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Winter Wonderland

Mike wished for snow, so I fully blame him for what is going on outside right now.

I tried to introduce Penny to the snow on our balcony. She was interested, but mainly wanted to sit in the doorway letting all the cold air in.

Finally I got impatient and tossed her out there (I'm so cruel!) She stared for a moment and acted like she didn't know what to do, and then she ran back inside. So much for new experiences.

I told her this might be her last glimpse of snow, but she didn't seem too concerned. She'd much rather observe the snow out the window from the safety and warmth of our apartment.

I know just how she feels.

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Tessa's Cards

This blog's purpose is to keep my loved ones updated and to share photos.

But I have also wanted a place to share my growing collection of postcards.

I decided to start a separate blog to share all of the postcards I have collected.

If you are interested in that sort of thing, you can check it out.

I've gotten a little crazy about it lately, but it's a lot of fun and it's good to have a hobby, as long as it doesn't break the bank...

We are spending the holidays with Mike's family.

I wish I could see all of you for Christmas. Maybe next year. But I hope you have a really great holiday, wherever and with whomever you are celebrating it.

Love,

Tessa

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My Font

I created a font from my own handwriting today. It was pretty straightforward, but because I'm a perfectionist it took me a little longer to make sure I got it just right.

This is what it looks like:

Now I can use it to personalize things like my website banner or cards and letters. I don't have the prettiest handwriting, but it doesn't really matter, I still think it's cool.

I thought I'd share how I did it since it was pretty simple and fun. If you want to make a font from your handwriting it's easy:

1. Visit YourFonts.com.

2. Print out the template and carefully fill in your letters. (It's important to make sure they line up straight!)

3. Scan the template and upload it to YourFonts.com.

4. Preview your font, and if you like it download it and follow the instructions to install it.

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The City of Lights

I've been super lazy lately and never got around to posting about the rest of our honeymoon. To my thousands of readers, I apologize.

Now that it's been so long, I don't really feel like writing about it, but here are the rest of the photos from Montenegro, Croatia, and Austria, if you are interested.

For Thanksgiving Mike and I made a quick little trip to Paris, France. Coming from the U.S. I have been exposed to a lot of negative ideas about France, so I didn't have very high hopes for our trip.

I am happy to say that the French were friendly and that Paris was beautiful, albeit very, very cold. Sightseeing in November is a little stupid, and I wound up catching a cold, but I'm sure if we had gone at a nicer time we would have never stuck it out in the long lines and gotten to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

We didn't have time for everything, so I decided on a few things that I wanted to see: The Eiffel Tower (of course), the Arc of Triumph, the Notre Dame, and the Catacombs.

Sometime I would love to go to the Louvre, but we just didn't have enough time for that.

When I first saw the Eiffel Tower during the day, I thought, "That's it?". It was a tall metal thing and didn't really impress me. But when we came back at night, it was beautiful. They had blue lights reflecting off of it and for ten minutes every hour all the bulbs would twinkle. Mike and I took advantage of the short lines because of the cold temperatures and went to the top. It was a lot higher than I imagined and I was very scared to take pictures because I imagined my camera blowing away in the wind.

The Notre Dame was nice. I really like cathedrals because I can't imagine the amount of work that went into building those things. Can you believe the Notre Dame took 200 years to build?

The Catacombs were creepy. We were the only ones when we started walking down the long corridor in the old caves and it was so scary! When we finally got to the part with all of the bones, I wasn't so scared because other people were around, but it was still very creepy. When the cemeteries of Paris became too crowded, they moved the bones to these old caverns.

We also took a boat tour on the Seine. Luckily the boat was covered so we didn't freeze to death!

Overall, I thought Paris was nice and enjoyed our little vacation for Thanksgiving. We were lucky enough to get to have a Thanksgiving meal earlier in November that was made by my friend Sarah. It was so nice having pumpkin pie and she was an amazing hostess and cook.

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Belgrade

Our last night in Budapest we were a little tired and cranky. We had no hostel and a train around midnight to catch so we had nothing to do. It was cold at the train station, but we tried to sleep.

Our night train was too short, so we were tired when we arrived in Belgrade, Serbia.

I've noticed that when taking trains one usually sees the worst parts of a city beside the railroad tracks. This was especially true in Belgrade where we saw areas filled with little shacks and piles of trash where gypsies were living.

We only intended to spend the day in Belgrade as we had a night train planned to Montenegro. Therefore, we had no hostile to stay at. Getting off the train at 6am in Belgrade we were tired and a bit intimidated.

Belgrade is definitely not as tourist-friendly as Budapest. There is a lot of work left to do.

We attempted to book a hostel so we could rest for the morning even, but the hostel was a bit unfriendly and so we decided just to walk to the main sight in the city, which was the Kalamegdan Fortress.

Luckily for us the sun started shining and it was a great day. We spent all of it sitting in the park at the fortress: reading, napping, and taking pictures.

I felt a bit like a homeless person sleeping in the grass with my backpack, but I was so tired that I didn't care.

The views from Kalamegdan were beautiful of the Danube and the Sava rivers crossing. The fortress was from when Belgrade was a Roman city.

I always find these old fortresses interesting. They went to such great lengths to build these protected cities up on the hills. It's really quite amazing to imagine all of the work that went into it.

This statue is called the Pobednik, which means the Victor in English. It was erected after WWI and placed at the Kalamegdan Fortress instead of in the Republic Square where the statue of the rider is because people complained about the nudity.

Mike thought it was neat that there were so many old men playing chess in the park and I really enjoyed a chance to eat some baklava!

That night we asked for directions to a movie theater and then watched The Rocker because it was the only movie they had in English. It was kind of lame but cute and it killed time.

In the end, we felt lucky that our day had gone so well, but we were happy to board our train that night and say goodbye to Belgrade.

***edit*** Mike tells me that we saw the movie in Budapest. Apparently this vacation has all become a blur to me because it was so long!

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