So what's the deal with milk

Milk is so crazy here in Austria. In the States you have three, maybe four options. But here I can buy fat free, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2%, or 3.9%. Come on, 3.9%? Let's just call it 4%. And recently I discovered something new. EXTRA whole milk, which is 4.5% fat!

I normally buy the light milk (which is 0.5% to 1.5%, depending on the brand), but I'll buy whole milk a couple of times a year. So, of course, I had to try the extra whole milk. And what do you know, it's extra yummy.

This doesn't have anything to do with milk, but I can't hear "So what's the deal with..." without thinking of my favorite Seinfeld opener. Just my luck, I found it on YouTube.

Continuing ed

Last night I participated in a scrapbooking class at a local continuing education center. I picked scrapbooking because I figured it would be easier to understand a subject I was already familiar with -- but it didn't matter much since the teacher spoke to me in English the entire night. Oh well. I didn't get to practice German, but I did get to make a lovely page for a scrapbook.


I still need to add a title. I couldn't decide between "Man's Best Friend" or "Happiness is..." I think I'm going to go with "Happiness is..." because I listed some of the things that we love about Sharkdog.

Now I just have to find something other than Sharkdog to scrapbook about.

A quick fix

I've been meaning to post a link to this tutorial on hemming jeans for months, but I'm just now getting around to it.

My jeans are always too long, so they always get raggedy on the bottom. But I've never hemmed them because it just doesn't look the same as the original hem. But then I found this method of hemming jeans that kept the original hem. And it's so simple! The whole thing took about 10 minutes.

So, without further ado, here's the post: How to Hem Jeans.

Photo used by permission under the Creative Commons license.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darling_clementine/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Rockin' it with The Boss

Before we moved to Vienna I had this crazy idea that Brian and I would get to see some amazing shows while we lived here. And two years after moving here, we finally attended our first concert. And it was pretty amazing.

I think one of my favorite parts was when Bruce did his preacher-man speech about building a house -- mainly because it seemed to really confuse the crowd. Maybe it was the whole language issue. It went something like this:

Bruce: Tonight we have come all this way to the land of musicians to fulfill a solemn vow.
Crowd: Wooo!
Bruce: We've come here to rock the house!
Crowd: Woooooo!
Bruce: And we're gonna ROCK THE HOUSE!
Crowd: WOOOOOO!
Bruce: But we're not just gonna rock the house. We're gonna BUILD a house!
Crowd: Wha?

I couldn't find the speech for the Vienna show, but this is basically the same thing from a show in London.


Other high points of the show included when Bruce collected signs with song requests from the people in the crowd. One of the signs read "Should I Stay or Should I Go," to which Bruce responded, "I've never even heard of that one." Then during the encore, a girl removed her shirt which contained her request of Jersey Girl. Apparently, that was a first for Springsteen. He hung the shirt on the mic stand and then returned it to her after the song.

If you like Bruce Springsteen or just want a little taste of the action, here's a 10-minute video that covers the 3-hour concert.

Turns out, I was right

I've always known that I'm a winner, but it's nice to get some validation from someone else once in a while. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Sew, Mama, Sew! saying that I had won some needles during their sewing machine month. I didn't even know they were giving away needles.


Nifty gifties.
Now, sewing needles may not seem like a good prize to some of you, but I'm very excited about them. There are a few twin needles that I'm looking forward to trying out. I just hope they work with my machine. And leather needles. Now I can finally make those leather pants I've been wanting. Not really. But I have thought about making some leather-soled baby shoes. Or those leather needles may just sit in the drawer for a long while. We'll just have to see what happens.

Refashioned

Last year I bought a shirt that I really liked until I saw myself wearing it in a photo. Not flattering. While it looked fine when i was standing in front of a mirror -- you know, standing straight and tall and trying to make it look good -- out in the real world it looked awful. So every since I saw that photo the shirt has stayed in my closet.

Until just recently. I've become very interested in the idea of refashioning clothing, so I decided to try my hand with this shirt. I was never going to wear the shirt again anyway, and if it didn't work out I could use the fabric for something else.

Against my better judgment, I'll include one of the photos that made me decide to never wear the shirt again. It's a photo my mother-in-law took while visiting last year. Obviously I had no idea she had her camera pointed my way or I would have stood up a bit straighter. :) But this is what refashioning is all about. You have to see the before to appreciate the after. So here are both a before and after photo.


before -- quite unflattering


after -- much better
I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do when I started, so I tried a few different options. I ended up removing the front seam under the bust, cutting that panel and sewing it back with an opening. I also removed the elastic from the back so the front seam was a little loser and shortened it by a few inches. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. Of course, I haven't seen myself wearing it in any candid photos yet.

Stay tuned for some t-shirt reconstructions in the coming weeks (if they turn out wearable!).

I get by with a little help from my friends

Today I received an email that made me smile. This isn't the first time I've received the email -- a similar message comes every month. And every time it makes me smile. The email is a notice from Kiva that another portion of the microloan I made a few months ago has been repaid.

Photo from Kiva.

This is Hawa Afia. She's 60, a widow and lives in Ghana. She's a fishmonger and sells used clothing from a shed in the local market to help support her family and send her children to school. With the microloan she received from me and about 20 other people, she'll be able to expand her business and buy more fish from the wholesaler.

I was familiar with Kiva for a long time before I decided to make a loan. I don't know what was holding me back. If you've been considering it (or even if you've never heard of Kiva until now!), I encourage you to just do it. It's easy to create an account and you can loan as little as $25. Once the loan has been repaid, you can loan the money to someone else. And every month you'll receive an email with an update on your loan repayment. :)