Autumn/winter goals

Basel in autumn

I don’t usually do seasonal goals and I wasn’t planning to now either, but this year has gone so fast that I feel like I need to have some specific things to tick off for the rest of it to avoid feeling like I’ve done absolutely nothing for the entire year. Also, these are technically “rest of 2019” goals since winter won’t end until the end of March and I don’t feel like planning my life out that far in advance. But autumn/winter goals sounded better. I’m rambling… I’ll just get on with it shall I?

• Finish making Halloween cards for Post Pals – I have 10 so far, I need 40.
• Make autumn cards for Post Pals families that prefer not to receive Halloween cards. I need 3 this year.
• Get at least three quarters of my family/friends Christmas cards made before December (instead of staying up late rushing to finish them in the last few weeks before Christmas!)
• Send Christmas cards to all Post Pals families.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-watch! (We’ve already started.)
• Read It by Stephen King
• Spookathon in October and Believathon in November.
• Make crumble again (I made one last weekend and it was delicious. And it’s so easy – I don’t know why I don’t make it more often)
• Bake muffins
• Bake some kind of Christmas biscuit
• Sort out the spare room (which currently looks more like a storage room!)
• Sort out the shelving things in the dining area. Basically we currently have the shelf things below. We want to take the left-hand part to the cellar and keep just the right-hand part for now (which will be moved more into the corner). That means I need to get everything off the  part on the left. Eventually the plan is to replace the whole thing with a nicer cabinet/unit but that won’t be happening this year.
  
• Get the huge bag of books that are waiting to go to free public bookshelves empty.
• Sort out craft stuff and clear the desk that is currently covered in half my supplies.
• Show my cousin and her boyfriend round Basel (they are visiting in November).
• Day trip with my cousin and her boyfriend – decide where to go.
• Take a day trip by myself while I’m off work in October/November.
• Go to at least one Christmas market.
• Take my annual autumn photos by the stream on 31st October.
• Go to the pub quiz at least once more this year.
• Respond to all pen pal letters I’ve received up to today. (I’m making no guarantees about ones that arrive throughout the next few months though…)

 

That’s all I can think of for now. And this actually already seems like a lot, so let’s hope I manage to achieve them all! What are your plans for the rest of the year?

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Friday letters

Hey everyone! Sorry I’ve been absent from the blogosphere this week – it’s been a stressful one. I’ve worked overtime every single day except for Tuesday, when I couldn’t because I was in the office and 2 hours of travelling time each way means I actually work less hours than I’m supposed to. Today I will work overtime again – I started early because there’s a job that absolutely must be finished by 5 p.m.! Luckily next week is already looking better and in three weeks time I have a week off. Now, though, it’s time for some Friday letters.

Dear chocolate. You have been tempting me far too often lately. It’s about time I ignored your call and added more healthy snacks to my diet. It’s all well and good being naughty over Christmas, but it’s almost February now and spring will be here before I know it…

Dear winter clothes. I wish more of you were both warm and pretty. Having an excuse to choose cosy over stylish was nice for a while, but now I would actually like to ditch the layers and shapeless jumpers occasionally.

Dear dishwasher. You save me so much time, I really don’t know how we coped before moving here!

Dear birds. It’s nice that you’ve decided to come back, but I see you’ve been ignoring the pumpkin seeds and eating everything else. Fussy little creatures, aren’t you?

Dear Stephen King. You are an excellent author, but whyyy must your books be so long?

Okay, that’s all for now. I’m cutting my lunch break short today so I can get this job finished…

 

Friday letters

Friday has crept on me again this week… along with half of January. My dad’s, my sister’s and K’s birthdays have already been and gone. Just my grandma’s left now then I’ll have to start thinking about the February birthdays I need to make/buy things for. But first, what letters can I write to the universe this week?

Dear birds. The lard ball we’ve hung out for you is exactly the same as the one you demolished within two weeks before Christmas, so I don’t understand why you’re shunning our balcony now? I’m sad to see my balcony so empty of little feathered friends.

Dear winter. Nice of you to actually show up this year . I’ve been waiting to see Basel in the snow since we got here (I mean, snow is kind of something I associate with Switzerland and we got basically none last winter…)

How it looked here last week

Dear BBC. It’s exciting that you’re producing a TV series of Good Omens, but must it be a collaboration with Amazon Prime, of all things? There is no Amazon Switzerland, and therefore no Prime for those of us who live here 😦

Dear Dara Ó Briain. I am so excited to see you perform tomorrow night. Please be as funny as you usually are!

Dear Goodreads. Quit tempting me with your book recommendations! My wish list is already long enough to keep me busy for many, many years…

That’s all for today, folks. Happy weekend!

Christmas cross stitching

Are you all sick of hearing about my cross stitched Christmas cards yet? I’m certainly sick of the sight of them! Luckily I’m all done now and this will be my last post about them (for this year, at least). I must apologise for the quality of some of the photos – I have no idea why I find it so difficult to get Jan’s camera to work for me! At this point I’m pretty sure it just hates me!

I’m sure you’ve all been dying to see the design I did for my dad made up into a card – at least that’s what I like to tell myself 😉 Here it is:

I took two photos of that card and the above turned out best… so you can imagine how terrible the other one was!

The design I was working on when I asked you to guess what I was stitching also became a card:

I liked the little snowman so much that I decided to stitch him a friend! This is actually among my favourites of the cards I made, along with the bah humbug one. I just love the pretty snowflake paper I used for the background.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into detail about all the cards I made. Here’s a selection of photos of the rest.

There are more, but I think that’s enough for one post!
And now for something a little different… I decided to use a pattern from one of my magazines and try my hand at making a Christmas tree ornament. I chose a snowman because it looked like it would be fairly easy to cut to shape at the end. Here he is:

I think he turned out quite well 🙂 Mr snowman is now all wrapped up and on his way to my grandma, who will hopefully love him lots and give him a happy home!

I’m linking this up to day 7 of Becster’s 12 Days of Christmas, which was Christmas crafts. I don’t think I’ve done this many crafts at Christmas ever, not even when I was a small child and we made decorations and things in school! I think the end products are worth all the effort though.

Karlsruhe Christmas market 2013

I did go to the Christmas market last night, but my train was delayed so I went straight into town from the station and had no time to pop home for my camera. It was dark and my phone has no flash, so photography was impossible… but I had to go into town today and I made sure to put my camera in my bag before I left. Sooo here are a few impressions of Karlsruhe’s Christmas market for you…

There’s always a children’s carousel at German fairs…

Glühwein pyramid

The Glühwein pyramid may look cool, but be warned… they make you queue twice for your Glühwein! First you have to buy tokens at a stall off to one side, then you queue again at the actual pyramid to order your drink.

Just a few of the yummy treats on offer…

 

All the stalls have something on the roof…

Spot the difference…

After posting about the snow the other day, it occurred to me that I had taken a strikingly similar photo back when this never-ending winter first started. Once the idea was in my head, I naturally had to go and find the other photo. So here you have it:

2 December 2012

25 March 2013

The difference? This time there are no Christmas markets to make the cold more bearable…

January brings the snow

We used to sing this in junior school:

January brings the snow,
Makes your feet and fingers glow.
A Happy New Year has just begun,
So sing this January song.

That’s all I remember – not sure if there’s more to it. Junior school was a long time ago!

This January certainly has brought the snow, at least in Karlsruhe. Shame – I was quite enjoying the milder temperatures we’d been having.

Snowy Karlsruhe

Snooow!

Snowy branch

Behind the Natural History Museum (Naturkundemuseum)

A snow-covered fountain in front of the Vierordtbad

I wonder how long the snow will last this time?

Snow!

I don’t have time for a proper blog post this evening, so you’ll just have to make do with a photo. Here’s what I woke up to yesterday morning:

Unfortunately, by the evening all the white stuff had gone and everything was just wet. But it was pretty while it lasted.
More snow forecast for later in the week. Maybe we’ll get some that actually decides to stay put…

Alright winter, you’ve made your point!

I am sooo sick of being cold!

Photo credit: mattjiggins

In English (or at least in the UK) we have a saying – more like a proverb – “April showers bring May flowers”. The German equivalent is “Der April macht was er will” – April does what it wants (April is pronounced A-prill with an A like in the word “alphabet” and to rhyme with will). I’m starting to think the German version is more accurate. This April certainly has no intention of sticking with one kind of weather! We’ve had dark, threatening clouds, we’ve had fog, we’ve had lots and lots of rain, we’ve had a tiny bit of sun peering from behind the clouds (mostly while I was at work), but what we’ve mostly had is cold. Today the temperature got up to a whole 10°C (Google tells me that’s 50°F, non-European readers), but mostly it’s been somewhere between 5 and 8°C. I’ve had to get my winter coat back out and have been wearing a scarf in bed (oh… I forgot to mention that I’ve had my hair cut and my neck now feels incredibly exposed…. and cold!). Did someone forget to tell the universe that it’s actually spring now? You had your chance winter… April is not your month!

On a brighter note, my team came first in the slightly-delayed-due-to-Easter pub quiz last week. The next one is on 8 May when we shall have a title to defend! We then went out on Friday night to watch our quiz master’s band perform, and got in free in exchange for doing the door for them (taking people’s money) as the person that usually does it couldn’t this time. All together now: “It’s not what you know…”.

Also, Newcastle United are currently fourth in the Premier League and it’s looking more and more likely that they’ll be coming to Europe next year, either in the Europa League (which I only recently found out is what they’re calling the UEFA Cup these days) or the Champions League. Jan and I are actually kind of hoping they end up with an Europa League place, that Stuttgart get one too, and that they happen to play each other. In Stuttgart. So we can travel to Karlsruhe’s greatest rivals, wearing Newcastle shirts and cheer on my football team. Unlikely, but the fact that I can even dream about it shows how far the Toon has come this season.

Life is good. But it would be sooo much better with a bit of spring sunshine!

Just call me hopalong

I didn’t have time to make a sandwich for my lunch this morning due to a failure to get out of bed when the alarm went off. Nothing like starting the year off as I mean to go on… Soo, given that I had nothing to eat, once lunch time rolled around I had to go into town to buy some foodstuffs. Out I walked.. across the courtyard, out the front gate, over the pavement and onto the road. And there, in the middle of the road, was a huge patch of ice. Very, very slippy ice.. which, of course, I stepped on, and off I skidded. All would still have been fine if only there hadn’t been a huge chunk of frozen snow right in the path of my sliding feet. I hit the snow with one foot, tripped, flew forward, failed to regain my balance and landed on the road. Hard. Most of my weight landed on my last knee, which is now swollen and looks like I’ve taken a cheese grater to it. My left hand is bruised from where I held it out to break my fall and the arm it’s attached to aches for some reason. I little flew over that ice and down on to the road! It must have been hilarious to watch, and I’m sure I’ll even by laughing at myself in a few days time, but right now my only thought is “ouch, that smarts a bit!” It’s a good job tomorrow’s a public holiday in this part of Germany…