It's Not All Bad

Although I absolutely love Christmas in Europe, I willingly admit that there are some advantages to being here in the States for the season. For one thing, stores are open when working people can shop. Maybe the biggest advantage I've noticed, though, is that I have choices. I went to Target to buy Christmas cards and felt like a kid in a candy shop. I ended up buying far more than we need, simply because there were so many to choose from. I also marveled at the selection of wrapping paper, bags, bows, ribbons, tags, and tissue - all of which were in limited supply and of limited selection at our PX (and way too expensive on the economy). So while I'm missing the German Christmas markets, at least I have Target!

Le Coin belge

Several weeks ago I mentioned I was getting ready to paint the kitchen, hoping that lightening the color (it was a medium blue) would brighten the eat-in part. While it's still dark in my corner (I sit at the end of the table by the window), I'm pleased nonetheless with the result. For the first time ever, I managed to keep my wall-meets-ceiling lines straight. I realized some time later that the tape worked so well because I was taping a flat ceiling. The ceilings in most of the rest of the house are textured, so the tape doesn't adhere well. Be that as it may, here's what we have:

Our new beer glass cabinet features most of our Belgian and German beer glasses, plus a few particularly pretty Polish pottery pieces. The picture above the cabinet is one of the canal near our house in Belgium. On the other wall you see are my speculoos molds. These wooden molds are still used all over Belgium to make delicious cookies. I haven't had much luck with my much smaller mold - at least with getting a distinctive design on my cookies - but the cookies themselves were pretty good.

Along with the beer glasses and the speculoos molds you also see a Belgian lace curtain on the lower half of the window. This is a very common effect in Belgium and in many other parts of Europe.

I've dubbed this part of the kitchen "le coin belge" - the Belgian corner. It helps with the nostalgia for the good ole days in Belgium.

Worth checking out

One of our semi-adopted daughters is in France now. She has the gig as a high school English language assistant that I had 33 years ago. She's even in the same general area. She's blogging her experiences, and we've added a link to her site, Étang. If you like good writing, you might want to check it out.

Advent

This is what last year's Advent wreath looked like. We got it at the German Christmas market at SHAPE. In case we neglected to tell you, Germans do Christmas up right. And the Germans at SHAPE are no exception. To make sure no one has to go without their Christmas market, they take over the high school cafeteria and transform it into a magical wonderland of yummy things to eat and drink and these hand-made wreaths, which the German ladies put together. These wreaths are so popular that people - us included - race to get there as soon as the market opens because they sell out so quickly.

This year - maybe because we spent Thanksgiving week in Texas - Advent crept up on me and I was totally unprepared. At some point in our movings - either before we went to Belgium or before we returned - I apparently dismantled our trusty old wreath that had, admittedly, seen far better days. So this is all I could dig up from the bowels of the basement:

Pretty sad, huh? I think I need to go back to Belgium...