My desk is slowly coming together.  It pretty much gets last priority as we remodel.  Martin doesn’t even have a desk yet, so I try not to make a big deal about how Horribly Dull my space is.  I hand painted a few flowers on a couple of IKEA magazine files back in November.  Otherwise, the desk has just been sitting.  Until now.

I found a boring little bulletin board at OBI, our favorite hardware store, for less than five bucks and got to work.  Here’s how:

1. watered down white acrylic paint and covered cork to lessen its intense color

2. masked off the cork along the edges and painted with orange acrylic paint

3. added a coat of watered down white to the frame and painted orange x’s

4. painted blue flowers to match the magazine racks

5. cut out a few fliers from our mailbox to make the “notes” label, which I glued on

Still need to hang it. Somewhere. We’re getting there.

(Image for Making This Home)

We’re creatures of habit.  We do the same thing over and over because it’s how we’ve always done them.  Some of these things make our lives easier; some make them more difficult and dirtier than we realize.  You and I have talked about some of these things before like canceling our excess catalogues so we don’t have to deal with them.  I think that there are so many other things we could be doing to make our lives less difficult.

The impressive thing to me is that these simple gestures not only make our lives easier and cleaner in the long run, but they also help the environment.  Many don’t even sacrifice your budget or your busy schedule.  Heck, some might even free up your schedule a little.  Why don’t we talk about them?

I thought it might be important to have these discussions every Tuesday.  We haven’t had a series on Making This Home since our Greener Christmas Guide, and maybe you’d like some ideas for making greener choices that don’t sacrifice your budget or your busy schedule.  Heck, some of them might even free up your schedule a little.  You can participate as much as you wish, and I hope you share the things you are doing and feeling in the comments.

To kick off the column, today’s suggestion is rather simple.  Just open your windows.  Let the fresh air in.

You’ve probably heard that the air in our homes is more toxic than outdoor air, even in the city.  Our furniture, our cabinets, our carpets – they’re slowly releasing nasty toxins like fermaldehyde.  If we don’t open our windows every so often, they stick around.

When we make hot tea, take a shower, line dry our clothes, or do anything else that adds moisture to the air (including our breathing), we’re also creating an environment that’s conducive to mold.  It loves warm, damp environments.  The problem is growing as construction technology makes our homes tighter.

Then there are all of our cleaning products – you know, the things with labels like “toxic” and “hazardous”.  They’re supposed to be getting rid of bad stuff in our homes, but if we don’t get a little air circulating through our houses, I’m afraid they’re kind of adding to the bad stuff in our houses.  If you notice your eyes watering or nose running, it’s a big red flag; you need some fresh air because your body doesn’t like what it’s getting.

Increased risk of carbon monoxide poisoning…  Furnaces that don’t have access to exterior air because they were poorly installed…  Yucky mildew… The list has potential to be long.

If someone were to ask me what the biggest difference is between the habits of Germans and Americans, I would say it’s the windows.  Germans open them; Americans don’t.  (You might notice that our kitchen window is open in almost every picture we’ve shared.)

The next time you come back home, take note of the smell and humidity level in your house as you walk in.  Is it stuffy?  You don’t notice these things when you’re in the house for a couple of hours.

So today try opening the window.  Feel the fresh, clean feeling that only a bit of air can offer, even if it’s just for a brief minute.  Feel European if you want; I know you’ll feel a little more alive.  We always do when we visit German friends who have their windows cracked even now.

If it’s absolutely freezing at your town (like when we had -15 weather and made ice cream), still try for just a minute.  It makes for such an Inspired Room.

Your thoughts?  Have you had anything you’ve encountered in your life on this topic or the idea of living a simpler, greener life?

(images by Making This Home)

We’ve had bike racks on the mind a lot lately. Maybe it’s all the signs of summer we’re getting (like the snow?). Or maybe it’s the fact that we had to walk sideways every time we were trying to get from the living room to the bedroom. Our bikes took up the entire hallway. It wasn’t impressive.  Either way, we’re Hooked On them.

We had this odd space just off the hallway that is probably meant for storage of odds and ends. Call us odd, but here’s what we installed instead:

Our bikes hang on the hooks.  We stand in the bathroom to lift our bikes onto the hooks, then we slide them into the little space in back.  Boy, the way I describe it sounds really ghetto!  The fact that I can’t even fit the entire space into the picture only adds to the effect, huh?  I swear the storage is wonderful and beautiful and all that charming stuff.  Plus our hallway is clear, and there is no arguing with that.  Here’s Martin napping on the job again when I’m ready to paint:

For the first time in Making This Home History, an entire house project started and finished in one post.  You ready for our double garage?

See!  Still American.  We managed to build everything on the drawer with scraps from the lumber yard and our kitchen remodel.  Now we all can cross off one project before we can tear down the tarp that divides our house from construction zone and sawdusty living zone.  It also means we’re one step closer to showing you our kitchen which is currently covered with a whole lot of this:

While I get back to sanding and Martin fires up the chop saw, we’d love to know how you store your bikes or favorite really big things.  If you say “a real double garage”, we’ll just have to plug our ears.  

(Images by Katie for Making This Home)

You know what the most un-German thing I have ever heard of is?  German Chocolate Cake.

I came to Germany thinking I might get my hands on The Best Chocolate Cake Ever, but I have seen no cake made of chocolate.  I have seen no coconut in any dessert.  And now I’m wondering if anyone around here would even touch such a crazy combination.  I mean, they turned down my chocolate chip cookies, after all.  Sure I’ve had the best cake of my life in Germany, and I’ve probably mentioned how amazing chocolate is around here at least a million times.  I think Europeans have a very refined taste for desserts.

German chocolate cake just doesn’t even SOUND like it could be something my neighbors would be interested in.

So you want in on a little secret I learned?

German chocolate cake has nothing to do with Germany.  The original recipe was created in 1957 by an Englishman named Samuel German.  He invented it for Baker’s chocolate who then called the cake German’s chocolate cake.  Not long after, the apostrophe and “s” were accidentally dropped in a cookbook, and the next thing you knew, we all started thinking the cake came from Germany.

Just thought I’d tell you during this post-Valentine’s Day chocolate coma.

Now we’re back to the drawing board in search of some delicious European recipes, and we promise to share.  In the meantime, have any favorites in your family that you might want to pass on?  We’re also taking suggestions for any European recipes you’d like us to find and taste test.

(Image from Amazon, data from Wikipedia)

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Hope Valentine’s Day
goes just how you want it to.

Happy Valentine’s Day, dear reader.  Sorry we couldn’t send each of you this card in the mail.  It’s made from a cereal box, and we just don’t eat that much cereal.

(Art by Katie for Making This Home)

Wallpapering the ceiling.  It’s definitely takes two for this tango, yet there’s nothing romantic about sore necks and strained arms in this final stage of our kitchen remodel.  I’m not exactly a fan of the flying glue, either.  We’ve never done any wallpapering before; we have no plans to do it again.  Nonetheless, progress is progress.  Here ya go before the drama began:

And another shot pre-application, pre-arm hair pasted to our limbs.  The wallpaper goes in the nice little L we’ve cut.  You can see the smaller, bluer L in the center of our missing wallpaper, which is where our original kitchen walls used to be:

We have no after shots of our wallpaper.  It was pitch black when we finished, and we don’t have lights in our kitchen yet.  All we know is that we’re glad the ceiling doesn’t look this bad any more:

I still have to whitewash everything.  White paint isn’t paint here in Germany.  It’s watery whitewash, and I am waiting to do that job when Martin is at work.  I think he’d have an anxiety attack if he sees me splashing whitewash on our cabinets.  YES, I’ll wash it off.  Though I’d like to say it’s good that I’m honest:  YES, I know it’ll get all over everything.  An upside down paintbrush with runny liquid?  Hardly my fault.

Why the heck would we put wallpaper on the ceiling?

I took the liberty of assuming you’d ask why we’re wallpapering our ceiling.  It sounds REALLY weird to me, and I’m the one doing it!

In the United States, people put thin sheets of drywall up around wooden frames, tape them together with a bit of mud, and splatter texture all over the walls.  Then they prime and paint.

In Germany, the walls are either solid plaster (like our kitchen) or reinforced concrete filled with rebar (like our walls dividing our apartment from the neighbors).  As far as I know, the seams aren’t neatly sealed with mud and tape; they’re so tight that they don’t need to be.  The wallpaper is white paper with bits of wood that I originally thought was a roll of art paper.  Once applied, the wallpaper is whitewashed or painted.  The walls are very breathable.  The dried paint is soft.  We nick it with our bike pedals in the hallway and leave little white spots where the paint peels.

Maybe we’re not the most romantic buds in the bouquet.

(Images by Katie for Making This Home)