An afternoon in Ladenburg

We went on an afternoon jaunt to Ladenburg this weekend. My birthday is tomorrow, and since we won’t have time to do a whole lot on my actual birthday, we went on the weekend instead.

To get to Ladenburg, we had to take a hilarious river ferry, which cost us 1,20€ each way, and each trip took all of 6 minutes. While we were waiting for the ferry on the way to Ladenburg, we watched a family encouraging a well dressed older woman to get into a canoe and row down the river. Just before the ferry arrived, there was a great big commotion, and we realized that the canoe tipped and the woman fell in! Everyone in her family (well, I don’t actually know if they were her family, but I can assume…) jumped to help, and the disgruntled lady climbed out of the river. I have to say, this woman must have quite a sense of adventure. I quite enjoyed being an onlooker. :)

Ladenburg is a pretty town from the late Middle Ages with history dating to Roman times. We walked around for a few hours, and when we finally decided to sit down for an afternoon coffee and cake, the café was out of cake! I was sorely disappointed, and we ended up at a weird Italian restaurant/ice cream bar and had traditional German “Eiskaffee” (a coffee and vanilla ice cream drink, topped with whipped cream).

It was a nice afternoon, and a fun excursion for my birthday weekend.

Busy, busy!!

So I’ve been  really busy, and neglected my blog. I missed Emma’s 3 and 4 month birthdays, and I finished the chairs and the table. Here’s an update!

Emma at 3 months:



Emma at 4 months:

Her favorite trick is rolling over (back to front), then wiggling her butt and kicking her feet—she’s trying so hard to crawl! She wakes up in the middle of the night to practice rolling over and holding her head high, but she usually gets pretty upset because she’d rather be sleeping; I’d prefer that too since I’m not a fan of waking up six times every night!!

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Next, we finally have a place of our own, even if it’s in the basement of Fabian’s grandma’s house. We now live in a 2 room (1 bedroom) apartment. We spent a bit of time cleaning and painting, and I must give Fabian’s dad a bunch of credit because he was a total champion to help us get things done. (And by help us I mean he took it upon himself to do most of everything…) We did do some painting though, really! I even had a super duper painting outfit. :)



I really wanted to help paint since Fabian’s family has already done so much to help us. So, I was put in charge of painting the edges in between the wall and ceiling.



Fabian helped when I had to stop to feed Emma. He got wicked frustrated!! (I thought it was hilarious, even if that’s not terribly nice of me…)

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I finished the chairs (they all have nice comfy cushions) and I refinished the table! To do the seat cushions, I took some foam, and cut it to the same size as the original seats. Next, I got really handsy with a staple gun, and pulled the fabric nice and tight to create a nice, rounded cushion on top.



Next, I cut the excess fabric to make it look nice on the bottom, and so that you couldn’t see the mess hanging down if you looked at the chair from the front.



And, ta-da! I think it looks pretty damn awesome…



Next, the table: This nice, old table from Fabian’s grandma needed some love. This is what it looked like (sans drawer) when we got it.



And, this is how it looked at the end:



After sanding the table, Fabian’s dad helped me replace the linoleum table top (a thing with old German tables) with extra linoleum he had from a previous table project. If we’d bought our own linoleum we would have chosen a different color, but since it was free, we took it.

I think it looks pretty cool with our chairs. :)

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The first morning we were in the new flat, Fabian made me an amazing pancake breakfast!



I promise, as soon as we’ve finished unpacking and have a presentable space, I’ll share pictures with you.

Till next time!