One month until we’re moving back to Berlin.  I can’t decide if I am excited or sad.  I am so in love with the mountains and the deer.  I love flying.  I love the ability to see family and old friends on a regular basis in America.

But I also really, really love Berlin.  My German skills (which aren’t much!) will be so rusty.  I wonder if I will understand anyone.  I wonder if I will eat too many croissants on our first day back.  So many things to wonder.

And so many things to do between now and then.  So very many things.

If you had to leave home for a new country, what is the one thing you’d absolutely take with you?

(Image from Tim Walker)

Today is such a beautiful day in our international wedding series.  It’s exactly six months from Valentine’s Day, and it also happens to be the anniversary of the day Martin and I were married.  Today was originally going to be the end of our wedding series for the summer.  (Don’t worry – we’ll start up again for Valentine’s Day!)

Except inspired by love and Valentine’s Day and all that is wonderful about creating a home with the people we love… well I just had to add one more wedding this summer.  It all began with an email from our dear friends, Vica and Ion, a few weeks ago.  The subject of their email:

“We said yes!”

To say we were tickled is an understatement.  I think Martin let out a big whoop!  Want to meet our dear friends, Vica and Ion?

Martin and I met this cute couple in Berlin a couple of days before Making This Home was officially up and running.  Ion is an engineer; he thinks logically like Martin.  Vica has an artistic flair and sense of style that I just love.  (Swing over to her photography blog if you get the chance.)

I must stop telling you about how much we enjoy their company, though.  Vica and Ion left Berlin and moved back to Romania while we’ve been in the US.  Wah!  We’ll miss being in the same place.  So why don’t I stop and let Vica take it from here, huh?

* * *

Will you tell us about your wedding day a couple of weeks ago?

Hi to all! and thank you Katie for featuring our ceremony in your blog’s wedding series. As the question states, we did get married few weeks ago, more exactly 4, and it was only the court part or as we call it here “Civil Marriage”.

So then you’ll have a church wedding later?  What’s that like?

Yes, we want to have a church ceremony also. Right now we still analyzing this part, as my husband, Ion, is quite skeptical of some aspects of it. But from what I know, usually men are more interested in the civil/legal part (being more rational I think :) ), and we – women – are more attracted by the emotional/spiritual aspects of things. Hopefully we will get to an solution which will satisfy both of us.

I consider church ceremony being very beautiful and emotional. I have been to several church weddings and although they are particular to each couple and seem different, the ceremony and the procession is the same: the couple stays in front of the church, with the god parents by their sides; the priest(s) reads from the Bible; the moment of blessing and the exchange of the rings, the moment of crowning and once crowned the couple walks a circle three times in a ceremonial “dance” in the middle of the church; the couple is given to drink some blessing wine from a common cup, the removal of crowns and in the end the priest invites all the guests to congratulate the couple. A more detailed description I have found on wikipedia.

Why are there two separate weddings?  Does that get expensive?

I would say there are two separate ceremonies: the civil, which takes place at the town hall and is officiated by an officer and the religious part, which takes place at the church and is officiated only by a priest. Usually couples prefer to have both civil and church ceremonies in one day: they first go to the town hall, after that to the church and in the evening they have the party. But this is not mandatory, only the mandatory is that you should get first the official/legal certificate stating that you are married and just after that you can have the church ceremony.
About the expensiveness of the wedding, this is relative. There are some fees you must pay for both ceremonies, but it can get very high in costs if you prefer a sophisticated wedding, or you can keep it very simple and not so expensive. Depends on your tastes and preferences.

Maybe this questions sounds silly… but what will be your anniversary date then?  Or do you celebrate both dates somehow?

I think we will celebrate both dates in some way, but more close to our souls will be the church ceremony date.

Could you tell us about some of the traditions from your court wedding?

There are not so many traditions; I would say none, because everything is so official and quick (the entire process lasts less then 10 minutes): the officer reads to us the Family Code.

We are asked to confirm our wish to get married.

And then we sign the papers.

After that you receive congratulations and big hugs from everyone, and I also was amazed of how many flowers I got. Here there are at home already:

When we went outside, our families and friends made a flower gate and threw rice above our heads.

It was very nice, and we spent a little more outside for a glass of champagne and for more pictures.

You have so many happy people with you.  Did you mail them invitations or was your court wedding kind of a spur of the moment event that didn’t take months and months to plan?

Yes, we were so glad to see so many friends around us, besides our families. We did not make almost any plans in advanced. We just moved from Berlin and started the house renovation, so we just decided on the date and then, a week before sent some announcements by e-mail (this is ours, that I made in a hurry :)

The day before the ceremony, we bought some bottles of champagne and cookies, looked in the closet for some outfits (I made myself a fabric flower to accessorize the simple outfit I had :) ) and we were ready to say YES!.

Oh that’s all so beautiful, Vica.  How will your church wedding be different?

I think it won’t be different from how it is usually supposed to be. Because this depends on the church where we are going to have the ceremony and I am very excited about it.

Do people traditionally give wedding gifts?  What would they be… and which wedding would they give them at?

Yes, they do. Giving gifts at the court wedding is not so common.  Mostly guests give gifts at the party or people prefer to give money for the newlyweds. But we also got some gifts: photo albums and some tea sets.

* * *

Congrats to Vica and Ion!  Don’t you just love that shot of everyone tossing rice?  Or all those flowers in their apartment?

Don’t forget to join us next week as I reveal the big day Martin and I celebrated.  And if you have a wedding we just have to hear about in the next wedding series (maybe around Valentine’s Day?), let us know… especially if that wedding is your own.

Peek into all the international weddings our friends and family have shared on Making This Home (from Vienna to Japan) on the International Wedding Page.  Of course it includes our wedding, too!

A couple of months ago, I was struggling to keep stationery organized around our house. I came up with this solution that was complete love at first site:

The fabric basket I made worked great for a while. We just had one problem – what about all those larger envelopes and pads of paper? They were still sitting in a pile on our bookshelf and driving me crazy every time I walked by them. Then it hit me: why not adapt the pattern from the Zakka Sewing book that I had used for the first project? I’ve never altered a pattern before. Sure I alter recipes and kitchen designs. But sewing? No way. Until now.

All I did was add about three inches of length and include cute little handles on each side. It’s perfect for organizing everything in a simple, visible way. And while I was at it, I made a whole new heap of baskets to organize stuff around the house (including my childhood postcard collection I’m still working on shrinking).

The greatest thing about an organized, tempting stationery center on our bookshelf is that it’s a great prompt for letter writing. You find yourself reaching out to more people and actually using your pretty papers.  Then you start creating letter writing habits, which is such a beautiful way to replace email with ones you hold dear.

In fact, an old friend of my grandma’s actually inspired me to develop a stronger writing habit.  The woman knew my grandparents when they first met and fell in love seventy years ago.  They kept in touch over the years, sharing stories of their children and lives.  A couple of years ago, the woman mailed my grandma a small box filled with letters my grandma had written over the years.  What a treasure!  I actually got to read about my grandma’s life as she was pregnant with my dad!

So none of my friends know this.  But in the back of one of the plastic bins we must live out of, I keep a few little boxes like this one:

One day, I am going to return all these letters to my dearest friends or their children or whomever.  What a clever way to preserve a family history, huh?

Letter writing is such a powerful thing.

How do you sort your stationery?  Is it neat and tidy or stuffed in a drawer?  What do you do with the letters you receive?

I have another really exciting day of flying to share with all of you.  Today is just a story – no pictures – because I was too overwhelmed to take pictures while flying (not surprising, right?) and too excited after landing.

So just picture this.  Two enormous airliners lined up on the taxiway, ready to take off.  Then picture me, all by myself, in a little four-seat Cessna airplane lined up right behind them.

You don’t have to scream or panic or anything.  If I’d really thought about the magnitude of where I was on the taxiway the other day, you can bet I would have been freaking out enough for all of us.  I felt like my entire plane could have been sucked into one of their engines.  But I just held my brakes and waited. 

Soon one commerical airliner took off.

Then the next.

I puttered up to the runway, and the man in the tower gave me the okay to take off… with a giant warning for quakes formed by those two airliners.

In the corner of my eye, I saw another large airplane taxiing up behind me.  I knew how to take off.  That part was easy.  The problem was everything that followed…

My voice must have been wavering.  When I was up in the air, everyone was talking so fast.  The tower would say something to me, and I wouldn’t know what they wanted.  I had to ask them to repeat most of the time.  I heard other Cessnas, a Twin Star,  airliners, and so many other planes (I don’t remember what they were).  It took all I had to fly my course as the tower directed me.

To be honest, I felt like everyone could have been speaking German to me.  Pilot talk is such a foreign thing.  I have to translate it bit by bit.  This learning isn’t a problem when I only have one other airplane to contend with at the gravel runway where I’m learning.  They’re quite forgiving.  The problem with airports so busy that they need towers to control the air traffic is that they can’t be so forgiving.  There isn’t time.

With so many voices all around, I’m sad to report that I was still the only female.  You all know that with only .025% of women carrying pilots’ licenses, I’ve never met a female pilot… and I’ve been hunting!

Around the flight pattern I went.  Next to the runway, behind the runway, and finally lined right up with it.  The tower kept instructing me the entire way.  I landed.  (Thank goodness!)

Except I was far from over.  One of many requirements for earning a pilot’s license is flying in an airspace with a tower for three complete landings.

So I took off again.  I felt a little more relaxed.  The houses that slowly shrank as I rose into the sky gave me comfort – like they were part of the world I was comfortable with.  Maybe ten minutes later, the tower granted me permission to land a second time.  So I began my approach for a second landing.  Another airliner was holding short; they were ready to enter the runway and take off.

But the tower made them wait.  Can you imagine an airliner ever waiting for you?  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I knew I’d never see something like that again.  The tower gave me top priority as a student pilot during their “airliner rush hour”.  

Then they gave me priority the next time I took off and landed, too.

When I parked the plane and walked into the general aviation terminal for small planes, two women walked up to me.

“Good job!” Martin cheered as he approached.  The women held out their hands.  They both asked with eager voices, “Was that your first solo?”

“My first solo with the tower,” I said.  Everyone was beaming.  They shook my hand.  They patted my back.  

(That was when I realized how covered in sweat I was.  I didn’t even realize how hot it was in the plane and never opened the vents.  I didn’t want to miss a call from the tower, you know!)

The women said they were both flight instructors, too.

I froze.

Two great victories in one:  my first solo with a tower and commercial airliners… and meeting female pilots for the first time ever.  I never knew flying could feel so good.

Ever since my baby sister read the post, Green Cleaning Tips, she’s had green cleaning on the brain.  The only problem was that she had gobs of nasty chemical cleaners filling the entire space below her sink.

Here’s what she had to say:

Katie, you have to help me.  I’m doing what you said about not using toxins and trying to go green.  It’s just that we have all of these cleaners and bleaches that everyone keeps giving us when they move away.  Of course I say yes and take them so they don’t end in the trash.  But now I have too many spray bottles and cleaners and I don’t want to use any of them now.  Help me!!  - Your younger, smarter, brainer, taller sister

Good question!  Whenever a person decides to green up, there are sure to be a pile of cleaners still floating around the house. Don’t throw them away!  Just because you might not be using traditional household cleaners, it doesn’t mean other people aren’t.  (You can’t lead every horse to the water, after all.)

If you’re trying to switch to a greener clean, here’s a few places we’ve come up with that seem more than eager to accept your donations:

1. Give to the local church.  Even if they hire a cleaning service for general cleaning, they’re still going to need emergency supplies under the sink for after Youth Group and other actives.  They might know just the people or places to donate your supplies or having food and supplies drives, too.

2.  Give to local missions and soup kitchens.

3.  Donate to the local scouts or summer camps. I can’t tell you how much bleach summer camps go through to meet health regulations.

4.  Take unopened products to the food bank. You’d be surprised by the demand for things like these and toilet paper at the food banks because most people obviously think food bank = food.  Our local food bank was recently desperate for toiletries, so you just never know.

5.  Contact your local United Way or other not-for-profit.

6.  And finally, call your local women’s shelter and battered women’s shelters.  These facilities might need your donations.  The women trying to reestablish themselves might, too.

And who knows.  You could always buy green cleaning products to donate to these places.  Sometimes it’s an act of kindness that changes us forever.  And in this case, it could help change the environment, too.

What would you do with untouched stuff?  We’re aching to know what you clean your house with, too.  I have a feeling a certain modest sister of mine might be up for some suggestions.  We’re quite the green cleaning newbies ourselves, so do share!

Well it probably comes as no surprise after my announcement last week that Martin and I are bunking up in a hangar that today’s unique house in our weekly series is a hangar.

Often times, you will run across houses along smaller airports.  These houses have the most enormous garages that are often larger than the homes themselves so that pilots can keep their airplanes right there with them.  I do have to say it’s the coolest thing to wake up and just walk a hundred feet to get to an airplane and fly away.

Of course, in our case it’s more like ten feet because we’re seriously living in a hangar right now.  Our bed is behind a curtain.  Airplane parts, tools, and of course an airplane are within arm’s reach.  It’s not much to look at (okay – it’s weird.  Much weirder than living in a house of tires.  But we’re hanging tight for a few days while the tire house owner has guests and we have to be out.)

So how about we look at a hangar that is an entire home, too?  

This Arizona house is 1,520 square feet; the hangar is 2,400 square feet.  How much would it take for your spouse to convince you to have a bigger home for his plane than his family?

Hangars are really good storage places for all your toys – RVs, boats, 4-wheelers…  Ahh.  I’m only adding to the case for an enormous man space, though, aren’t I?  The truth is that you don’t have to think and breathe airplanes all the time.  (Although this house is on Runway Road!)

Now what about you?  Has “design hangar add-on” been on your household to-do list?  Or maybe another hobby item like a kiln or outdoor grill?  How easy it would be to keep your spouse out of your hair with something like this?  Definitely give us your take on the idea.

Over and out.

oops – that’s police talk, not pilot

(Images from Big Springs Ranch Airstrip)