Out for a (st)roll

Well, I guess you guys don't bake cakes or quick breads. Or maybe you just like to keep your recipes top secret. Because only one person gave me some suggestions. But that's all right. I'll get by.

Onto other things -- my favorite topic, Sharkdog. He has a lot of endearing habits, but this is one of my favorite. (Oh, who am I kidding. They're all my favorite.)

Sometimes when we go for a walk, Sharkdog will sniff around in the grass until he finds just the right spot. When he thinks he has found it, he's gives it a test by rubbing his head in the grass.


Once he's confirmed it's a good spot (and it's almost always a good spot), he goes to town.


Oh, just look at him go. He loves to roll around in the grass.


Ok, I guess that's enough.


But then again, maybe not.


Nope, he still has a bit left in him.


There we go. It's time to leave. Of course, we normally only make it a few feet before Sharkdog finds another good spot and starts to rolling again.

We now return to your regular programming

Thank you for all of the well-wishes for our adoption plans. I've invited everyone to the private blog except for those whose email address I am missing. But I've left a comment for those people on their blogs. So if you haven't received a blog comment or an invitation to the blog, I probably have an old email address. Just send me a new one and we'll get it all fixed up. And, of course, you're still welcome to leave a comment or send me an email if you'd like to be added to the private blog.

And now, on to other things -- cakes! One of the cultural aspects of living in Vienna that I've embraced wholeheartedly is that of consuming coffee and cake at every opportunity possible. Recently, I've found myself needing to make cakes fairly often and I'd love to try out some new recipes. This is where you come in. I hate to be a bother, but do you have any suggestions and/or recipes?

There are a few things to keep in mind when making suggestions:

1. I use the term "cake" very loosely. Basically, I'll accept anything that goes with coffee. I've made the Pioneer's Woman's apricot bars, sweet potato bread, pear bread, and cinnamon bread. Come to think of it, I usually make quick breads and not cake. I'm thinking about trying the cheesecake recipe from a friend in Germany soon. Is 9 a.m. too early for cheesecake? I don't think so.
   
2. Austrians typically don't like things as sweet as Americans. I almost always decrease the sugar a little, use a combination of white and wheat flour and add or increase the amount of oats in a recipe. Cakes like a traditional coffee cake with crumb topping would probably be too sweet for this crowd.
3. It needs to travel well since I usually make it at home and take it somewhere. If it freezes well, that's a plus.
   
4. It's summertime, so I need some good summer recipes. All of the recipes I've used so far are very fall-ish.

Wow, that's kind of a lot to keep in mind. But I hope you won't let me down. If you don't have a recipe, just let me know what you like to munch on with your coffee -- especially in warm weather. Or are Europeans the only ones who drink coffee in the warm weather? Sometimes it's hard to remember these types of things.

More info

After yesterday's big announcement you're probably curious about our adoption plans. Well, Brian and I are kind of private people and we don't want to just put all of this personal information on the internets. So I've started another blog -- a private blog -- where Brian and I will share more information about our adoption plans and eventually information about and photos of our child.

There's a link to the new blog, Three Little Birds, on the sidebar, but you have to receive an invitation before you can view the site. If you want to follow along, send me an email or leave me a comment with your email address and I'll send you an invitation to the blog.

Oh, and remember a while back when I showed you some cartoons made from photos? And I told you I was working on a project. Well, here it is -- the banner for the new blog.

How not to break the news

Remember back in February when I told you about the Christmas gifts I made for my family last year? You probably thought February was late to be talking about Christmas gifts, but I guess June is really late. But I want to show you something.

This is the tin I decorated for my Dad's magnetic word kit.


See, it was filled with little magnets.


I even left him a note on the inside of the lid.


And I packaged it carefully so the magnets wouldn't shift around during transit. This was very important, because I also left a note for the whole family on the bottom of the tin underneath all of the other magnets.


There it is. Do you see it? Here, let me help.


I tested it several times to make sure the message would stay intact during shipping, but unfortunately I didn't count of someone in customs opening the package and taking everything out. So once it arrived, the message was no longer there. Just in case you ever want to make a big announcement with magnets that are going through international mail, here's some advise: glue the magnets in place.

Fortunately, I knew it was possible that the magnets wouldn't stay in place, so I had another cool way to make the announcement. Not as cool as the magnets, but still fun. I wrapped up a baby dress that I made and since we were opening gifts together over Skype I made sure everyone knew that this wasn't a gift from my family ("Oh, this one must be from Santa") so everyone was watching, then when I opened it I said, "This must be a gift for the baby we're adopting." Everyone was excited and my sister accused me of upstaging Christmas, or something like that. We repeated the whole baby dress announcement with Brian's parents a few hours later.

And so, that's the last time I'll blog about Christmas 2008.

Oh yeah, and can you believe it? Brian and I are ADOPTING A BABY!

The mysteries of the couch

That's an ugly couch, isn't it? Go on and say it. You won't hurt my feelings. But it was free and it was already in the apartment, so I'm not going to complain. Plus, this couch is full of mysteries, so that makes it kind of fun to have around.

For example, we lived with this couch for more than half a year before we realized it did this:


And it took me probably another year before I figured out it did this:


Brian knew it did that all along because the landlord showed him. But I had no idea. Now I keep most of the extra bedding in there. But one thing I have yet to figure out is why it does this:


The back cushion on the short side can be removed and there's velcro on the back of the cushion as well as the couch to keep the cushion in place. None of the other three back cushions can be removed. And I have yet to figure out a reason why this cushion would need to be removed. Any guesses? I'm wondering if there is another mystery to this couch that I have yet to discover.

I've got it covered

I love the pun. Brian says it's the lowest form of humor, but I don't care. I also enjoy slapstick. And I'm pretty sure that Brian likes it when I love the pun and enjoy the slapstick. But this is a pretty weak pun, so I'll just point out that the title is in reference to the window coverings. See? Isn't that fun?

I finally finished the roman shades for the office. It seems like I've been working on them forever. I started them sometime in March and it didn't take me long to realize that I don't like working with such large pieces of fabric. I made the first two (there are three windows) and decided they were too narrow.


Originally we planned to hang them so the shades were set inside the frame and only covered the glass. But that would require attaching hardware to the windows and I wasn't sure I wanted to do that since we're renting. So we found these brackets that attach at the top where the window opens so they won't cause any damage to the windows. (These windows have a hinge on the left side. If you turn the handle all the way up, the window tilts inward so that it's locked at the bottom and open at the top. If you turn the handle to the side, the window opens like a door. And if you turn the handle down, the window is locked. I remember taking photos of the windows a long time ago to show how they work, but I guess I never posted it.)


Oh look. You can see how the windows are open at the top here.
When we changed the way we were going to hang the shades, I should have remeasured. But I didn't. So they ended up too narrow. I left the shades up for about a week or two to see if I could get over their narrowness. I couldn't, so I decided to rip the stitching on the hems and decrease the hem from 1.5 inches to .5 inches. There are casings for dowel rods sewn to the back side , so I also had to rip the stitching about an inch on each side of the casings and sew on additional strips to accommodate for the thinner hems. It probably added 10 to 15 hours to the project, but it was definitely worth it. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

On a side note, the painting that is hanging between the windows was painted by one of my teammates, Kim. Another teammate Jake has photos on one of the walls. I think it's pretty swell that we're able to use our talents to complete the office.

Rockin' baby

A month ago Brian's sister Candace had a baby, so of course the proud aunt and uncle had to send her something. And it had to be cool. After all, we have an image to maintain. So I made a couple of pairs of babylegs and decorated onesies using freezer paper stencils.



This was my first experience using freezer paper stencils and it was so much fun and super easy. I found a free stencil for the electric guitar online and made the strawberry one myself based on a few different stencils. There are tons of tutorials out there, but since I took the photos, I decided to document the process in a Flickr set here. When I have a bit more time, I may try to decorate a t-shirt for myself.

Here are some more shots of the painted onesies since the photos with the babylegs were kind of an awkward angle.