Yesterday evening, I went out to take some outfit shots. It's - finally - warm here and I love wearing summer dresses. As it turned out, taking self-portraits isn't the easiest task. There were quite a lot of outtakes but I ended up with some pictures I really liked. Here they are :)
outfit details: dress: vero moda shoes: minnetonka necklace: thrifted
I missed those quiet summer evenings outside. The light is just beautiful and everything is peaceful :)
#2: Cheesecake!
I love to eat cheesecake. And I love to make it as it is very easy and quick. The main difference between American and German cheesecake is that we use something called quark instead of cream cheese. I found a quark recipe online in case anyone wants to try it.
I like to add fruits (cherries, mandarines, in this case red currants) to the dough to make it more summery :)
Yesterday I decided to sew a bag. Today I finished the last bits and pieces. Here's the very first bag I designed and created. I fell in love with the Kokka Echino fabric the minute I saw it. I envisioned an everyday bag that would be suitable for shopping trips, adventures with friends and university life.
It is roomy yet not too big. The pink fabric I used for the straps and the top of the bag is from IKEA. It's really sturdy and I love the color!!
I talked my mom into quilting the upper part of the bag. She quilted my name, too. I love those little, personalized details about handmade <3
This was also the first adjustable strap I made. I strongly recommend to have another bag with adjustable straps near by, as it is quite confusing how to sew it.
I added several pockets to the inside. There's also a chain to which one can clip a key chain or something to find it easier [it sometimes takes me minutes to find my keys. My bags are rather messy, to be honest].
Yet another echino fabric (my absolute favorite!!!). I also printed out a tutorial on how to sew hidden pockets. It wasn't as difficult as I had imagined :)
I also made a tissue holder from some of the scraps. Next week I'll sew a little matching zipper bag to store little bits and pieces like lipstick, chewing gum etc.
Last but not least, I wanna thank for mom for being a really helpful teacher and assistant ;) If she hadn't taught me all the special techniques and gave me advise on how to do things this bag wouldn't have turned out nearly as neat as it did.
In other news, I'll go to Cologne and Frankfurt for the next 3-4 days. So it will be rather quiet around here in the next couple of days.
Happy sewing :)
Today I'm introducing a new feature: 30 recipes before 21
I'm one of those persons who can't resist a book full of tasty-looking cupcakes, delicious meals and cool decorated tables. Also, I've been hoarding recipe books of all kinds just because I liked the photographs. Some of the books are still new but I think that has to change. So I wanna try 30 new recipes before I turn 21 on April 6, 2012 (21 sounds scary. and so much older than 20). This feature will (hopefully) increase my cooking skills. I love baking but cooking? Uhm... let's say I'm fine with eating cereals, toast and bread all day lol.
So here's #1: OATMEAL COOKIES:
I mixed three different recipes together.
Ingredients(approx.): 175g butter, 200g sugar, 1 egg, some water, vanilla extract, 400g oatmeal, 120g flour, some salt, some cinnamon
I mixed all the ingredients together until the dough looked just about right. It turned out to be waaaaaaaaaay too much dough. We probably had about 60 cookies. I suggest using 1/2 the recipe. or even less. I added some cinnamon to make it taste more interesting. One could also add raisins but certain people in my family (I) don't like raisins too much so I made 'plain oatmeal cookies'.
They tasted great and we like to eat oatmeal cookies especially in summer, as there's no chocolate that will melt and stick to the fingers and they are still tasty after a week or so. But as I said, half the recipe would've been enough.
Any cool cooking/baking blogs you wanna share? My favorite one is Emma's Food Coma blog. I'll try some of her delicious-looking recipes in the near future. And her blog reminds me that I gotta work on my 'taking pictures of food' skills.
I've caught a pretty bad cold yesterday. I've spent the day sipping tea and knitting.
May I introduce you to the Calais Shawl (aka the 'green monster' as it gets bigger and bigger). A friend recommended the pattern as it is simple to memorize. This is my first lace project and so far I really like it. So if you are somewhat afraid of knitting lace (like I used to do), give it a try it's not as bad as everybody says :D
My mom asked me to take pictures of the shawl she knitted during our vacation in Egypt. Here's an outtake of the 'photo shoot'. A human model is much easier to handle than a cat model :D
Can't wait to finish my green monster and block it so I can start a new lace project :)
My parents have several old SLR cameras. My dad has a Nikon FE film camera that he doesn't use anymore. I officially stole it today :)
He has lots of lenses, filters etc. for it, too. I'll play around with them in the near future :)
Can't wait to have my first roll developed!!!
To me, summer means having time to art journal. I was considering re-taking Kara's Summer of Love Class but then I stumbled upon Elise's Summer Minibook. Shipping to Europe would've probably taken a week or two and I didn't feel like waiting. Soo I decided to make my own minibook:
I named it Sweet Summer 2011 because a) summer is sweet and b) I plan on trying lots of new recipes this summer. I cut down a bunch of paper leftovers to fit the photos (their size is 17x11.5cm - pretty awkward to work with). Here's what I made so far:
Left page: the first self portrait of the summer.
Right page: I wrote the text in open office and printed it on a 17x11.5 (light yellow) cardstock.
Left page: another self-portrait
Right page: I couldn't decide what to do with this pretty paper. So I just left it blank.
Left page: In Germany, seniors have costume days the last couple days of school. The motto was "back to the 50's" and there's a picture of some friends and me.
Right page: I 'stole' a couple of color charts at an American hardware store a couple years ago. I love using random things in my scrapbooks.
Left page: I glued two color charts to back. On this one I wrote my current likes.
Right page: I printed a mixing tape onto an transparency and attached it with an index tab to the envelope. I also stamped a flower on the envelope to fill the empty space. I really liked the idea of using envelops in the album. In this one, I will put some playlists.
Left page: Another flower stamp to pretty up the envelope. I punched the holes on the side where the envelope opens because that way it is closed (nothing falls out) but I can add more playlists later on.
Right page: Blank page
On the last page I tried one of the new embossing folders I got for my birthday. I love it. I'll probably change the order of the pages as I keep adding new stuff. And I'll probably add more pages.
Unfortunately, I don't have any big binding rings (didn't find a German shop where one can buy them. Only tiiiiny ones that won't even hold five pages together =/)
I recently ordered some jewelry making supplies online which I intended to use in art journals.
But why not make a couple of cute, vintage-looking necklaces and earrings? Here's what I came up with:
Cute bird, sewing machine & camera? And a vintage look? I like!
I don't have any of those fancy jewelry making tools. My list of materials is quite simple:
1. a nice cup of coffee/tea, nice weather and a cozy place in the garden.
2. a tablecloth (it prevents things from falling down), some pliers(I recommend to clean them. The ones I found were quite dirty...) and some pendants, necklaces etc.
You can always use old necklaces, earrings etc. and use the materials to make new, handmade beauties.
I got all these from a dawanda.com shop
I like to keep my jewelry rather simple, so I usually only use one charm/earring.
These are also cute, little gifts. If you don't want to invest money in charms etc, you can also use buttons, little thrift store finds, pompoms and small fabric elements like yo-yos and small flowers.
Happy crafting!
We're back from Egypt and we've had a great time. There were so many experiences I made and interesting cultural differences I observed that I decided to write a somewhat in-depth report of our trip. If you have any questions, just drop me an e-mail or comment here and I'll try to answer them :)
I was strongly advised not to take my expensive DSLR with me to Egypt so all pictures were taken with a point-and-shoot camera(Canon PowerShot SX200IS). Sorry for the rather plain pictures.
We booked a one-day trip to Luxor at our hotel. Luxor is about 280km away from Hurghada but it was a 4-hour drive (due to the speed limits, as seen below)
The drive through the Sahara was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. Our guide had warned us that it would be a boring drive and that we should sleep but we're glad we didn't follow his advise. The Egyptian desert is made out of stone. and some sand. But pretty much just ruff rocks and hills. Along the way, we saw many Bedouins. They build their 'houses' (made from wood and palm leaves) close to the highway. I found in interesting that they hall had electricity. In the desert. Not something a European girl would've expected. Our guide told us that in Egypt more or less ALL people have electricity because it's so cheap. Along the highway, there were aerial masts every 5-10km. So there was complete network coverage in the desert(at least along the highway). I guess technology has strongly improved the lives of the people living in the desert.
We drove along the Nile the last 60km. All the peasants live along the Nile as that is the only part of the country where one can grow crops. We were told that about 35% of the Egyptians are peasants and that they are the lowest class. Poverty was well visible, as seen in the picture above. They build their houses out of Nile mud. Fortunately, it doesn't rain often over there. Don't think building houses out of mud would be a good idea in rainy Germany...
The farmers live in the same house as their animals. Also, they have no waste management thus they throw all their waste on top of their houses or in front of it. Which does not give a nice picture. In Egypt, people don't pay taxes as long as their house is not completely built. As a consequence of this stupid law, hardly any houses are finished. In Hurghada, about 2/3 of the houses were halfway done. Even some huge hotel complexes are still under construction, although there are guests staying there and the main buildings are probably about 20-30 years old already.
Another interesting fact our guide told us was that all the hotels in Hurghada belong to three rich families. This makes sense as only 2% of the population is rich, 8% belong to the middle class and the other 90% live in poverty.
Our first stop in Luxor was the Karnak Temple, which is probably the most famous Egyptian temple. There, much of the original colors are still visible. It was also impressive how huuuge the temple is. On pictures, it looks rather smallish but once inside, wow. The temple was built over a long period of time as each pharaoh added something.
Most archaeological work takes place in the winter but we got to see how Egyptians restore the floor of a small part of the temple. All the tourists were sweating because it was 40°C+ (and there was hardly any shade... so add another 20°C) and they were working there, looking fresh like always.
There were soo many statues, it was impossible to remember the names of the pharaohs they represented. But they sure were impressive when standing right beneath them.
It's not too visibile in these pictures, but the pillars in the temple were gigantic. Unlike Greek pillars, they were rather bulky. It's amazing how the people were able to carve them and transport them to the temples thousands of years ago.
Okay, we should practice taking self-portraits some more. And looking good in 50°C+ is not easy, so excuse our red faces.
The trip also included a short boat trip on the Nile. The Nile was much bigger than I had expected (I guess just about everything in Egypt was bigger than I had imagined...) but the trip itself was rather boring. Okay, we got to see some banana plantations but no crocodiles (as they only live south of the Aswan Dam).
Next up was the Valley of the Kings. Taking pictures was prohibited buuut it was totally worth seeing. It was so impressive how BIG those graves are. They are all carved deep in the mountains. As there is no light and no rain down there, much of the original colors is preserved.
The last stop was at the Hatshepsut Temple. We went there in the evening, so there was no light inside the temple but standing in front of it was amazing with the sun behind the mountains :)
The view from the temple was really worth climbing all those stairs. One could see the green Nile valley and the mountains of the Sahara behind it. The contrasts in the country are so beautiful. Landscape wise it is one of the most beautiful countries I've ever seen.
