Got the wreath!

Yay - I got my wreath and it is already on the wall. The girls and I went to the market on Saturday especially to get it. (R was awesome. I stepped away to buy something and when I returned she had the wreath wrapped and ready to go and had gotten instructions in German on how to keep it fresh.) Our plan had been to do some shopping on Saturday and then kick off the Christmas season on Sunday decorating, listening to music, and making cookies.

It probably sounds crazy to start Christmasy things on November 17th. But we had our reasons. 1. Since there is no Thanksgiving here and the girls we be in school that day, we had no reason to follow our usual day after Thanksgiving kick-off. 2.  The weekdays are very busy for the girls with their school work. Some days R leaves for school and comes home, too, in the dark. That leaves just the weekends for us to do our usual things: making cookies, watching movies, making presents and decorations, etc. Keeping in mind that we also want to visit some Christmas markets, that we are leaving to ski on the 22nd, and we have E, S, R, and T's birthdays to celebrate having an extra weekend or so seemed like a good idea. 3. Sprüngli chocolates puts out its full line of Christmas stuff on the 15th, it's Christmastime in Zurich anyway.

In the end, we just didn't feel Christmassy enough to make Sunday the official start of the season. Instead we had a preview. We made some cookies and watched Holiday in Handcuffs. For anyone who has talked to T lately - you know he is obsessed with gingerbread. I got him some cookies at Ikea just to hold him over and he had a great time decorating them. We will kick off on Saturday the 23rd with a birthday/Thanksgiving combo.

I forgot to bring my camera to the market - after planning to take pictures of all the wreaths and arrangements and flowers. Oh well. I had my phone for a while and took a picture of these absolutely gorgeous enormous amaryllis. Notice S is there to give you an idea of size. Each stem is 7.50 which I think is extremely reasonable. It would be a good price in the US since to buy an amaryllis bulb which would put out a stem this size would cost more than that and you would be lucky if it bloomed when you wanted it to. Here where a carnation might cost a dollar it's a great deal - very hard to ignore if you like amaryllis. I didn't get any, though, because T "bought" me a few faux amaryllis when we went to Ikea together. I put them out yesterday since he and I didn't want to wait until we did the other decorations.

The market on Saturday is at least twice as big as the one on Wednesday. There were many more florists, bakeries, cheese, dried fruit, nut, fish, and sausage stands. We got the wreath, of course, some things the girls couldn't resist - R wanted a slice of squash very badly, and lots of baked things. They had Rhode Island style tomato pizza, but round, and mini sfogliatelle, so we got those. At another stand I got gingerbread cookies for T and L in the style which seem to be a specialty here. There are two rectangles of gingerbread with some sort of honey nut paste sandwiched between (I haven't tasted them yet.) The top is decorated with a painted slab of what I guess is marzipan. To the right is a photo of a gingerbread I saw at the grocery store. It is not a sandwich cookie, but gives an idea of how elaborately the tops are decorated. I didn't get cookies for R and S because they don't care for gingerbread for some reason, which is too bad because they love decorating it.


Here is a picture of the littles at the market the other day, and the enormous lettuce from the walrus.

T continues to sleep in crazy positions.

The girls and I got so many things at the market that R volunteered to take them home while S and I continued to Ikea. Supposedly they had restocked a couple of decorations I wanted (no.) But we were able to get a crib sheet for L, a birthday present from S to T, and a package of rolls for St Lucia Day. On Sunday I was very glad we had gotten the rolls since baking here is going to be hard enough without making extra work. Just as we were starting the cookies we realized there is no mixer in the house. Just an immersion blender. I had assumed there was one because there are lots of cake pans and decorations. We already knew we wouldn't be able to make lots of our usual Christmas cookies here because of equipment or ingredient issues: no krumkake, no lefse, no buckeyes. Now no meringues and no spritzes because I must have hallucinated the spritz gun I thought I saw in the cupboard. It is a good year to try something new, for sure. I just need something new that doesn't require any equipment or American ingredients. 

Here is R waiting for her train home on the platform across from us.

Although it is chilly here, it is an awesome time of year. Enough trees are bare that we have new views of the lake everywhere. The vineyards by the train tracks are all yellow. And the rose at the bottom of the hill is going crazy. I wish I knew what kind it is. It's not even mulched and it grows and blooms like this. The rose is across the street from the tree. It's like spring, fall, and winter at the same time.