Zeitungsente

The duck and I decided to dedicate our newest artistic endeavor to one of our favorite words in German, the Zeitungsente. This colloquial expression for a newspaper hoax translates to ‘newspaper duck.’ I tried to fold one out of a printed-out newspaper hoax story:My origami skills are still mediocre, so I was grateful for the duck’s suggestion to enhance the photo of our newspaper duck with some digital art.
To mark the occasion, the duck turned the leftover newspaper-print paper into a fancy hat and demanded to be addressed as Hauptzeitungsente, the ‘main newspaper duck,’ for the remainder of the day. Of course, I obliged. I’m glad that these seem to be the only shenanigans the Hauptzeitungsente is up to today.

What is your favorite benign (newspaper) hoax story or practical joke?

The reason why our bedroom sometimes smells like toothpaste

It’s spring! The temperatures are getting warmer, and nature’s color scheme is shifting from browns to greens. The birds are building nests, the flowers are starting to wake up, and the spiders are busy plotting how to intrude into your bedroom so that they can crawl into your mouth when you’re asleep (I doubt that that actually happens, but just the idea is enough to send shivers down my spine). The duck and I have a tumultuous relationship with spiders. There was a time when I had told myself that they won’t do me harm enough to actually not mind them, somehow the irrational fear of spiders inside my bedroom returned – possibly when my bedroom had floorboards with gigantic gaps between them; one day I observed a rather big specimen of a spider casually crawling out of the floor and back in again. Yikes! That was the first time my bedroom began to smell like toothpaste. Across the years, the duck and I tried several methods to keep spiders out. Here’s a photo of the duck posing with a few items from our current bye-bye-spider-kit – so that I shall never again awake in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat because I dreamed about a massive spider on the side of the wardrobe (which, I am ashamed to admit, might have been the only nightmare that ever had that effect on me). Anyway, here’s how we attempt to keep our bedroom an insect-free zone:

A small bouquet of paper

It’s no secret that the duck loves gardens and flowers. I like them, too. But I don’t like receiving flowers most of the time. If it’s a single flower or two I appreciate the gesture, but once we’re talking a big bouquet from a flower shop I often find myself wishing that all that money had been invested differently. Also, the duck and I aren’t that great with plants, anyway. When our lovely friend J got us a flower origami set for Christmas, however, the duck and I realized that not all flowers have to be short-lived and we decided to craft ourselves a few flowers that we would not have to care for and might even be able to give away without feeling as if we’d wasted money. After checking the little book of instructions that came with a bright and beautiful stack of origami paper, the duck and I were optimistic that we’d be able to fold at least one or two successful flowers. So, we went shopping, bought some extra supplies and got ready to craft:

Corny Cat Corner

This year is crazy! And things are pretty weird for the duck and me on top of that these days. All this makes us miss having our very special friend around even more than usual. Well, we can still watch her through the window. But that’s not the same as having her lounge around in our bedroom, judging our every move, as she used to. So, the duck and I decided to build a little shrine so that we don’t even have to walk to the window anymore if we want to see a friendly feline face! Unlike the glorious image we had painted in our minds, it turned out very meager. But that’s okay. It still supports us in our quest for limitless laziness, so we’re happy!

This might be our last bedroom beautification broject in a while which is why we decided to be extra specific in our instructions on how to beautifully display your own accumulation of cat stuff (of course you can go with any other theme you like, but, trust me, this works best if you have immense admiration for the subject of your ‘art’ project):

A steady chocolate float ride…

This is the second time I repeat the terribly cheesy sentence that I used way back to describe my experience trying sakura flavored matcha KitKat for the first time. See, others would be ashamed of their corny attempts at fauxetry in describing the simple act of biting a chunk off a chocolate bar. Not us! The duck and I own up to all the weirdness we produce. In fact, we own up to it so much that we decided to adorn one of our leftover candle holders with exactly that: ‘a steady chocolate float ride through a peaceful matcha stream in the middle of (the week-long) cherry blossom season’, in a new installation of our bedroom beautification broject. The duck couldn’t wait for our art project to start. And, to be honest, I couldn’t, either. Being stuck inside and not being able to observe the change of seasons the way we excitedly did in Japan, the duck and I are trying to do what we can to remind ourselves of what the outside world is like (literally! As you can see by the chosen candle holder decoration theme):

Flight of the galaxy paper cranes

The duck and I are spending a lot of time inside these days. Despite our more recent attempts at blaming the season for our nonstop lounging in front of the heater to look out of the window instead of actually going outside, deep inside the duck and I know that the main reason for that is, and always will be, our laziness. Since we are spending pretty much all of our free time in our bedroom the duck and I felt that it was high time for another installment of our bedroom beautification broject series. This time we decided to take the fruit of our continuous (unsuccessful) attempts at improving our paper crane folding skills and turn it into something somewhat pretty. The duck loved cuddling with all those slightly unsymmetrical paper cranes, but after some discussion we agreed that the cranes would be much happier if they were allowed to fly. And what place would be nicer to do so than the doors of our wardrobe (well, I guess the sky, but it’s pretty rainy these days and paper and rain aren’t the best of friends, I think)? This is how our mini bedroom beautification broject turned out:

Day 4: Turning mistakes into tea candle holders

Yesterday the duck and I wrote about how we were unpleasantly surprised when we found out that the Christmas tree scented candle that we had bought in hopes of having found the one Christmas candle that does not smell super sweet did indeed smell like a tiny tree on a mountain of gingerbread (well, I guess they might have advertised it as specifically Christmas tree scented, rather than, say, fir). Anyway, the duck and I took this mild disappointment and turned it into an exciting, somewhat Christmas themed, bedroom beautification broject! See, once the candle was gone and our room smelled like a cookie factory, we thought that we should definitely turn all our former candle containers into tea light holders, to give them another chance at not disappointing us!
This vanilla scented candle (which is a Christmas scent as you can tell by the golden glitter on it) did not look as neat as it does in the picture for long. I wonder what the duck was thinking about, casually looming? Well, it might have had to do with our plans of turning this innocent candle into a not as elegant looking colorful duck-display (keep reading to find out how):

100 memories

Soooo, this seems to be the duck and my 100th post (say what?!). First of all, we’d like to thank our approximately 5 unique readers (mom, thanks for the jam – it’s delicious)!
Looking back at the past few months of insane laziness, it’s kind of hard to believe that we actually wrote so much nonsense and even finished a video we never thought would see the light of day.
To properly celebrate this milestone, the duck and I thought that we should probably further decorate our bedroom so that it is truly worthy of the new royalty that resides in it – with a little photo wall that looks back on those past 2+ years (or, more precisely, the time we spent in Japan when we still managed to post on a fairly regular basis and took quite a few photos more than we do these days)! And, if you like, with our perfect step-by-step guide you can create your very own photo wall that celebrates the duck and my exploits!

To craft this thing that has truly never been done before, the duck and I didn’t need much:

• four small hooks that we ordered online for exactly this purpose
• wool that we found at the bottom of one of our drawers – of course that pretty dark grey would have been our first choice, anyway!
• a few clothespins that have shrunk in the wash (paper clips are an acceptable alternative)
• our beautiful photographs that you can get, too, by taking screenshots and removing the watermarks (just kidding, please don’t ever steal someone else’s art!)

Wow! It’s so easy! Let’s craft:

A beautiful desk light

Do you remember our old pal Cutie-pie? He was and will forever be #1 in our bedroom beautification bproject (and in our hearts) even though he is a rather old fella now. But, in order for him to truly be a #1, there has to be at least a #2 (and I don’t mean the kind you flush down the toilet. Don’t ask me why I went there. The duck and I have had a lot of work and not enough lazing around time to filter our thoughts). This is why we decided to expand the bedroom beautification to our desk lamp, using a pretty floral leftover from our days in Japan, the land of the 100-yen-shops, and the good old internet for some cloudy inspiration.

So, armed with incredibly sharp crafting paper, some super strong string, immensely powerful sticky tape and our trusty crafting scissors, we started to do what we always do when we are bored and have some paper lying around (you don’t even want to know how much fun we had the couple of times we had jobs involving a cash register, i. e. an endless paper machine) – we folded a paper crane:

A new friend

Friends are awesome, especially when you are moving somewhere new. That, for example, was one of the main reasons for the duck and me to move to Tokyo when we were planning our Japan adventure. Fortunately, we did also know a few people in Berlin before we moved here. And we ended up meeting a few lovely new ones, too. One of them was actually introduced to us by our friend Sb whom we went on our Disney Sea adventure with – meet Cutie-pie who came to us all the way from Denmark!

Other than in Tokyo where we knew that we would move out after a few months, we don’t have a set time limit (as of yet) for our glamorous lives in Berlin, so the duck and I have decided that we might as well actually try to spend some time and effort (and money, if we can get over our habits as penny-pinching personality peers) to actually make our bedroom a bit prettier. Well, we will still keep it relatively minimal because, as we’re almost running out of fingers to count how many times we have moved, there is one thing that we have learned in the past few years: moving is a pain in the feathery bottom.
However, we will definitely count this little fella as #1 in our bedroom beautification bproject (and in our hearts). But first we have to free him from his paper prison: