Sunday, September 19, 2010

an alternative oktoberfest celebration




It's Oktoberfest time! It seems that what everyone loves about Oktoberfest celebrations is the crowded parties, the massive drinking, the dancing and the meat.

I love Oktoberfest and yet I don't really like any of those things. Don't get me wrong, I love a good beer or two, but since they mostly make me want to curl up on the coach or take a nap, dancing around to loud music with a crowd of people is not something I'm probably going to do - drunk or not.

Another main reason I don't go to Oktoberfest celebrations is that I don't eat meat. It is pretty hard to find a veggie sausage at a German celebration. I don't really understand why, either. It would be so easy to just offer veggies sausages.

When the mister and I were in the Bavarian themed town of Leavenworth, Washington a few years ago they had one place that had veggie sausages. We ate there twice. I absolutely love a veggie sausage with mustard and sauerkraut!


Most German food, like Potato salad and other things, also has pork in it. So, that leaves that out for me, too. What's a German food loving veggie to do?

Put on your own Oktoberfest!


Mine is just for the mister and me. It features veggie sausages in buns with the toppings, German potato salad (I've made it in the crock pot before, mostly just potatoes and vinegar - good!), pretzels (can be made or bought from the local German Bakery), cucumbers in vinegar or salad, pickles and good German beer.

You can get Oktoberfest decorations from the local party store. I try and make the table look like a table in a bier garten. The final touch is some good old fashioned German music. I just find some on the internet and play it over the laptop.

This may seem pretty dorky to you - and it is - but we like it.

It reminds me of being in Leavenworth, which I loved. And it is a fun way to celebrate Oktoberfest without all the other stuff that although can sometimes sound fun - is just not really my style most of the time. I do love the German music and the Bavarian aesthetic. Maybe someday someone will start offering more veggie items at Oktoberfest celebrations.

Whether you are celebrating big or small - Happy Oktoberfest and welcome Autumn!

Friday, September 10, 2010

new issue of imaginary life now available

The first part of this week I was at a wonderful beach house on the Oregon coast. A proper post about the trip coming soon. I am going through the huge amount of pictures I took of the the sky and ocean right now.

In the meantime, I finally got Imaginary Life #7 listed on Etsy. Here it is. More info about the zine on the listing.


Friday, September 3, 2010

mcclure it

I just got an email from Buy Olympia telling me that the new Nikki McClure calender is out for 2011. That reminded me that I kind of wanted to write about the Nikki McClure catalogs and what you do with them when they are done.

As you probably know, they are beautiful. Each page is a gorgeous paper cut layout celebrating the simple pleasures in life. Usually the calender is worked into them in a way that makes it pretty unattractive to extricate it from the image thus making it difficult to cut out the calender and just hang it on the wall (she does sell wall prints now of many of the images). Yet, the images are so beautiful it is impossible to throw them away.



So, I save them and put them with my wrapping paper and use them for wrapping gifts sometimes. I also recently used some old pages to line a drawer.



Lining a drawer is an interesting thing. It seems like such a old fashioned kind of thing to do and I never really thought it was that big of a deal, and yet I will often do it, just out of some domestic tradition. This particular drawer I had not lined and I wish I had as a bottle of lotion got loose and damaged the wood. See, that is why you should line drawers! So, I did with the Nikki McClure pages.

These pages would also be nice to use for scrapbooks. You couldn't use the whole thing of course, but little pieces like leaves or something would be nice.

What do you do with your old lovely calenders?

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