Conversion Extravaganza!

We kept ourselves busy this weekend with painting and baking. Paint color options are limited in Germany compared to the US. However, after hitting three different "mini" Home Depot-like stores we were able to find two great colors for our dining/living room and the baby nursery. Greyish-lavender for the living room and sour apple green for the nursery. After converting liters to gallons, we sort of knew what we needed for the rooms. Of course, you don't buy paint in gallons and quarts, so we bought a 10 liter bucket for the living room, and after hemming and hawing, went with the 5 liter bucket for the nursery. We guessed right, and avoided that infamous second trip to the hardware store..












Here is a work in progress pics of the living room and an "action shot" of Rich with our co-worker friend, Niko, painting the nursery. His American girlfriend is back visiting family in the States right now so we were able to persuade him into helping us by offering him.....that's right..... cold, German beer. It also helped that he brought a ton of painting supplies with him and his 6' 8" frame!

Makayla spent the day serving the German beer (she made sure the trim was done before serving round 3!) and baking. We spent Saturday morning going to a Walmart-like store with another co-worker friend, Karen. She said they had the best assortment of baking ingredients. While we did manage to buy a good amount, there were definitely some differences. First, they don't have baking soda here nor do they have brown sugar. She convinced us to buy what she called "brown sugar" which is really raw sugar. We're not sure why we bought it since we knew it wasn't right....guess we caved under the German peer pressure! During the time it took for Rich and Niko to paint two rooms, Makayla baked homemade brownies and a blueberry coffee cake. It's amazing how much time goes into converting oven temperatures from C to F, grams to ounces and cups etc.......


The pic above was initially supposed to be portrayed as a "Ha ha, nice try baking without brown sugar Makayla!" kind of picture. However, we woke up Sunday morning pleasantly surprised with how delicious the coffee cake turned out! Rich finished off a quarter of it...but that's not too surprising to anyone who knows Rich's eating habits.

We spent a great Saturday night with a couple who live upstairs from us. She is French and he is German. It was very entertaining listening to their differing opinions on each other's home country. They did, however, find common ground on the Brits. For any Brits reading this, we'll keep that information to ourselves! ;-)

In other news..we are getting internet Tuesday! This may not seem like much, but we feel like Christmas has come early because this means American TV, phone, and internet for the Temers. Makayla had successful driving session today with only two stalls (at the same yield sign). Two thumbs up! Lastly, we are heading to Brugges, Belgium, this weekend to meet up with some great Chicago friends. We are looking forward to seeing them....and the Ranch dressing and Pop Tarts they are bringing us!