1. You can’t get candy corn in Germany.  Last year, I tried out this recipe for making my own without much luck.  My fingers are crossed for this candy corn recipe later this month.  Sometimes a piece of home makes all the difference on cool and dark evenings in a different place.
2. Just when we might start thinking those bratwursts look a little tempting, the NYTimes writes up pieces like this one to remind us of the meat industry and why we’re sticking to our veggies.
3. My German is coming, but it isn’t always easy.  I was trying to figure out which contact solution was right for me yesterday evening.  The store had four options.  So when I turned to the clerk for help, all of my questions resulted in only one answer once she finished reading the entire label of the one in my hand.  She told me in German, “This is contact solution.”  Oh.  I took a guess at which one I should get and just took it home, hopeful that Martin would tell me it was the right one.  (It was.)
4. Trying to keep up with everything gets a little overwhelming in our lives.  I know I don’t have to tell you that!  But I like this suggestion called “10 Minutes“.
5. It doesn’t matter where we are.  If a small airplane is flying overhead, Martin stops to watch it.  That’s nothing new.  It’s just that now I stop and watch it, too, and we become nostalgic for flying.
6. Once a week, I pick out a new vegetable that we wouldn’t normally eat and try to figure out what to do with it.  So far, it’s been easy because I am picking vegetables I recognize.  (We’ve had eggplant and red cabbage.)  But one day soon, I’ll either need to bring a dictionary to the grocery store or bring home the root vegetables I don’t recognize and figure out what they are.  Any “weird” vegetables you’d suggest we bring home?

(Image by Martin for Making This Home)

I’m big on reading about food.  I think it began after Martin and I got married, and I realized that if we were going to be a vegetarian household, I seriously needed to figure out what I was doing in the kitchen.  Plus I had to justify our decision to our worried families.  ”Are you getting enough protein?”  ”Do you have enough energy?”  ”What’s that funny plant in your fridge?  Is it food?”

This morning, I stumbled on some great bits from Michael Pollan’s upcoming book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.

You’ve probably heard of him or his books like In Defense of Food.  You might even know his most famous mantra:  ”Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

For his new book, Pollan has been gathering a collection of rules of thumb we rely on for good diets.  We’re talking ideas like “an apple a day…”, and Pollan seems like just the guy to do it.  He has such great philosophies on food.  These two bits from a sample of the future book on the New York Times have especially got me thinking, so I just had to share with all of you:

What do you think?  Read any of Pollan’s books or have some mantras of your own about food?  One of mine is to avoid buying foods with more than five ingredients.

(Images from NYTimes)

By now, you’re probably pretty familiar with our 36 square foot kitchen remodel that we were busy doing last year at this time.  (If you aren’t, we’ve got a slew of before and after shots on Our Kitchen Remodel Page.)  The kitchen is our pride and joy.  But there was a time when the whole project almost went up in smoke.

We were almost finished when our countertops didn’t fit!

By taking such a serious DIY approach to our remodel by making our own cabinets and installing everything ourselves, we were able to save a chunk of change.  We were also able to budget a granite countertop.  (Thank goodness our space was small!)

We made a critical mistake and didn’t check to see if our wall that we tore down half way was perfectly perpendicular to our exterior walls.  It was off by about one degree.  The other problem was our counters weren’t cut perfectly square either.  They were off by one degree, too.  All of that’s not a problem in the beginning.  But by the time you get to the end of the counter, one degree of difference means our countertops hung over one side by an extra 3/4 of an inch and didn’t cover all our cabinets on the other side.

These little mistakes are so easy to do.  It’s even easier to beat ourselves up over them and feel discouraged or angry.  But we need to try not to do that.  I think Martin and I probably spent about eight hours trying to tweak the countertop and make it fit.  (The worst is when the flaws are partly your own fault.)

We had to do everything from cutting off pieces with the table saw to sanding to filling gaps with a little extra caulking.

When you look at your home, try not to look at the faults or the bits you changed to best correct those faults.  Try to see the beauty.  Try to find inspiration and joy from your home because ultimately, if you are always thinking about the flaws in your space or pointing them out to other people, those flaws will always be there. When you stop fretting about them, faults have this way of just disappearing.

Today our countertop is much better.  It’s still not completely perfect, but I don’t say anything – not to my husband, to our guests, or to myself.  And if it weren’t for Houseblogs’s little contest all about DIY drama, I’m not sure I would have remembered it at all.  Isn’t that how home should be?

Grandmothers around the world would have been embarrassed if they’d seen our stash of socks six months ago.  We were definitely the wear-until-there’s-a-hole kind of people.  Then when the holes got too big for me to handle, I tossed the socks in the trash with a big loud, “Oh darn!”

…until we started this No New Clothes Challenge.

Since the beginning of the summer, Martin and I have purchased no new clothes, as many of you know.  We’re using what we’ve got – a challenge that’s really done little wonders for our wallets and made us rethink the clothes we already have.  At the rate we used to go through socks, this challenge was going to have to

1. Come to a screeching halt soon, or
2. We’d become those people who wear shoes without socks all winter long, or
3. I’d need to figure out how to patch the weak fabric before it became a huge hole.

So I decided to teach myself how to darn socks.

I keep a little pile of socks in the pocket of my sewing machine (a sweet birthday present from Martin), and once a month, I sit down to darn socks.  Yes it makes me feel a little grandmotherly, but darning holes in socks is actually really easy.  You don’t even know have to know how to sew straight.  If you want to join me, I promise I won’t tell.  You can patch one of three ways:

1. Machine Sewing with a darning stitch. This method is the easiest.  Look at your sewing machine manual to see if you have a darning stitch so that all you have to do is push the pedal.  The straight stitch will work its way forward and backward, strengthening the weak fabric.
2. Machine Sewing without a darning stitch. Use a straight stitch to sew forward across your worn fabric, then push the back button to sew backward and slightly to the right.  Work your way forward and backward, inching your way to the right until you’ve covered the hole.
3. Hand Stitching. With a needle and thread, you can certainly patch socks yourself.  Annie has a beautiful and descriptive post on darning holes in clothing by hand.

Oh and a word of the wise – start patching before the holes get big.  The easiest way to spot them is straight off the drying rack or out of the dryer.  As you fold socks, just look for any places where the fabric seems to be getting thin or spreading, especially the toes, heels, and ankles.  This hole should have been darned sooner:

But it’s not a problem.  Just pinch the hole closed a little like this:

Then start on the far left and sew up and down, up and down in tall stitches (like half an inch tall) until you’ve reached the other end.  If you need to, reposition the angle of your sock and do it again.  It’s not rocket science once you figure it out.  In fact, it’s kind of like getting a king size candy bar in your trick-or-treat bucket.

So think you’re up for the repurposing challenge?  Could you see yourself sewing socks?  Or maybe you could share a few tips for salvaging or repurposing clothes and fabric?  You know every little tip adds up these days.

Every so often, readers ask me to describe how our life differs in Germany and the US.  While it’s impossible to say which is better, I do want to try to share the experiences.  For more scenes of life in Germany, you might enjoy A Typical Sunday in Berlin (when everything is closed), Making Sense of German Recycling (for all 10 piles we have to create!), and Setting Up a New Filing System (no more manilla folders?).  We’re drooling over today’s topic…

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Our favorite grocery store is probably a ten minute bike ride away.  It’s stocked with so many delicious foods that I love to unload the grocery bags right onto our counter so I can just stare at how much I got (for so little money!).  Martin looks over everything I have picked, licking his lips even at the sight of tomatoes.  Who licks their lips over tomatoes?!  Both of us in Berlin.

We went from living in the Rocky Mountains where we had to drive half an hour just to get to the grocery store to having little grocery shops, fruit markets, and organic grocery stores everywhere we look.  Living in such a huge community means high turnover, so our food is always incredibly fresh.  Our grocery store in the US did everything it could just to maintain a selection of food without everything spoiling.

Today as Martin helped me hang my bike back up in our “double garage” in the apartment and eyed what I picked, he cheered.  He also groaned; I accidentally bought garlic and herb cream cheese.  Germans love garlic and onions in their cheeses.  But they also really like a lot of other delicious combinations of hard and soft cheeses – the sorts of things that you’d have to special order and pay half a fortune for in the United States.

Lunch becomes a simple thing at our house when we’re both home.  We don’t cook.  We cut up a plate full of vegetables like peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes, fresh rye bread from the bakery, cheese, and pesto or hummus.  Everything is fresh, uncomplicated, and so unlike anything we experience in the countryside.  I couldn’t resist picking out this cheese today:

It’s called “Halloweenkaese”.  It’s flavored with ginger and pumpkin.  Like I said – Germans like weird things in their cheese.  But oh my gosh – it tastes amazing.  This hunk, which is now a third consumed!, only cost two bucks.

I think I understand why Germans have such tiny fridges now.  Our fridge is the same size as the one I had in my college dorm room in the US!  We stocked up on fruits and vegetables in the United States and needed a huge fridge.  Here the food tastes so amazing right when you get it from the grocery store that, at least at our house, the frequent bike rides are well worth the added taste.

Brrr.  Autumn weather officially blew right into Berlin this weekend.  How about where you live?  Is it getting chilly?

Now seems like the perfect time to revisit and revise a popular post from last year:  How to Lower Utility Bills Even if You Rent.  (Thanks to Jesscyn who suggested it on Twitter)  So here it is – a new and revised version for all of you who hate paying higher power bills than you really, truly need to.  I’ve done my best to adapt to tips for both European and American homes.

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1. Buy a programable thermostat.  No sense paying for heating a house you’re not even in during the day.  Take down the manual thermostat (we did this at every rental we’ve spent a winter in over in the US to save money), and put up a programable thermostat.  It’s super easy, and then you don’t have to worry about turning the heat down at night or during the week if you’re always out at the same time each day.  We huge fans of this thermostat.

Our power company even offered a rebate for installing it, so we filled out a quick form and got a full rebate a few weeks later.

Total time:  15 minutes. Total cost: $0

2. Check your air filter if you have forced air.  If your home is heated by forced air, check the filter.  Some landlords do this.  If yours doesn’t, you’d better hurry and do it.  A clogged filter drastically decreases the efficiency of the heat that makes it into your ducts.  Might as well get the heat you’re paying for into the house, right?

Total time: less than 5 minutes.  Total cost: $3

3. Open south-facing curtains.  During bright sunny days, you can snatch up free heat from the sun if you open your curtains on the south side of your house.  Nothing beats passive solar heat in the winter.

Total time: 1 minute  Total cost: $0

4.  Invest in thick curtains.  For all of your other windows and those south-facing windows at night and on stormy days, make sure you invest in thick curtains.  Feel the air in front of the window on cold days.  Now imagine putting up a shield of thick fabric to keep that cold air from circulating throughout your house.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a house with modern, efficient windows, thick curtains aren’t as important.  But if you’re a renter or live in an older home, chances are your windows aren’t quite good at insulating all by themselves.  I sewed some floor length curtains for our first apartment so they could be easily adaptable to our future homes.

Total time: 90 minutes  Total cost: $50 – $100

5.  Check the seals on your windows.  This means two things:

- pulling out the calking gun to close up gaps along the window frames, inside and out.  If you think it’s necessary to do the whole frame, wait for a windy or cold day and and run your hand along the frame to feel the air.

Total time:  10 minutes per window  Total cost: $7 for a caulking gun and caulk

- replacing rubber seals between windows and their frames.  This project just popped up on our to-do list.  You can call someone from your window supplier or local glass shop about getting the seals redone, or you can DIY.

Total time:  couple hours per window  Total cost: varies depending on seal type and quality

6. Replace the light bulbs you use the most.  I think everyone talks about this idea all the time.  But how well do you understand light bulbs?  Martin put together a great lightbulb guide to clear things up.  For years, he’s been swapping out our light bulbs for more efficient ones.  We even snagged a handful of free CFLs from our power company in the US.  As of a few days ago, conventional light bulbs are no longer available in the European Union.  And it makes sense.  Power costs 3x as much as it does in the US.

Total time: 2 minutes per fixture.  Total cost savings: $6 per bulb each year

7. Open the vents.  You’d be surprised by how many people complain how cold rooms are… only to discover that the vents in that room are all closed.  Take a few minutes to make sure that they are open.  If you don’t need a particular room to get as much heat (like your bedroom), close the vents a little.  This picture is from a forced air system.  It’s the same idea with radiators on your hot water heating system.

Total time: 10 seconds.  Total cost: nadda

8. Close the door.  German homes feel strange.  When you walk into the entry of a home, you’re greeted by a series of doors.  Every room in the house – from the bathroom to the living room is shut off by a door.  As strange as it feels, the idea is brilliant.  Germans close doors and lower heat in rooms they don’t use.  Consider closing the door to guest bedrooms and extra spaces in your home.  Close the vents or leave them cracked just slightly to keep the room heated a little.

Total time: 5 seconds.  Total cost: nadda

9.  Wear slippers.  If you have a no-shoe policy in your house like us, chances are that your feet are going to get cold, especially if you have forced air heat or live on a “slab on grade” (i.e. have concrete slabs as foundation under your flooring).  Wear slippers and try to keep a few pairs available for your guests.

Total time: 10 seconds.  Total cost: $10/pair

10. Get an energy audit.  Call your local power company and ask about their energy audit program.  It’s free in most communities!  A couple of guys will come to your house, ask you about energy use in your house, perform a few tests, and help you come up with ideas for improvements.  Then they load you up with free stuff.  We’re talking gobs of CFL light bulbs, low-flow shower heads, blankets for your water heater…

Total time: 2 hours.  Total cost: free

11. Insulate your house.  Don’t hesitate to shimmy up to the attic area and see how much insulation is up there.  You know how we lose most of our body heat through our heads?  Hot air rises, so it’s the exact same in homes.  Get that attic well insulated.

Consider insulating walls.  Local companies can blow in insulation by poking holes into the walls.  (Obviously, this tip is irrelevant to most European homes, which have solid walls.)  Landlords might hesitate to add these upgrades.  Sell them on the idea by finding out if your power company offers rebates and… well talk to the homeowner instead of the property manager if it’s something you really want.

Total time: amount needed to line up necessary work.  Total cost: several hundred dollars

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I love it when being green means saving money.  Or saving money means being green.  It’s all good.  Have any pointers we can all add to this list and save a little as utilities go up and the economy goes down?

In the mood for saving more money?  Check out our list of ways we save money at home and tips we follow for affording life in Europe.

(images by Katie for Making This Home)