Thursday, January 31, 2013

Be thankful

Thanks to a very good friend of mine I am trying to be more thankful.

He reminded me of how lucky I am to be who I am, to be able to do the things I want to, to be able to think about others, to be able to live the life I am living.


People need to take more time being thankful for everything they have. 

I was frustrated because on that day everything seemed to be going wrong. Literally everything. At least I thought so. I missed my train, my bus, wrote a bad test (at least I thought so - it felt so bad), let things fall down, spilled my drink.....

So what if I miss my train? I can take the next one ten minutes later. It doesn't matter if I come to school ten minutes later. I should be thankful I can go to school. Thankful I have enough money to use the train. Thankful my body is capable of running to the train instead of being sick. Thankful I am actually able to think about how much this missed train affects my life instead of thinking whether I will survive this day, get enough to eat and drink, see my family and friends.
Same goes for the bus. So what?
The test turned out a whole lot better than I expected. I should believe in myself more.
Oh well, things fell down and spilled. Keep it together felilu! Geeeez.

I am thankful for being healthy, having amazing family and friends, time (!), enough money to live a great life... (wow. I'm one of the 8%...).

Thank You God.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Photo Project: "New"

I love finding new things (another one for my I love... posts)



The new thing in my life right now is meeting two friends at a café and playing a game. First of all it was the first time we three met up and second of all: playing games at a café/restaurant. So cool! It was great and we all decided we'd have to do it more often.

In spring we'll take our bikes on the train and ride out into the country to do a reeeeeally long bike trip. The three of us plus our bikes and my camera - it's going to be awesome. And new :) 

New friends, new things to do with them, new photography location in all of the beautiful fields out there.

I'm excited already. But right now I even if nobody else is... am enjoying the cold weather. I prefer snow but hey - you can't have everything can you?

Recipe: Orange Chicken

So the other day we wanted to cook one of our favorite recipes: General Tso's Chicken.

We came back from food shopping and realised we forgot the ginger. Since we were definitely too lazy to go back we decided we had to cook something else.

So onto Pinterest I went. I found this amazing recipe on my Snacks & Main Dishes board.

It looked interesting and I had pinned it ages ago so I thought we could give it a shot since we had already cut the chicken.
We tweaked it a bit since 1) we don't have a slow cooker and 2) I can't follow recipes.

Ingredients:

500g chicken breast (cut into bite-size pieces)
sunflower oil
juice from 3 oranges
3 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp salt
pepper
4 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 egg
3 tbsp cornstarch
750 ml water
+ rice

Heat up a pan with sunflower oil (better for frying than olive oil). Meanwhile mix the orange juice, ketchup, 1/2 tbsp salt, brown sugar, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar in a small bowl. Mix the egg with the cornstarch in a larger bowl and add some salt and pepper. Dip the chicken into the egg mixture and start frying it in the pan. When the chicken is lightly golden brown, add the ketchup-orange sauce to the pan. As soon as it starts a-cracklin', pour in some water. Repeat this process until the chicken is completely cooked and serve with rice.

Done ! And it tastes reeeeeally good!

Have fun and tweak the recipe if you can't follow them like me ;)

Monday, January 28, 2013

I Love...

...being able to wake up to him in the morning. Not every morning, but sometimes... <3


Thursday, January 24, 2013

Acts of Kindness

Exactly what I want to do. These random acts of kindness. Whether they are for friends, for family or for strangers. Especially before Christmas I was in the mood to do good things. To show kindness, that's being showed way too little.

One of my favorite bloggers just posted a little story of "seeds of kindness"

And just the other day I sent a lollipop to one of my closest and most important friends...He had been telling me how he couldn't sleep and didn't really have enough energy. He was tired and I felt bad for him. So I sent him a little lollipop that gives him energy due to the dextrose in it. It just felt good doing it. I wrote a little note but I didn't write my name. The next day he thanked me and said he couldn't think of anyone else that would be so kind (and crazy) and just send him a lollipop out of nowhere. Ok. I asked him for his address a day before and wrote about something we had just been talking about. But it made me happy.

I am going to do this more often.

Last year I randomly sent some flowers to my grandmother - gee was she happy about those! And it felt good.

People should feel good like this. Maybe do some more kind things. It could also just be to hold the door for someone or to pick up something that fell down. Here is a little video that's quite inspiring:
If you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own (The original was found on Facebook but since I can't relink that here - here is my version ;))

Be Kind. Keep acts of kindness alive and make people happy!


Monday, January 14, 2013

To Do

Ok. So of course my to do list changes about every hour, but there are a couple of things that are important enough to write them down here. Just to keep track of all the things I want, need, have to do !

- finish mom's dress (buy the last materials for it)
- finish my room
- cook more, spend less money at school
- study for tests
- improve business English skills
- decide on my costume for Karneval

that's pretty much it for these next couple of weeks...but I hope I will actually achieve all my goals for once. We'll se!

Sunday, January 13, 2013

I Love...

Week 2

....candles & light.


For me, all kinds of shapes and sizes, places and times light comes in are the most fascinating things. It doesn't matter if it's the clouds that look special when the light is shining on them in different ways, or candles that can light up a whole room and no matter where they are, it automatically becomes cozy, romantic and comfortable.

This post and especially this quote is dedicated to my best friend from outofpeonies.



Saturday, January 12, 2013

Recipe: Waffles

This morning I woke up and thought "Gee, would I love some waffles today!". But unfortunately, just like my sister did, I had to realise that I barely have food let alone the right ingredients for the things my mind randomly comes up with...
Fortunately I have a room mate who also doesn't have everything but she has things I don't have and the other way around - so we get along ;)

So due to lack of ingredients I changed the recipe I found on the internet:

Plain ol' Waffles (enough for two people) :

150g flower
100g butter (I mixed in liquid butter to 50g of soft normal butter)
50g white sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 pck vanilla sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp sour cream
3 drops of bitter almond flavor
1 cup of warm milk
1 pinch of salt

and even with mixing the ingredients I didn't follow the instructions. I was supposed the mix the milk, the butter and the eggs together first and then add the rest.

I did not read the instructions and just stacked the flower, butter, egg, sour cream, sugars, baking powder and salt on top of each other, made the dough with my hands and then added the milk. Don't ask. I guess I just can't seem to be able to follow directions...

I used a Tupperware product called the Quick Chef to mix the dough and the milk. It worked quite well. By the way - at the end of the month I'm having a Tupperware party at my house. It's going to be so fun! I will tell you how it went.

When the dough was ready I just turned on the waffle maker and tadaa - impressed my boyfriend who thinks I can't cook or bake ;) Ha! Told ya so.

Again there are no pictures because for one 
I wasn't planning on them to turn out well. 
And he said the recipe itself were more important 
than pictures....Sorry for that. Next time - I promise!

Edit: Here are some pictures  :)



Friday, January 11, 2013

Picture Project: happy

I'm happy. Just because I live in an amazing city with the most awesome stores and sights! And because right now I have a lot of time for myself...the blog, crafts, thinking, cleaing up (my apartment and my mind), settling down and for being happy! And I am thankful for the best friend in the world! (And that is meant both ways ;) )

oh...and I'm happy because it's starting to snow again!!!!

 
all pictures were taken with my phone
(my camera is gone for the next two weeks!!)




Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Photo Project

This is my new project: I will take a picture with a certain promt word on these days:



Tuesday, January 8, 2013

To Sew


                                    some more of these (just to have on hand)                         

for a hopefully endless summer
this awesome thing...in more than one color (?) for all kinds of events
this cute thing just to pimp my sweater
this beauty for a chic summer

this awesome one to party

this cool thing for my pregnant aunt !

this big thing for school

this or...
...this for my notebook (duh!)

this pretty one to have something pretty to go out with

this for traveling home

this for summer trips to the park



something like this for my mommy (needs to be finished next weekend!!!)


and something for our bathroom
But these are plans for the whole year...so we'll see how many of them I actually make!!




Porzellanfräulein

We used to have this awesome place in the town we lived in where you can pick your piece of pottery, different colors of paint and design it yourself. They glaze and fire it for you and you can pick it up a couple of days later. It was called Color Me Mine. It was my favorite place for my birthday parties when I was little.

Now I'm not little anymore but I always remembered it an wanted to go there again. Guess what?! They have it here in Hamburg, too!! It's not quite as big and it's quite new, but it's perfect!! It's called Porzellanfräulein here and I've already been there twice.
Thr first time I went with my room-mate and we were lucky that we were there early. We stayed there for five hours and I still wasn't done with my one plate...so I took some paint and my plate home and finished it. Went there again a week later - alone - and sat there for about six (?) hours and enjoyed m the silence and just sitting there by myself with nobody who wanted to go home or anything. Just me, my pottery and peace and quiet....it was great!

phone photo
phone photo