Happy Friday!

Happy Friday and start of the Olympics! Nicole and I have pretty much been talking non-stop about the Olympics for the past month or so, so we're beyond excited that the Games have finally arrived! Now that I'm back home in Miami (details about my LA trip to come next week), my weekend will be consumed with watching swimming and gymnastics--and yelling at those little gymnasts to stick their landings, of course. :) What are your plans for the weekend?

Happy Friday and see you back here next week!

P.S. Speaking of the Olympics...(hehe)

And if you're in London, this picnic garden looks awesome!

Love these clever iphone docks!

In case you need some cute cutlery tags in your life.

Olympics print by Dieter Braun

Pool Party!

While Micha and I are both self-professed city dwellers, at least at this point in our lives, we have to admit that the idea of having a giant-ass garden and a pool is pretty freaking hard to resist. A pool, people, a pool!

And not any old pool, a pool with two beer-carton floaties and a floating bar (we may have contributed two of those three items to the birthday boy...)!

Before this summer, I don't even know the last time I was in a backyard pool outside of LA. Maybe never. Obviously, in LA you get a lot more use out of them, and Natalie and I had many a birthday party in our backyard pool back in the day. But I've discovered that pool-time fun really never gets old and even if you can only use it maybe five days a year (which is what it seems like in Berlin this summer), it's kinda still totally worth it.

"No, Aron, the drinkies are all mine!" says Micha... ;)

Having a deep, manly conversation, for sure

Granted, I didn't really go in the pool this time (it was freaking freezing from all the rain water!) but Matthias did manage to get me soaking wet with a cannonball, so I enjoyed it nonetheless. Aron (slash Hef, as he is still known :) also wisely tried to stay dry on his raft and screamed and cried the minute he accidentally fell all the way in, poor little fellow. I felt his pain. (He recovered 2.5 minutes later after he was dubbed "a real man" for surviving the icy waters.)

Cool floaties take work | Micha definitely got the best run-into-his-arms-and-hug greeting of the day from Aron

The other awesome thing about having a huge backyard is, quite obviously, the seemingly endless garden-growing possibilities available to you. And Anja has taken full advantage of their space by planting not only tomatoes, beans, peas, and strawberries (so tasty!), but also carrots, radishes, lettuce, and even pumpkins (which shall be put to use for our Thanksgiving party she assured me; hoorah!).

We spent the whole afternoon and evening outside, playing all sorts of games with and without the wee ones. Micha's remote controlled helicopter (a lame prize I won at my work Christmas party that none of the boys found lame at all) was a big hit, even though he managed to get it stuck in not one, but two trees. But Matze MacGuyver was there to save the day, as he always is (he didn't earn that nickname for nothing)!

The night ended perfectly, with some grilling and drinkies and lots of laughter around the fire, just as it should.

Micha and Stefan having a moment. Clearly, a very private one...

And we wonder where that little cutie (Aron) gets his good looks from (that's dad on the right :)

Aron, future hooligan

It's funny, when I read this post by Holly at Nothing But Bonfires about how now that she has a lot friends with kids they get to have kickass parties, I was like, yeah...you're crazy, honey. But then...

...you see rugrats like these...

 

...and get to partake in moments like these...

...and you're like, ok...

...I get it.

Inspired By...

...a typographic DIY rug that would be a whimsical change from your average rectangular throw rug.

Photo & DIY by Jessica Hische 

...colorful confetti vases for your summer flowers or desktop pens. (I want some for every room!)

Available by Stampel Studio

...Twiggy and a flying kitten. Enough said.

Photo by Helmut Newton

...color-coded, magically floating books. I can think of no better way to decorate a wall.

Photo by Marjva

...gorgeous prints of marbeled wood. They're simply mesmerizing, aren't they?

Available by Snedker Studio

Typographic rug by Jessica Hische via Man Made DIY | Confetti vases by Stampel Studio via Bright Bazaar | Photo by Helmut Newton for Vogue, 1967 via Whorange | Invisible bookshelf display at the Housing Fair in Finland photographed by Marjva of Divaani Blogit via Poppytalk | Marbeling prints by Snedker Studio via Design for Mankind

The No Longer Sad Wall!

We actually did it! The exclamation point is well deserved, as I tend not to follow through with projects nearly as quickly as I intend or claim to, so I am quite proud of us for actually getting this frame wall done when I said we would. It helped to have all the frames lying on the floor for a week, bugging the crap out of Micha and making him all the more willing to help me get them hung up instead (but he really did like the idea, so that obviously helped, too).

Funnily enough, his first comment was, "it looks very American" and a laugh. A happy laugh.

Yeah, that statement confused me, too. But he claims Americans always have "lots of little pictures hanging up, while Germans always have just one big piece on a wall." I suppose it is kinda true... Though maybe we just read too many decorating magazines and blogs and get crazy ideas in our heads of filling our walls to the gills. :) Either way, I'm glad he embraces my American-ness.

There may very well be some crooked pictures in there, I tend not to be able to tell if they're all straight or not...but I figure when friends come over, they'll straighten them, as they always seem to do (apparently we have enough crooked pictures for it to be often noticed).

Not all of the pictures will stay, some were last minute replacements when I realized the layout I had on the floor was a good foot wider than the actual wall space (oopsie poodles!) and had to quickly rearrange and rotate some frames, so I hope to replace a few of them with some cute new prints in the near future to mix things up a bit. I'd like to think of it as a constant work in progress that we can update whenever we find something new to hang up. But some of those beauties - like my favorite picture of Nat, Liz, and me pinching Alyssa's tush at her wedding, or the adorable baby pictures I found of each of us - are there for good!

The airplane print is a Thomas Prior photo and the Elvis print is by Landon Nordeman, both from 20x200 | The bullfighting drawing is a Picasso print picked up on Nat's and my travels through Europe | All other pictures are ours

Travel Posters

Now that I've signed up for fab.de, my email inbox has gotten that much more dangerous each morning (and I completely blame Emily here). Dangerous for my wallet, of course, while our apartment, on the other hand, is getting the royal treatment. Like yesterday, when I knew I'd already splurged plenty on our frame wall and a couple other prints last week, I just positively could not resist the newest sale on posters from the Anderson Design Group. And I tried. I filled my fab cart over and over again, letting it expire each time, with the same three prints for a good three hours, trying to rationalize with myself why I should buy these instead of, say, rain-proof shoes (#firstworldproblems much?), which would be much more practical this summer.

But the awesomeness won out and in the end, I checked out with two of the fabulous prints I wanted. I already know exactly where I'll hang them, too (which is a rarity for me, planning ahead like this!); the next step is just getting Micha on board and convincing him our walls aren't already overloaded... (they're so high that they could never really be overloaded, really). Now just try to tell me it wasn't money well spent! Check these babies out:

The two that made the cut! Current home and will-always-be-my home

The one that got away...

A couple other lovely options: Beloved city of our college days and Nat's current home

What do you think? Which one would you choose? There are plenty more in their Art and Soul of America and World Travel collections!

All posters by Anderson Design Group: Berlin | California | USA | Boston | Miami

My Weekend in Pictures

We started the weekend off with a Friday night movie and friends, I cannot recommend the movie highly enough. We saw The Way with Martin Sheen and it was so touching, and sweet, and funny, and sad...and just all around enjoyable and very much worth the watch (bonus: I love the fact that Emilio Esteves not only played the son in the movie, but also directed his dad in it, too!). It also made us want to pack up our giant backpacks and hit the road... but I suppose that will have to wait a while (le sigh).

On Saturday we headed to another awesome pool party for Matthias' birthday, which I'm sharing pictures of later because there are just to many good ones to include here! Ok, fine, here's a sneak peek:

Aron looking mighty dubious of the water | You can never have enough beer cooler floaties

And I'm proud to say that on Sunday, we really did tackle my biggest to-do of the weekend and hung up the frames on the sad wall! And I think it looks freaking fantastic. (I think Micha does, too, but he's a man of few words and so I take his conciliatory nods for great withheld exclamations of enthusiasm.) Well, one picture is still missing - a canvas print I ordered that I'm picking up today - so that will have to wait too, but look, here's proof!

That's his "really? You're taking a picture now?" face. Also, yes, the lanterns from the baby shower are still totally there. Hanna will get them for her room, eventually.

And since I was feeling so productive, I went ahead and got a couple more home projects done, too. Cuz these moments are few and far between.

We replaced our previous hallway picture with this fabulous one I gave to Micha for his birthday (I got it from 20x200, which I also can't recommend highly enough - that place rocks! Two of the pictures on our new frame wall are from there, too.). In case you can't tell, he's a bit of an airplane fan. :)

I also got around to improving the front door cork-/chalkboard calendar I'd previously DIY'd. The chalk lines I'd had on there had made it rather tedious to update and as a result, the calendar still said November. So I wised up and used some colorful washi tape to make the lines instead and, bam! new, much more usable calendar! Now I just need to hang a big sign above it that says "Don't forget: KEYS! PHONE! UMBRELLA!" and our door will have all the daily reminders we need on it before leaving the house.

And since I love adding chalkboard touches to things, I whipped out my new chalkboard paper (contact paper? Whatever it may be called...) and relabeled a bunch of our spices. Just because.

Apparently, we hoard dried Italian herbs

Some random plants that weren't so happy on the balcony got a new home in our kitchen hanging planters, which have been used for many things over the years, but now for the first time for plants. On the left is the mint that I oh-so proudly grew from a cutting!

I swear the kitchen isn't really that intensely green... The lighting in there is crazypants.

So obviously I now have six new cuttings (including four from Anja's garden, since she had some different varieties) growing...

But most of the day was spent enjoying the rare and very welcome sunshine on the balcony, reveling in our wee little forest, and grilling tasty large steaks for dinner on our new portable grill (again, just because).

The babies are growing up nicely!

Thanks for the fun napkins, Emily!

Why do the weekends ever have to end...?