranberries, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 cup orange juice,
1/4 tsp each: grated ginger root and salt, 1 Tblsp Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur. Heat cranberries, sugar, water and orange juice to boiling in a medium saucepan over high heat. Cook, stirring, until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes. Stir in ginger and salt; reduce heat. Stir until mixture thickens and berries begin to split, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in Grand Marnier. Refrigerate at least 3 hours before serving.

Thanksgiving and Christmas in one week...

.. now that's something you don't see very often. I feel like that:

Wait, is there more pie?

Going to the dog park

We've discovered Shawnee Mission Park, a mere 10 minutes away from us. It's huge and quite diverse, containing an off-leash area and beach for dogs:

(see the cute doggy drinking fountain?), an observation tower with a nice view of the area - wow, it was windy up there:

a couple of pine trees (I never thought I'd miss pine trees, but especially in autumn, I kind of pine for the scent (Worst. Pun. Ever.). Having grown up in northern Germany, going on autumn early morning mushroom hunts in huge coniferous forests was kind of a family tradition. Here? The most you can see here in parks are usually a couple of pine trees that have obviously been planted there. The rest is brown and dry and leafy, especially around this time of year. Blah.

AND quite a sizeable lake! Wow, even with a swimming beach *closed for the season, of course.* We'll definitely return to check out the 3-mile hiking paths.

It's never too early for pink and purple Christmas.

This is, of course, a shameless copy of Maize Hutton's post about her cute little tree from Target. On the other hand, I can't help it if we have a Target store just up the road. I LOOOVE this year's collection and store decoration (huge snowflakes and winter scenery cutouts hanging from the ceiling) by Tord Boontje. So we went to look at some early Christmas gifts, and so my eye fell upon this lone, little pink-and-purple tree - the last one! Somebody had put a plastic tiara on it, but I could see that he didn't really need that to shine. So now he's happily sitting on my kitchen counter next to Buddha. I hope that'll enlighten my cooking *har, har*.

We finished our first stab at Christmas shopping by stopping for the first eggnogg and gingerbread lattes of the year at Starbucks. They are selling some tempting Christmas stuff this year; a cute little advent calendar, some adorable Christmas stockings, and snow globes! Well, it was fun sitting out in the sun, sipping coffee.

Entertain me, Internet!

The Face Transformer: upload an image of yourself, see what you'd look like as an African American, Caucasian, Old Person, Child, Anime Character...

The 30-Second Bunnies Theatre Library: Cartoon bunnies reenact movies in 30 seconds (Watch "Jaws"! HAHAHA!)

Something a little more design related:

Apartment Therapy: Shopping, decorating, design, style; I can spend hours here, imagining eclectic design between my four walls *yeah like that's gonna happen*...

and then there's Decor 8, a picture heavy site that always makes my little ol' laptop cough a little and simulate a heart attack (especially if I happen to open about 10 other browser windows at the same time, where can I get a t-shirt that says "I [heart] tabbed browsing"?). The site's main contributor, Holly, is roaming around Germany right now, so there's some beautiful pictures of Hannover, among others.

Hmm.. more yummy fun with Quark

APPLE-QUARK-BAKE

Ingredients: 100g (less than a stick) butter, 100g (bit more than 1/2cup) farina/semolina (Grieß), 500g (bit more than a pound) Quark (or Yogurt Cheese), 150g (less than 3/4cup) sugar, 3 eggs, 1 pack vanilla sugar (or 1 tsp vanilla extract), 400g (about 3-4) apples, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 tablespoon breadcrumbs (Semmelbrösel).

Separate egg yolks from egg whites. Bring half of the butter to room temperature and beat together with the sugar (with a mixer) until foamy. Add farina, quark, egg yolk and vanilla.

Wash and peel apples, remove cores. Cut in small slices, add immediately to the quark mix. Add lemon juice. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks and add carefully until fully incorporated. Fill the mixture into a greased oven-proof dish. Distribute breadcrumbs and the rest of the butter in small pieces on the top. Bake at 200C (400F) for 35-40mins until golden yellow. Eat warm, as a main course or for dessert.

Westport impressions

The historic district of Westport (Kansas City) is great for dining and shopping during the day and drinking and partying your pants off at night. We went to one of our old favourites, the Jerusalem Cafe, for some gyros and falafel sandwiches. The shopping wasn't as good as I remembered, a bunch of stores had closed down, but hey, there was a new World Market (a food and gift store with stuff from all over the world - can you say "Pfeffernüsse"? Also, they had chocolate filled Advent calendars. Yay!)

Afterwards we went to the Brookside shopping area for some pumpkin ice cream, and on to the park to enjoy some sunshine. Nice to see Loose Park still looks like it used to 5 years ago, when we moved away from here.

Pretty kitty

Camera shy or camera hogging?