Healthy Snack

A couple of weeks ago I discovered a healthy ranch substitute.

If you buy a fat free ranch seasoning packet and mix some of it in non-fat plain greek yogurt, you have something that tastes pretty similar to ranch, and a lot more healthy. This is my study snack.

ALSO:
Matt and I traveled to Dublin, Ireland with 2 of his friends last weekend for Matt's birthday, hopefully I can make a post about it soon.

Wurzburg.

Last weekend Matt and I went to Wurzburg, Germany. A city that is only about 30 minutes away from us, and for some reason we never went besides going to the outskirts to shop at IKEA. Wurzburg has a castle, which was the main reason we went.

We laughed at how small and ridiculous European parking spots can be sometimes. In this particular parking garage, there are 5 floors and each one had only 1-2 parking spots left ...that were this size. Our Honda Accord is huge over here. Parking is not fun- sometimes we aren't laughing about it.

While we were there we also decided to get some lunch. I ordered a Margarita pizza. In America, a Margarita pizza is cheese with tomato slices and spinach on top, right? Here in Germany it's just a plain old cheese pizza. For shame! Also, after declining the english menu, what Matt thought was a baguette sandwich that he ordered for a meal turned out to be toast with garlic on it. Oh, the European adventures.

Wurzburg was really nice! It was really easy to get around and outside in the Aldstadt (Old City) there was a couple of stages set up with some music and vendors selling bratwurst and other German foods.

A-Z of ME.

I saw this on other blogs and decided to do it too.

A. Age: 23
B. Bed size: Queen. Hard. Old. It only cost $20 and was purchased off craiglist (i know) after I married my husband and we were sick of sleeping on an air mattress. I think it might be time for an upgrade. King, please?
C. Chore that you hate: Laundry and the dishes. hate, hate, HATE.
D. Dogs: None. :( I really want a puppy, but I have to wait until we move back to America (HELLO, MAY) to get one. I'm not fond of the idea of putting a pup in a crate in the baggage area of the plane. Especially during the summer.
E. Essential start to your day: Wake up, brush teeth, facebook, school. Oh and eat.
F. Favorite color: GREEN. I'm also fond of blue.
G. Gold or Silver: Both! I have some cheap fake gold jewelry from Forever 21, my marriage ring is white gold.
H. Height: 5'3"
I. Instruments you play: I used to take guitar lessons and could play a few songs. I probably still could if I tried.
J. Job title: STUDENT.
K. Kids: nope.
L. Live: Germany, thanks military. Until I get back to Austin!
M. Mother’s name: Susan
N. Nicknames: Bails
O. Overnight hospital stays: Never!
P. Pet peeves: Toilet paper put on the wrong way.
Q. Quote from a movie: "I always tell the girls, never take it seriously, if you never take it seriously, you never get hurt, you never get hurt, you always have fun, and if you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends." That was my favorite movie quote years ago and was the first thing that popped into my head. 
R. Right or left handed: Left.
S. Siblings: Lyndsey, Martha, Rachel
U. Underwear: ? LOVE THEM.
V. Vegetable you hate: asparagus. I don't really hate it, but it's not a favorite.
W. What makes you run late: Refusing to get out of bed because I stayed up too late the night before. Other than that I'm usually 10 trillion minutes early to everything. I hate it.
X. X-Rays you’ve had: One on my chest. And some for my teeth!
Y. Yummy food that you make: Tacos! Pizza! Sandwiches! Chicken Parmesan! Eggplant Parmesan! Something I made up! I like to cook.
Z. Zoo animal: Zoo's make me sad, but if I had to chose one I would say monkey and then I would free them all. 

This is my the current state of my hometown:

Because of the severe drought, high temperatures, and recent heavy winds (the winds were caused from a tropical storm), Texas has been experiencing wildfires all over. I personally don't know about the rest of Texas, but I know the surrounding Austin areas have been hit pretty badly. One area alone lost over 700 houses the last time I checked. This makes me sad and wish I could be there to help out. Unfortunately, I'm in Germany. I hope they get the fires contained soon. It's so terrible!

FALL.

Today is the first day of September! That means fall is coming! Which means we are one more season closer to going home for Christmas!

Alright well, fall semester has started, in fact, I'm supposed to be finishing up the second week right now... but instead I'm blogging. Why? Because I'm really good at procrastinating (Notice I haven't made a blog post for a while, until today). I have a ton of Math homework I need to finish before Matt comes home from work today because this weekend he has a four day weekend. I'd rather have fun than do homework. 

Fall semester has been going swimmingly so far, minus one strange professor. I'm taking Web Design I- which has basically just been a review so far, Interface Design I- which is new but interesting, and taught by idiot professor, and another math class. I'm in Developmental Mathematics because I wasn't so great at math in high school. This kind of sucks because I could be finished with all the math I need by now, but I'm okay with it. One more developmental math class in the spring then it's on to college algebra. 

So, basically there has been a lot of this going on in my house the past couple of weeks:

Oh, school. 

A couple of weeks ago Matt and I went to Rothenburg, again, to walk around and explore. Rothenburg is probably one of my favorite cities I've been to since I've been here. It's an old medieval walled-in city, and you can actually get a sense of feeling like you are back in time. It's not a huge city like Munich or Berlin that is really loud and noisy, which I also like about it. 

I think the town we live in just finished celebrating there fall festival. That thing lasted for like 6 days! Every day there was some sort of parade and really loud German fest music. This is what I would see looking out the living room window:

It was cute at first... then it just got annoying. This was still in the cute stage.

Other recent instagram photos: (including the biggest, brightest rainbow I have ever seen in my life)

Yesterday Matt bought me roses, which was really sweet. I was feeling a little bummed and it really brightened my day. Matt normally thinks buying flowers is dumb (he's a guy), but it makes you feel good every once in a while.

This post felt really rushed, but homework's waiting! 

Pinterest.

I think everyone should have a Pinterest account. It is so neat. I think it might be similar to StumbleUpon (which I only used for about 5 seconds about year ago, so I might be wrong). Basically, you set up your account, and you get this little "Pin it" button at the top of your browser.. while you are surfing the web, which is something I spend way too much time doing, you can pin photos of things you like to come back for later. It's kind of like a bookmark... But it also shares your pins with the rest of the internet, or, at least the rest of the people using pinterest. Usually I just look at whatever people have been pinning lately and I can blow a good 30 minutes finding cool craft ideas, clothes I want to buy, home decor ideas, or... whatever else is out there, like this cat for example:

(not my photo)

Pinterest is really cool. It was using Pinterest that I found how to insert my own navigation bar at the top of this blog. Fancy, huh? Actually, I didn't do a great job at it.. but it's slightly time consuming and after I completed it I kind of didn't want to start all over. I will probably fix it one day... but not today.

Here are a few other things I found on Pinterest that I thought were neat:

this cool idea for an office:

this owl craft idea:

and this yummy looking slow roasted BLT sandwich recipe:

the above photos do not belong to me. :)

festivities

After living here in Germany for over a year (minus a little detour), I'm still trying to figure out how to handle myself during a German fest.

They close off all the roads in town and everyone just sits around and drinks beer and eats German food all day for 3 days. Even though I try and keep up, I just can't! Neither can Matt. 

Regardless, it was fun. 

random crap.

Some recent instagram randomness:

Ijust realized all but one of those were taken in the car, I guess I'm most likely to get bored in there.


Speaking of things happening in a car, If you are interested in seeing what driving down the autobahn at 100mph looks like, check out this video. Although, I must warn you, it's not as crazy as it seems (in the video or in real life). Just regular ol' highway driving...


Also, today is the first day of the Kiliani fest in the town we live in! It's a 3 day festival with live music, renaissance shows, and all the brats mit brotchen you can eat.  Last year we had so much fun! The fest and the world cup were going on so it was complete chaos, and I loved it. Hopefully this year will be fun as well.

Also also, I'm half way through with my first class in my Web Design degree, and I had to make a "pun" as my second project in photoshop. We had a list of things to choose from, I chose deviled eggs. Although I would never normally make something like this, I thought my eggs were cute. The project had to have certain components in it in order to receive full credit, or else I would have made it much cuter.

Austria

Last weekend Matt and I got a 3 1/2 day visit from Kim, Matt's mother.

Aren't they cute?

Exactly one year before this trip, Kim was visiting us with Sean, Matt's brother. On top of that, it is also Kim's birthday when she comes for visits. I think this is starting to become tradition.

Anyways, Kim had the idea to go to Innsbruck, Austria this year, a little place tucked in the alps. Matt and I really didn't know much about Innsbruck before we went there, except that it was close to the alps and we would be hiking... We were excited to go, but basically felt the same about the trip as we have every other place. Now having been, I must say that place is hands down the most beautiful place I probably have ever been to. The alps were breathtaking. They are HUGE! It's like nothing I really have ever seen before. Innsbruck itself was awesome too. It wasn't a big city like Munich or London, it was the perfect size with lots of culture, plenty to do, and beautiful buildings. I didn't feel overwhelmed by high prices or lots of tourists. It was just right. So, thanks Kim for wanting to go to such a nice place, I don't know if I will ever go back there but I won't forget it.

Here are some photos (although they really don't do it justice):