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Friday, December 31, 2010

Christmas and Happy New Year


Advent and Christmas were full of joy -- and lots of snow shoveling.

My mom's Advent calendar showed Munich's Marienplatz (Mary's Square) -- inside were 24 wooden ornaments.


In my Advent calendar, there were markers, crayons and other fun stuff.


The IKEA mirror my mom had decorated herself.


The beautiful Advent wreath.


A new decoration -- a cute Christmas cabin.


An invitation to a Christmas dinner at the restaurant below.


Before dinner, I had a nonalcoholic punch outside underneath this warming lamp.


I love to see all the decorations in the neighborhood.


They brighten the evenings and nights.


Such beautiful colors and forms and shapes.


A Christmas tree.


The owl in our garden.


Finally, it was Christmas. I put my grandmother's crib on the window sill in my living room.


Two of the Holy Kings.


The little angels my grandmother had painted.


Some special ornaments on my Christmas tree like this sweet angel.


Isn't the mouse with the pretzel just cute?


Many years ago I saw this dog at a stationery store and had to give it a new home.


This is one of my favorite angels.


A reindeer -- I love the country style.

A very special gift from a dear friend -- thanks so much, Wendy! Theresa is the one who makes and sells these wonderful peppermint earrings in her Etsy store -- just fabulous!


As a child I could see only this of my mom's Christmas tree in the living room before the Holy Evening -- oh, the magical things which waited behind closed doors!


My mom's Christmas tree is always pure magic.


There are many glass birds on the tree.


One year I found the owl ornament for my mom.

Another sweet angel.


There were some gifts, too.


Guess who is a Tangled fan? Gotta love Flynn!


I hope you had a wonderful Christmas season --
here's to a Happy New Year 2011!


May all your wishes and dreams come true!

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Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Advent



Advent seemed to fly by -- it's almost Christmas now!


I hope your tree is decorated and your gifts are wrapped up.


Then all is ready for a magical Christmas!

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Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving

It's chicken for me today, but I will certainly pretend it's turkey.

I am grateful for many things in my life, and one of them is being part of a great blogger community. A big thanks to all of you who read these lines and often take the time to leave a comment. I appreciate that very much.


Happy Turkey Day!

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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Goddess

Lately, I received a lovely note in the mail along with a gorgeous keychain. The note read:

Birgit,
Thank you again for being so sweet!

Now I want to say exactly the same to Rain who was so sweet to send a wonderful goddess keychain to me.


Purple is one of my favorite colors, so this is perfect! Rain doesn't just have an interesting blog aptly named Rain Sews but also two Etsy stores which you find here and here. In the latter she sells the very goddess keychain she sent me as a gift. From the website:

"Keys represent many important parts of life: home, work, transportation and security. Here's a talisman to protect your keys, and therefore to protect all the things that keys represent."


Rain, you couldn't possibly know that, but I was actually thinking of getting a new keychain, so the timing and choice of gift couldn't have been better. Thanks so very much -- you are such a sweet person!
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Saturday, November 20, 2010

We Love Digital Art



Beverly invited to another round of pink fun for Pink Saturday. I made a digital collage for that, using the photo below. Yup, this is the original, unaltered photo showing mainly black. I took it on New Year's Eve shortly after midnight when fireworks were blooming all around. Here I caught a moment inbetween.


Don't delete such photos right away -- they may be perfect as background for a digital collage or scrapbook layout. Just use your graphic program of choice (I used Paint Shop Pro 9). If you don't have any graphic program on your computer, go for the free GIMP. By adjusting the curves for input and output you can see the hidden colors and shapes.


Since the image was very grainy, I removed some of the digital camera noise, ending up with a smoother image which still had the slightly grainy quality I wanted.


I then added two other images, blended the layers, used a couple of filters, and added a frame. So here's my finished collage with pink accents.


I hope you like it -- and if you are now eager to learn more about digital art, be sure to visit We Love Digital Art. It would be lovely to welcome you there.


Happy Pink Saturday!

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Friday, November 12, 2010

The Pink Gorilla of Austin




A couple of years ago I had the chance to meet a dear friend in Austin, Texas. We had gotten to know each other through an email group dedicated to a TV show we both like. Soon enough we started to correspond by email, seeing a kindred spirit in one another. When I visited her and her family in Austin, we came across what I call The Pink Gorilla of Austin. Gotta love that guy! Isn't he just perfect for Beverly's Pink Saturday?


Happy Pink Saturday!

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

H is for Help

Once again coincidence is the reason why I chose Help to be my H for Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday. On Wednesday, I received an email from a snack company that my photo of a squirrel had been uploaded to their online gallery and that it is now ready for voting. They also wrote that I should invite friends to vote for my photo. Normally, I don't even bother to enter such photo contests. I am not registered at Facebook or Twitter, so everyone who has a few hundred contacts there can easily get many votes -- often enough no matter how the photo looks like. Thus a couple of photos already have nearly 100 votes after just one day.

Anyway, the topic of the photo contest was to show a photo which is genuine as in genuinely beautiful or or genuinely crazy or genuinely whatever you can come up with. I decided to upload a photo I took in Sacramento, CA a couple of years ago. The cute squirrel -- genuinely cute or echt süß in German --, seemed to pose for the camera. The little guy lived in the park in front of the California State Capitol.


If you think the squirrel is genuinely cute, please help me get a few votes, so that I don't stick with a modest one vote -- my own vote that is. You could even vote once a day until December 15. Click here to help my squirrel move up on the voting scale. You just have to click on the red button which says Stimme geben (which means vote). That's it. Then my squirrel can start its march to the top and could win me an Apple iPad or Apple iPod Nano or a packet of snack products.

A click a day makes my squirrel squeak hooray!
(And me, too.)


Edit on 11/13:

Thanks for your votes -- they have meant very much! However, I don't stand a chance against people who can rally hundreds of people who vote for them day by day. In just a few days, a couple of photos have nearly 1,000 votes. Well, it was worth a try, but next time I will definitely pass taking part in "photo" contests which are in fact popularity contests.

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Sunday, November 07, 2010

Hats and an award

It has been a while that I made a postcard for Sunday Postcard Art. The current challenge was inspiring though -- Hats'n Crowns. I had great fun going through my collection of vintage ladies wearing fancy hats, ending up with this digital collage:


Earlier this week, Wendy from The Year of the Cats was kind enough to pass on an award to me:

Now, that's always good to hear -- thanks Wendy! I am supposed to pass the award to ten other blogs I enjoy. I won't do that though -- there are by far more than ten blogs that I love to visit. In fact, I am even thinking of removing the list of my favorite blogs from my blog's sidebar as it's not nearly completed, and some dear friends might feel left out. I have so many wonderful blogs bookmarked and just haven't gotten around to add more links to the list of blogs I love to visit. Anyway, please feel free to take this award, too -- I am sure you deserve it!

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