The canned food selection in Germany is nothing like it is in The United States.  Back home, I could find anything from spinach to sweet potatoes in a can.  In German, we’ve got cans of peas and cans of corn.  And at the risk of getting really wild, the grocery store where I shop also has peas and corn in the same can.

So you can guess that we’ve been eating more fresh vegetables than ever before.  Martin might call this past season The Winter of the Beet.  They’re so simple to cut up and steam until tender.  I’d be willing to say it takes just as much work to open a can and heat them up.  Now I think I’ve been waiting all winter to try this with our leftover beet juice:

Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

I combined the whole boil eggs step with the dye eggs step into one, cooking the eggs in the colored water, and I was a little surprised by the results.  Wouldn’t beet juice turn the eggs pink?

Instead, the eggs turned a soft yellow-brown color when they were done cooking in beet juice.  The almond-colored eggs were also boiled like normal, but with a heaping tablespoon of paprika in the water.  When I turned off the heat, I added a splash of vinegar to both pots.

Martin and I really like how the subtle color turned out, even if it’s not what we were expecting.  Our eggs feel natural and comforting instead of coated in artificial food colorings.

Have any of you ever dyed eggs with kitchen ingredients?  It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I after I made these eggs, I wanted to try more methods.  But honestly?  How many boiled eggs could we eat?

(Image by Katie for Making This Home)

All right, it’s time for another clue about where we’ll be this summer since we sadly have to leave Germany.  What do ya say?

So far we know:

1. Martin’s deep in the wires with a huge hint in his hand (you know – if you know what that thing is)
2. Clouds
3. Dirt Road

Ready for a fourth picture in your third hint?  Some of you are on the right track with the guesses you’ve left in the comments.  Well except you, Larissa.  She guessed, “You’re going to Montana to fix your great-uncle’s time machine?”

That would make a wild summer now, wouldn’t it?  haha!

So get ready to get those brain muscles moving, and share your best guess with all of us in the comments if you’d like.  Here’s your next hint:

“You haven’t done laundry in how long?” Martin said to me on the phone while I was thousands of miles away at college.  Back then, I was probably shooting for a world record in the Women Not Doing Laundry division.  The thing was, I hated shlepping my clothes down the hill and across campus.  I hated spending my whole day in the laundry room for fear of having my laundry stolen, dumped on the floor, or worse – stained with dye by a bunch of pranksters.  So I put it off.  I learned to wear some of my clothes a couple times before throwing them in the washing machine.

Modern technologies like washing machines and dryers are supposed to save us time.  I’m not sure they really are, though. Our great grandparents used to put on clean clothes on Monday.  They’d wear the same shirt and pants or dress all week long.  Then they’d wash them.  Today we put on one outfit for work each day.  We come home and change into something else.  If we go to the gym, we put on another outfit.

Some of us use a different towel every day.  We wash sheets and rugs and everything else all the time.

So I’m wondering:  are we really saving time? Before women had a couple outfits to wash by hand.  Now we have dozens of things ready to be cycled through the wash, folded, and put away all the time.   What was supposed to save us time may now be just as much work.

Now I’m not asking you to change your habits to the point where you’re challenging my college record (which will remain an anonymous bit of data!).  I’m just asking you to think about how much you’re running your washing machine in today’s portion of A Simpler Life Series.  Do you truly dirty things before they wind up in the laundry basket?  Washing laundry is so easy, so we find ourselves doing more and more loads.  The time we spend quickly adds up.

This week, try to rethink how much laundry you’re creating.  Is it realistic that your family shouldn’t be creating more than one load per person each week?

At our house: with such a small apartment and a half-size washing machine, Martin and I are really becoming aware of just how much laundry we create because in the winter, it takes an entire day for a load to dry on the metal rack.  That rack is right in our way until the clothes are dry.  It’s horrible.  It also means that we’re wearing clothes a little longer so our rack isn’t out all the time… and we’re doing fine.

So what do you think?  Could you cut back on the laundry you create and free a little time in your week?  Then again… anyone dare to challenge my college record of holding out?!

(Image from Flickr)

While Martin was out the other day, I decided to tackle our dining table troubles.  The table is older than us, and it was starting to show.  The varnish was worn thin on the top.  We had to use coasters and placemats for anything that touched the table.  If we didn’t, the wood would soak up any moisture and leave a horrible water mark.  You can imagine the mad scurrying we were doing any time a drip landed on the table.  It was time to do something.

The good news is that refurbishing pieces with old varnish is really easy – especially if your surface is flat like a table.  The job is really tidy, too, so all I had to do was pull the table away from the wall and get to work.  I love when projects are this simple!

Blow-by-quick-blow, here’s how I refurbished our table:

First I sanded off the old varnish with a 160 grit sandpaper.  I didn’t have any holes to patch.  But if I did, this is when the wood putty would have could into play.

Second I sanded with a 240 grit sandpaper for fine details. Attaching a shop vac to the sander every time I sanded meant no sawdust blowing all over the house.

Third I wiped the surface with a tamp towel.  When it dried, I sanded it again.  Why?  It’s not because I’m a sanding junkie.  It’s this:  you know how wood is porous?  Applying the damp cloth makes the wood feel kind of lumpy as different areas expand and shrink.  If I skipped this step, the wood would get all bumpy from the wet varnish, which wouldn’t look cool at all.  An ounce of prevention and all that…

Fourth came the varnish. We chose a natural varnish, so if anyone wants to lick our table, I guess it would be okay.

Fifth was the sander with 240 grit sandpaper again. (Now you’re catching on as to why our kitchen remodel took So Long, huh?)  Sanding after the varnish has dried removes all of my brush strokes.  Sure, the strokes are going in the same direction as the wood grain, but it’s still pretty easy to tell the difference between wood grain and brush strokes.

Sixth came another coat of varnish, and another sanding job, and another varnish, and another… since I was working with a tabletop, it made sense to be generous with a thick layer of varnish.  It got a grand total of three coats (our cabinets got two).

So in the end, the table still looks exactly the same.  Of course, now we can use it without panicking about coasters.  Life is good again.

Up for more?  Scope out our step-by-steps to lowering your utilities or restoring really old, dinged up furniture for a little inspiration.

(Images by Making This Home)

By now, you all know how much Martin and I think about the environment in our day-to-day.  It’s part of the reason we like to bike everywhere.  So when we ran across this little Berlin shop, we knew we were in heaven.

This shop is a Natur am Bau or natural building supplies store where we buy all of our varnish.

Natural varnish isn’t filled with all the nasty products that release off gases that are toxic to our health like standard varnish. All those fumes that come with varnish and give you pounding headaches?  Yep.  That’s the pretty nasty stuff hurting your short term and long term health.  So we didn’t even have to do the math on this one.  Spending a little extra money on natural varnish meant we could keep living in our house during our kitchen remodel.   We didn’t have to stay in a hotel, and we didn’t have to worry about future off gassing.

Of course, I’m all about saving time, too. There’s nothing worse than spending five minutes cleaning your brush in a bucket of toxic solvent after you’ve varnished.  As luck would have it, natural varnish is water based.

All I had to do was stick my brush under the sink with a little soap, and it was as good as new; the stuff going down the sink was in the clear.  With as many times as I had to sand/varnish/sand/varnish (whew!) and then flip the doors and shelves over to sand/varnish… you get the idea… let’s just say I was beyond ecstatic about my easy-wash brushes.  The stuff dried in 15 minutes.

I want to call it my liquid miracle, but that’s a little salesman-like, no?  All we know is this:  regular old varnish no more.

We’ve got one more kitchen varnish project in the works for you.  I just had to get more varnish!

So what about you?  Anyone else have experience with natural varnishes and paint?  Then again, can you even find natural products in your community?

As promised, here’s our second clue for all of you.  Two days ago, we shared the sad news that we aren’t going to be in Berlin for the summer and offered you two hints.  First there was Martin laying on his back, surrounded by dirty wires.  He was showing you something very important.  The other picture was simple:  clouds.

Now for clue number two:

Any guesses?  If we’ve lost you, don’t worry.  It’ll come together.  So just give it your best guess!  We’ll be back soon with some more clues…