Earth tones and stainless steel

Excuse me but my arms are sore from patting myself on the back so I may type funny. My goodness I'm good at picking out colors for rooms. I had no idea I had this talent. I was outside pulling weeds so when I finally saw our new floors, I was floored! Ahem.

They look amazing! That Ritter Sport wall really fits with the tan/grey berber carpet, and the kitchen, my goodness, I think that particular kitchen was made for the floor we bought! I couldn't leave tonight, I just sat there staring at my floors. (The photo shows our new bedroom carpet, minus baseboards for now because I destroyed them trying to get them out. Oops.)


I can't wait to show my man! But I hope he's not mad - I tipped the installer 50%. Well, in my opinion he undercharged us, and I really felt his work was worth way more. So he got a massive tip. Happily, he said he'd come back to fix a few other things in our home. As you see, our bedroom is adjacent to the kitchen. Wonky, but that's what you get sometimes with houses from the 19th century.

I had to tell the installers not to try to eat my Ritter Sport wall. I know, it looks like chocolate. My sense of humor is just not cutting it in Germany; no one laughed. Oh well. I had no idea that the two floors would complement each other like that. I really picked them independently, based on our furniture. But apparently our kitchen and our bedroom match: )

I wanted to mention that one of the best things about living in Germany - the enormous carrot bags for horses. Local farmers provide horse owners with these ginormous sacks of misshapen or too-big carrots. Imagine a grain sack size. All that for 3.50 Euros! I love feeding Baasha so many carrots - you know, you don't want them to go bad! Anyway, driving through my new neighborhood yesterday, I looked over at the one gas station in town, and they sell these carrot sacks! That's how you know you live in horse country - when the gas station sells horse carrots.

One other charming country detail: there is no garbage man. There is a garbage robot! I saw it with my own eyes this week. I stood there staring, paintbrush in hand, as the robot arm lowered itself onto our garbage can and picked it up. There was a truck driver, and his robot friend, and that's it! I was grinning so big, the man waved at me. I'm sure my eyes were wide, and he thought to himself, "So they're the newbies here!"

There are new flowers springing out of the ground, each new one a surprise for me. I even saw new buds on the strawberry plants, so I think we'll be having strawberry milkshakes this year, my dad's specialty. A lady rode by on a huge bay TB, right in front of our house, her horse completely calm as he clipclopped along. She held her english reins in one hand, and smoked a cigarette with the other. She had purple and black hair (purple hair is common here with mid-to older aged ladies). At some point, I'm gonna have my horse at home, and I'm gonna ride up to these people and say "HEY! I'm new, show me some trails!"

Dreams become real, it all happens this month.