DIY: Pencil Holder

Another easy decorative idea.  I like do it yourself stuff which is done in some minutes and right after the idea came into my mind. And I like practical stuff.

The only things you need are an empty, cleaned jam jar which is big enough for pens and pencils, a decorative paper and a old present bow. Oh and a scissor to cut it in the right size. No glue, no expensive stuff, just the things you can find. Et voilá!

Like so many cranes...

The Wall: As Fall Goes By

Balcony Tomatoes

I never ever want to live in a city again without having a balcony (or a garden!). This spring I spend a lot of time digging in soil. Planting flowers. Sowing seeds. Waiting. Being patient. Watering. I loved it! Spending time on the balcony felt like holiday. I also really like the idea of being able to plant your own vegetables. 
So one project were the tomatoes. We had seeds but the plant did grew really slow at first. But then I spend some weeks somewhere else and when I came back it was really high. Still there were no blossoms on the plant... So we were waiting again. Did fight against plant louses. And then there were blossom and suddenly small green balls, yeah, tomatoes! But as it was late in summer already, there was less sun every day... So we did harvest them green. Put them on the window sill with an apple. Nothing happened for a while, until I read that. So I did put the tomatoes in a box, wrapped them in newspaper and put them unter a shelf. And some days later I check and it worked!

Wide Sky and Kites

I am late with the autumn posts, so here are a bunch of them..!
Not posting meant there was a lot of things happening or I was lazy, somehow it was both... That seems positive as I was not distracting myself too much... which doesn't mean I was focused either... Well.
I haven't been flying kites since years!! So that was my special wish for my birthday in October. There is this old airport area in the middle of Berlin where you meet many more kites and people enjoying the wide area in the middle of the city.

DIY: Coloured branches

If you want to be creative and bring some nature in your home this is something nice. While painting the branches or painting a pattern on it you can enjoy the concentration on doing just this one thing. I thought it was really relaxing and calming painting the branches.
So first you have to collect some branches or drift wood. Then you can paint them as you like. Drift wood is especially nice cause it has no treebark left. I took acrylic paint which vanished a little bit on the branches which I had on the balcony. Still it looks nice. These shown on the picture are decorating the bathroom.

Selfmade Hummus

This is a thing I wanted to try out for so long and it's really easy!
A friend of mine gave me this recipe.
You nead

1 can chickpeas (just leave a little bit of the water)

3-4 spoonfull of tahini

1-2 garlic cloves

1-2 lemons

olive oil 

salt

Mix it all together and wait 2 hours. Then put in on bread or in a sandwich.

About weakness

I have been ill last week and stayed at home some days. What I hate about being ill is to cancel appointments and to call in sick. I always ask myself: Am I really feeling so bad that I am not able to do that? Because sometimes it's difficult to answer the question. Sometimes you just have to do things. Sometimes other people may get angry because of your cancellation. All this thinking and missing work or appointments always makes me feel bad about being ill. It's more relaxing when you definitely know that you are too ill to leave your bed...
But in the end it's always a decision about yourself and your own health and wellbeing. And in the end no one would like to make you suffer by not letting you stay at home. Usually people are nice and caring when you are sick. But it always seems like an excuse to me, cause you need reasons for your sickness.
But what you actually need is time to get better. Time without excuses. Time for yourself.

While being ill we have to deal with our weakness. Our body is not as strong as it is supposed to be. That's probably why we don't like being ill. It's in the times when we are pushed down by others, when you are losing, when we are sick that we are feeling weak. In society weakness is something negative which is not talked a lot about. We have to be strong, we have to work, no matter what. So we often ignore the signs of weakness.
The same happens when it comes to mental illness. People who have mental stress and difficulties are very often considered as weak.So illness can be even worse when other people can't see that you are struggling, cause it's happening inside of you. And it always seems that you need excuse for that. But actually you don't.
For me, saying that you are feeling weak and need a break, need someone who cares for you, need something which helps you, is always about being able to talk about your own needs. But before standing up for your needs you have to know what your needs are.

Beside that, feeling weak doesn't mean that you can't be strong. Feeling weak is a part of life. Life is fragile and if we do not accept weakness we do not accept real life. Everyone has made the experience of being weak. But no one wants to be weak. It's just sometimes you are weak because you were strong for too long...
And isn't it strong to admit that you are weak? Isn't weakness showing that you are a human, that you are vulnerable and fragile. Accept weakness and it will change into strength....Do not ignore the sign, maybe the weakness is telling you something about your needs.

DIY: Treasure Map

For my work with children I always need new ideas to make up exciting stories. Usually I think of things I have at home anyway and how I can use them to do something by myself.
So one evening I ran out of ideas, so my boyfriend and me were brainstorming and finally he came up with this idea: Making a message in a bottle and creating a treasure map with the help of stamps. We really had fun to make the treasure map by painting and stamping pirates, ships and a treasure. Coffee, burned edges of the paper and crumpling the whole thing made the look complete. I haven't done that since my art class back then in school.

The task for the children was to "read" the message in the bottle. It can be read as a short comic-story about pirates on a ship who come to an island, where a monkey gives them a treasure map. In the end they went for treasure hunting. Afterwards the kids could "write" down their own messages or stories with the stamps. That was also an exercise to practice fine motor skills.
Of course I pretended to have found the message in the bottle at the beach and that the treasure map is really old and should not be touched, otherwise it would fall into a million pieces.

Plum Crumble Cake

Autumn time is harvest time. When I am at my fathers house I use to help him harvesting the plums from the trees in the garden. We put up a ladder to reach the ones we can't pick from the ground. Sometimes the leaves are wet from the rain and it's misty around the garden. The plums are quite sweet and tasty. He uses to make jam out of them. This year I am not home for harvesting plums by myself.
Still I wanted to bake a plumcake,

so here is the recipe:
Beat 1 egg, 80 g butter, 80 sugar and a little bot of vanilla sugar until the mixture is fluffy.
Add 200 g flour and half a teaspoon baking powder.
To make the dough softer add 4 spoons of milk and 2 spoons of rum.
Put the dough in a form and place the cutted plums without the pit on it.
For the crumble (streusel) mix cold butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon, the mixture will crumble by itself if you are lucky. Sprinkle the streusel over the cake and put it in the oven for about 40 minutes. I did in a gas stove, so I can't give any exact information about the heat. In general I use to improvise a lot when I cook or bake.

First times

On the weekend I had a discussion about questions like: When was the first time you listened to this song?  Sure, most of us remember the first kiss or the first own appartement. But do you remember the first time you did pet a cat? Or the first time you realized what you want to work? Can you remember the first time that you realized that people have different skin colors? When was the first time you realized that you are a boy/a girl? Can you remember the first time you were able to stay up until midnight?

It's about the time when interest forms itself.
A lot of first times occur to you when you are a child. So thinking about first times is also about how you grew up. When and why did a certain interest for something start? Which opinions and views on the world you had and have and when were the first times that opened up or broke down these views?

A friend of mine had the idea of trying out something new every week as a kind of dare. That could be going in a cafe all by yourself without meeting anyone there. Or singing karaoke. Or answering questions of a teacher when no one else does. Help someone who looks desparate. Talk to a foreigner on the street without a reason. The list is endless. And it's a very personal decision what to choose to do something for the first time. And sometimes you are not even able to choose a first time cause you suddenly find yourself in a new situation. Everyone has and had their own first times.
I think it's a good idea for brighten up daily life by setting yourself in new situations, which may frighten you or encourage you or just giving you another perspective on life and the world that surrounds you.
I think there is something special in everything you do for the first time. It will never be like the first experience. Your senses are more open. You're maybe more emotional about it. You have expectations or  opinions. Have doubts or questions, you wonder about things.
In first times the fear about a new situation can make you feel uncomfortable and make you never go back in a situation. First times challenges you. Try out not to critizice. Be a field researcher who finds out how another culture or society works. Let your feelings which arise and the thoughts you have wander through your body and mind. Everything is a new experience. Stay open for first times.

Blueberries

When I was at home during summer holidays we were hiking up the mountain around my village and found the perfect spot for blueberry picking. Unfortunately it was raining, and the blueberries were so small, so it would take hours to get a good  amount. So we were just eating them right away. I like these berries so much, although they are not linked to any childhood memory but to my love to scandinavia. But not even there I did pick a lot of them. It was last summer on my travels to Estonia, that we discovered a lot of them, much bigger than those you can find in Germany.
Well to disappoint you, the ones in the muffins are from the supermarket, but who cares when there is so much memories linked to them?
 

Virtual world and me

Somehow it's a love-hate relationship between the opportunitiys of the virtual web and the trouble it gives to me and my time. Sometimes I want to quit with social networks, mail programmes or online newspapers. But I know that I can't right now, cause it feels like the only way to stay in contact with some of my friends, and to get informations I would miss otherwise. Moreover I love stories and pictures and when I have interest in a topic I can take hours to read articles, blogs or collect pictures and ideas. This is not something bad. But in the combination that it distracts me from what I actually should do it's not good.
Because often I just sit there and suddenly I realize how much time passed by just doing nothing but consuming data-information of the web. Information which includes stories, pictures, ideas, inspiration, knowledge, news. A lot of them are useful, some give me hints, some help me, but too many of informations about everything distract me from what I actually wanted to do. To keep plans is something I am not very good at in general, so the web even makes it harder.

By just comsuming others lifes I lose myself. By writing about my own I get closer to myself.
 Often I look for something in the virtual world that I miss in my real life. Like when if I feel lonely by just sitting at the desk writing my thesis and no one is there, I would go online to get away from that feeling, to distract myself. It's a pattern which annoys me.
The virtual world is important. We can share more than ever. We can get more information than ever. We can stay in contact much easier than ever. But we lose so much, too. I feel that I lose real close friendship. Lose time in which we would just concentrate on one single simple thing. Lose focus on what matters most. Lose ourselves.

Some days ago I heard a man in the subway talking about that he decided to have no computer at home anymore. Furthermore he talked about the moment when you actually feel tired and not concentrated anymore and start to do something on the internet, just anything. And suddenly a few hours passed just because you missed the moment to stop. I want to realize this moment when it's a good moment to stop.

I am on my way to finish my studies, the only thing I have to do is writing my master thesis. And I have to write it on a computer, for sure. So how to stay away from the web? How to stay focused?
By creating a new blog? By not just comsuming others stuff but by producing even more information? Sounds right to me, so I will try. Not feel used by the internet but use it.

The blog project

This blog is a way to express thoughts, share stories and pictures of my life, write down inspirations which occur to me during my daily life. It's a project for the next months, to make them brighter, to make something which makes me happy and share things.