Happy Weekend.

Do you have anything fun planned for the weekend? I had a stressful week at work so I plan to just rest and cook and read and rest some more. The weather report says it´s going to be rainy so that kind of agrees with my plans. Also, I want to try making this bread. I have tried a few recipes from Joy so far and they always turned out super yummy!

Here are some fun links to get in the weekend mood:

* The cutest kitten picture (I´m sorry. I just happen to love cats.)
* Right, I think the universe is trying to tell me that I should have chickens very soon.
* You still haven´t had enough of animal babies?
* Here´s something for those of you who rather enjoy human baby girls in cute dresses.
* Speaking of babies, you need to read these. (I almost laughed my head off.)

Happy weekend!

(Rainy day picture by Amy Homegrown on Flickr.)

Travel plans.

We have been going back and forth with our travel plans for this year. We want to enjoy summer in Berlin and escape the dreadful greys in winter, so we thought we´d go on a long holiday in October/November. We handed in our holiday approvals only to realize a week later that this time of year is quite a difficult one to travel. There´s hurricane season in Mexiko and Cuba and rainy season in some parts of Africa we considered. The husband does not want to go to Israel which I´d love to and I refuse to go to South America. And I still can´t bear the thought of being stuck in an airplane for 24 hours to go to New Zealand or Australia (I have claustrophobia and 12 hours is the longest flight I have managed so far). We thought of going to the US westcoast again to make up for our very short honeymoon there last year, but then again the husband is pretty tired of the US.

At some point the husband remarked why we couldn´t just go to Portugal. We´ve been to Portugal two times before and really loved it. And while it´s a pretty low key - and probably boring - solution to go to Portugal it´s also an inexpensive and (hopefully) very relaxing one. And let´s face it, we´re not backpacker-travel-the-world-on-a-shoestring-kind of people. So I did some research and turns out that the Portuguese island Madeira is still a good place to go in late October - it won´t be a beach vacation but it should still be warm and we plan to hike a lot. So Madeira it is. I keep looking at pictures like this and wishing I was there already.

Do you have any travel plans in place already? Where do you dream to go one day?

(Also, we´re looking for realiable people to come and live in our apartment and take care of our cats while we are away. If you are interested, drop me a line!)

(Pretty vintage luggage by Cake Walk on Flickr.)

Weekends are the bestest.

What can I say? I had such a nice weekend and I already miss it. I could use some more "end" to my weeks these days, I must say...

Especially now that it´s (almost) spring. Berlin is quite a bit behind spring-wise, it´s still pretty cold here so no blooming trees or such. Still it is so nice to have more light during the days. We don´t get any sun in our apartment during the winter months (something I didn´t know before we moved in and which is a major bummer) but now the sun is finally high enough in the sky and we have glorious light in there. It´s a bit pathetic how happy I am about this.

I also spent some time in the garden making plans for summer. I have planted a gazillion spring bulbs in autumn so it´s going to look pretty very soon I hope! We won´t do much to this garden though because we plan to move sooner or later. I´m always a bit sad when I compare this very bland garden to the one we had in Vienna - but hey, we have a garden at least and I will do my best to make it pretty in summer.

In other news, we finished our kitchen! I hope to take pictures next weekend and show you around. I really like it now. And yes, we indeed made pasta on Sunday: Fettucine with basil pesto and a huge lasagna for our weekday lunches. Everything turned out yum but I didn´t take any photos. Instead you can look at my pom-poms in the living room above. I thought I´d do a "how-to make pom-poms" soon, yes?

Happy Weekend.

I have been feeling a bit under the weather lately so we´ll take it slow this weekend. I plan to finally finish decorating my kitchen and then, cook and bake a lot in said kitchen. I bought a pasta machine recently and we´ll be testing recipes. Do you have a favorite recipe for pasta dough? The last attempt I did (see picture above!) was based on semolina flour and it turned out... uhm.. interesting. But maybe the pasta machine makes the difference? We´ll see.

I have collected a few links over the week and wanted to share them with you:
* One day, I want my own chickens.
* The cutest kitten I have ever seen.
* I love this house tour.
* Lotta Jansdotter is blogging!
* Great food photos.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Party like the King.

Did you see The King´s Speech? I did and guess what my favorite part was? Yep, Lionel Logue´s office. Isn´t this a grand room. I´m not sure if I´d like to live here - it´s a bit too dark and moody - but look at all the features - the room´s size, the dramatic window and the skylights, the huge fireplace, the wooden floor and these amazing walls. Speaking of the walls, what you see is not patina - I read somewhere that the decorator crew applied three coats of wallpaper, paint and whatnot to these walls - impressive!

When I went on the hunt for pictures, I was surprised to find out that this room actually does exist - I had somehow assumed that they had it built to match their requirements as it is often the case with movies (one of my favorite movies plays in an amazing apartment that was built from scratch - I need to show you sometime).

However, turns out that Lionel Logue´s office is part of a very fancy party venue in London. Look at the picture below and you can imagine how it looks to throw a lavish party there - not too bad, right?

(All pictures are from the 33 Portland Place website).