Natural Christmas decoration

You don't always need to buy new decoration. When I'm out for a walk I try to collect things from nature and use them for decoration because simple things are often the most beautiful things. You know I love Christmas and I also love to have a mix of new things and old things. This is a good example how to create new things yourself and protect the environment:

picture: skonahem

Blouse with tie

My favorite this autumn are blouses with ties. This is something you can wear at work and you still look feminine. Even when having a business meeting with men, I always choose something feminine to combine it with a suit: Ties, peter pan collars or cap sleeves:

picture: hm

picture: asos

My grandma

Today would have been my grandma's birthday. After so many years I still can't believe that she is gone. I would do anything to be able to sit together with her in her little kitchen just one more time, to bake with her, to chat with her, to ask her questions and to stand at the window and watch the snow while she reads her favorite poems and bible verses to me. She was like my best friend, I could tell her anything and she would understand and had a solution for me and where she had no solution she would simply hug me and be there for me and share the pain. I remember the moment my dad called me to tell me she had passed away, my first thought was to call her and tell her. I know she is there in everything I do, I even reaction like she would have done in some situations. I miss her so much.


1.
Så går en dag än från vår tid
och kommer icke mer,
och än en natt med Herrens frid
till jorden sänkes ner.

2.
Men du förbliver den du var,
o Herre, full av nåd,
och våra nätter, våra dar
du tecknat i ditt råd.

3.
Trygg i din vård jag lämnar mig
när solen från oss flyr,
och gladligt skall jag prisa dig
när dagen åter gryr.

4.
Men om det stilla dödens bud
i denna natt jag hör,
det är min tröst att din, o Gud,
jag lever och jag dör.

Christoph Friedrich Neander

Time to collect pine cones for Christmas

We have had an Indian summer here in Munich this autumn. One of my favorite things to do in autumn is to go outside and have a walk, enjoy the colorful leaves and to collect various things for Christmas decorations like pine cones. There are so many various possibilities to use them as decoration:

Picture: Skonahem

Picture: expli

or just keeping them in a jar :

picture: elbgestoeber

Inspiration for my bathroom

We have one of these standard bathrooms: white, tiny and no window. For me a bathroom should be cozy which is very difficult if you have one like ours. My dream would be a room like this with large windows and grey/brownish colors:

Picture: hemnet

But I can't change the color and the size of the tiles. I might need to work with more white and silver to make it look bigger...

Picture: badrumsdrommar

And to increase coziness, I've ordered a bathroom light similar to this one with fewer light spots :

Picture: casalumi

I hope to get it this week and to show you some before and after pictures soon..

Isabell

Meister Eder und sein Pumuckl - Bavarian series for children

Autumn is a typical time of the year where I start to tidy up. Today it was time for our attic. Some of the  moving boxes have been unopened since at least 15 years, one of them is a box where I keep things I loved when I was a child like "Meister Eder und sein Pumuckl".

Pumuckl is a kobold ( it is the cartoon figure on the right) invented by Ellis Kaut and is invisible to people around him except for the master joiner Eder (the person to the left) with whom Pumuckl lives in Bavaria. Pumuckl loves everything that has to do with the ocean and he doesn't like neat and clean places, so he strands in Meister Eder's untidy workshop where gets stuck on a pot of glue. Whenever a kobold gets stuck to something, they become visible, and must stay with the human who sees them. 

There are a lot of episodes that tell about their life together starting from the way they meet each other and until how the got close friends, which is really not easy as Meister Eder is a man that is happy to be by himself and Pumuckl is quite cheeky sometimes. But it's this interaction between the two that is funny, even for grown-ups.

Unfortunately you need to understand German to be able to watch the series, as it hasn't been translated into other languages as far as I know.  But it is one of the best series for children that I know and I'm looking forward to watching it this weekend again after all these years...

Fig Jam

One of my favorite desserts is warm goat cheese with either honey or fig jam. October is the season for many nice fruits, like apples, pears and figs, so I should hurry up to make some fig jam. I've found a new and easy recipe which I would like to try:

Picture TV4

Here is what you need:

1 litre fresh figs
2.5 dl sugar
1 vanilla bean
2 table spoons of water

Rinse the figs with fresh water and cut into pieces ( do not peel). Split the vanilla bean pod lengthwise into two halves and scrape the seeds. Put the figs, the pod and the seeds together with the sugar and the water into a cooking pot and let simmer for ca. 30 minutes until the figs are tender. The jam needs to cool down a little before filling it into sterilized jars.

Kram,
Isabell

Sporty

I've never been a super active and sporty girl. While others went to the gym or had their team sports, I've always preferred different things like food for example. I simply enjoy baking or cooking more than running and lifting heavy weights and I was lucky to never gain weight. So I've only trained a little every now and then and always found a good excuse not to go.

Last week my company has given free gym memberships to some of their employees for 1 year- I was one of the "lucky" winners. So I've been in the gym to have a look at it and wow I didn't know that even the gym fashion had changed that much! There I was in my old fashioned bootleg shaped gym pants -the latest fashion from 5 years ago- with a washed out t-shirt between all these girls with their leggings and loose-fit tops and top styling, sticking out like a soar thumb.

In my daily life I'm up-to-date with the latest fashion, so I've decided to buy a new gym pant, like the one on the picture:

Picture: Nike

Maybe this will motivate me to do more sports as it is not as flattering as my old gym pant :)

Kram,

Isabell

Autumn at Tegernsee

What a wonderful weekend! We went to lake Tegernsee with our motorbike, driving trough the Bavarian countyside and the colors of autumn. If you continue one of the roads uphill, there are a lot of beer gardens close to the lake which are much better than the ones directly at the lake. Surrounded by old trees with red, yellow and green leaves and mountains we just enjoyed being outside and having another late summer day.

Picture: Sueddeutsche Zeitung

Happy Halloween

A few years ago nobody celebrated Halloween in Germany. Halloween came to Germany from the US and I think it's a great thing that the world gets more international and celebrations are shared and adopted among the entire world. The world would certainly be better if we would celebrate more together…

I will be invited to a Halloween party tonight and am looking for something to bring to the party. Everybody invited should bring something and I'm the one that was chosen for decorations. I've seen this bat mobile on Martha Stewart's website and I really like it:

Haven't decided what to wear tonight yet, maybe I choose to be Morticia Addams from the Addams Family, that's quite easy.

Happy Halloween to everyone!

Isabell

At Home

Today I have a day off and I'm currently enjoying a late breakfast with some magazines at home. I've already bought a couple of Christmas special magazines. I'm one of the biggest Christmas fans in the world. As soon as it starts to get darker outside and the weather is turning from sunny days into cold storms and finally winter and snow, this is my favorite season of the year. BUT after Christmas I'm fine with having Spring again immediately :)

Normally I like red, green and gold as they are the traditional Christmas colors but I might decorate the entrance in white and silver this year as this is very nice too. 

Have a nice day !

Isabell

Royal Copenhagen Blue Fluted Mega/Musselmalet Mega

You know that I like dinnerware and porcelain. This summer when I was in Copenhagen for my yearly visit, I couldn't resist. I've been in a Royal Copenhagen outlet and bought these 2 tealight holders from the Blue Fluted Mega series. They are quite expensive but I really like the style and porcelain in white and blue is very classic.

I've also painted a cup with this pattern for my friend's 30th birthday which you can see in this post: Musselmalet Mega - DIY. It takes certainly many year's to paint it like the original one :)

Have a really nice day.

Isabell

New furniture

We've already lived 6 years in this apartment, but still some rooms still seem to be unfinished and needed new furniture. I've bought a couple of new things this summer to finally have some rooms ready, I'll show you bit by bit. For the bedroom I've added a small desk with a chair and finally long curtains in grey and the rest of course wood and white, my favorites which you can see in the entire flat. :) Before that I had a black desk back from the time when I still was a student and one of these typical office chairs. I'm happy with the result:

Back in autumn time

I know, it's been along time since my last post… but I'm back now from my summer holiday. I truly needed it, the new job had been more stressful then I thought it would be. I'm happy to be back and I'm looking forward to autumn, to all the colors and season of apples, pumpkins, plums and baking.

picture: lantliv.com

The picture you see above is Swedish buns with cinnamon, it's called "Kanelbullar" in Swedish and I'm going to bake them today and this week and use different recipes. I'll get back to you with the winner ;)

Have a lovely sunday!

Isabell