hallo again

it's almost half a year since we posted here, so i decided it's time for a new start.
Well what happend in between... quite alot i have to say..

i try, kind of, to grow up. means: earning my own living. And i have to say, even it's quite a change, it went smoothly. i found my jobs quit fast, and till now i could pay everything on my own evn insurance and stuff. sometimes it shoks me to not be my parents little girl anymore and to stand on my own to feet. but yay for me , i manage. that's good news, which i didn't had a few month ago.

i also started a second study. i'll become a teacher. even if i don't really like to be a student, it's maybe a chance to mix my love for art and children.

that's kind of it. i wasn't verry creative lately, even if i have some ideas in mind. still figuerrng out what to do with a master in fine arts. i helped my boyfriend every now and than to had stich things for his school. and i made some jam... so fare my cooking creativety. plum-cocoa-cinamon, grapefruite-mint, mango-peach, appel-pear-ginger, sweet-sour pumpkin... that's it.

but today after a long time ( a full timetabel at both sides makes it hard to meet up often, especially just the two of us) we managed to come together and have fun together. means nagging over things we aren't so verry good in and making things. in the pictures you can see, the super nice self-sawn wood candelholder. you cut and i hold the wood. even my m. likes it. i also stole some flowers and greens from your garden. black berries, hortensia, some holly and other greens make a beautiful bouquet on our bedroom tabel, next to a new alarme clock. you can also see the advent calender i made for m over our bed. each day he get`s a foto of the past months we spend together.

.

not so verry exiting news lately:)
what about you
do you think we shoud try again to share more here, especially since we don't see each other everyday anymore
kisses s.

sorry for teh blurry pics, it's quite late..

... and two cups of coffee.

Dear S.,

I wanted to share this story I found on the internet with you. It made me happy. Please take the time to read it, it is worth it!

When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the two cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions – and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else – the small stuff. ”If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

source is "The Radical Uprise", an amazing blog run by Jetta Vegas. it's all about Positive Mental Attitude. Whenever you feel that you need something to cheer you up or motivate you, go to her page and you will find what you are looking for:
http://theradicaluprise.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/a-mayonnaise-jar-and-two-cups-of-coffee/

(... time and space for a cup of coffee or some other onzin/Unsinn like wearing matching turbans in order to concentrate better :p )


Love,
M.

baking > complaining.

Dear S.,

Instead of complaining, I'll talk about baking.

1) baking asks your full love and attention and therefore takes your mind off everything else.

2) the smell of something baking in the oven makes you feel home.

3) baking attracts friends and good talks.

4) eating something someone else baked especially for YOU is one of the biggest pleasures in culinary terms...

5) ...just as it is a great source of joy for the baker to watch other people enjoy their piece of baked good.

6)baking shows your ability to work concentratedly and precisely and with lots of Hingabe on a project.

7) kneading shortpastry, rolling out a yeast dough or beating a batter with your hands is a great outlet for your fears and frustrations.

8) a piece of pastry in your mouth prevents you from needlessly complaining about your life.

9) eating something baked is the best thing to do to fill in your breaks from work and study. It provides you with new strength and energy and satisfies you.

10) having to bake something is a great excuse not to work or study for a while.


that said, here is what I baked yesterday: carrot cake. Darling J., was here for dinner, and while N. made some gorgeous lasagna, I searched all my cupboards for baking material (note to self: always have a decent stash at home in the future). I wanted something with a fresh ingredient, fruit or so. Carrot was the next best thing- carrot cake it is.





The little carrot is a real carrot I carved into the right size. together with some fresh thyme, I find it looks much better than the normally used marzipan carrots.
The day before, we had you, M. and T. over for a small dinner party, the topic was white food ;) we had asparagus risotto and cheesecake. mmmh. A cake a day....
I really enjoyed you all being here, quality time :)

love, m

top!

Dear S.,

my latest sewing project- a top for myself. I used plain ikea- toile for the whole piece; in the front, I layerd a lace- fabric on top of it.





oh and here are Charlie and her neighbour boy sweetheart, tiger:




I'm having a bit of a rough time uni- and lifeplanning wise atm; so I'll keep this post short and simple and not moan all about it. Maybe I'll do that in my next post, who knows :p

LOVE! m.

Hickups

hey my dear,
well now it's my tur to write just befor i'll go to the doc. .
Cramps... in my stomach, something typical for this time of the year. but still it got so fare that i don't wanna eat anymore and this is a very alarming thing, as I love to eat.

and still this post is mainly about food. ;)

I'm of coffee to protect my stomach a bit, but when i was still drinking a lot of coffee i had this on... A glas coverd inside with white chocolate, and than coffe in it so it will melt slowly- mhmmm..good memories. good that i love tea also, because that's all i'm drinking and for a part eating right now.


and now i tell you why i call this post hickup. it's as if i have hickups of joy and happienes in all this stress. there is alot of schoolwork for me and my dear one but in between i manages to make my ultimately happy. and this includes alot of food.
it feels somehow decadent ;). last thursday after a long stressy day we went eating out. we just didn't feel like cooking something. so we went to a small cozy marrocan place and had honestly good tajine. which was also a stupid idea regarding my stomache but hey at his moment i just didn't care. afterwards we went for a fast drink. the whole day this giant zepelin wnet around in the air of antwerp. it was pretty unexpected to see this giant air boat.



well friday the two of us went to gent. he was already there at his sisters and i went later by train, because i first had to work. some really nice food, and now i now his family and am quite reliefed, everything went good. the weekend we spent at his childhood home. it's nice to see where someone is coming from. and super nice to have a quiet home with a garden for a day to write those to papers. while m. was of for work the two cats and two chickens were my company. i stole their eggs the next morning to make pancakes.
back in antwerp we cleand his whole appartement and changed a few things. than i headed back to work and he took good care of me... cooking a delicious meal. tunafish caspaciou ( how ever this is written), tomate crevette and fish soup. mhhmm.



I don't have a garde just al ittle terasse so these are my plants, doin quiet wel, and i like the hart shaped potato, which became decortion...


well that's it. i enjoyed to come over to your palce yesterday evening since i'm a part of two it's not happening all the time anymore ;).
let see what the doc is saying...
kisses
s

so this is grass.

Dear S.,

you know what I haven't posted in a long time? right, pictures of the garden project!

So, we do have luscious soft green grass, everywhere. we cut another dead tree. I really love the rough work with wood. We had tulips and narcissus around easter, but of course they are dead by now. There are new flower bulbs of Dahlias and gladiolus in the ground, we are expecting them any day now (though I doubt they will actually come out, since the neighbour cat is using our flower-bed as his litter box, lovely). The hortensia survived the cutting of its neighbouring tree and will start to flower in about a week's time, I guess.




Ok, so, this was again a very interesting entry on our garden. great, huh?
(excuse my sarcasm, I'm about to leave for the dentist who will hopefully relieve my from my horrible toothache).
No but seriously, this garden means a lot to me. I really enjoy seeing the Tikis go outside and stir a bit with things. I love the physical aspects of working in it, it makes me feel good, worthwhile, strong and helps my mind breathe.

After my exams, I will make lampions and garlands to decorate it. And have a picnic in the grass. Are you in?

Love, M

gpoy

Dear S.,

gpoy: Gratuitous Picture Of Yourself, used a lot on tumblr; A picture of yourself, or something that you do like a gif of someone dancing like an idiot or a socially awkward penguin picture.

(--> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gpoy)

this is something I have learned from Tumblr this week. (Who ever invented tumblr, anyways? It is hor-ri-ble! can't stay off it, but I'm refusing to get my own account.)

so, what I was wanting to say: I am writing my final Bachelor paper at the moment (well, actually, it's been going on for quite a while now).

Charlie will help me express the way I feel about it- multiple personality gpoy, here we go:


hey, everything is just fine, got 30pages written already, professor kind of gave me a carte blanche,my topic is SUPER interesting and I could go on about it forever. stretch and smile.

everything that needs to be said is already stored in your head, it's purely a matter of typing it. let's swerve on the internet and play and bake and stuff.


i-i-i-i-i (sound of strings in Hitchcocks shower murder scene in Psycho)- What an EARTH I am even writing about? what is my thesis statement again- "Let me explain to you my blury ideas of how the main concerns of youth a hundred years ago are still the same as now and how these are represented in like all of literature? I'll be like totally able to do that in 30 something pages, and I'll show you that I completely get it all, ok?" heeeeelp! way too complex way too broad topic, can never be clear about what I actually want to say- I am not saying this very same thing for the fifth time already?


just shut down the f*cking computer already and get a life. academia is really one big house where all the bullshit of the world is being expatiated, do I really want to be part of this?



ohne Worte.

Well, excuse my rude language use- this is just how I sound in real life.

S., I am so happy to know that you are around, right now in Ghent, I suppose. What would I do without you?

love,

M.

small measures

Dear S.,

on may 17th, last tuesday, was the International Day Against Homophobia.

I just felt the urge to do some little thing to support this important cause.




small measures- ridiculously small measures - but still: love is love, people.

Bye,

M.

flea market²

dear m.
Saturday we both tried to get rid of some old clothes. i guess both of our wardrobes are exploding so it was time to get some space in there. it was really good to do it together. it's kind of intimidating to expose your things which you once liked and now don't want anymore. you made some money and i made a little less money, and we both were happy to be free of some luggage and richer of some cents.the location was also really nice an old church and we got free coffee, tea and pancakes , yeah!

the next day there was a big fleamarket very close to my home. the initial plan was to just pop by and than disapear again into paper writing. it didn't work out of course, because i met some friends so we had a limonade together. but i did find some nice things. as 4 old plates:two pink ones and two blue ones, a flour sifter (i just thought the night before it would be handy to have one), a appel perforator ( perfect for bratäpfel in automn), and a caster for cinamon-sugar. i just used half of the things to prepare my weekly pancakes treat.



after the fleamarket i prepared dinner went to my male m., ha how to descibe it in another way... adn we ate and than both worked for school. i really managed to just shut my mouth for a few hours for once... well reading and talking doesn't work, even not for me.
i hope your scriptie is doin fine, but i'm sure of taht kisses
s.

Frühling im Mund. Und Schokolade.

Dear S.,

2nd post today! trying to keep up with you :p

Sooo, my friend P. came over today and we made...

Sachertorte!

P. spent the first semester of this Uni-year in Vienna and learned to know (and love!) our Austrian Konditorei world. For quite some time we'd planned to bake a Sachertorte ourselves- (oh, I just noticed that I presumed you all knew what Sachertorte is; it is the most famous Austrian chocolate cake. Expensive, exclusive, extrachocolatey)
-so, today we finally met up and tried our luck. It was not like the original in texture, ours was a little too light, but the taste came quite close :)
Anyways, it is a lovely chocolate cake.


Also, we (S. and M.) finished the last step of our Elderflowersyrup today- we bottled it. WEll, we did not exactly use bottles, just jam-jars. Our title for the project:

Frühling im Mund- springtime in your mouth.

Also, next to all these seemingly irrelevant, procrastinating actions (which they are not actually, these things are just vital for me), I have worked concentratedly on my Ba-paper. yes.

see you soon :)

M.

motivation!

Dear S.,

thank you for your last two posts! I reeeeally feel like rhubarb cake,mmmmh :)
yesterday N. and I made a sauce holandaise to go with fresh asparagus and little potatoes, and it worked out! At the second try, that is. So, seen that there were some eggwhites left, we made meringues. Come by and fetch some if you feel like it!
I'm so exited about our elderflower sirup, can't wait to bottle it later today..

For now, I have some motivational stuff to keep you going:





I know it is busy right now, but eventually we are gonna be fine!

love, M.

easter in germany= baking ( like crazy)

and the second post for this evening ( i listen to the music of the movie where the wild things are, i just love childeren movies..)

and it kind of fits.
this time in germany i just felt incredebly blessed. i sucked in every minute. it was nice sunny warm weather. i had olenty of time with my parents( mr le chef and daya). made long and less long bike tours. we wnet to a lake which seemed so fare away as a child and isn't that fare away after all. how perception changes still fascinates me. on one of teh trips we saw a little lamp abandoned by the rest of the sheps, my mum and i where directly overwelmed by motherlyfeelings but on our way back the mother cared again about it.

going to the market to buy some good food. i love especially one stall owned by a woman named maya. she is old, quite rough and speks the lokal dialect, next to veggies from her fields she sells the moste beautifull flowers...




i also baked ..like crazy. some times even in this homienes i go a bit crazy... this time one cake collapsed on the ground and i threw it verry angry into the zink, with the result of some dough on the kitchen window... after this sudden emotional outburst everything was ok again.
and also knowing that at home( i mean the other home, antwerp) there was waiting somebody for me. but first i had to go to amsterdam to meet an young artist. more about that later on..





Eastereggs: we had chicken, duck, goose, chocolate and marcepein ones. i backed some gist nests for them. and a delayed birthday cake for may mum. rubarb cake, so the chocolate butterflie doesn't really fit but looks good.

sleep well
it's proably not the best idea to go to bed with a stomache full of warm cake but just today i won't cre( so fare to my suggar free diet...)
kisses
s

Ringel ringel Reihe, sind wir Kinder dreie, sitzen unterm Hollerbusch machen alle husch, husch husch

dear m,
a nightly update first our action yesterday... hunting elder flowers. it was really a kind of hunt. while you two managed to make a gras field in the front of the tikkis garden the bottom stayed unchanged wild. which i love. and somewhere hidden between fir trees, evy, other more obscure trees and an ancient wall full of spiderwebs we could see the elderflowers floeting in the air seading this incredible smell of spring. but of course they where fare away, so the hunting part started. you with a kind of saw/hook pulled them down and i cut them standing on my toetipps with a verry long garden scissors. it was jolly good fun ;) giggling and woowing we went back up to make partly sirop for cold and less sunny days against all the upcomming colds, and partly we cut them to dry them and make tee. wee had a sneak peak on what the tea would taste like. dear n. made some lemone, honey, fresh elder flower tee. mhmmmm.
the wohle air was full of the yellow dust they spread, best perfum ever, but you had to sneeze and my eyes started iching ...



i'm looking forward to the result of the sirop. now the flowers are ate the window in my living room to dry( so charlie wont play with them and spread them alover your place) and a honey cake is in the oven... i just need some homey comfort after all this running around and doin stuff today...

kisses s.

stressed=desserts ?!

Dear S.,

It is now 11.30pm. While I am writing this text, my oven is baking a bunch of cupcakes. I am baking them at this hour because I can’t deal with myself anymore. (Besides, any time is the right time to bake.) So, it’s May today. Wow. 30 more days and my Bachelorwork has to be finished. 31 days and my exams will start. So, I am kind of freaking out a little. I am sooo incredibly tiring to myself like this! I have stayed inside (well and on the newly cleaned terrace) all day long to write. At least like… 10 pages or so. But, of course, after having written a few sentences, I notice that I actually do not really know all that much about what I’m writing (some narratological questions). So I think: hey, let’s get that book from first year to refresh my knowledge about narratology. Having found the book, I notice that back then I had only read like a third of it- it was my very first real Dutch uni book. It was sooo incredibly difficult to understand it, the field is quiet complex and then that new, strange language… So, what do I do: I start reading it on page 1. And whenever I read a theoretical book, I like to take notes. Like a few lines per two pages, in a word document, so that I have the core information at hand whenever I need it. As you can imagine, this takes up QUITE some time. The book I’m talking about has 177pages. Ok, it was utopical to think that I could do them ALL today, but, come on, I’m only at page 50 now, after say 3 ½ hours of work. Also, I have only written one single page for my work. 1. Sigh. So, this is basically how every single day I am trying to do productive work and end up desperate and with no output whatsoever. That is why I am baking now. I can sometimes be so incredibly tiring for myself (and my surroundings), when I have the feeling I’m not working well enough. I tend to get all hyper, sing awful songs in a horrible voice, start meowing like a car just rolled over my imaginative tail, start running around like a headless chicken (haha, like Charlie a little bit… We just found a little bell and put it around her neck with some lace… she is so funny! –and she’s ok, don’t you worry.)


(this is the postcard I gave you for your last birthday... isn't it just unbelievable ;) )

Ok, it’s time to get the cakes out of the oven. The icing is already waiting for them!
00:46. Can't wait to get my teeth in one of these!







N. and I decided to go for flashy colours. and love, of course. I have tons of love for her. and cake.

my dear, now I've written all about how exhausting studying is, and just yesterday I worked at a kinf of info-market at my Uni, trying to convince possible future students of how exiting and fun language-and literature studies are... :)
I guess, that's just how my life goes.

also, I still wanted to say that I miss us blogging more. i know we both have extremely busy times, but still our blog makes me happy everytime I visit it.

sleep tight, I'll enjoy a pink cake and read some more!
xxx

M.

copycat

Dear S.,

post n°100- yay!

Two sets of photos for you today.
I am in Austria right now, for a week, during a part of my Easter holiday. (which is not actually a holiday for me, writing on my Ba-work, an Ma-presentation and so on.. also, I fell ill, my throat is a field of horror. Also, all my family members are wanting to see me at least once, but if you have a huge family, that is a looot of once's.)

ok, but here are some images from my home town:






I spent some wonderful hours with my dear friend H. We just spent 7 hours talking- I loved it. Time with friends is vital.
Yesterday, I picked her up and we watched the sun set from a hill/mountain (for Belgians might consider it a mountain :p). This is what you see on the pics, obviously.

And now the second set of photos:
The result of my copycat-action some time ago.
I've always loved your short black dress with the press-buttons in the back. I've worn it all the time when you left it with me while you were in Portugal :)
So I decided to make one myself.





Quite happy about it, it is one of the few home-made things I actually wear a lot!
my dear, my writing sucks today, I feel a little feverish- I'll leave it with this

love,

m