My favourite kind of evening

Imagine the classical music in the background and the candles on the little table beside me and you have a pretty good picture of my favourite way to spend my evenings at the moment. I discovered puzzles about two weeks ago for my self and haven’t really stopped since. The funniest is that my whole family is pretty enthusiastic about it and they all join from time to time. It’s great!

Presents make me happy

Especially when I am giving them to other people. So when I had some spare things from sorting out my room, I decided to just give them away to random strangers. I set up a little display on a fairly busy street nearby.

Almost twelve hours later, most of it had gone. I love it when a plan works out. :D

A pocket library

I have always dreamt of having my own library. A room just dedicated to reading? Yes please! I think I have just taken a large step away from this but all things considered, it's better this way. Meet my new kindle touch!

I was going to wait until after I finish my exams to order one but I often have an hour or two in the evening and reading seemed like a good way to fill it. Since then, I have discovered the Kindle popular classics. So many books I always wanted to read, for free!I think I might have to make the Mister guardian of the device, just in case. Must not fail exams because I'm reading.

Fresh Guacamole

Nope, not a recipe. I found another short movie I had to share with you. Isn't this awesome?

An ode to a notebook

I have already spent enough time praising my Filofax but its companion has been entirely neglected. This has to be changed, after all the two go everywhere together!

I used to carry little notebooks, small enough to fit into any pocket, which I would fill with shopping lists, to do lists and anything important that I wasn't allowed to forget. Lovingly nicknamed "My Brain", it worked great, in many ways but it also had some serious shortcomings. Keeping dates that way was a nightmare. I'd always forget where (and if) I had noted something down. Once the notebooks were full, I never knew what to do with them but I mainly just them them away. After all, who is interested in a to-do-list from three weeks ago? Not me, that's for sure. Big dreams, plans and goals went into my diary at home, provided I still remembered by the time I reached it and could still be bothered to write it down. Long story short, the small notebooks were great for the hard-to-remember everyday stuff but terrible for big ideas, important developments, deep thoughts and even plain simple remembering a date. Being a freak who loves to write things down, that wasn't a great solution at all.

Here enters the Filofax. It took over the to-do lists and made planning much easier but there was still no space for dreams and thoughts and emotions. The note pages in there just didn't cut it for me, maybe because I am left handed and writing in there can be awkward. Then I met a friend who was carrying a lovely simple black sturdy notebook, which he pulled out during one of our conversations last summer.It was perfect! I don't know why I didn't come up with that idea myself! The next day, I got myself one.

Now, five months later, I have just turned the last page on my first one. Its full of dreams and smiles, hopes and disappointment, lists, poems, notes, thoughts, pep talks, anger, recipes, information and plans. I'm definitely keeping that one, for myself and just in case anybody ever wants to write a bibliography about be. You never know.

more pretty things for the kitchen

On Saturday, I got a very delayed but absolutely lovely birthday present: A collection of biscuit cutters and cupcake molds in all shape and sizes in the brightest selection of colours ever. Thank you so much for it, I can't wait to try them out. :)

The little silicone shapes are for confectionary and since I have never made any of those, this will be exciting new territory to enter. This might have to be put on the agenda for next weekend.

I love the selection of easter themed biscuit cutters ( and I love bunnies all year round ) I might have to whip my icing abilities into shape though to turn these into the kind of lovely treats I am currently imagining.

That thing in the middle is a biscuit press, in case you were wondering. Open it, put the dough inside and then press it shut to get a pattern on both sides. I am really curious if this will work or not. I promise to test it soon.

So, you know where to find me next weekend but before then, I am planning on making a huge tower of pancakes and do my fair share in destroying it. It's pancake Tuesday tomorrow!

A night at the Opera

We had an amazing night out with the greates womanizer of all times and the most awesome chocolate desert I have eaten in London so far. I did try to take some pictures of the dress for you but photographing a black dress by night is impossible. You will have to wait until the weekend when I can take some proper pictures.

 

The Mister in suit and leather coat. Nothing like some contrast in ones outfit.

The Royal Opera house where we saw "Don Giovanni"by Mozart and Da Ponte. One word: Awesome.

My absolutely amazing chocolate desert. Instead of going for a cheap meal out, we decided to treat ourselves and have just desert but pick a nice place instead.

So nice, while we were waiting to pick up our coats, a lady smiled at me and said I had "absolutely lovely hair." Note to self: give more compliments to strangers in public.

The Royal Opera House from the outside. Amazing, isn't it?

Bread for Breakfast!

I'm not normally one for grand shows of emotion in public but when I came past a new bakery this morning, I almost squealed with joy. To all you Germans out there, that might not seem a very exceptional event but here, bakeries are very rare. Most people just buy their bread ( or what they consider to be bread) in the supermarket. It often tastes distinctly of cardboard to me so when I came here over three and a half years ago, I basically stopped eating bread. Very occasionally I'd treat myself to some I found at a farmers market but I just don't get to these often enough. But now, I don't have to! There is a German bakery a few minutes walking distance from my home and its always there, not just Thursday mornings when I'm not around anyway.

I just could not resist and got myself a loaf and some croissants for breakfast for me and the Mister. It wasn't exactly cheap so it will still stay a treat but I've already tried it and it tastes just like I'm used to. Slab some Nutella on it and I'm in breakfast heaven.

heavenly sisters

 I currently have three sister, two biological ones and my japanese "exchange sister". For Christmas, one of my younger sister gave each of us a little angle. The most amazing thing is that they actually resemble us. Mine is the green one, one of my sisters is blond and the other has light ginger hair. My japanese sister of course has dark hair.

The really amazing thing happened when my mother took one look at the little angles and retrieved part of our christmas decoration from the window sill.She already had a matching mother angle!

A little box of treasures

I got this lovely box of treasures from my youngest sister, full of little treats, candies and the prettiest boxes ever. They made suche a pretty collection, I just had to show you. Doens't it look amazing? Thank you so much for it! I have slowly been nibbling my way through it. I want to keep it forever but I know this wasn't the purpose so I will try to draw out the eating process as long as I can.

A joy a day keeps the sadness away.

Do you remember the absolutely awesome advent calender my mother made me last year? Well, I got another one and it is at least as amazing as the last one. Lovingly put together by my mother, it adds some real Christmas feeling to my room and makes getting up in the morning that much nicer as in, I can't wait to get up which, trust, me, isn't the usually we do things around here. She jokingly said that she will probably still be making them by the time she is eighty. You won't find me complaining, I will still be enjoying them by the time I am sixty, I promise. Thank you so much, Mama. You are the best.

Snowflake lights

Even though I have a lovely collection of Christmas ornaments, I am sadly lacking candles so I made these little lights out of things I had lying around anyway. Super easy, cheap and they look absolutely lovely. I plan on keeping them up long after Christmas. They have a winter theme so it's allowed!

If you want one yourself, you will need:

• an empty jar (mine used to contain jam ;) ), no lid needed
• normal printer paper
• a nice ribbon that is long enough to be tied around your jar
• a candle
• a ruler
• scissors

Now, measure the height of your jar and cut a strip of paper as wide as your jar is high.

Fold up the right hand corner such that it meets the left hand edge and cut it off. You now have a square piece of paper. Put the strip of paper aside.

Fold up the lower left corner to the upper right corner.

Fold the upper left corner onto the upper right corner. Now, if your piece of paper is already tiny, skip the next step.

Fold the lower left corner up to the upper right corner again, if this is still more or less comfortably possible.

Now, take out your scissors again and find, on your folded piece, the corner that has the loose ends. This should be your right hand corner, if you followed my steps exactly. Cut this corner off, either in a semicircle or in a straight cut. Both is fine. If you followed my steps all the way, look at the picture to find the right corner. If you didn't do the last step, you have to cut from the upper left corner to the lower long edge.

Now for the magical step: Cut out little triangles from all sides of your folded piece of paper. Make sure you only cut out triangles and don't cut off one edge completely! I tend to just distribute my triangles randomly and try to cut out as many as possible withouth making it too fragile. In the picture, the folded piece is the one next to the scissors.

Open up your folded piece of paper and admire your paper snowflake!

Repeat the steps until you have three different snowflakes of roughly equal size.

Now, tie the snowflakes around your jar using your ribbon. If they really don't want to stay in place, use some glue. Mine where fine without it.

Put in a candle and enjoy. :)

7 things

As every week, seven things I used my hands for today.

I collected some branches,

lit a candle

and combined them into a christmas decoration.

 I also went shopping,

did some work

and worked on my new project. (More on that soon)

Then there was also the mystery project, which isn't to be revelaed quite yet but it involved cutting lots of paper, as you can see here.

South Tyrol

I am back, after some fairytale weeks in Valle Aurina, in South Tyrol. It's been a while since I have spent extended periods of time in the mountains in summer and I had forgotten how gorgeous it is. We spent many days hiking and climbing or just wandering along the valley enjoying the view. I so needed this, after months in London with hardly a sign of summer showing. If you have the big city blues: grab your hiking boots, pack some suncreen and go to the mountains. It frees the head and opens up space around you like nothing else.

Sado

I learned on monday that "Sado" is japanese for "tea ceremony" and translates as "way of the tea".

I am very fortunate to have a japanese exchange sister living with my family who, on top of being a really sweet person, happens to be studying tea ceremonies with her grandfather, one of the remaining tea masters. She put on a ceremony for us and all I can say is: Thank you. It was so interesting even though I'm sure our absolute inability to kneel still for a long time bothered you and thank you for your patience when we did everything all wrong.

 

 

First picture

My camera arrived, I'm so happy. I already snapped a few pictures but this is obviously only the beginning. I want to learn to handle it properly.