Marlene Is Here

Our biggest news this week is that Marlene Wessel, our German Exchange Student, came last week. The poor thing had to travel on the day of the terrorist threat in London, but luckily it did not impact her trip. --just the weather did. She was delayed for several hours and didn't arrive into Albany until after midnight!

Marlene is from Brensbach, Germany (near Frankfurt). She is 16 years old and will be a junior at Long Trail School.

I need to get a new picture of her to post as this one is from her exchange student paperwork. She is much cuter in person. She also is a wonderful person and we are all so happy to have her be a part of our family.








































These two pictures of the bedroom that we decorated for Marlene. I wanted something that a teen would like, but something that we could also use as a guest room in the future. Found these comforters at Linens and Things for $25/each and that was the beginning. One of my favorite things about the room are her curtains. Actually, it's a curtain - it is a shower curtain, even attached to the curtain rod by cute shower hooks. I originally was going to cut it in half and shorten it to the lower sill. But, my creative Kinsey put it up as is and it looks adorable. As the craft magazines like to say, it was a great "no-sew" project. We don't have the dresser knobs on yet in these pictures, but we bought some wooden ball knobs, painted them the green wall color and then put on blue polka dots. They are a great finishing touch.

Marlene has also done a great job of making the room her own. She brought many pictures from Germany and wanted to put them on her walls. We bought some 12 x 12" cork tiles, glued them to the walls and she hung up all her pictures on them. I'll have to take a picture of the wall and picture art because it really looks good.