Winter here we come

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Childhood memories

Do you remember all the special sweets and plates you just loved as a kid? I do and once in a while I like to just try some of them. Unfortunately, somehow our tast changes a lot and the good old things aren't so good anymore. The strawberries above are really interesting. I used to love them but to be honest they are gross. The tast is awfully artifical and they are not really sweet. Either the manufacturer changed the recipe or all the deliciouse healthy food I ate changed my internal "like-list".

How to receive a gift!

This time I'll talk a bit about receiving because I figured out that it's often an issue of discomfort. Just remember the time when you were a kid. Every-time when you got a present your parents probably said that you should say "thank you". Quite easy isn't it. The reason why children tend to forget to say thank you is because they are either thrilled by the gift itself and want to try it out now, or because they are overwhelmed from all the impressions around them.
As kids we don't question peoples' intentions we just assume that there is someone who likes to give something to us and we just receive it. Once grown up the world is different. We learned how to play the game. We know the rules of society. Really?
I read a lot about cultural development and personal development during the past weeks and I observed how people act. Think about your loved ones and the not so loved ones. Why do you like one part of your family and why not the others? Maybe it's because the first ones honor and respect your ideas and make you feel comfortable whereas the other don't believe in you or trust you? How did you figured out who's on which side? Normally people don't say specifically that they don't value you as a person but there are ways to convey that message. One for example is to spoil the process of receiving presents. The best place to try that one out is Christmas! Here are idiot prove phrases that will make sure nobody is ever going to prepare something special for you:

1. That really wouldn't have been necessary.
2. You really shouldn't have spent so much money for a present.
3. For Christ's sake are you mad making me such a gift?

 Perfect! You can be sure that you will receive a bunch of crap as birthday presents because nobody will be in the mood to do something special for you.
Receiving a gift is easy isn't it? What most people forget is that making a gift is only a way of communication. Since communication never is a one way channel you should think about your response! Someone makes a gift to someone to show love, gratitude, or respect and the last thing that person wants to hear is that is was not necessary to do so. Thus to make both sides happy practice to receive gifts. Sometimes old parental guidelines are not the worst way to react :). When I heard about this strategy I was quit irritated but I practiced receiving for a week by just saying "thank you" for every complement or gift no matter how big or small it was and now it feels great.

Try it, there is still enough time left (43 days) until Christmas.
Cheers Christina

Relaxation

Guess what :) I had a fabulous weekend. Although we took a course in communication, and had not been home much I am relaxed, and motivated. I even got most of the stuff for the university done but that's less important than the fact that I nearly finished my sisters' christmas calendars.
Do you want to have a preview? Here's a picture:

I'll post some more as soon as I am ready with both calendars. I started wrapping the gifts this morning at 6:30 AM, or something like that. As I already stated a very productive weekend. There is something else I finished today:

I was caught by Andreas when I filled the beanbags and he asked who is supposed to leave the company this time, which reminded me that I'm crafting too many farewell gifts. These beanbags are not really a farewell gift because I am sure that I will spend a lot of time with the one who will receive them.

Greetings from Christina, 

who cannot wait any longer to finally go snowboarding again.

Knitting Projects

I wrote a while ago, that I finished the summer project. Why do knitting projects always tend to get ready when the season is over? It's probably destiny, or the lack of interest once there are three of four parts finished. It's the same with my winter project. I only need to put in the sleeves and the main zipper but I really don't want to work on it at the moment.

 

So I stored it in my closet. I sewed last weekend but not on that project. You know it's going to be Christmas soon. 

Cake :)

I really missed being in the office. Well, that's not really the truth, I didn't miss all the uncool stuff like priority shifts etc., but I missed the colleague who always knows where to find cake. Thus I had to make cake on my own. I decided to do something with apples. The decision wasn't caused by our strong longing for apples or anything related to the nutritional benefits "eating apples" might have, it was due to the fact that we had a massive amount of apples.
I decided to try something new and so we had "French Apple Pie". Please don't ask me why it's called "French", it's really not that special, apart from the rather complicated process of baking parts of it twice.

Today is All Saints Day and we used it to do (more or less) recreational things. I spent the day with Christmas preparations,  sewing, and bread baking. Andreas fixed his PC and Rolf eliminated tones of paper :), as I said more or less recreational.

Thus today we had raisin bread instead of cake. To be honest I just can't stand apples anymore. I tried to mix them into our meals as often as possible but I'm still not a hugh apple lover. 

Here is a picture of the bread and the orange butter:

The Wall - part two

Facing the most horrible three hours of its life the wall knows that you never ever should trust comforting silence. The ones from upstairs really had the nerve to put in a door.

Before they finished the door they also made other strange things. They brought metal things and green stuff downstairs. There must have been a source of that green stuff upstairs.

 After bringing these green stuff downstairs they started to put all these things together:

In the end there was a new wall. The ones from above argued about sockets, they weren't sure yet were to place the sockets.

The wall felt released at least the ones from upstairs were done with it. It wished the new wannabe wall good luck and decided not to worry anymore.