Fräulein Schön macht schöne Sachen: Happy New Year everybody!

What has everybody been up to?
December has been a very crazy month, like always. And although I took some days off prior to Christmas, I still didn't manage to create and prepare all the presents smoothly. The long shawl I knit for my cousin took me hours before Christmas Eve, in fact I went to bed at 3:30 after I had finally managed to finish it.

It didn't help that we had two weddings to attend to in the last weeks of the year, to reduce the stress. Looking for presents and preparing our clothes, etc. My friend who got married asked me to take pictures and as I almost never take pics indoors, which is why I got myself an early Christmas present in the form of an external flash.
The wedding went smoothly and I realized that if you are a photographer at a wedding it's good advice to get to know everybody, do a lot of smalltalk and make them less afraid of the big camera and the big flashlight. I still had some problems with the tech sometimes, but in the end I am mostly satisfied with the pictures.

A week later one of my best friends, who moved to Canada years ago, came by with her husband to also celebrate their wedding. It was great seeing her again and getting to know her husband, who is a funny and interesting guy and seeing them together made me really happy. When we were little we swore none of us would ever get married, but they seem to be pretty happy together, so I guess I am alright with her breaking the vow. Jeannie's parents have a young dog, who was a big fan of Lisek, wanting to play with him all the time. She was very cheeky and sometimes Lisek even played a bit, but it seemed more forced, to get rid of her. I am still amazed by the patience he showed towards her all the time.

I had the chance to take Jeannie and her husband on a stroll through the forest we used to take the horses to and it was like a huge flashback. The two of them are into birdwatching, so we took the time to watch some of the very common birds here feeding. As they are living in Newfoundland, our birds are not so common to them. It was great seeing them and I hope we can manage to go and see them in St. John's in the summer. Jeannie does whale watching tours with tourists in the summer and this must to be one of the most amazing jobs ever.

Christmas Eve was amazing. In recent years I have been really enjoying the time with my family. Everybody just gets one present and so it gives us much more time to have dinner together and just talk. I have a couple of cousins I only ever see on Christmas and it is great to see how they develop and what they are up to in life. Most of them I can still remember as little babies.
All in all we had a few christmas days with a lot of us-time, chilling and relaxing. I loved it. On the 28th of December we had spontaneously booked a trip to the closest mountains, hoping for some snow. We were meetings two friends who have a camper van as well and it was a pretty sweet deal, sleeping in the vans, including breakfast at the hotel and being able to use their pool and sauna. The hotel wasn't top class, it was ok, but there were too many little things waiting for repair for it to be perfect. The first few days we had quite an amount of snow, which made our walks super-romantic and a lot of fun for Lisek. While the New Year's Eve party was not the greatest, it was a perfect way to end the old year, with a lot of relaxed conversations, hot coffee and knitting, walking outside, hearing the snow crack beneath our shoes. I loved it!

Now we are back home, working and finally deciding to do more sports. (What an original New Year's resolution). I started already after I had seen myself on the pictures of the wedding, so horrible! But I am going to write another post on our progress in the cooking, sports and fasting department.

Prepare for a lot of doggie pictures!