Summer at last...

To say these past months of 'spring' have been relatively cold and extremely wet would be an understatement.  But, lo and behold, summer has finally arrived in Gufi!  With plenty of lovely, cotton-candy-sunsets like last night.

What About Detroit?

Check out my latest film endeavor - 'What About Detroit? Submissions for the Sustainable Transportation Award'.  You'll see all sorts of characters, like Mike (from Detroit).

Florida, ahoy!

One whirlwind of a day in Florida.

Cruised on jet skis through the bay.

Explored Egmont Key Barracks.

Sat at the dock of the bay and watched the tide roll away...

From the mountains of Virginia to the lakes of Savannah

Driving from Pennsylvania to Florida in 3 days... here's a snap shot of somewhere in the hills of Virginia and a campground lake in Savannah, Georgia.

The Barn on Fretz Valley Road

Beautiful barn, with rustic elegance fit for a wedding.

High-ceiling interior, above the pony stable.

And guinea hens.

Beach Birds

Seagull flying solo

Sandpipers running in waves

Hampton, NH

It's so nice to breath that fresh, salty air!

 the marsh

 the rocky shore

 the birds

Sugar Scrub Cubes

In preparation for an upcoming bridal shower, I decided to penny pinch and try my hand at making the favors.  Since the theme of the shower was 'Victorian Teatime', I wanted to go with something tea and shower infused.  I made some 'teabags for the tub', which only required purchasing empty teabags, dried rose petals and lavender, and some thread.  After a quick internet search, I found some directions on how to make sugar scrubs into cubes.  Here are a few photos of the results:

I wanted to test the directions on two different soaps before using the nice handmade lavender soap I had.  I chose 'refreshing' lime and 'soothing' honey & oil.

The lime-scented soap did not smell nearly as refreshing as advertised, it smelt more of cleaner.  The honey & oil soap smelled delicious and warm.  It took about 1/2 an hour to shave a cup of flakes.  Note: using the blunt side of a knife worked surprisingly better than the blade.

I attempted melting the flakes with a double boiler, but found that even after HOURS of boiling, so soap would not melt on it's own.  So, with my lime batch I gave in and dumped all the oil in.  It melted much faster that way, however the consistency didn't seem quite right.  I used brown sugar, since it was all I had at the time.
With the honey batch, I attempted to double boil, but found it much more effective to place the pot directly on the burner and watch it carefully.  The consistency was quite different this time around, and as you'll see in the following photos it was just right.  I did attempt a 2nd batch of the honey, but ended up burning it... in the end, it smelled more like maple syrup, so not much of a loss there.  ;-)

As you can see, the lime batch did not stick together AT ALL!  I was terribly disappointed... but extremely excited when the honey batch turned out so great.

    

Not wanting to waste any of my concoctions, I put the lime batch into a bowl and currently use it on my feet.  It feels wonderful, just like a regular sugar scrub, but smells a lithe toxic.  The honey batch was carefully transferred into tupperware in order to travel to the bridal shower safely.

I placed the tea bags and sugar cubes into little cellophane bags, tied off with a teapot 'thank you' tag.  The shower was a delight.

Photos and Language Learning

After a recent teacher's meeting, my boss gave me the go-ahead to have an interactive photo wall.  Basically, students respond to a question about the given picture in the language they're learning.
We painted a magnetic area on the center wall at the school, and the first picture has already had some traffic!  Looking forward to more comments in varying languages, as well as deciding what picture to post next.

I heart Fasnet (part three) - Rosenmontag in Denzlingen

This year we decided to heed the advice of my students and check out the Rosenmontag parade in Denzlingen, as opposed to Freiburg.  It was worth it!  Still a decent-sized parade, but with groups I hadn't seen before (such as Mr. Scary Bo-jingles pictured below) and much better candy.  It was also less crowded.  Oh and did I mention the candy?  You know when you're a kid and go trick-or-treating... there's always that one house with the full-size bars of chocolate as opposed to the fun size.  That was Denzlingen.

Oh, and it snowed some more!