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):
Candles
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):
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Day 3: Christmas candles – y so sweet?
Phew! The duck and I really shot ourselves in the foot yesterday, all for a stupid joke. In order to counterbalance our essay on the Baker’s Dozen of must-try German Christmas treats, today’s post is going to be a short one… about our favorite tea companion: scented candles. We mentioned in our teanalasys that we used to like sweet scented candles. Well, same as our taste in tea, the duck and my taste in candles has changed throughout the years so that we are now trying to avoid them at all costs (well, the very sweet dessert scented ones, anyway). However, come Christmas time, we just need our Christmas related candles. With this being the season of baked cinnamon apples and Spekulatius it seems almost impossible to catch hold of one that does not smell like we live in a candy factory.
Some weeks ago the duck and I were super excited to have discovered a Christmas tree scented candle. ‘That sounds nice’, we thought, ‘nature usually doesn’t smell too sweet’. When we lit it for the first time, however, we had to realize that this Christmas tree was decorated with about a million gingerbread people when the candle-scent-collector (that’s an accurate and totally existent job title!)
dropped by to record the scent so that it could be replicated in a little green candle that we would excitedly buy at a grocery store a few years later (capturing and reproducing Christmas scents is a very exhausting and time-consuming process, the duck and I heard). Oh, how we wish that this tree had stood in a plain old forest instead! But the candle is bought and it will be used – there’s no way the duck and I, being proud representatives of the tightfisted transaction troupe, will let a perfectly good candle go to waste. We even bought some more Christmas candles, like one of those rare vanilla scented ones, because our love for Christmas is stronger than our hate for candles that smell so sweet that you wouldn’t even want to eat them if you could- and because we have plans! More on that tomorrow.
The Duck in... side 