The other day we were walking down a street in our neighbourhood that we don't usually walk down, and we found these great drawings that kids made of their favourite food. It's all very telling.

I'm heading to the Bauhaus Archive on Wednesday morning to see the Benita Koch Otte exhibition.

Happy Monday.

It's flower season. I'm obsessed. I've been getting in the habit of picking wildflowers when I happen upon an empty lot or random flowers along the road or canal. So we'll definitely have lots of flowers around the house for the next little while.

Summer is definitely upon us and we're making a list of all the wonderful things that we can do in and around Berlin over the next couple of months. We were planning on taking some trips within Germany and around Europe this summer but I've just quit my job, so money is a bit tight. But summer is hands down the best season to be spending in Berlin so I am not too down about staying here. 


Tonight we're heading over to HBC for the Julia Holter show, and next week I'm going to check out the Diane Arbus exhibition at Martin Gropius Bau.

Happy Thursday.

We've been travelling a lot lately, and just spent a lovely, relaxing weekend in Karlsruhe in the south of Germany. I don't remember a time where I've played so many board games. Thanks E. and T. for being such wonderful hosts!

I've never really used this blog as a forum to vent, but I've been feeling the crunch lately. I know that the beginning of a new year is all about turning over a new leaf and excitement for what is to come, but I have been feeling totally overwhelmed and as a result haven't felt like this new year is off to such a fresh start.

I'm not sure how other Moms juggle their children and all of the other things that they have going on in their lives. Most of the time it seems like many of you out there in blogland do a wonderful breezy job of it. I've been finding it hard to get to my projects, which other than spending time with my family and friends are some of the things that really make me feel good in life. I have to go back to work, after having a wonderful year off, at the beginning of February. I'm both fearing it and looking forward to the structure of it all. I have a feeling though that the structure will be good and I'll be more effective in organizing my time.

Anyway, I appreciate that there are people out there that have stuck with this blog through the sparse posting. I really really hope to be more active this year, and I have many new projects floating around in my head that I'll want to share with you once they come into fruition.

Here are a bunch of random photos that I didn't get a chance to post over the holidays. I hope you enjoy them.

Happy Wednesday.

The weekend.

Oh brother. Bureaucratic stuff is dragging me down. I shouldn't complain too much though... I'm sure that there are people out there that have it way worse than I do. My latest experience is with private health insurance. I swear that I'll never do it again as it is almost impossible to get them to pay for anything. Ugh.

On the other hand we had a lovely weekend here in Berlin. It was rainy and super cold but we ended up getting our social activities on.

I saw a Herlinde Koelbl photo exhibit with a friend at Martin Gropius Bau.

We went to an Egyptian-themed show at Basso including a crazy/messy burial performance. I had a conversation that got me into watching 21 Jump Street again. And... I ran into an old co-worker of mine from Toronto. Who knew. Us Toronto folk are all over this Berlin connection.

Saturday I didn't set one foot outside. It drove me a little crazy but I got some quality relaxing done.

Last night we saw Julie & Julia. It made me want to cook... and cook and cook. Afterwards we enjoyed an amazing dinner at Felix Austria in Kreuzberg. The food was amazing, very Austrian, and not over the top expensive. Go there if you have the chance. The atmosphere was sweet and old school. We were just sad that we didn't have any room left to split a Kaiserschmarmm.

Happy monday.

....bbbbbbirthday out.

So here's the report from my surprise birthday event for m. We had a pretty relaxing day lying around in Tiergarten and Volkspark Friedrichshain. I've been meaning to do this all summer and can't believe how hard it has been to schedule it in. Jeesh. We accidentally found public tennis courts and will now have to dust off the tennis outfits I made for us last summer. We had originally thought that the public ping pong tables of Berlin were the equivalent of the public tennis courts of Toronto... and that it would be impossible for us to play tennis unless we bought an expensive club membership.

For lunch I took M. to one of our favourite Austrian restaurants in the city, Sarah Wiener. One of the things that I really love about this place is the beautiful room that the restaurant is housed in inside of the Hamburger Bahnhof. It's a place that makes you want to order a coffee, sit back, and read for hours... and in the middle of the day it's pretty peaceful.

In the evening I surprised M. by taking him to the Freiluftkino Friedrichshain to see Alle Anderen. It's a Geman movie so I was a little nervous thinking that I wasn't going to understand everything but to my surprise I kept up. More German films it is! It was pretty fun and well worth seeing. We need to be taking advantage of these Freiluftkinos for the rest of the summer... Berlin has so many, it's incredible.

That was pretty much it... all in all it was a really nice day.

It's been a couple of crazy movie weeks for us. Yesterday we went to see Inglorious Basterds, which was really funny but also includes a little of that Quentin Tarantino gore that everyone loves. In the past couple of years I've really started to respect Brad Pitt as an actor. He's been pretty versatile in his rolls.

We decided to go out for dinner after getting our movie tickets to waste some time before the film started... I wanted to go for Japanese food as always but M. ended up taking me here instead. All I can say is that it the evening was a true north american experience. When we came out of the movies it even smelled like an evening at home in late summer... reminded me of cottage country. How? I don't know.

Tonight I'm going to try and bake this yummy pie.

Happy Sunday.