Step Inside

It's been a rather shitty day for the mind and emotions today. But stepping out from 2,5 hours of dancing I feel at peace again, even though the top of my foot hurts a lot after a bad landing on it.
And today at the second class a girl offered to go with me on a diagonal when noticing that I was the odd one out, it felt so nice to be seen in a group that seem to know eachother from before.
Next week will be a new song, but for the last three weeks this has been my music: Dermot Kennedy - Shelter

Test

Just a little test

Chocolate Factory - The Experiment

After 4,9kg of chocolate last weekend, I felt like I never wanted to see chocolate again. Never ever would I make a single more praline. Never again will I temperate chocolate.



Well... It's a week later and I really wanted to make a lime-filling and salted caramel. Is this how women feel when they decide to get a second child?

And also... I did not follow the rules, so lets see how my experiment last night went.

No cream in the ganasch. The recipe calls for cream, but I don't have milk products at home only vegetable based substitute (environmental reasons). So instead of cream I used Oatley "imat" which isn't even a cream substitute, but a substitute for low fat cream used in cooking. Think it went badly? Well, actually not too bad at all. Taste was fine, I really think that Oat-cream doesn't taste anything when you start mixing it with other things. However the filling didn't really want to thicken up the way normal ganasch thickens, but that's most likely because I mixed in a lot of lime in my filling which thins out the filling. Should probably have added some starch to it, something to remember for next time.

Having a runny filling made it of course a little bit more difficult to put lids on the praline. Put there's a trick I've seen on Youtube, where you spread out the chocolate on a cooking sheet and then put it on top of the pralines.

Who needs to be precise when temperating chocolate? I was hoping to find a cooking thermometer at ICA that shows decimals/fractions, but had no such luck. Was instead stuck to use my timer-steak-thermometer-combo device from IKEA, that doesn't show decimals which could be a bit difficult when you're looking for a temperature between 31,1-31,9. But I gave it a try, what's the worse thing that could happen? Probably that you end up getting the chocolate a little bit too cold which made it difficult to work with, but it was still in temper (glossy and snappy). The lids didn't end up looking too pretty, but heck, that's okay for me

200g of chocolate. That's was all I used, for a recipe that called for 255g+30g. How did that affect the result? Well I didn't get any chokladbräck obliviously but I also didn't have enough chocolate to fill up the whole mold. Solved that with a a spoon and scooping over chocolate from filled shapes to some that needed more. It went really well except that my chocolate was a bit too cold so some of the shapes got stuck with chunks of chocolate in them. But that's okay, I just didn't put any filling in them and the chocolate can still be reused. Even though I only used 200g of chocolate I did end up with some leftovers.

No big bowls? Tipping out the chocolate when making shells is a messy business. Perhaps even more messy when you don't have a  big enough plastic bowl to tip it all out in. Instead I used a reusable teflon baking sheet. And it was very effective. Once the chocolate had cold down on the sheet I could easily get it off as it didn't stick to the sheet, and it also felt nice not throwing tons of paper away, yay for the environment.

All and all I'd say that it went very well yesterday and I'm ready for making some salted caramel tonight, already cooked the filling (so much work cooking a can of sweetened condensed milk for two hours...). 

Preparing for a New Year

 

This is the new journal

I have not been updating much on my Bullet Journal, but I do kind of still use it actually. And as we're getting closer to the end of 2017 it is time to think about how I shall continue this habit for next year. I've barely used 2/3 of my current bullet journal, and I would use even less as I'm going for a more compact layout now compared to last year.  So in spirit of not tossing away a book with 100 of empty pages I decided to do surgery on it and turn the empty pages in to the next years bullet journal (as I calculated that I would barley need 100 pages for that one). Sure, the numbering doesn't make much sense now, but I never paid any attention at all to those tiny numbers at the bottom of the pages It has been a very fun project and it is now finished, I can now start planning out the coming year in it (yes, I am way to excited about starting new calendars).

Spent hours making this golden pattern on the inside of the book (it's in the back as well). And i also made a little pocket for stuff, which I will probably not never use because I've yet to use the pocket inside my current journal. But hey, it's pretty and makes it looks a bit more professional than DIY I guess.

It's a bit crooked but I think I will love this journal no the less. It is also nice to have a smaller journal as it will take less space in my bags which will make it more likely that I'll bring it with me every now and then. 

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month. By a coworker I got informed about this to me unknown challenge, where you're write a novel of 50.000 words during November month.

I used to write lots of poems back in my teenage-time and on my drive there's lots of unfinished stories that I really want to write on. And there's one story in particular that I want to write. So I signed up for this challenge and three days in I'm already struggling to keep up, hurrah. But It's been great non the less. And it is fun doing something creative besides drawing.

There's a whole community and all attached to this challenge. If you sign up you can track your progress and get badges. I'm a sucker for achievements.

The story I'm writing is rather difficult to describe, mostly because it's very personal. It could be described as a biography inspired by my teenage-years but written from other peoples points of view as a reflection on the relationship they had to this teenage-girl. It's very much a fiction however, with few resembles from actual reality. I only have about 20 chapters planned which might be a bit short as I'm currently trying to write one chapter every day and that will probably not reach 50.000, but I'm sure I will figure something out along the road. And it's not like this is going to be published or anything, so it is totally okay if it falls short.

Good luck to everyone that's writing this month!

Inktober

October has passed and with it has also the inktober challenge, were you're supposed to draw an ink drawing every day in the month of October. This year has been the third year that I have done this challenge and so far it's been the best in the aspect of keeping up with the daily drawings, even if my Instagram might not agree. I've finished 16 drawings and still have another 6 that are sketch but yet not finalized. I'm planning on finish them during November, with ink of course. So in "total" I made 22 drawings out of 31, not to bad considering that I'm not even used to sketching on a daily basis.

Not all of the drawings have yet made their way to Instagram, where I usually post my arty stuff. It's mainly because I always stay up very late to finish the drawings and don't want to post pictures then as I have coworkers following me there and I don't want them to tell my boss I'm staying up way past my bedtime and not being a responsible adult (yes I know that's a rather strange dilemma I've created and not very reasonable in the real world, but that's just my brain). The other reason is that I don't like the quality of my camera on the phone so I just don't feel like the photos showcases my drawing well enough, which makes me feel a bit sad. I am thinking about saving up for a new camera, one of those cool ones with WiFi so that I could either upload directly to Instagram or just store them on my drive where I can easily access them from my phone to edit and post.

Inktober has inspired me to try some other challenges, but these are mostly sketching which makes it so much easier. Some of the challenges that I'm considering to do are "30 day diary illustrations", "100 sketches of ..." and "30 days of Outfit of the day". I think they will develop me a lot. Especially that last one since I can't draw clothes at all and it's something I really want to do.

But before I'm undertaking any challengers I'll give myself a bit of a break during November as I have plenty of other projects that I want to do. I'm trying my hands on writing with the NaNoWriMo-challenge (more bout it in the next entry), want to redo the 30 days of yoga, finish crafting my new bullet journal, I need to mend and fix lots of clothes for Australia, a secret thing and I also really want to do some doll customization as I've recently become addicted to the Dollightful channel on YouTube. So during this weekend I'm planning on searching in Second Hand shops for toys that I can repaint, as I'm trying to be environmental and also dolls are very expensive. I have lots of difference idea that I want to do, so I'm going to see what I can find in the shops and go from there.

Australia booked

I'm going to the land down under! And you can bet on me to glow, because I'm just that fricking pale that I reflect sunlight like a moon. People better wear sunglasses around me if they don't want to go blind.

It will be great going down there again. Hopefully I'll get to bring home all the cute animals this time.

Baby Blanket - update

The amount of squares for the blanket are rapidly growing. Since I'm able to do some crocheting on the bus between work and home I can keep up a rate of one square per day. It's so nice that crocheting is do much more compact compared to the knitting. I would probably not find the time to do it otherwise, especially now when I'm trying my best to actually do Inktober every day.

I've had to settle for yarn of the wrong brand and colour, as I went to the local store and they did not have Drops-yarn. I realized afterwards, when starting to crotchet with it, that the new yarn wasn't as soft either. Also noticed it was a lot more expensive than buying Drops online. Sadly I noticed this too late, as I can't return the yarn and get my money back. I could exchange it for a gift card at the shop, but in currently in no need for others yarn so I guess I'll just stick with this. I'm sure the blanket will be nice anyway. 

My wonderfully messy blanket sketch and tracker. 

Going home from Art Class

Guess what. I didn't get thrown out.

The class was a little bit awkward, because out of nine students only three showed up, including me. But we might get to join with an earlier group, so that there will be a little bit more lively.

This evening we only worked with charcoal, which I haven't touched in ages. Was messy and fun trying to just focus on colour values and not so much the end result.

I will now end the evening with some tea and working on the baby blanket.

Heading to Art Class

For the first time since high school I'm heading back to a painting class. I've done lots of art studies after high school, but this is the first time I'll be in a classroom where you'll get help and feedback from a teacher, which I hope will teach me stuff that I probably forgot during the years when I didn't paint.
I'm hoping to improve my colour theory/colour mixing, blending technics and finally to just get inspiration and force myself to paint more often. Without practice one does not improve.

Heading to this class I'm having lots of anxiety. What if I don't have the right supplies, what if the others are better, what if I get tossed out for not being good enough. You know, the usual panics when we try something new... I'll get back with an update telling you all about how they tossed me out on the raining streets and how the tram didn't let me on because my paint stained clothes made me look like a hobo.

Baby blanket

On my 30 before 30 list is a dreaded goal of making a crocheted blanket. I goal I almost completed before tossing a huge 90% finished blanket away, as I had grown to despite it. And have since struggled with starting a new, since I don't feel like such a blanket will fit in in my home.

But it had recently been announced that my brother is expecting a baby, so guess who will get a crocheted blanket for their birthday.

Went to Google for inspiration and found a supercute pattern using something called bubble stitch which was used to create different symbols on each square. I will keep it a bit simple and just use blank squares and squares with hearts on them. I will also make a longer square containing the name, which I think I'll find out before I'll meet the baby.

I think the colours for the blanket will be off-white, pale yellow and a pale forrest green. Would love to use some of the pinkish coloured yarns that I have, but since the gender is not known yet and since I don't think these parents will appreciate a pink blanket to a boy, I'm going with some more gender-neutral colours.

I've made a sketch of the blanket, to figure out where to place the hearts and what colour each square should have. It's still a work in progress. When it comes to the colours I'm thinking of having two colours for the squares and then the third colour for the name tag, making it pop more.

What I do know is that I have 51 squares + name tag to do. It takes me 1,5 hours to make one with hearts. And the yarn seems to be enough for 3,5 square. There's a lot of work ahead to finish before February.

The best party

I'm on my way home after a wonderful weekend in Stockholm. First on Friday was a crayfish party, a Swedish specialty, with lots of relatives. It was nice with lots of loud singing.

On Saturday was a full day of party at Linnéa's, celebrating her big birthday. We were welcomed by big balloons with horses on them, a fitting theme indeed. It was an absolutely wonderful day, filled with tasty food, wine, boardgames and good friends.

A little bittersweet as it made me miss having that kind of social life. Gothenburg is rather lonely and during my time there I haven't really had people over for boardgames or days of fun.

Sunday was a calmer day, with drop coffee and ice cream in the park before Rhys, the kitties and I had to start our journeys home.

Magical Birthday

I recently had the honors of having my Birthday. The day itself wasn't much to brag about, as it was just me, the kitties and Ben&Jerrys. But I had an amazing weekend to make up for that.

When I arrived the day after to Stockholm I got pancake dinner and a frozen chocolate mousse cake, accompanied by birthday singing from my parents.

At 5 AM on Friday I had to drag myself to the airport and to London, with a new found cold. But the day got a lot better when meeting up with Rhys, who had stolen cookies from Ben just for me. We left the airport, had lunch at out favorite Lebanese place Comptoir Libanais before checking in at this hotel where we got to choose between two different room. One had a big bed and the other had smaller bed but a shower in the room. We chose the shower, and I'm so sad for not having a picture of this room as it was rather funny looking with a freestanding shower in a corner of the room.

After a few cookies and some rest it was time for a big adventure that I had no clue about what it could be. Rhys kept on giving me clues, laughing a bit at my slow mathskills, as we headed out of the city center. I got the theme quite quickly, but had no idea what activity it could be with said theme. It's an understatement to say that I got excited when we arrived to the adventure. Warner Bros Studio Tour of the Harry Potter set. Holy smoly was it a fantastic day, fever aside. I remember being told in the beginning of things that would appear, but I forgot them quickly and every time I turned a corner I was amazed. We walked around for 6 hours and I filled my phone with photos and a few silly videos showing me displaying some behavior society might not seem fit of a 29 year old woman. However, I will restrain myself from sharing these things here, as I know of a certain someone reading this blog might want to experience this magical adventure for herself.

Thank you sweetie for this wonderful surprise <3 p="">
On the Saturday we started out a bit slow, perhaps it had something to do with me having a rather big cold. But after popping some paracetamol combined with caffeine we could get some adventures done. We decided very spontaneous to go and watch King Lear at the Globe which was really nice even though I didn't understand everything right away (someone had to explain a lot during the break). After the theater we went out for dinner, sadly not the Wine cellar bar we had planned and someone was filled with paracetamol. Instead we went to Pizza East in Portobello (it is so much better than the Shoreditch one) and had a lovely pizza night, so much yummy.

Sunday was a calm day mostly spent at Lush, whoops I might have bought some make up, and at Foyles, a wonderful and huge bookstore. We had a quick Meze platter at Comptoir Libanais before heading out to the airport.

And that's how my last 20-something birthday was celebrated. I've now started the countdown for the big birthday next year. Not stressed out about turning 30, but more stressed out by my 30-before-30-list of which I've only completed 10 task over the years I've had this list. But heck. I think I should be able to complete it all in the next 300-something days that are left.

Halfway

Woho, I have finished the backside of my knitted sweater. I have hopes of finishing the whole sweater before the end of the year.

This little thing is part of my 30 before 30 list, which I have 1 year left on and more than half of it left to finish, I'm good with procrastinating.

Project 333 / Capsule Wardrobe - The Purge

As a part of my journey into getting a sustainable wardrobe, and part because I love organizing anything, I've made a big spreadsheet of the content in my wardrobe. Not only did I make a list of each piece, but I also added information about color, appropriate seasons to be used, what state they are in and whether or not I want to keep the piece. Took me some time, but it was a lot of fun...

Yes, I'm a dork and proud of it

With help of my honest and though loving sister, I've purged my wardrobe. It was great fun and lots of undressing and dressing quickly and a new joke was formed.

*tada* Släktmiddagar *jazzhands*

I'm left with a few decisions and two big bags with clothes for donations (as I'm too lazy to try and get some money from them by selling them). I also have shoes to sort through but their fate is kind of already set. If shoes are to uncomfortable to wear, than there's no reason to have them.

So from 91 pieces of clothing (including outwear but excluding shoes and accessories) I'm now down to  66 pieces, all of whom will be used and loved and tended for.  It feels wonderful to have purged the wardrobe. I now have a wardrobe only of clothes that I will wear, no more guilt over that skirt that I bought 5 years ago but never worn. Having things that I don't use does not make me happy. 

And with this purge done I feel ready to try the 333 Project for this autumn. 33 pieces of clothing to use for 3 months.  

Project 333 / Capsule Wardrobe - What is it?

Over the summer I've been introduced to a concept refereed to capsule wardrobe or Project 333. It's all about having and using a small wardrobe. The Project 333 refer to using 33 pieces of clothing, often including outwear, shoes and accessories, and using these clothes for a full season, 3 months. It's goal is to use your clothes, minimize the "One day I'll wear that"-pieces in the wardrobe. It is also combined with saying good bye to fast fashion and instead, when needed, invest in clothes from sustainable sources. Well, that's at least what I've taken from it. And from it I will take these things:

• Start buying clothes from sustainable sources
• Think through my purchases more, no longer buying clothes that will not be worn
• Mend and take care of my clothes
• Give the 33 clothes for 3 months a change, try make new and fun combinations
• Stop using softener and the drier, as these does more harm than good to the clothes 

Interested? Here are some links and information

My Green Closet Youtuber all about sustainable fashion and with great tips on how to get the most out of a smaller wardrobe.

List of a ton of sustainable shops, not only fashion

Project 333 Here you can find a lot more information.

Good Morning Sunshine

It has been a morning for sure this Wednesday. For the third night in a row I'm woken up in the middle of the night. This time by a Milky cat complaining that he didn't get any dry food before bedtimes. It was a very tired Maria that later rolled out of bed after snoozing an hour.

I recently changed my breakfast from yogurt and müsli to smoothies, as I had started to loathe my yogurt and müsli. Though this new breakfast of mine surely is tastier, I'm a bit worried about its protein content. To ease my worry I've ordered some protein powder that the postman jammed into my mailbox, was a lot of cardboard destruction to try and get that out, thank you postman.

But back to this morning. It was the first time for me to add this healthy powder into my smoothie. The backside of the bag said to use 30g of powder to 300ml of water. Since my smoothies are about 300ml, I made the decision to measure up and add 30g, which is roughly 100ml. Big mistake. My smoothie tasted nothing but powdery, nothing like my usually so tasty blend between banana and raspberries. I tried my best to add more oatmilk and more raspberries, and though it started to taste more like raspberries again it was still rather powdery. Ended up with probably 600ml of smoothie, so at least I have some of it waiting for me when I get home.

Well, after the powder-disaster it came time to close the bag of the protein powder. It had one of those zip-locks, clever little things to make your bags reusable. Except this one wouldn't work at all. After trying for half an hour I had to give up and instead find a container to put the powdery content into. Only I didn't have one big enough, but after pouring over most of the content I could at least fit the bag into one of my reusable zip-lock bags (oh the irony). 

My kitchen is coated in powder now, I nearly forgot to feed the kitties before leaving. Lets hope I don't fall asleep at the desk at work

Bedtimes?

It is nearly one AM, middle of the night and yes I am still up. My alarm will go off in six hours.
I have been up painting this late evening. There is something therapeutic about painting this late in the night, when no one else is awake. I love it and I could easily stay up  another two hours painting. But I do have a day job waiting for me in the morning, so I better get to bed. Good night to you all.

Flying... Or rather just waiting. Part 2

After a hot and wonderful weekend in Vienna it was time to get back to Gothenburg. I checked in on my phone early in the morning, downloaded my boarding-passes and went on with the day. Got ice cream, almost won at minigolf and had tasty nachos before heading out to the airport.

Upon arriving to the airport we noticed that my flight was an hour delayed, of course. Since my battery was around 30% I thought it was best to print out the boarding-passes in case the phone died, because I forgot to pack charger. To my surprise, Airberlin no longer had machines for that, so I had to go to the regular check in line for this. It was moving slowly but after 15 minutes it was finally my turn. And here is were the chaos starts.

After minutes of buttonpushing, phonecalling and tripple-checking my passport I got sent of to the ticket custom service place. Went there and got informed that I had been rebooked for a flight with another airline. I'm handed a printout of my flights and sent to print my boarding-passes with this airline. So we head off to the other side of the airport, a bit stressed since it is now getting close to departure time. We had arrived to the airport one hour before departure, since all we had to do was hugging goodbye and get me through security. Now we had 30 minutes for said tasks and no boarding-pass.

When arriving to the new section of the airport we quickly found the machines and tried printing out the boarding-passes. Big no from the machine because check in was obviously closed for that flight. The lines were huge to the check in counters so we're trying to explain my situation to two different workers until getting send of to a third lady that could help me. She did her best trying to catch the gate, but couldn't help me as they had already started boarding.

All I could do was to get to the next ticket customer service place and be rebooked. Again. Lucky for me there was one more option available that day, leaving in 1,5 hour. So after a quick meal me and Rhys sadly said goodbye and I headed to my gate

.

And guess what. My flight is delayed an hour. Which meant there was a very big chance of me missing my connecting. Oh well, I got on (eventually) and as we were approaching our destination I asked the flight attendants about connecting flight, but they had no information at all. We landed the same time that my connecting flight were to take of. I got of and hurried to a message board and found that my next flight had not taken off, but was an hour late. Thank goodness for that.

I join a group of tired travelers as we're waiting for a pilot. I check the shuttlebuses in Gothenburg and realize that there is no chance of my making it to the last bus. My only option is to take a cab. I'm terrified of going alone in a cab and I will avoid cabs as much as I possible can. I can count on one hand the occasions I've been in a cab. Once with my family on the way from airport home, from the city after seeing the Return of the King with my brother, after I fainted at the blood donation place with boyfriend at that time, between restaurants when we celebrated my dads 50th birthday with family, once in Thailand with parents. Lucky for me I found a girl to share the cab with and got home around 1.30 AM. 

Flying... Or rather just waiting. Part 1

Goodness gracious me has my flying luck been on the edge of not working at all this weekend.

On the Friday I got an email midday from airberlin informing me that my 19.20 flight has been delayed to 20.00. which sucked alot since I had a connecting flight that would be hard to get onboard before I got to Berlin.

When getting to the airport there's no information about the delay at all. Foolishly I thought that was a good sign (I'm laughing inside at the foolishly naive young woman I once was). All through the security and all I get another email saying my flight is only delayed to 19.50. Half an hour later I get yet another email, saying 21.00. Big oh no as that would mean that I would miss my connecting flight. Well, things kind of got better from there, as I got yet another email, but this time about my second flight. It was delayed by two hours as well, making it again a narrow change but in the end I made it.

But I couldn't relax just yet. As I now we're arriving to the airport at 00.05 and the last train from the airport goes at 00.18. We did of course land at the furthest end of the airport, making it a long run. I could barley breath for half an hour as the AC on the airplane had dried out my poor throat.

At least I got there and got to enjoy a wonderful weekend with my sweetheart.