Immenstaad

Last Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day, so we decided to take a bike ride.  We knew we wanted to go west down the lake, but we didn't really know where we wanted to end up.  We had about 2 hours until we had to be back in time to eat before church.  In the end, we ended up in Immenstaad which is the next town down the lake about 3 miles.  We had been to this town before because it is where we meet other ex-pats from MTU to get a ride to Ueberlingen for a book study we're a part of.  They live near the highway and we hadn't been down by the water yet, so we decided to try to find the waterfront to take some pictures of the mountains.

Our first guess on which direction to go was wrong, but we did discover an orchard that sells fresh apple juice in boxes.  We've been wondering where to get this and now we know!  Unfortunately, we hadn't brought any money with us, so we couldn't get any.  We also passed a stand with fried fish that smelled amazing!  We're hoping to go back there and get some of it.  :)  We turned around and then were rewarded with the right direction to the waterfront. 

Each little town here has it's own unique things along the waterfront.  I love taking pictures of these unique little things because they seem somewhat random to us, but must have something to do with that town in someway.  Here's some of the things unique to Immenstaad.

 Giant bunnies in a backyard.

 A giant chess board that a few elderly men were playing.

A rooster statue in a roundabout.

 The top of the rooster statue.

"M&M" Cookies

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked if I could make cookies for a snack after our church service on Sunday night.  Making something new is always a bit of a process here because I never know if I can get all the ingredients that I need here.  I ruled out all cookies with shortening in them because I haven't been able to find that yet.  We also haven't been successful at finding regular, old chocolate chips.  We find fancy things that might work, but without seeing them, I'm not really sure. 

I decided that M&M cookies might be a good option because I know you can get M&Ms here, except that they are very expensive.  After going to the smaller store closest to our house, we discovered that they don't carry M&Ms like the bigger store does.  Since we didn't have time to go to the bigger store, we opted to buy Smarties instead of M&Ms.  Most Americans reading this are probably wondering how on earth you can put Smarties into cookies because they are thinking of the sweetart type candies in the plastic wrapping that many of our teachers gave us so we would be "smart"er.  These are definitely not the type of Smarties that I put in my cookies!  Here, Smarties are almost exactly the same as M&Ms, except a little bit bigger, different colors, and a different chocolate flavor.  I might even be tempted to say that I like them better than M&Ms!  The McDonald's here has Smartie McFlurries instead of M&M ones. 

After getting all the stuff we needed, we made our "M&M" cookies and they were a big hit!  They were very yummy and almost looked like Easter cookies because the Smarties lightened in color when they were baked.  I will definitely be making "M&M" cookies again!

Kitchen Curtains

Last night I started another project that is totally new to me.  Our apartment has no curtains (which is rather annoying on the ground floor), so I have been looking for curtains wherever we go.  We haven't had much luck in finding curtains that are the right size for our windows (most curtains here go from floor to ceiling and our heaters get in the way).  This past weekend we went to IKEA to look for things for our apartment and we discovered that they sell fabric there!  You could cut your own piece and they had a pretty good selection.  We found a fun, bright colored fabric (because our kitchen is pretty much just gray) for our kitchen curtains and to recover the kitchen chairs we got from a coworker.  Last night I worked on figuring out the sizes that I needed for the curtains and the chair covers and cut them all out.  Here's some pictures Brian took of me during the process.

The next step is to buy some pins and white thread and start the sewing process.  Hopefully it doesn't take me too long to make them because I'm very excited to have them up now!  As far as the chair covers, they are all cut out and pressed.  Now we just have to staple them onto the chairs, so hopefully that will be a much quicker process since Brian already has the old covers off of two of the four chairs.

God's Handiwork

The last three days have been unusually warm (65-70 degrees F) and beautiful (could see the mountains!) for this time of year in this area.  It was such a nice change from the rain and cooler temperatures that we had been getting (although the rain is back in full force this morning!).  We took full advantage of the nice weather while we had it.  On Saturday night, Brian and I went down to the lake to take some pictures at sunset of the mountains and then went out for pizza.  On Sunday afternoon, we went for a bike ride and ended up in Immenstaad (the next small town over) and explored a little bit of the town and took more pictures of the lake and mountains.  Last night, we rode our bikes across town to check out the Aldi (wasn't overly impressed).  It has been nice to be able to bike without gloves and headbands and to be able to see the mountains that grace the other side of the lake.  We have been in awe of God's handiwork and truly blessed to see it.