Brussels Floral Carpet - take 2

I've been looking forward to this all summer. Every other year, Brussels turns their Grand Place into an explosion of color by making a tapestry out of flowers. By doing this they pay tribute to their history of tapestry making. It is huge, beautiful . . . and crowded. Last year we had my sister and brother in law as our travel companions, this year we had to go it alone.
Here is a little secret, we TELL everyone we are going to see the tapestry, but what we are really going for is to eat yummy but unhealthy food. The dietitian in me is always a little sad when I have to leave her behind for trips like this, we just can't have her reminding us how unhealthy we are when we have lunch that consists of gauffres, frites and chocolate. She just ruins all the fun.
This naughty little boy was standing there watching us eat our waffles, he has bad manners but you can't be angry with him, he is iconic Belgian after all.

Of course on the way home we do as we always do, stop at the grocery store. In Belgium we like to grab waffles (plain sugar and chocolate) and speculoos spread (this my friends, is heaven on earth, it is the consistency of peanut butter but tastes a like Christmas), and then whatever else catches our eye.

We crammed one last thing into our itinerary, furniture shopping in this store that has German AND French designs. Their stuff is solid, unique and super fun. For those of you who live nearby, even though they are in Belgium, they are a German company and therefore take VAT forms. Plus, the total discount is 35%, which for the life of me I could not do the math. The VAT is 19% but the sales lady assured me that the total discount is 35%. Who am I to argue a few percentage points when they are in my favor? And you wanna know the bonus??? Free delivery and set up! What?! You heard right. This is the little set I have my eyes on, I just wish the wood was a little bit darker:
Now today, I'm nursing a wicked headache that set in on our way home last night and lasted through until this morning. Was it too much sugar, sun, fun, shopping, spending 8 hours in the car with 2 kiddo's, crunching numbers on furniture prices?? Tell you what, if I could figure out the triggers for these beasts I would be a better functioning citizen.

More pottery!

Sunday afternoon we joined Claudia (my wonderful German friend) and Annalie (her mother) to spend the afternoon in Homberg at the Keramik Markt. We braved the rain, wind and cold to enjoy all the outdoor vendors showing off their artistic talent with pottery. I found a great mug to add to my big mug collection. As soon as I saw it I heard, “Please take me home, I belong to you!” This size mug is so great because I can use it for so much more than just hot cocoa. What about soup, cereal, ice cream, and munchies at the computer.? The first is the homburg mug, the second is the Poland mug and the 3rd and 4th are mugs from France. I try just about everything in them to see their pretty colorful art. I don't even care that they don't match, they have become more of a sentimental set, each bought on a different adventure, each with their own story of finding me. This is how I have discourage myself from accumulating "stuff" when we travel here. There is so much to adore with the eye but realistically we have to come home and put it somewhere. So I devised an organized system of souvenirs. One that I particularly love is purchasing a post card at each travel opportunity we encounter. Then that postcard is placed upon the wall in the kitchen. We love watching it grow and being able to reminisce our travels over breakfast. Because of this plan we have even traveled without buying anything but a postcard because we know THAT is our souvenir. We save money and have eye candy to take home. When we move, these postcards will be pulled from the wall and made into a book to keep forever. While in Homburg we ate lunch at a café where I had the best tomato soup ever! It was made with cream, anything with cream is wonderful, right?! Bailey and her friend Jaci had their first 3 minute egg and actually found out they enjoyed it. We also enjoyed baked bread, croissants and heiss schokolade (hot chocolate) with whipped cream on top, of course!

A European type day!

I really great benefit to actually moving to Europe is getting to experience what their daily life is like. This is impossible to do if you come on vacation, really you just get to "window shop" into their daily life. There are many things that I enjoy about living here and one of the best is how German's, at least out in the country where we are, spend their day. They are so smart about it and I truly want to adopt this way of life, but when your husband works for the big American military machine, some things are not easy. For instance, Germans take a 2-3 hour lunch! How great is that, plenty of time to cook a great meal, the main one of the day, and plenty of time to rest! McKenna and I had a European day today, starting off with the rush of getting Mark and Bailey off to school, then a quiet breakfast still in our PJ's. We worked a little around the house, did some laundry and by 10:30 decided it was time to start our "lunch". McKenna snoozed, I read (well I tried to read but I snoozed). Then we went to the market to get our goods for dinner. We still have the main meal at dinner but at least we are trying. Fresh bread and apple strudel, produce for colorful salad and oh yes . . . the splurge of fresh flowers, tulips no less as we anticipate Amsterdam next month. We finish too soon for the bus so we walk to the cafe, order a fantastic pastry and heiss schocolade (hot chocolate) and have a nice conversation with chocolate mustaches. We don't even have to worry about the calories because oops, mom forgot totally to even MAKE lunch. Plus we walked to the cafe like the Europeans to purchase our treat. I even came home and took another 20 minute snooze. I'm telling you, Europeans really know how to do it right. I never could imagine a day like this back in the good ol USA, wait, I dreamed about it a lot but always felt guilty and it ruined it. No more baby! I'll take a European day any day of the week and enjoy every relaxing minute, after all I did do some laundry!

Hey, let's go to Poland for the weekend!

So that is something this small town girl never thought she would be saying! But there are many things that I am saying and doing that I never thought I would do until we took the plunge to move to Europe. What an amazing ride I am on. I went to Boleslawiec Poland this weekend with a group of 9 fab ladies from church (thanks to Megan for leading and organizing!) Didn't really go for the pottery because it had not caught my eye. I decided I needed to go to see what all the fuss is about. I have a much greater appreciation for it now as I was lucky enough to actually paint a piece of pottery myself! Now I realize how much time, effort, patience and detail goes into each piece of pottery treasure! Hop over to this stores website in a week or so and you just might see Kristine and I workin' it! Oh how I love to get my hands into a mess of artistic pleasure!

This was the first girls weekend for me in a long, well actually this was a first girls weekend for me. Bree, we really should have done this. I thought about you the whole time!! We drove, talked (my voice was gone by the time I returned!), shopped, ate, slept (wait we didn't sleep), ate, shopped, ate (not a polish sausage in sight), drove, giggled, gained insight to girlie things, and came home with empty pocketbooks but lots of treasures to show off. You should definitely hop over to Kristine's blog to read her take on the weekend, she describes it so well you will actually feel you took part in it. Plus there are more pictures of me!!! I think I have a new appreciation for the polish culture as I have seen an artistic form that is so intricate and special and hard to create, come from a people who had everything down to their lifestyle and land taken from them during WWII. They had to survive and grabbed hold of an ancient craft that was to create basic eating utensils and turned it into a magnificent artistic form that people from all over the world come to purchase. Oh yes, I purchased!!!!! That plate above is now mine forever!!!!! Here are a couple of random shots from the trip, I really tried to get the whole experience captured. The crazy man is an image from their annual celebration of pottery. Everyone smears themselves with clay and party's in the street. Love that look on his face! So stayed tuned to my story as I become more brave and experienced in my adventure's in Europe. But I will never get used to saying, "Hey let's go to _________" and having the dream come true!

Girls and boy day out!

Yesterday my good friend Kristine and I ventured out to the Basket Factory in Dahn. We took our two 3 year olds, yummy snacks and a bit of euro to see what finds we could come across. As always the factory does not disappoint. The picture shows my favorite find of the day which is the twig wreath that was in the seconds pile for 2.30 euro! Splendid! The eclectic jar is for Mark to dump his change in and the finds in the vase include Bailey's prized rock collection at the bottom with more factory finds layered on top. Kristine is very talented when it comes to home design. She has encouraged me to bring more organic items into my home to balance the visual appeal. She is right, bringing in items that are more earthy really warm up a room. If you want to see more of her energy I highly encourage a look at her blog by clicking here. Our adventure did not stop when shopping had ended. As we were heading home we noticed traffic starting to back up which is not uncommon in this area due to congestion with semi trucks on two lane roads. As we pulled into the crowded lane we noticed that the road was completely saturated with liquid, which I assumed it was water but it was a clear day without a cloud in sight. Then we smelled it, a very strong gasoline smell, stronger than I have ever smelled. And I noticed a very large wood log off to the side of the road. As we continued on we saw what had happened. There was a large fuel truck carrying two containers of fuel, the one in the front had been punctured and was leaking gas and the one in the back had been speared by another log and was spewing gas like a waterfall. As we passed the truck I noticed the first Police to come on the scene and I will never forget the look on his face as he realized the problem at hand. Both of us were praying that no one flicked their cigarette butt out of the car window. I don't think we realized the danger we were in until we were past the scene. Timing is everything, if we would have been moments sooner or moments later who knows what would have happened. Heaven forbid that something happen to that sweeeeet Volvo, Kristine! =) Kristine and Roanan rock!