Diana Elle Blog

Happy Holidays! I hope y’all had a wonderful time!   We got to spend Christmas eve with our friends Maria & Alex. They were nice enough to host, we made turkey and they treated us to some lovely dinner, gifts & the kids got to play together. Here are some crappy  blurry phone pictures For my birthday I plan on going ice skating :) maybe I will post some of those pics, for sure you can find them on my instagram/twitter. For New Years Eve, I have invited my friend Rachel over, will cook dinner and then time for some fireworks.  The fireworks here are something else, the Germans love gigantic firecrackers, they are really loud! but a soon as 12 am hits, everything lights up.. last year I got to see this first hand from a hospital window since I had to get my appendix removed. but this year will be better, at least I'll be with my loved ones. Until later,  Diana.

I am so excited that it is almost Christmas, this will be our second year celebrating it in Hamburg. Christmas in Germany is fun, festive, traditional and cold.  Being our second year here we are still not fully aware of how Germans do Christmas, but there are some things I have noticed: Christmas Tree Our "landlords" gifted us a real Christmas tree last year, and they will again this year. The bad thing about this, in my opinion, is that Germans generally put it up and decorate it a day before (or on) Christmas eve. Totally not what we're used to (putting it up at the beginning of the month or end of November) but it's okay, we don't mind. Weihnachtsmarkt Another cool thing about the holidays in Germany are the Christmas markets. They sell food, hot chocolate, glühwein, and a lot of hand crafted Christmas decorations. Every "Weihnachtsmarkt" is decorated with lights, Christmas trees and other ornaments, making it look very festive. :) S...

Rose VoxBox Find this image on Instagram and Like it . As far as I know, I've previously blogged about Influenster and their FREE boxes filled with all sorts of goodies! Valid in the US, you can request an invite, get approved, receive periodic boxes, blog about them. Easy, Request an invite and join in on the fun! My latest box was the Rose VoxBox filled with autumn- themed products and treats. This is what it included: Lindt LINDOR Milk Chocolate Truffles I tried them thinking they would be good, but my God, they were AH-MAZE-ING! I had never purchased them before, but I can assure you they are worth the money! I'm definitely buying some for my family and their Christmas stockings! belVita crunch Breakfast Biscuits I gave it to my mom and she ate it right away... says it was good, tasted like my favorite cookies (barras de coco in sold in Mexico), but they were a little dry. I plan on buying more, so I can give my opinion as well. Dr. Scholl's For He...

We've officially been in Germany for a year I remember my first day here it was hectic at the airport, I had a bunch of suitcases of all sizes and Avi was to little to help carry them, besides, she was in her stroller. I found out that the little carts you usually rent didn't require money, just a quarter, so in it went and I was able to get us out of the airport easily, Once out of the baggage claim, Pablo helped me mit alles . What I didn't know was that if I put the cart back it would return my quarter to me, oh well... you win some you loose some! W e took a train then a bus to get home.  I remember the smell of the apartment when I first got here, how everything was so new, Pablo had a few things in the fridge and we were able to eat a homemade meal as a family for the first time in Hamburg. Life has changed in so many ways over the past year and yet remains the same. Currently: - I am a SAHM, I did an internship earlier this year, but only for 6 mths...

Logistics Hamburg (train to) >  Bremen (plane to) >  Skavsta airport (bus to) >  Stockholm (train to) > Borlange (bus to) >   Falún I really don't think I knew what I was getting into when we started the trip... We spent one day in falun, one in Stockholm, and one in Nyköping. We arrived at night, and as soon as we got off the bus in Falun we started walking around looking for the hotel. Alas, we found it and Chuy was waiting for us outside with two coworker friends..Here's what we did the other three days: Falun We walked around and visited the Coal mines there, but the English tour had been in the morning and there weren't any others for the day so we didn't get the chance to go inside... Plus we didn't have sweaters (only avi did) or jackets and it was at around 5 degrees inside the mine! Instead we bought tickets that would let us explore the area (walked 1.7 km outside the pit) and visited the museum, I enjoyed it, it...

How are you!  Here it is still hot, and sometimes hotter, nothing like what we're used to but still more than what you'd expect in Northern Germany, we are sometimes getting rain but even then, it is immer noch warm! ¡Caliente! Beating the Shine.

I currently have the opportunity to try out   Dr. Scholl's® For Her High Heel Insoles as part of the  Influenster   Paradise Vox Box program. 

I don't think anyone is reading this, so I'm just typing away in case influenster is interested in reading my post about my most recent VOXBOX!!    One day as I got home my mom called me over and let me know I had received a big orange box from Influenster, yay!!  I was very excited since I had heard via twitter and Facebook that it is supposed to be very relaxing  and soothing.  This is the second box I receive, I didn't blog about the first one since I received it last year, during the holidays and I wasn't into blogging back then.

We saved enough money to go on another vacation, this was the first time we didn't have any tours scheduled, in our Easter Break in Holland we had Carmen and Joost and in the Czech Rep we had the  free & paid SANDEMANs tour .  in the end it turned out okay since we bought the Hop On Hop Off 36 hrs tickets in Rome, Venice was walkable and we rode on a vaporetto, and Florence was also a very walkable city and the maps were very detailed. This post  is going to be heavy on the pictures and light on the descriptions. If you want to know anything more about a specific picture, please ask!

Casamundo on  26. Juli 2013 My last day of work was Wednesday  but since I got sick (gastroenteritis) I was unable to attend.. so my real last day of work was Monday! Anyways last week before I got transfered to happycar.de  I had asked my workmates if they wanted me to take lunch for my last day of work as the abschiedsessen..  (since its a tradition to take something to share, usually sweets or so) I offered them Chili dog, Mexican style.. they said yes, except for two of them that are Vegans and decided to make chili sin carne con tofu.  I ended up changing the day to Friday instead of wed. and well.. it was a total success :) The food came out delicious, everybody enjoyed it! As a goodbye present they got me a "I <3 Hamburg" coffee mug some chocolates and a postcard signed by them..  one of the chocolate is flavored "Chili Kirsch" (cherry chili) it is actually a bit ...

I'm doing a short post today, letting you know what I did at work, something excited happened! Although I've already mentioned it before, I'm currently working on SEO , and with that I have to guest post on different sites to boost up our job website.  I had only been doing reciprical links, but recently I decided to go for it. I contaced h ttp://www.enjoy-darwin.com   and offered to guest post. T hey said yes!  My  article is about Dreamlines Cruises and the NT of Australia  you can check it out here: Cruises to Australia Had you heard of Dreamlines Crueses?

Have you ever wanted to win a trip to somewhere, and just never knew how? Well, Ii went looking for some information and I found that Omni Hotel is having a sweepstakes, and it ends August 31st,. This gives you enough time to sign up! I leave you the information here: Omni Hotels & Resorts is running the “ Omni Summer Passport Sweepstakes “! Your chance to win round trip airfare and hotel accommodations for two to your choice of five Global Hotel Alliance destinations! Also, I mentioned in yesterday's post we have our next trip scheduled for August, I'm super excited we will be visiting Italy for the first time . We plan on spending a week there, and will visit four major cities, and are debating what route to take. I have a couple of things to plan for this trip and am really excited to be going on it! If you decide to participate in the sweepstakes I hope you have fun and I wish you good luck!

This is what happens when you have nothing to do, I took the "Where Should You Go on Vacation" quiz and got Paris as my answer, better yet it says I should spend my Christmas there, I think we'll be spending our Christmas vacation in Hamburg this year although we don't have any plans yet.. Paris won't be happening this year, maybe we'll be able to go next year, but for now we have our next trip booked already, I just booked our flights to Italy Where Should You Go on Vacation? from answerbuddy.com ! Now, we have to plan everything we want to do in Italy, we arrive in Pisa on August 14th. Our Plan in Italy Some of the must-see destinations for our first trip to Italy are Rome, Florence and Venice, probably doing 2-3 days in each city. We aren't booking any sights in advance, but we are definitely planning to go in to the Colosseum and the Vatican. Moving within Italy is where the question lies, we will not be renting a car an...

Avi has three weeks off from kita, for summer vacation-I suppose. And Pablo and I have decided to split this time with her. I take the first week since this was Pablo's last week of school before finals, and then he will take the other two weeks (and I go back to work). I took advantage of this time and took her exploring, while Pablo was studying for his first exam. Here's how our week was laid out: Monday After lunch we decided to go outside, so she could practice riding her bike, she has actually gotten pretty good at it, although not enough for both of us to go on a bike at the same time, but she's getting better!  Tuesday We went grocery shopping, but Avi decided she didn't want me to take the stroller and she would take her toy shopping cart instead. So we both had one at the store, and everybody would smile at her when they saw her! By the end of the trip she had cookies, apple juice and strawberries in there. We went on a playdate with other...

We took two days off and visited the city of  Prague. if you haven't visited it, I suggest you go ASAP, it was easily the most beautiful city we have visited to date. Even though we only spent two full days there we were still able to see just about all of the main landmarks. We took an overnight bus (the   big yellow ones  with Student Agency) from Hamburg on Wednesday evening and arrived in Prague on Thursday at 6:30 a.m. First day in Prague We made sure to book our tours with SANDEMANs online before we left. We had a couple of hours free time in the morning, but our itinerary was quite packed. w e had three tours scheduled for the day: the free tour, the castle tour, and the beer tour.   A Museum (w/Harry Potter in the window) We spent the morning visiting an empty old town square.  Then went to find a place to chill and eat breakfast while we waited for our first tour to start. Once it was around time we went to meet with our tour gui...