Thanksgiving Alphabet...

Things from A - Z  I am grateful for:

A - Air -good mountain air to breathe
B - bread - Fougasse, French bread fresh from the oven
C - Colors - all the colors of the rainbow
D - Dolls - being able to create and sell them
E - Electricity - because when you are in the midst of a storm-induced power outage you really learn to appreciate it!
F - Friends - on Facebook and other places
G - German Accent - I have a sort of love-hate relationship with that one. Some days I get tired of telling people where I am from. But it sure make for interesting conversations, too...
H - Harvest. Of course, what would be more appropriate on Thanksgiving Day? We harvested lots of veggies and got to grow our own watermelon in our community garden patch this year.

I - The Internet and being able to connect with people all over the world
J - Jobs. I am glad my husband has a job and is able to support the family. I pray that each person who needs a job will find one this coming year.
K- Kids. My kids make me smile all day. What would I do without them?
L- Lemons. Because when life gives you lemons, you just make lemonade with them. And we have this saying in German: sauer macht lustig. (sour things make you laugh) so don't lose your sense of humor no matter what!
M - Marcus. My husband, though often he does drive me nuts.
N - Nuts. I love all kinds of nuts. Coconuts. Walnuts. Pecans. Hazel Nuts.
O - Origami. I think paper crafts are so cool.
P - Pizza. I know 90% of kids say that when asked for their favorite food. I like making Pizza from scratch with fresh veggies grown in my garden.
Q - Questions. It's good to have a lot of questions and look for answers all the time. Makes us smarter. It's the people who have all the answers that do scare me...
R - Recycling, reusing, re purposing.
S - Safety. The children say, they are thankful that we live in a country where people are fairly safe from political unrest.
T - Tomatoes from the vine. Okay, it was weird how we had tomatoes to eat from our garden until the end of November this year. Freaky!
U - The movie UP. It's a favorite in our family. The most UP-lifting kid movie I have seen in a while.
V - Verwandtschaft = the German word for relatives. I do miss my family from Germany and hope to make it home soon.
X - X-Factor Show. I hate to admit it, but I do love that show. So much better than American Idol because older folks can be in it. Not that they would ever win in this culture focused on youthfulness...
W - Wool, soft and warm to stuff my dolls with.
Y - You, the people who read my blog.
Z - Zeit - the word time in German. I am grateful for the time I have to create and write.

Now quick do your own alphabet and tell me what things you are grateful for.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Please Check it out! Post about Waste Land

I was so excited. I wrote this long - and what I thought to be engaging - article on the NaturalKids Team blog about the movie Waste Land. Honestly, I spent a long time on this piece of brilliant writing. With the result that I got ONE single comment.
So please, if you see this, can you go on over there and read my post. I would much appreciate you taking the time. Hopefully it will inspire you to watch that awesome documentary.

It's about hope. And who can live without that? So I am hoping you drop me a note.

Promise you are not wasting your time!

Etsy Treasury

I was featured in this cute treasury today...

Thanks so much, Maggie!

International Shipping of GermanDolls Christmas 2011

It has come to my attention that there are longer THAN USUAL delays in shipments to various parts of the world. Let me give you an example: My last package to Germany took over 5 weeks. Not sure why customs all over the world has taken it upon themselves to hurt small businesses in such a way. Do they sit there and roll the dice on whose package makes it through? Is there a system? Or maybe it's the Postal Services' fault? I am not sure who is to blame here. I am sad I have to make this announcement. Almost as sad as Duke when he found out he wasn't allowed to come to the baseball game this summer...

Dear International Customers,

I just want to let you know that I dearly love you people in Canada, Australia, UK, Belgium, and other places I normally ship to. I don't want you to walk in my Etsyshop and buy doll clothes or dolls - all hopeful that your items can still arrive on time for Christmas. To save you from disappointment and myself a huge headache, I went ahead and changed all my listings to US shipping only.

Of course, if you still want to order because:

 a) you are an optimist and know good fortune will lead your dollorder to your house on time or

b)you have connections in customs or know the Postmaster General in person or

c) it's not really a Christmas present and you don't care when it arrives you just WANT IT

In those cases you can contact me, and I will gladly make you your own personal listing to purchase now.

Love,
   Your Faithful German Dollmaker
       Ulla

Key-ing - An American Sport? Schluesseln - eine Amerikanische Sportart?

The word keying had not been part of my vocabulary at all. I guess my high school English teachers didn't know about it, it never came up in any of the novels I read in college, and when living in England I never heard this term either. It must be a new kind of "sport". Let me explain this to those of you who are complete innocents like me or those of you who are foreign to these parts:
Keying is when somebody takes a key and makes a big fat scratch on the paint of your car.

Das Wort "keying" oder schluesseln in direkter Uebersetzung war mir nicht bekannt bis vor Kurzem. Keying oder "schluesseln" bedeutet, wenn jemand einen Schluessel nimmt und damit einen riesigen Kratzer auf Deinem Auto hinterlaesst...Seufz.


Why am I talking about this? Well, a couple of days ago my son's 7th grade basketball team had a game against another school in a little town about 1 hour's drive from our town. Emotions had been hot, since our team won the last game against this team in a close game during overtime. I guess I did not realize how hot people were, until we visited their gym two weeks later, thisTuesday night. From the get go everything seemed rigged against us. There were strange calls. Refs calling fouls on our kids and a few discussion ensued about the running of the clock. Despite everything our team managed to win.

Warum erzaehle ich davon? Vor zwei Tagen hatte unsere Basketballmannschaft ein Spiel in einer kleinen Stadt ca. eine Stunde Autofahrt entfernt von hier. Die Woche davor hatte unsere Mannschaft diese Mannschaft besiegt, und die Emotionen waren ziemlich hochgefahren. Mir war nicht bewusst, wie hoch, bis zu diesem Revanchespiel am Dienstag. Von Anfang an schien das Spiel zu unseren Ungunsten zu laufen. Da gab es ein paar Fehlentscheidungen der Schiedsrichter und merkwuerdigeUnstimmigkeiten mit der Stoppuhr...Trotzdem gewann unsere Mannschaft das Spiel.

It often boggles the German mind how people get so worked up about youth sports in the US. Not that I don't enjoy cheering for my kids and watching their games. But when I see how out of control parents get here, I fondly remember the days of my youth when I was on a table tennis team in Germany. My parents never went to the matches and could have cared less about the results. They were happy I had some safe place to be and get some exercise. I think my coach was the only person who ever got worked up over our team's losses.

Ich finde es wirklich befremdlich als hier lebende Deutsche, wie sehr sich manche Leute ueber die Spiele von Jugendlichen aufregen. Natuerlich seh' ich gerne zu wenn meine Kinder spielen und gewinnen, aber ich verstehe nicht, wenn Leute so vollkommen ausser Kontrolle geraten. Da bekomme ich direkt nostalgische Erinnerungen an die Zeiten in meinem Tischtennisverein in meiner Jugend. Meine Eltern kamen nie zu den Spielen und interessierten sich kaum dafuer. Die waren nur froh, dass ich ueberhaupt Sport machte und Bewegung hatte. Hier hofft jeder auf die grosse Karriere im Sport und Millionenvertraege, und viele Eltern scheinen ihr Leben durch ihre Kinder zu leben...


I am often taken aback when I see how out of control some parents get when watching their kids play sports. I have seen people yell at their kids, coaches, and taunt other fans and their players. I have seen a mother going after a child after a baseball match giving him "a-talking-to" because he supposedly injured her child. I missed a fistfight in our area that actually made it onto National TV last year...But what took the cake the other night, was that one of the mom's from our team found that her car was vandalized after Tuesday's game. How nuts is that? What kind of person would wonder up to stranger's car and put a big fat scratch all around the vehicle? I am still floored by the ugliness of this particular American past time of random violence against a perfect stranger. I guess one shouldn't put a sticker of one's team on the car because you never know what people might do if they happen to be the losers of a game...

Ich habe schone viele komische Situationen erlebt bei solchen Spielen hier. Da sieht man Eltern ihre Kinder, die Trainer, oder andere Fans anschreien. Ich sah eine Mutter, die so weit ging und hat ein Kind nach einem Baseballspiel verfolgte und auf uebelste Weise anfuhr, weil es angeblich ihr Kind verletzt haette..Aber meine neueste schlimme Erfahrung war diese Schluesselaktion vom Dienstag. Eine Mutter von unserer Mannschaft fand am naechsten Tag einen riesigen Kratzer im Lack rund um ihr ganzes Auto herum. Da fragt man sich ob diese Leute noch alle Tassen im Schrank haben...Eine komische amerikanische Sportart...

Sibling Dolls - Sisters

I just completed this set of sibling dolls. I think they look so cute together.

And the world didn't end ...Yet.

One of my Facebook friends predicted the other day jokingly that the world would end on 11/11/11. All sorts of funny commentary followed her predictions.

Well, as we all know now, the world did not end, and the only thing that did end this last week is my pile of sticks. The City or Greeley finally came and picked up the stick pile left behind by the huge storm two weeks ago. They came with giant machines and trucks to clean up the 20 X 10 foot pile in the street. It's weird to be able to look out my window again with an unobstructed view. I kind of miss seeing the birds play in the pile. They certainly had fun in it.

I suppose I should be happy and grateful to the City workers. Yet I can't help but feel uneasy about the state of the world. Yesterday the announcement came through the news that the carbon monoxide output of the world has reached new record numbers. Judging from the pollution it doesn't look like we are in an economic crisis at all.

As I sit there sewing up my little dolls I worry about my own carbon footprint. What about my very own actions as a manufacturer of goods? Are my dolls adding to the world's problems rather than helping? I like to think that making dolls from natural fibers and doing a lot of the work by hand is a good thing. But maybe selling them online shipping them all over the world is not. Wow. It's so depressing when they use such terms on the news as "catastrophic" climate change.

The empty space left by the dead trees downed by this last storm serves as a reminder that when nature wreaks havoc we humans are often left truly powerless. What if we create a mess that cannot be cleaned up? We must change our ways or else there may not be a future for our kids and grand kids. What are you doing to lessen your carbon footprint today?