Schuster Travels

Our home

2009-04-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

This post comes as a request from my mama. So, here's a little tour of our house for you! I'll get one later of the outside...I kind of forgot to add that one. We first start our tour of the entryway. They used a pretty tile and I like it except in the winter when your feet will practiclly freeze to it! Most of the homes here have marble stairs in them and they're beautiful but don't fall down them!

This is the guest room that's the first door on the left in the entryway hall.

Then we have a room right across from it that's actually another dining room and kitchen but it's pretty much empty. So, we'll continue our tour up stairs. This is the children's room.

Right next door is our room, here's two photos since my camera sucks at zooming out.

Notice the two children fighting? Nice huh?

These photos look a little dark, I may need to take more photos later. Anyway, here's the hall that's inbetween our room and the childrens and connects the bathrooms and stairwell to the kitchen and livingroom area. The door at the end leads to our bathroom.

Next is a couple pics of the left side and right side of our kitchen. There's a doorway inbetween the photos, it leads into the livingroom and dining room.

Next is the dining room.

The stairway goes up to a loft area and playroom. There's a balcony up there as well and i'll add pics of it all later. The kids trashed the playroom so it seriously needs my attention. :) So, here's the living room. I'm still waiting on my shelves to arrive and it's going to look great. I'll update the photos when they arrive.

Well mom I had to add this last photo for you because I know you'll love it. It's an amazingly beautiful cherry tree in our front yard and this is the view of it out that window behind the chest.

My punishment

2009-04-13T23:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so while I was up on my computer doing a post for Easter...I was taking too much time for myself (20 min) and Ethan let me know it! Audrey yelled, "It's an emergency!" Once she yells this, it usually IS an emergency and Ethan has created some kind of disasterous mess. So, I ran downstairs as fast as I could to find this all over the livingroom and our kitchen floors...some furniture were given the sprinkles as well.

This mess was created with four bottles of "sprinkles" from Christmas. Let's just say that ALL the sprinkle bottles in our house have been put in the garbage! My entire livingroom looked like this picture. Plus, he didn't just dump out the sprinkles...he also spit water over some of it and cemented it to my floors. I had to sweep, scrap, sweep again, vacuum and then mop my floors. I asked him if he made this mess and this is the face that I got.

He's lucky he's so cute...notice the sprinkles on his face?

Easter Day

2009-04-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

Easter day was an eventful but enjoyable day. The kids first woke up to find one egg left for them from the Easter bunny. He never brings their baskets until they come back from Church...this helps build the suspense! We all went to church and it was so enjoyable. The kids were awesome and Ethan sat on Jamie's lap the entire first hour. Audrey was perfectly content just coloring and both Jamie and I were able to hear what was actually said for the first time since children! After we came home and had lunch, we went outside to see if he came and he had!

They had so much fun this year, it seems like every year they get more excited. While we were all outside, the Easter bunny snuck in our house and hid all our baskets. Ethan helped Audrey find hers and then said "want that". He moved the couch for her so she could get hers and then found his inside their playhouse upstairs.

It took me FOREVER to find mine and Jamie found his like two minutes before I found mine but still bragged of course. We all ate candy until our tummy hurt...it's hard not to. Anyway, my favorite thing to see was how Ethan opened eggs. He puts the egg in his mouth and then just bites down. It's funny to watch.

After we all over dosed on sugar, we colored some eggs. This last week was so hectic that we never did it before Easter but the kids didn't mind.

So, that was our Easter. We then decided to do a quick family picture and it actually turned out. It doesn't happen very often when we're all looking at the camera, with our eyes open and smiling! All you mothers out there know what i'm talking about. So, we love you all and miss you and hope you had a great Easter!

Antique Market in Tongeren Belgium

2009-04-06T01:24:00.000-07:00

Every Sunday there's a huge Antique market in Tongeren and we had to check it out. It starts pretty early and we wanted to take our time so an Awesome friend of ours watched the kids while Jamie and I went. It's about a little over an hour away (Jamie driving) unless I drive then it's an hour and a half away. Here's a photo of the entrance to the Antique market...everywhere you turn there's another road or alley and lots more vendors!

You have to be careful though, there's a lot of people that will try to scam you and tell you it's an antique when really it's not.
Tongeren is the oldest town in Belgium and was the last to be conqured by the Romans. Here's part of the entrance into the center of the old city. Gotta love the history.I had to try a Belgium waffle, the lady handed it to me and I couldn't help but be American and think...where's the chocolate, strawberries or whip cream? It didn't need it because it was so full of sugar already. I thought I was going to vomit before I was done with it and had to have Jamie finish it off for me. It was dang good though.Okay, so the big reason for us going to the market was to try and find a sideboard. We...mostly I have been wanting this forever! I've been to ECL (awesome store but very pricey) and love their stuff but just couldn't bring myself to spend so much. So, we found this beautiful peice that is exactly what we or I have been looking for! It's a nice solid hard wood and from indonesia so it's not an antique but who cares??? It's totally beautiful!
The guy we bought it from was such a nice guy. His family has been selling Antiques and furniture for four generations. His brother has a store near Tongeren that I have to go back to. You can find some amazing stuff there and it's not overpriced. The guy was so nice, our bank card wouldn't work for some stupid reason and we couldn't take ANY money out. All we had on us was four euro! Our breakfast ended up being a loaf of rasin bread and one bottle of water to share. Anyway, our only option left was credit so, he drove us 20min to his brother's store and just charged our card there. He even cut 45 Euro off the cost as well. We got an amazing deal and we went home feeling great about the purchase.

Raspberry and blueberry muffins

2009-04-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Audrey, Ethan and I decided to make something yummy today and I have been craving muffins forever! So, we got this recipe off the internet just because the pics of it looked so delicious. It's super simple to make and tastes great.

Here's the recipe if you'd like to try it, the jargin is a little different than what i'm used to, i'm thinking someone posted this from England maybe?

Ingredients:

1 egg

1/2 mug (cup) milk

2 tbsp oil

1 1/2 mugs plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 mug caster sugar

1 mug mixed raspberries and blueberries

Butter for greasing and sugar for dusting

1. Pre-heat oven to 220C and grease a muffin tray (or line with muffin cases). Mix all the wet ingredients together in a bowl (excluding the fruit).

2. Sieve the dry ingredients into another bowl and then gently mix the wet into the dry. Do not overmix - it doesn't matter if the mixture is a bit lumpy.

3. Add the fruit and again, mix through very gently.
4. Fill the muffin cases about half-full and then dust with a little sugar. Bake for about 25 minutes and then remove and cool on a wire rack.

Ethan is such a fruit lover, he dug right into these and I think it ended up being his dinner.

An eventful day

2009-04-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

We decided that it was time to get out and enjoy this beautiful weather! This park is AMAZING, i've never seen anything like it! Only an hour drive away and totally worth it. It's huge and surrounded by trees so you don't even know you're in the middle of the city. They have a creak going through part of it and a ton of stuff for the kids to run and play on. This slide was a lot of work to climb up to. Jamie and I took turns climbing up it and going down with the kids.

Can you believe how cool this is? I would have loved to of gone to this place as a kid! They had a huge pirate ship to play on. This picture only shows half of the ship...I couldn't fit it all in my camera.

The kids of course loved the water and both of them ended up falling in it. Thank goodness I always over pack and had an extra set of clothes for both of them!

Isn't she a darling? She always picks flowers for me and I LOVE it! Everywhere we go she's on the hunt for more.

I'm such a sucker for self portraits! I had to tackle her to get her to stop picking flowers for one minute for this photo!

The boys on a turtle and of course us girls on a turtle.

After spending time at the park we were off to do some antique shopping. We went to three different Troc stores, they're like a consignment store and you can find some great stuff. We stopped at the one in Luxembourg city and then we went to one in Esch Sur Azette and finally one just in france. I'll post some pics soon of what we bought. I first need to touch them up and do a little painting.

Decorating for Easter

2009-03-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

Can you believe that spring is here? I yelled out loud today as I saw the trees budding (My kids and neighbors think I'm crazy). They do the coolest thing over here. They decorate eggs and hang them on their trees. They also decorate the inside of their homes with rabbits and flowers. From what I've heard, Easter is their second biggest holiday right after Christmas. Well, since we live here...we'll do as the Germans do!

Here's Audrey decorating as fast as she can so she can hang more than Ethan. I think we've entered the competition phase.

Ethan was ecstatic, can you tell? It was funny watching him decorate the tree, his little arms couldn't reach very high.

Drum roll please....okay so here's the finished product. Audrey's exact words were "It's a fabulous tree!" I'm thinking we may need more eggs and that six packages wasn't enough. Perhaps I'll actually buy eggs and we'll dye them ourselves!

Finally, I've decided to make my front door a little less plain and use some crafting skills to make something.

What do you think? It's amazing what you can do with a little hot glue.

A day at the park

2009-03-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

The weather lately has been so beautiful. We ended up meeting the E. family and the R. family and driving to a park in Kirchberg, Luxembourg. We live so close to Luxembourg that it only takes about 30 minutes to drive there. The park was so beautiful, they have a playground and a duck pond.
The look on his face just cracks me up. They had so much fun feeding the ducks...we didn't have any bread so they had a gourmet meal of cheerios from us.
So, after feeding the ducks everyone needed to use the restroom. Do you see the hill in the background? Ethan went down that on his bike and you could hear all the mothers gasp (including me). He's definitely all boy and there will be broken bones in the future with him! I'll add a video when I can figure out what codec code I need to download.

Honey Pie Cake

2009-03-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a honey pie cake made for you? Well, it consists of lots of dirt. Followed by a slight whisking in of water and then topped with flowers. It must be made with lots of love and served with a smile. Isn't she so adorable! I know I am her mother but she truly is an angel.

After our yummy honey pie cake, we had to enjoy some bubbles. Because, what's a beautiful sunny day in Germany without bubbles? Audrey was very careful with hers and

Ethan had some issues with keeping his bubbles from spilling. They were a lot of fun to watch though. I think the highlight was when some neighbors of ours went for a stroll on their horses. The sun does not shine very often so when it does, everyone takes advantage of it!

Trip to Slegers in Belgium

2009-03-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

So, we finally were able to go to slegers on Saturday. Thanks to some awesome friends of ours, we went on an all day long date! First, we had to hit Slegers and let me tell you...it's amazing! It's this hudge warehouse full of amazing finds. They have a site (http://www.slegers-antiques.com/) but it just doesn't do them justice. A lot of their stuff is a little too detailed for our taste but I did find some little treasures of my own. I found a couple dough bowls, interesting magazine thing and an antique iron.

I love this one!

Pretty cool huh?

Jamie has got a great eye and found an old wine barrel for our end table. I love it! Then, we drove and drove and drove to a town called Chiney in Belgium which had a Trocs. We didn't find anything in perticular that we wanted so we were off again! Our next stop was Tongeren. There are a ton of little antique shops there and we'll be heading back at the end of the month. Every Sunday they have an antique market and I hear it's fabulous.