Corner View: Bee Sting Cake on the Menu

Today's Corner View theme is about your local menu. One thing you can certainly find everywhere in Germany is an Italian ice cream shop (eiscafe). Our local favorite has this dish with ice cream surrounded by a ring of a sort of warm chocolate pudding.


Thankfully the menu had a great color shot of the dish, as I forgot to take a picture of mine before we polished it off!


Another thing on this weekend's menu was Bienenstichkuchen (bee sting cake). We had cake and coffee over at my mother-in-law's house on Sunday. This is quite possibly my favorite German cake. Simple, not-too-sweet layers of cake sandwiching a frothy white layer of whipped cream, topped with crunchy, honey glazed, toasted almonds. Perfect!

For more Corner Views of menus around the world,
head over to Spain Daily!

wool = cozy decor

So I can't stop. Well, I stopped enough to do a rush job for work-work and that sort of thing, and I stayed up late to fix a dog jacket and finish some sewing bits of Christmas presents, but otherwise I'm stuck on these:

No more details because they're also destined to be gifts of sorts...maybe...Stefan thinks they look so cool and we keep thinking we could keep them all. Or not. We'd look pretty silly with so many, don't you think?!

Now, I have to give a MAJOR plug here for the lady who inspired me to give this a whirl myself. Her designs are SO much cooler than mine and she's basically got this down to a science. It's her job and it shows. Check out Knock Knocking's Etsy shop. She has a cute blog, too.

She's so creative, isn't she?!

I love the felt flowers she makes to put on them as well. I'm not so sophisticated. I'm going to go with imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and be happy for a good idea. I'm not selling mine, nor is my gift budget such that I could afford to gift so many of hers, but it's fun, no?

To see more posts on yarn wreaths hop over to Holly's post on Decor8 and the how-to tutorial that inspired her. Remember, if you want the look without the DIY, buy your own here (she updates her shop often).

Mixing yarn with 'shrooms: twisty

I've been wanting to try my own yarn wrapped wreath for a while, but had a really hard time finding a foam wreath. However, between a random specialty shop where foam wreaths were all less than 2 Euro and the 1 Euro yarn bucket at the grocery store, these two wreaths came in at under 3 Euro each! I love this one - it's going in my living room somewhere.


I think I may want to add something else to it, but I'm not sure. This wreath took me less than 20 minutes to wrap up. It's only roughly 7"/17cm in diameter. The next one took a whole ball of yarn and took about an hour and a half or so. It's much bigger at roughly 12"/30cm in diameter.


This guy definitely needs more work, and I may remove the pilze (mushrooms). It was really hard to get a good picture of this green one thanks to the typical gray and rainy weather we're having. Ignore the leaves on the balcony... There's just no good light anywhere!

You could easily do these while watching a movie. I got nearly caught up with friends and finished mine over the course of 5 different phone conversations. So for those of you I still need to catch up with (you know who you are!), you'll know what I'm working on while we talk!

Twisting and turning: yarn and thread

I've been busy working on non-creative work-related things, but I've managed to squeeze in some top-secret Christmas projects.


I've also started trying out some fun ideas with yarn. I found some great colors in the 99 cent bucket at the grocery store and today was able to procure a few more items necessary for my trial runs. I'll have to do some non Christmas-y things first, to see if my idea can follow through more, so stay tuned - hopefully tomorrow there'll be more to show!

The Berlin Wall: then and now

Today is a big deal kind of day here in Germany. It marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Regardless of how and when this all exactly came about, today is the day of celebration.

Here's a look at the first border crossing to open - watch how things change in less than 9 minutes. Realize that you are literally watching people walk into freedom. If you understand German, it's even better because the translation, while fair, misses a lot of things.

Where were you when you heard the wall was down?

(my answer's in the comments)