My Once Upon a Time...

My friend Julia, who is also from Germany, and I met when we were both au pairs in Rhode Island in 2002. I remember countless nights just hanging out at Johnny Rockets on Thayer Street in Providence  with her  and to this day, I will always think about her when I see a Johnny Rockets.  Meine Freundin Julia, die auch urspruenglich aus Deutschland kommt, und ich haben uns als Au Pairs im Jahre 2002 in Rhode Island kennengelernt. Ich erinnere mich an viele Abende, wo wir einfach nur bei Johnny Rockets auf Thayer Street abhingen und auch nach so vielen Jahren denke ich jedesmal an sie, wenn ich irgendwo ein Johnny Rockets sehe.  Yep, here we are again, at our favorite place with her boyfriend (now husband) Erik. The funny thing is, I didn't even like the food there, but I guess the entertainment was worth every stomach ache I got. Whenever a certain song came on (I believe it was RESPECT from Aretha Franklin), all of the waiters would stop what they were d...

6 years ago I didn’t know my life would change forever. For the better. These have been the best 6 years of my life, hands down. But the best is yet to come! I can’t wait to see what the next 6 years have in store for us.  Here are six random facts about each year we've spent together!  Vor 6 Jahren wusste ich nicht, dass sich mein Leben für immer verändern würde. Im guten Sinne. Die letzten sechs Jahre waren die besten meines Lebens. Aber die besten Jahre haben wir noch vor uns! Ich kann es kaum abwarten, um zu sehen, was die naechsten sechs Jahre fuer uns bringen werden! Hier sind sechs Fakten über jedes Jahr was wir zusammen verbracht haben! Year 1 Fell in Love Moved in together Worked in the same restaurant Traveled to Germany to meet my family Traveled to Arizona to meet Katie's family Managed to share one single car the entire year Haben uns kennengelernt Sind zusammen gezogen Haben im gleichen Restaurant gearbeitet Sind nach Deu...

The perks of working for the Home Shows presented itself last weekend when our company hired HGTV's Property Brothers to come out to our Show! Some of you might wonder who the heck the Property Brothers are...especially if you don't live in the US. Mein Job kann manchmal ganz schoen stressig sein, aber am vergangenen Wochenende durfte ich die Vorteile meines Jobs geniessen, als unsere Firma HGTV's Property Brothers fuer unsere Show einfliegen liess! Einige von euch werden sich fragen, wer zum Teufel die Property Brothers sind ... vor allem, wenn ihr nicht in den USA lebt. They are twin brothers who have their own TV Show on HGTV. One of them is a Realtor, the other a Contractor, and together they  help families find, buy, and transform fixer-uppers into dream homes on a strict time-line and strict budget. Here's a short video clip of their Show! Sie sind Zwillingsbrüder, die ihre eigene TV-Show auf HGTV haben. Einer von ihnen ist ein Immobilienmakler, der...

When Katie and I first talked about having children, the discussion about what last name the baby should have, came up every once in a while. Hers, mine or both?  You can basically name your baby anything, it doesn’t even have to be any of our names and we could’ve changed our last names to whatever we wanted, which I thought would have been a little weird.   I didn’t like the idea of using both of our last names, it would’ve been a mouthfull to say all the time and I already felt bad for the child to have to deal with that.   Although, I liked my last name when I lived in Germany, I learned to hate it living here. First of all, no one was able to pronounce it correctly, I tried to teach Katie for 5 years and although she came close, it wasn’t really my last name after all.   Second of all, the letter my last name starts with is really hard for ME to pronounce in english and every time I had to spell it for someone, they didn’t understand what I was trying to say...

You probably all know by now that I love to get freebies. Mostly through couponing. Granted, not everyone likes to clip coupons and whip out coupon policies at the check out register to prove to the cashier that you're the one who is correct. Katie mostly disappears and acts like she doesn't know me when I pull one of those! I don't blame her.  So today I wanted to share two easy and fast ways to get some freebies and even earn a little money on the side.  I was introduced to Bzzagent.com through another Blog. They basically want your opinion on products and in exchange, they will send you a full size sample.  It's super easy. Your initial time investment is about an hour, signing up and answering a bunch of random questions about things you like. But after that's done, it's smooth sailing, I promise.  Within a week of signing up, they sent me an invitation for my first campaign. Once I signed on, they sent me the product. I have at least a month to t...

Our #1 wish for a new house is a 3-car garage. 2 for the cars and 1 for all the crap we've been hoarding. Seriously, our garage has been so out of control lately, we had to jump over boxes, squeeze between half finished furniture pieces that are waiting to get painted and trip over brooms just to get to our cars in the morning. It was quite the sight for the neighbors.  Since the bigger house with the 3-car garage (and walk in pantry, thank you very much) is nowhere in sight, we had to work with what we've got. The first step was to sell all of our well traveled 10 suitcases (serious, who needs so much luggage?), since Santa brought us some really nice luggage last year. Step 2 consisted in Katie and me fighting over things we wanted to throw away. I can be somewhat of a hoarder and I'm sure the neighbors got another good kick out of us fighting over keeping some empty packaging that once held our vacuum cleaner, hairdryer and headphones. Yes, I'm that lady. Just f...

I’ve written many times about Katie’s awesome family who’ve always treated me like a daughter/sister/granddaughter. I love them so much and feel so blessed to be part of their family. Katie’s grandma has given us an unbelievable gift and it’s hard to wrap my head around the generosity and love she has sent our way. A few weeks ago she offered to pay IVF for us and although Katie and I had many conversations about it and how and if we could accept her gift, we ultimately accepted her offer and she is so excited about becoming a great-grandma! I still can’t believe it! I never thought we had to go here, IVF that is, but when my mind allowed me to think about the possibility, the thought just overwhelmed me, thinking about how we could ever finance or afford such an endeavor. It’s crazy expensive. So, a few weeks ago we lined up several consultations with different clinics to find just the right doctor for us, preferably one that didn’t suggest crazy diets and bee stings . ...