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?

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):

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:

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: