Jack O'Parade

Isn't it just amazing what you can do with a simple pumkin and a little bit of imagination...

You will find all the original sources to the pictures here!

Source: pumpkinrot.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Happy Halloween!

Colours of the Fall

I had to take a break from the Halloween business today because I felt a sudden need to look for new autumn stuff to adjust my wardrobe to the outside conditions. I found a lot of inspiration and some beautiful coloured clothes. This is just one of many possible fall combinations I put together: 

1. Belt - White Stuff
2. Clutch - Etsy
3. Scarf  - Etsy
4. Boots - Stylefruits
5. Dress - White Stuff
6. Bracelet - Etsy
7. Earrings - Etsy

Chocolate & Bones

The Headline kind of gives it away - today is 

Treat Day!

Sweets and Desserts are the essentials for every party and Halloween is no exception here. In a world with cupcakes, the possibilities to create colourful, original, funny and tasty things are endless. Even so, I always tend to think that I have seen it all and there are no real surprises anymore when it comes to baking and sweets. After all, there must be a limit when it comes to the things you can do with a simple cupcake, right? Little did I know.... When I started to browse around for Halloween ideas this year, I was impressed and surprised (and sometimes shocked) about the unbelievable amount of creativity that is out there: 

Source: inspireco.blogspot.ca via Miriam on Pinterest

Source: inspire.2ia.pl via Miriam on Pinterest

A wise rule that often applies in life comes in handy here as well: The simpler the better. Isn't this the perfect saying for this incredible cake? Such a simple idea and such an impressive outcome! 

I just love it!

Source: 27.media.tumblr.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Have a sugary night!! :)

Pin of the Day

Source: piccsy.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Halloween 2.0

Today is

Food Day!

Personally, I don't enjoy it when the food gets all too disgusting comes Halloween. I mean, its great and funny and I really admire the creativity of the people who invent things like that, but I just can't eat it when it looks too awful. And I can tell you - there is some REALLY disgusting stuff out there! Oh Yeah!... When I feel like I am eating a real brain it just kind of takes the fun away for me. So here are my (not too scary and disgusting) Halloween food inspirations. (But some of them might also tickle a weak stomach):

You can find all the sources to the pictures here!

My favourites used to be the Hot Dog Mummies because they are so easy to make and look just so funny and somehow even realistic.  But then I saw this:

Isn't this just great? :)

Have a tasty night!

Pin of the Day

Source: thisisnthappiness.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Soon the Bones will Rattle

Halloween approaches with big steps! Yesterday I was looking for scary ideas and it made me remember how, a view years ago, I mistook a monster spider (that was hanging in the window of an Australian shoe shop) for a Halloween decoration. It ended in an hysterical screaming fit when I approached it and it turned out to be real... Ugh!  But I normally really like this Holiday. Skeletons, yeah! :)
When I was small we always went for trick or treat, even though nobody in our village really got what we were doing.  They probably considered us a little bit crazy (Halloween just started to be celebrated in Germany back then), but most were really generous with their sweets anyway. Today it's more established here, but still not comparable to the US.

To get into the right mood I have been browsing around for days now, trying to find inspiration for the Day of the Undead. I collected my favourite ideas and categorized them. Today is

 Decoration Day!

I generally don't like it when the deco-madness gets too wild or too funny (at least not in my own apartment), it often looks a little bit tacky then. So I tried to find decoration ideas that are spooky and classy at the same time. These are my favourites:

You can find all the sources to these pictures here!

I really like dark birds! They are mysterious but look so shiny and elegant.  The Black Cat Cookies would normally belong into the food category, but I think they look so great, they can just as well be used as decoration. And isn't it a fantastic idea to put a flowered pantyhose over a pumpkin?

Have a spooky Night!

Pin of the Day

Source: eatliveshop.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Candied-Almond Cookies

Today I felt a little frustrated. I had (again!) spent a long time in the library, copying and reading, and it took me hours to pick out all the chapters that I wanted. The books I need for my thesis can not be taken home, so I either have to read there at the library (which can be fun but is never very comfy) or copy the hundreds of pages. Today, when I finally got home I realized that about half of the pages I copied are missing a piece of text at the side... I guess everybody goes through that from time to time and it was my own fault but now I have to do it all again...
When I am depressed I have to eat something sugary (not good ... I know). I generally try to cut down on sugar, so I went through my kitchen cabinets and the fridge and all I found was low fat chocolate pudding. Not what I had in mind! Just when I came to the conclusion that I had to go out again to buy something that would give me my sugar rush I remembered my cookie jar! My good old cookie jar ( which I love, by the way, because its full of cute chubby cookie eating gnomes)! And what did I find? A batch of Candied-Almond Cookies I had made several month (yes, month!) ago! And what do you know, they still tasted great! A little stiff, but that's how they are meant to be anyway. :)
Made my day! The recipe is very easy and they taste really like the Candied-Almonds you can by at a German Christmas market. Yeah, the Cookies can be considered a Christmassy thing, but so what, its not that long till December and as I said -  they keep very well!

Candied-Almond Cookies

You need:

125 g grounded Almonds
150 g Sugar
50 g Powdered Sugar
2 1/2 tsp Vanilla Sugar  

1 Egg white

Mix the almonds with the sugar. Now beat the egg white until its stiff. Add the powdered sugar and the Vanilla sugar in small steps, one spoon after the other and then add the sugar-almond mass. Form little balls out of the dough and sprinkle them with a little powdered sugar. And... that's it! You can leave them on the tray over night, that makes them more crispy. 

Now preheat the oven on 160 C° and bake the Cookies for 15-20 min. Don't let them get brown, they need to stay light! They might not look like much, but they really taste great! 

Enjoy! ♥

Dragonfly & Hummingbird

Just wanted to introduce these wonderful new earrings from my shop! I have never seen a hummingbird in real life but I guess they must be very beautiful and special creatures. Whenever I hear that they flap their wings up to fifty times per second (in one SINGLE second!) I try to imagine that and its just not possible. I simply can not vision it! How do they do that?
When I took the pictures of my earrings I tought that hummingbird is a really nice word (it's Kolibri in German) and that made me wonder if there are any hummingbird poems out there that I don't know about. On my search I stumbled upon this little poem by Emily Dickinson that I really liked. It is also called  A Route of Evanescence:

Source: whattopin.com via Judy on Pinterest

The Humming-Bird

by Emily Dickinson

A route of evanescence
With a revolving wheel;
A resonance of emerald,
A rush of cochineal;
And every blossom on the bush
Adjusts its tumbled head,--
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy morning’s ride.

Pin of the Day

Source: someecards.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Monday Cravings

New week, new clothes! If only...! But dreams are for free and these are my Monday dreams for this week! I have always loved to combine elegant with rustic! Its the best (and sometimes only) way to wear beautiful clothes such as this when there is nor party or other event in sight but you want to wear it anyway! Now! And since we are experiencing a bit of an Indian Summer here at the moment, it is really not easy to get dressed. It's not cold and not hot, in the evening it gets freezing and in the afternoon you are sweating. I think this is a clever combination to wear in a situation like this and it's also perfect to wear at Uni! Not boots but ankle boots, no jacket but a cardigan, and the jewelry rounds it all up! Gold is autumn for me, because it fits to the beautiful leave colours all around and the earrings are simply in my favourite colour (and gold, too!) and I fell in love with them at first sight! Now I only have to decide between the two cardigans... life can be tough! ;)

1. Dress from see U soon

2. Boots from White Stuff

3. Cardigans from Bonaparte

4. Earrings Etsy

5. Rings from Etsy

Coming Home

To come home is usually a nice thing. But after an absence of nearly 3 month, it has its downsides, too. I spent most of this summer in Italy, trying to learn the beautiful language and my apartment has been abandoned during this time and the weeks I spent with my family.  Now I came back with tons of luggage, my complete winter-wardrobe (which I had stored at my parent's house  - as now is my summer wardrobe), all the new things I got in Italy and the Netherlands and all the other stuff I had needed over the summer. It was chaos. My apartment was completely covered in dust (and spiders), I had no food at all, and I could not find a thing in the mountains of clothes lying around everywhere. So I spent the whole day cleaning, doing laundry, clearing my closet and trying to find places for the new items I bought. And actually... it was fun! I hate cleaning (and avoid it as good as possible) but I have always liked to organize and clear up. Put some good music on and start the show! It is oddly liberating and calming and you can see the effect of your work, which is always good for the soul! So now, after hours of chaos, dust and spider-fights, my back aches badly but around me it is all shimmery and clean (yes, I cleaned, too!) and even my wardrobe is in perfect and neat balance. And because it looked all so neat and new I decided that I wanted to clean AND re-decorate in one go. In the Netherlands I found so many beautiful things and they needed to be arranged and stored. 

I love to shop in the Netherlands, it always seems as if they have so much better decoration stuff then we do... Don't know why but they are just better in that department. I bought lots of new Christmas decoration and I can't wait to arrange it. But it is still 5 weeks till I can get it out of the cabinets and I wanted something new now! My apartment is not very big and as a broke and busy student I neither have the time nor the money or the space to do very much. And because it's only a temporary residence I can't do big things like wallpaper (I even avoid paint on the walls, because I will have to repaint it white when I move out and who needs that stress?). But nevertheless I want it nice and cozy around me and I just have to work with the possibilities I have at hand. So today I tackled my little living room table and one of my windowsills. It's not really a fall decoration but I am not much of a season-decorator. When I managed to arrange items in a way that appeals to me I'm often having a hard time to part with it again. That is also the reason why I did not have any Christmas decoration in my apartment last year... But this year is going to be different, and these pictures can help me to remember the way I had it arranged before. 

One of the things I got in the Netherlands is this graceful lady here. I just love here because her  glaze has my favourite colour  and she looks so beautiful and dignified. 

My grandparent's vintage wedding picture fits perfectly in the new  frame with its vintage look :)

And this is what is was supposed to look like, because it's really an evening decoration! Without the candles burning it's just not finished! I don't spent much daytime in my apartment, and when I get home after a busy day I need my candles and I need everything to be calming and cozy. 

 Have a nice evening!

Pin of the Day

Source: 2.bp.blogspot.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Pin of the Day

Source: whiteswallows.tumblr.com via Miriam on Pinterest

Shopping for Tin

 Today I was at one of my favourite second hand shops (I go there every time we come here for the holidays and every time I find a new treasure). Today it was this beautiful tin can. When I spotted it in the big pile it literally screamed my name. It will fit perfectly in my obsessively large tin can collection.  Nothing looks more Vintage than a tin can, right? I was so happy when I found this one. It looks old and special, classy and mysterious at the same time. I like to imagine that it belonged to a British Lady once, who kept it on her dresser in her beautiful mansion-boudoir and stored her love letters and diamonds in it. The colours are just perfect and for 2,25 € it was a  bargain ( Isn't it often shocking how expensive old cans can be!) Now I just have to find a place for it in my apartment.

Seals without Sea

Today I reached one of my holiday goals -  I saw a seal! Several actually. Ok, I was at a seal rescue station, but I didn't really specify, did I?  It was great to be in such close contact with the animals, but at the same time it was also a sad experience. Many of the seals have illnesses such as eye-problems and the Babies are orphanes and have lost their mothers. The work of the rescue team is a very good thing, though. The old and sick seals can stay at the station and spent their twilight years under protection and the younger ones will be coddled up and set free when they can care for themselves. I was able to take some nice shots - the whale is only a replica, though. But doesn't it look real?

My favourite picture.
 Isn't he cute? The Babyseal was so fascinated by our umbrella that he even tried to catch it!