My Weekend in Pictures

Advent calendar goodie 17 will come in very handy for future backpacking adventures!

Papermash knows how to spruce up a package.

Automatic is where it's at.

The gorgeous, but oh-so-crowded Christmas market at Schloss Charlottenburg.

Micha makes the best steak (rare, but of course).

We're not the only ones with a lime green kitchen.

I finally made those sparkly cranberries and they were deeeelish!

Yeah, it's that good.

- I don't really think any of our Christmas cards will actually arrive on time this year (yes, I wrote them this weekend and just sent them out today...) but hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

- Saturday was date night, so we spent a couple hours at the lovely Christmas market at Schloss Charlottenburg, enjoying Glühwein and filling up on Pierogis, then headed to Dussman's, our favorite bookstore, to to stock up on some new reads and revel in the great holiday atmosphere they have. It's one of my favorite new holiday traditions of ours.

-Sunday was our big cookie baking day with good friends - in their lime green kitchen, might I add, felt just like home! - and I remembered once again that a day full of cookie baking really is the best way to ring in the holiday season. But we have so. many. cookies! Especially a lot of dachsund sugar cookies from a  set of Bavarian cookie cutters Emily gave me a while ago and I finally got around to using (that's Christmas-y, right?). We also made some chai spice girls, as promised, in the shape of Ampelmänner, and jam thumbprints with red currant jelly.

-Sara and I had been wearing our jinglebell reindeer antlers all day while baking to ramp up the holiday spirit. Towards the end, and after a few glasses of glühwein and few more beers, Christoph turns to her and says, "I think all girls should have real reindeer-style ears and antlers. They're quite sexy." (Take note, ladies.)

-The Hunger Games, people. The Hunger Games. I know I'm way late to the game but Natalie was right, it is completely enthralling and I've barely put it down since Saturday.

On a total side note, why don't Europeans just start driving only automatic cars already? We Americans learned many years ago that it's just plain better and this weekend I confirmed that it IS. I went for my first solo drive with DriveNow (following Micha's car) in an automatic BMW and immediately felt more at ease behind the wheel. Sigh, Europe. Sigh.