Bird Feeder

Last night we went to the store to get some better mats for our car.  We came home with those and a kit for Brian to make me a bird feeder!  We have a lot of birds in the tree right outside our windows because the neighbors below have a bird feeder.  I like seeing and hearing the birds and wanted to have my own bird feeder.  We tried these bird feed balls, but haven't had a lot of birds.  When we were browsing the store yesterday, we found these kits for a child to make a bird feeder with a parent.  Brian said he would make me one.  It definitely didn't take him long!  Here's the finished product with the bird feed ball hanging from the side of it.

In other news, we tried to go cross-country skiing today!  We found a place with a route and thought that there would be a rental place nearby.  We got there and drove all over the town and even asked a few people, but there was definitely no place to rent skis there.  We knew of a place in the town where we live, so we drove back and asked there, but they were out of skis for my size, but not Brian's.  We're going to try again once we get back after the holidays to do it again.  It was very pretty driving though, so it wasn't a complete waste.

Christmas "Wreaths"

My task on Wednesday was to make Christmas wreaths to go with the candies I had made on Tuesday.  I've always liked eating these Christmas wreaths, but had never made them before.  Germany makes it a bit more interesting.  :)

First, here is my bag of marshmallows.  I didn't know marshmallows came from the Rockies!

I needed a lot of Corn Flakes and could buy a double-box here!

And from there the wreaths didn't go the greatest.  The first batch wasn't very green because I didn't put enough food coloring in.  They didn't make it to wreath shapes because they got hard too fast.  Instead, I made holly lumps.  It worked out okay when I put them onto plates though because I lined the outside with them and it looked like one giant wreath on the plate.  They taste great though, so hopefully people can get past their looks!

Candy Making

Yesterday was candy making day for me.  I want to give our German teachers something for Christmas and I'm doing the snack for church on Sunday night, so I had a good excuse to make some candy.  I made peanut butter balls and chocolate-covered caramels.  The peanut butter balls were pretty basic and this was the first time I had ever made them.  The caramels are just caramels that I bought and then dipped in chocolate and some in nuts.

Today's task: Corn Flake Christmas wreaths...pictures to come!

Das Handy!

Brian finally has a work cell phone!  This is quite an accomplishment because he has been working on getting one since we got here in August.  He is on a business trip today and tomorrow and used that as an excuse for IT to give him the phone sooner than they were planning on.  They had the phone, but wanted to do classes for all the people getting cell phones.  Brian was sick of waiting and knew that if he had a good reason for getting the cell phone, they might give it to him early.

He flew this morning to Dusseldorf, Germany and then had to drive about 2 hours to someplace in the Netherlands and then was also going to Belgium at some point.  This means he's adding 2 countries to his list!  He's quickly approaching having been in more countries than states at this point.  I'll have to count sometime.  :)  He comes back tomorrow night.

We are also very excited to have his work cell phone because it means that we will be able to communicate with my family when we fly into Detroit (next week!) to let them know we are there and they can come and pick us up.  This makes things a lot easier!

I wouldn't recommend calling Brian's phone if you're in the States because it's a German number and will cost you a lot.  Plus it's a work phone, so he should probably keep it mostly for that.  :)