The New Apartment!

From April 21st to October 24th, Nate and I lived out of suitcases in other people's homes. We are very happy and proud to announce that we are no longer wondering where our ocean container is or when we will move in to a real apartment. The six months of transition have ended, and we present photos of our first home together! 

The handover of keys on Tuesday, 23 October. The classic "before" shot (and the classic "after" shot is hopefully a week away!)

Unloading our belongings that we packed on 27 July! 

So many exciting things that we got for our wedding and had never used, just waiting to be unwrapped. (plus, the autumn leaves in the background are beautiful!)

My glorious Trader Joe's food!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My genius contraption to transport my jewelry. No inspiration from Pinterest!

The assembly line that Nate set up after he put together one chair. He did the other three in almost the same amount of time. Proving, once again, the effectiveness of the Industrial Revolution.

Nate, always using his time wisely, used 5 minutes before work to keep working on my dresser drawers. So devoted :)

One of the first nights, before we moved in, when I had been unpacking but we hadn't started setting up furniture. Humble beginnings!

My handsome consultant who eats everything I make <3

This is a Honeycomb Pull Apart Cake made with a Williams Sonoma cake pan that Barbara Bell gave me for our wedding. It was a detailed recipe that took longer than usual but the end result was delicious, and Nate and I don't even like cake that much!

Our very good friend Chris and Sina who came over to celebrate our new apartment :) By the way, I actually have more than two fingers, even though it doesn't look like it.

Nate with his dream car, a Land Rover Defender 90

Have you ever carried this much food by yourself? I hadn't either, until Wednesday. I went grocery shopping on my bike, and I wore a backpack. Even though it was 40 degrees outside, I stayed warm as I biked to 5 different stores to get all of this, carefully loading heavy things in to the basket on my bike and lighter/fragile things in to my backpack. Tis the European way!

A dinner that I was very proud of, 1) because it tasted so good and 2) because it was entirely plant-based! It was straight out of "Forks Over Knives" and loved it. I fried chickpeas with lemon juice and served them on spinach and I made an off-the-charts-delicious vinaigrette for the dressing! Then I made zucchini fritters, which are very easy and very healthy, which we had with a mix of ketchup and Sriracha hot sauce . 

At the brunch buffet we went to on Thursday (the 1st of November is All Saints Day and our state of Nordrhein Westphalia gets it as a holiday!) Even though I look really bad, it is the only evidence of the one American type of brunch food: waffles. And the only picture we got with Marcel! 

Marcel did his best but sometime iPhone photos are wiggly no matter how hard you try to hold still! 

Later in the day we went to see the new James Bond movie, Skyfall. It was incredibly well done and we loved it. Very enthralling with an interesting plot. It was the OV (original version) which movie theaters show for major blockbusters- this is the first movie that I've seen advertised that hasn't been translated in to German. About 90% of the audience was German, and seemed to be avid movie-goers by the large amounts of popcorn, soda, and candy that they purchased beforehand. They also seemed to be interested in the original version because they laughed at the funny one liners and appreciated the special 007 touches like when he drives an Aston Martin. I won't give away any more details, but the car is pretty unbelievable! As is the whole movie :)

Aaaand a video of our fun Saturday night: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnb5mlQRqls&feature=youtu.be