warm sunset

last days of february,
sunsets look warmer
they color roads and buildings in orange,
daylight lasts longer,
25 hours left till spring...

a pleasant aftertaste

This is a valentine's card that bunbun made for me! It's a secret card - when you look through it at sun/candle light the hidden text appears and the trees become green! Ben is soooo talented! And there are also polaroids of us with the chocolates, my new awesome sparkling shoes, Ben's new scarf and a teddy bear from B! awww...

 

And here we are with a fur tree on a snowy Moscow street :-)

11 Questions

Beautiful Alice from The Mow Way tagged us on the "11 Questions" post! Thanks, dear! Your blog is super cute and I'm in love with your Paris the pig (guys, you all have to check it out - so cool!)

The rules:

- Each person must post 11 things about themselves on their blog
- Choose eleven people to tag and link them on the post
- Go to their page and tell them
- No tag backs

11 things about Ben&Katie:

1) We are getting married THIS spring!!
2) We both adore sweet peas.
3)On the weekends we watch Disney cartoons.
4) We met on the 27th of June, 2009.
5) Katie is scared of walking down stairs.
6) Ben is awesome at reading the menus in French out loud.
7) We keep creating new nicknames for each other all the time.
8) We ate snails for the first time in our lives last week.
9) The craziest thing we've ever done together was mountain dog-sledding in Norway.
10) Our favorite thing to do on the subway is riding escalators together.
11) We're having guests from France tomorrow!


Continuing the tag:

Smiley Katia from Kitty Snooks
New Yorker Natalie from The SoHo
Lovely Debbie from Debbiecutieface
Poetic Gina from Contemplating Beauty
Charming Angela from Simply Simple Me
Romantic Laura from Polaroids and Kisses
Wonderful mom Sarah from A Girl in Transit
Stylish Lizzie from Place Clever Title Here...
A fantastic fur hat owner Liv from Liv+Dave=
Sweet Chloe and Dominick from Lazy Explorers
Vintage Enthusiast Jessica from Steve and Jess

This is Ben working on our future big surprise! ;-)

Have fun!

Recently

 I baked cupcakes using a kit from Accessorize - the liners were great, the recipe too, but the icing bag popped and I had to use a spoon to decorate my cupcakes.

 After 3 years I'm finally back to cross-stitching! I find it exciting again :-)

We had snails in garlic butter for lunch last Thursday! Pretty interesting, and it was worth trying :-)

We are planning some big surprises soon, also this week we have guests from France! Stay tuned and have a fantastic week!

it's Friday - I'm in love

 

The Cure - Friday I'm in Love

A card I made for B//Sweethearts from B's mom//Flowers B gave me

Valentine's Day recap

This was a very special day for B and me: it was the first every Valentine's Day we celebrated together (last year boo was in Korea and we celebrated through packages and skype), and... we finally got our wedding date set! Now it's official! We are getting married in April! It wasn't easy: we had to run around Moscow for weeks collecting different papers from various officials. We didn't plan to get everything done on Valentine's Day - but this date was set when we applied online for turning in our papers. I guess it's a good sign! And very romantic.. :-) I was somewhat worried that we missed some detail or document and something would go wrong.. but it was perfect! Now I'm starting to worry about the wedding! :-)

After this very important event we had a huge lunch and celebrated! It's the biggest plate of sushi we've even had! haha Later I had another appointment and we returned home late in the evening: very tired but glad :-) And we announced the winners of our TOYHOP Valentine's Day contest: you can find them on Facebook and we'll post them later on Michael's blog.

What was your Valentine's Day like?

what i wore: more patterns!

what i wore:

cardigan//made by mama; dress//American Eagle - from Ben; tights//babushka at a local market; shoes//lucca

And here's my dear frozen bunny: he was super brave going with me and taking all the shots! Thanks, darling! I love this hat he has - he got it in 2003 when he was on the cross-country team in high school. Isn't it adorable? And guess what? Right now I'm enjoying a dinner he made: creamy pesto potatoes (additional THANK YOU to Ben's mom for the spices and recipe!)

Happy Valentines Day - Our love story!

Hello, this is Benjamin! Because it's February and some of the books I teach out of have Valentine's related material, I got to thinking about unusual love stories and realized that most people go through a lot of crazy things in their lives, especially relating to love and romance.

We're no exception. Whenever someone asks us how we met, we always look at each other and say "We met in Montana, but it's a very long story." There's not any kind of simple answer.

We did meet in Montana. It was summer and I had just graduated from university and Katie came to work at a hotel in my university's town, as part of a work-travel program -- her degree was in hospitality and tourism. That seems normal enough, but it wasn't the first time she had been there. She had also come the previous summer and we'd never met, so it was a lucky second chance. We met through a mutual friend and we were friends immediately, but we never dated.
I liked her a lot but never admitted it.

She went back to Russia and I decided to go to Korea to teach. Two of my friends from college also went to Korea. Because she loved traveling and had an opportunity, Katie came to visit us in April 2010. She and I had written a few emails back and forth and I was really excited to see her when she came, but I didn't expect to feel the way I did the moment I saw her. I remember hearing and disbelieving stories about a "lightning bolt" feeling that people got when they realized that they were meant to be with somebody, but that's absolutely how I felt. She was only in Korea for a couple of weeks, but somehow I suddenly knew that she was the most important person I had ever met.

We wrote back and forth after she went home and decided I would come and visit her in Russia the next summer in July. We spent a week together and then had to wait until Christmas to see each other again. We spent Christmas and New Years in Barcelona and planned for me to come to Russia again after I finished my teaching contract in the spring. It was really hard to be apart, we wrote each other every day and talked through Skype a lot. Thinking back, I still can't believe we survived such a long period of distance, but I'm so happy we did. We were apart from May-July, August-December and then finally January-April. On April 1st, 2011, I left Korea for the last time and came to my Bunnybun in Moscow. We celebrated her birthday on the 3rd and then took a trip to Europe for a month with my parents. Near the very end of the trip, when we were in Stockholm, I proposed and she said "Yes... eventually." :-)

And I guess the rest is history. We started this blog after we got back from Europe!

Since February is the month of love, we'd like to feature your love stories, too!!! Send us your usual/unusual love stories at mulberrymelody@gmail.com and we'll feature them here! Please include some pictures!

Inspired

It's pretty hard for me to find motivation recently, most of the time I feel like nothing makes sense, there's no reason for waking up and such. February in other words :) Today was one of those days when I just sat at the computer, did my work and felt pretty low overall. And then I decided to check the blog, I followed some comment to another blog (you know how it happens) and then another.. and found myself on some fitness-healthy-living blog. And there I discovered this:

Ah! It took me 5 minutes to realize that I needed to stretch and move! Some 20 minutes later I felt relaxed and isnpired! Thanks, Meghan, thanks, Blogger, thanks, Body!

around here

This week I work from home because it is just too hard going out into cold and darkness every morning at 7am. It doesn't mean though that I don't get any fresh air at all - I try to use my lunch break for walking and catching as much sunlight on my face as possible. It's supposed to give me vitamins and make me happier, right? At least it gives me some pictures to share here..

frosty treats

This week is busy.. Work is somewhat tough after a big break. The only good thing is the weather. It's -20C BUT sunny! Sunshine makes my days! It's way lighter now, too. It's already light at 9am and still not dark at 4pm! Finally! Also Bunbun cheers me up all the time. Recently he brought me these cute little macarons. How sweet.. :)

 

Happy Groundhog Day!

Groundhog handler John Griffiths holds Punxsutawney Phil after Phil saw his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter during 126th annual Groundhog Day festivities. Six more weeks!!! Ughhh

white

I found some pictures from back in December.
I can't wait to be able to go have adventures outside again!

 

Till then here's the link love:

Super cute Toy Photo Challenge by Michael TheMonkey

February Desktop Calendar by Christiane

These wonderful photos

This cute buttefly globe

Fantastic chalk letterer Dana Tanamachi

How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds