Jun 6, 2011 Posted by Tiffany

E. coli and growing your own

The last few weeks of shopping here in Germany have been interesting. You’ve likely heard by now that in Germany there has been an Escherichia coli (my favorite bacteria, BTW, because of the amusing name) outbreak and for about two weeks now, no one has had a single clue about where the source of the outbreak started. First cucumbers, salads and tomatoes from Spain were blamed — but no proof... read more

Dec 7, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Dog- and kid-friendly walls

Once every six months, we have to repaint the walls in our foyer and at the top of the kitchen stairs. These are the locations where Ayla lays most often, usually flipped on her back with her dirty feet up in the air and on the wall. In April, before we had visitors, you may remember me writing about the joys of painting and that we were thinking about using some of the plexiglass we inherited from the... read more

Feb 17, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Recycling a little junk mail – making origami newspaper pots

After posting new photos of the seedlings, some were asking about the newspaper pots I use. They are completely free (aside from the soil we buy to fill them with although one could use their own soil and compost) because I use papers that come to our house every week for free. We get an insane amount of junk mail here. About two inches thick every week. A lot of it is slick fliers which can’t be... read more

Oct 17, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Got any grapevines hanging around?

The sun is shining here today, for the first time in what feels like weeks. And although it’s supposed to be only in the mid-50′s the next few days, I definitely prefer cool days with sunshine than grey, miserable, rainy days like those that usually fill the winters here in Frankfurt. So I took advantage of a bit of the sunshine this morning, doing some sweeping and cleaning up in our... read more

Oct 16, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Babywearing with a wrap

I bought us a Baby Bjorn Synergy carrier a few weeks ago via eBay and know that it will be great for extended wearing, taking long walks, shopping excursions and so on. But I also think that I’ll want to be wearing Mackenzie when I’m working around the house too and I won’t want to use something as complex as the Baby Bjorn. You might wonder why I would want to wear her all the time when... read more

Oct 9, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

A little natural fall decor

Some days I would love to be more like Martha Stewart. She has this knack to make things look so great without really seeming to try. Of course she also apparently has no business ethics or regard for the law but that’s a whole other story… As the days are getting cooler and shorter, I generally look forward to decorating the house for fall. I think I like decorating in the fall more than in... read more

Oct 7, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Before and After: The Old Kitchen Becomes an Office

This post is part of the Before & After series I’ve started about the renovation of our house. If you’d like to read more about our projects on the house, please visit our Farmhouse page. When we bought the house in August 2006, the kitchen in the main house was this room. The counter wasn’t quite as cluttered as it was here but otherwise this is what it looked like. All the... read more

Aug 16, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Make your own organic rooting hormone

We have found that taking a cutting from a tomato plant is quite simple and it roots really easily. But we’d like to do other plants as well and sometimes a rooting hormone would be useful. No need to worry about buying some expensive chemicals or organic something because we can actually make it ourselves. Chances are, you have everything you need growing somewhere nearby too. We might even do this... read more

Aug 11, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Recycling old candles

We weren’t really feeling like doing anything too physical today so we decided to try something else new – recycling a big basket of bits and pieces of candles that was left in the house when we moved in. We’ve thought about doing this for a while, but never really had all the pieces until lately. I bought wick on eBay a couple weeks ago and we are going to use some of the glass lid liter... read more

Jul 21, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Build Your Own Tortilla Press

So I was thinking about various gadgets that are great to have in your kitchen and came down the list to the tortilla press. I know for many this would be an absolute waste, but we eat a lot of flour tortillas here (almost weekly taco nights) and at about 25 cents a tortilla (I did just find some on sale for 16 cents – the big ones of course), I have to think that there must be a cheaper way! There... read more