S is for Seahorse

S is for Seahorse or Seepferdchen.

The plan is to have the book ready to order by next week.  If you're interested in purchasing one, keep your eyes open for a post about how to buy the books on Monday or Tuesday!

So close...

So I really need to get cracking on this alphabet book.  My deadline (for myself) is Friday... because my mom is visiting in two weeks and I want to have time to upload the book to my most favorite online self-publishing site, lulu.com and order a few to have my mom bring over so I don't have to pay to ship them to Germany (which would probably be über expensive).

I've been a drawing and painting machine!

Here is N is for Newt:

I think they just keep getting better...

BUT, that might be because for the last 12 letters or so I made all the sketches and then put them in order of the ones I liked least to the ones I liked most so that I'd be encouraged as it got towards the end.  Wait until you see the last few!

Q is for Qualle

... which in German means jellyfish.  Q is another letter that has a different animal for the German and English pages.  I'll keep the English "Q" page a surprise...

Bunnies and Playgrounds and Cars... Oh My!

We thought we'd wander around Dresden and take advantage of *some* of the stores being open.  It also looked like good people watching weather.  I love people watching...

Our walk started out with a snack - we needed energy for all our walking!

I got a bunny from the bakery:

kind of like a donut... but bunny shaped

 We walked to the Neustadt and saw this awesome playground:

On Hauptstraße on the way home, we saw some people dressed as Easter Bunnies giving out candy to little kids.  Not just candy though- TOYS too!  If only I was 10...

Near our house, it seemed like it was quirky car day...

We spent a few hours lounging in the sun and then came home for meatloaf dinner (which we ate on our balcony:

Another awesome day outside...

A Friday Bike Ride

In Germany, everyone gets Good Friday and Easter Monday off.  We were pretty excited for a four day weekend, except that all the stores are also closed Friday, Sunday and Monday.

Yesterday I took the car to Elbe Park to the big, cheap grocery store and stocked us up on groceries for the weekend.  Not only did I look like the bag lady on my way back to the apartment from the parking garage, but I had a really hard time fitting all that food into our half-sized German fridge.  Good news is that we won't go hungry!

Today we decided to take a long bike ride to Rathen.

It's a beautiful ride down the Elberadweg.  We rode it last summer to the Bastei- which also involved a really long hike at the end of the bike ride.  This time we rode the path down the other side of the river.

The steam ships were out...

Here's our bikes taking a break

There were tons of other bikers out too- the path was beautiful and either ran by the river or through the trees

We saw some interesting things on our bike ride...

We saw a UFO

and a "crop square"

 We've been spending a lot of time outside now that the weather is nice, but I hadn't been on my bike since last summer.  It made for a pretty long bike ride... I was so glad to see this:

These cool mountain formations are the signature of the Sächsiche Schweiz.  That's how we knew we were there!

This is the town of Kurort (across from Rathen)

Rathen from the other side of the river

 The town of Rathen is really cute.  We spent some time roaming around the narrow pedestrian streets.  We decided to stop off at river-side restaurant called the Distillery.  They're famous for "the spirit of Rathen" and other fruity liquors made on site.  They didn't have much of a food menu, but we saw some people eating the daily special- flammkuchen, one of my favorite German "pizzas".  They are super thin crust, spread with quark (like cream cheese) and topped with bacon, scallions, cheese, and sometimes potatoes.  This flammkuchen was especially tasty and went fabulously with my cool glass of saurkirchsaft (cherry juice).

After our awesome lunch and a quick rest in the sun, we jumped on our bikes and rode home.  Nope, just kidding... remember how I said this was my first time on my bike since last summer?  Well, my legs held up pretty well, but bike seats are awfully uncomfortable.  Instead of riding home we boarded the extremely crowded train.  Unfortunately (or fortunately for our behinds) we had to stand the whole way home.

It was a fantastic day and it was so nice to be outside enjoying the summery weather!

E is for Emu

I love emus.  They're kind of like ostriches, but way cooler.  Here is E is for Emu.  I decided to give you one more in color because I think the colors on this one turned out so well.

Y is for Yak

I really like the yak.  And the mountains in the background.  Good thing I saved all the good animals for last!

G is for Giraffe

This one might compete for my all-time favorite animal alphabet book letter.
In color, he's yellowy-orange with blue-green spots.

Getting close to the end!!

U is for Urial

Here's U.  U is a really hard letter to find animals for.  A(n?) urial is like a mountain goat.  I guess they're pretty cute...

He's a lot cuter in color... sorry!

A Flea Market and a House Warming Party

Every Saturday along the Elbe, they hold a giant trödelmarkt or flea market.  They actually have them all over Dresden, but I think this one is the largest.  They even get food stands to come out and sell food to the hundreds of vendors and shoppers!

It's pretty impressive, even from far away.

A lot of the "booths" looked like people just pulled stuff out of their keller or found stuff on the side of the road and were trying to sell it, but some of the stuff was really old and super interesting.

I REALLY wish they had one of these in Austin when I still had an art room because there was SO much cool stuff for still life drawing - like this really old and probably very dangerous fan:

or these telephones:

or this phone in a suitcase:

or even this hairdryer:

You could even buy clothing and furniture!

The coolest thing I saw were these old windows:

I really wanted to buy them to make paintings on.  I probably stood and examined them for 10 minutes!  I REALLY REALLY wanted them.  But we were walking and they were heavy and I probably don't even have time for painting windows in my last 3 months here... but maybe next time I'll buy them and bring them home as a project for New York... who knows??

Anyhow, the whole experience was very interesting.  Also, I got some warm streuselkuchen, which was fantastic!

Later, we went over to a house warming party where we played Bob's favorite game, corn hole.  It's called corn hole because you throw bean bags full of corn at a board like this:

and try to get them in the hole.

Here's a nice action shot:

We had a great time enjoying the courtyard at the housewarming party!

It was a very busy, interestingly fun Saturday :)

W is for Whale

Yep, that's all it took- I had to fix the lion.

Here is W is for Whale.  The last 10 alphabet pages will be posted in black and white.  Not because I don't want you guys to be able to see them in color, but because there are mean and evil people out there and I don't want them to take my alphabet book and try to pass it off as their own... Don't worry though, in a few weeks, it should be done, and then, if you like it, you can buy one!

Lions Again!

I really didn't like L is for Lion.  Maybe that's why I haven't wanted to make any more alphabet pictures...

I realized that he didn't have any foliage around him, so I added some, and that made it a little better, but I still didn't like it.

After staring at it every day for the past week, I finally figured out what it is I don't like.  He looks like an alien!  I think his eyes are just too big and black.  So I borrowed the eyes from J is for Jaguar, and now I think he looks a lot better.

A New Project. Soon. Hopefully.

I'm still working on the Animal Alphabet Book, but I think it was a bit much to take on, and I'm getting a little bit Alphabetted out... I'm going to finish it though, have no fear...

But while I'm procrastinating, I'm thinking of new projects.  I really want to make some artwork featuring the architecture in Dresden because it is so beautiful and so European and so... awesome... that it would be a shame not to.

So I started taking a few pictures of some of my favorite buildings and sites... I think I'll do a series... in cut paper... we'll see...

Bier Gartens... Not Just for Beer

Sunday started out as a fabulous day.  It was warm, the sun was shining, and I got my most favorite morning beverage, a milchkaffee, from the McCafe, complete with a chocolate.

We took a stroll down the Elbe to a beer garden called the Fährgarten.  Not because it is really far away, but because in German fähre is ferry and the beer garden is right next to the ferry.  Pretty clever right?  We'd never been before, but we were invited to the birthday celebration of our friends' little girl who was turning three.  Funny place for a birthday party, you say?  Maybe, except that this beer garden has an awesome pirate-ship playground.  The kids had a blast, and I got to eat chocolate cake, so I was a happy camper too.

We stayed for a few hours before deciding to take the ferry across the river to our new favorite Sunday destination, Waldschloßchen.  Every Sunday, they have live music and cheap drinks.  So we sat around listening to the band...

sorry about the pole, Bob took this one...

and eating bratwurst and currywurst and pretzels.

Our friend chowing down on some currywurst.

It was a great day spent outside.

*Side note: even if it is only 60°, you should still wear sunscreen.  I now am a lovely shade of pink.

Flowers!

One of my favorite things about living in Dresden is that they really pride themselves on the way the city looks.  There are always city workers cleaning up trash on the sidewalks.  Once a week the street cleaner washes the streets.  And in public areas they plant flowers once a month.  Now that it's spring, not only are the trees blooming and the weather beautiful, but there are also flowers!