The Small Things: Rhubarb Tart

I love love love cake!
I’m convinced that I have a special stomach just for sweets and perhaps even an extra one just for cake. I can definitely eat more sweets than other food and I usually can always eat pie, no matter how much I’ve eaten before. When I was still living at home, my Mom and I sometimes just had an apple pie for lunch. My favourite kind of cakes are fruit cakes in every variation.

Today we baked a rhubarb tart with a simple sponge mixture, freshly picked rhubarb from my parents garden,  and beaten egg whites with almonds on top. So yummy! Rhuburb tart is especially delicious, since you can get rhubarb only for a limited time, so for me it’s something special. Fortunately there’s some left for tomorrow and I’m already looking forward to the next one, I’ll definitely bake another one this season!

If you like I can share the recipe – if you’re interested tell me in the comments!

Have an exciting week!

Link Love #16

Image: Rookuzz

Even though this week was quite uneventful, it was kind of exhausting, I don’t know why. Now I’m for a mini vacation at my parents, which is always very relaxing.  Here are some links for the weekend.

• An interview with Hitler’s Food Taster: One Bite Away from Death.This almost made me cry.
• This embroidered tote bag looks really great. Sadly I guess I’m to impatient to do it.
• I’m a little bit ashamed to admit this, but I love hair tutorials. At the moment my favourite source is How-to-hair-girls blog, I like that her tutorials are always a little bit messy and not too polished. One day I want to master this.
• More great use for washi tape: magnetic bookmarks and shelf edging.
• Aren’t these flower pillows beautiful?
• A list of Megan Drapers outfits. I’m not sure if this is something you have to see, but you definitely have to read the names of the outfits. My favourite name is “Cleaning the House” lingerie.
• You know I like to make my own notebooks. Here’s a tutorial to make a file folder book.
• Pictures of places so beautiful, you can hardly believe they exist. I can confirm that the black forest does exist, but the last time I saw it it looked rather dark and depressing.

Have a nice long weekend – do you have any plans?

Art Journaling: Circle Stamps

Not only do I love letter stamps, I like stamps in general very much. Very often I use every day materials as stamps, especially for stamping simple patterns as backgrounds.

Two things I regularly use for stamping are bubble wrap and mason jars.
Here I used a wrap with bigger bubbles and covered it with coat of acrylics using a roller, before pressing it onto the paper.Than I added a second layer with bubbles which were a little smaller. I also went over the page with the roller and the paint which remained on it after covering the bubble wrap.Then I took the bottom of the maison jar, where you usually can find a “patterned circle” and covered it with paint.I really like the look of the mason jar stamp with its little pattern and the irregularities.

To finish the page I filled the maison jar circles with gesso, cut little butterflies and glued them on. For me this is an unusually colorful and bright page, but I like it, because of its springy and happy vibe.

Do you have any tips which everyday objects would make great stamps?

Projects: Work in Progress – Sixties Dress

Currently I am sewing a sixties dress, I wanted to do so for a long time, so when I discovered this dress in the autumn 2012 issue of Burda easy fashion, I decided to give it a shot. I really like the pattern, especially the collar, but I don’t like the fabric they chose. I bought two simple cotton fabrics, one in plain blue and the other one with little circles.

Although the pattern is from an easy fashion magazine, I have to admit that I found some parts to be rather difficult. But the advantage is, that you don’t have to copy the pattern pieces onto tissue paper and that they provide  step-by-step instructions. Also there’s no zipper, which makes it easier since zippers can be tricky some time. By now I have learned to sew in zippers quite well, so it wouldn’t have been a problem, but I like that it’s a dress you just can slip on.

Today I worked on my least favourite part, inserting the sleeves. Although I have sewn clothes with sleeves quite a few times by now, I always struggle to get it right. So far I have sewn in one sleeve and it turned out surprisingly well, although it was a challenge to include the lining, because I haven’t sewn something with both sleeves and lining before.  All in all I’m quite pleased how the dress turned out so far. I will show you pictures of the finished dress as soon as it’s complete.

Which is the part you struggle most with when sewing clothes? Any tips for inserting sleeves?

Link Love #15

Image: couscouschocolat

This week was pretty slow, among others because my pulled tooth is still bugging me. But at least it’s slowly getting better. Here are a few links I stumbled across this week.

• A whole tumblr full of Art Journaling Inspiration.
• In honor of mother’s day, Sarah gathered the wisdom of our mothers. This reminds me of a column of a magazine edited by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, called “Learning from the Old” (if I remember it right). Sadly, they stopped the magazine years ago.
• These Zipper Bracelets would make a great use of zippers from old clothes you don’t wear anymore.
• I want to try these chocolate chips and granola bagels. I think they would make a great breakfast.
• Another “Why didn’t I think of this before” DIY: Safety Pin Shirt.
• 11 successful people who failed at first isn’t only a great article because a picture of Elvis is included.
• The Rorschach Test may be controversial, but at least it’s definitely a great design inspiration.

Have a relaxing weekend!

Bookshelf: 1Q84

I just finished the third book of 1Q84 and I’m really sad it’s over! A few month ago I read book one and two and didn’t discover that there’s a third book until last week. I couldn’t believe that I missed it before.I’m not going to summarize the story, since I feel that it’s much to complex . You can get an idea what it is about here.
As you already can tell, I enjoyed it a lot. It’s not exactly something new, rather all you can expect from a good Murakami brought to the boil. It starts with two different stories about two main characters, and in the beginning I had no clue how they connect. While at first everything seems normal, at some point strange things happen and you don’t know if they are real, or just in the protagonist’s head. But as the story goes along you get an idea that through these things there has to be a connection between the two protagonists and bit by bit the whole thing comes together (although not all questions get resolced). I really admire it, if an author is able to start at different points of a story and to bring it together at the end (other great examples are Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem and Die Frequenzen by Clemens J. Setz. I think the last one is only available in German). The story is really exciting, at some points I rarely could wait to find out what will happen next, what’s the meaning behind the events and for some things to finally happen which had announced themselves over chapters. In between there’s a lot of confusion, but in my opinion that’s part of a good Murakami, too. Next to the two stories coming together they also develop on their own. Bit by bit you get to know the main characters better and learn about their past, what made them to the persons they are and what brought them to the points of their lives they are currently at. While the personal stories of the main characters add some depth to the story, they are also essential for the overall plot.

All in all I liked the first two books better than the last, since they are more exciting. Although the third one is the one where most of the mysteries are resolved, it’s sometimes a little lengthy. Nonetheless I couldn’t put away one of them. I really wished there was a fourth book.

Have you read it? Did you like it?

The small things: all shades of green

What I really love about spring next to the flowers are all the fresh shades of green that appear everywhere. I can’t really remember if it has been like this the years before, but this year I’m really enjoying it and find it very energizing and refreshing, but also very calming and relaxing. I just want to dive into it. Perhaps it’s because it took spring so long to finally arrive. However, I just can’t get enough of it. I know I repeat myself, but I want it to be spring all year long!

And I actually managed to take a walk today on my own, in spite of my fear of dogs. I met some, but surprisingly they didn’t take an interest in me. I’m a little bit proud of myself. The area I walked through is so beautiful, there’s a little river, fields and a lot of trees and I guess I couldn’t have found more green anywhere near. It was great.

I got pulled out a tooth this morning and just don’t feel like writing a proper post, I’m sorry. Perhaps I will catch up on the link love post over the weekend, we’ll see.

Have a nice weekend!

You can make this! Paper Daisy Tutorial

Finally here comes the tutorial for the paper daisies. They are really easy to make but I think that they are very cute and I like that they can be used in so many ways.

You need:

• crepe paper in a shade of rose and magenta
• plated fasteners with round heads
• nail polish in yellow
• scissors

1. Paint the heads of the fasteners with nail polish. Let dry.
2. Take a sheet of crepe paper folded as it is and first cut a square, than cut it into a circle. Mine had a diameter of about 4 to 5 cm. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
3. Notch the edges of the circle. Make sure not to cut to far into, since there has to be room for the fastener.
4. Take tha layers of crepe paper apart, than make little piles of about ten pieces. Make sure to pile them a little bit shifted to get a more natural, fluffier look.
5. Make a little cut into the middle of the pile, push the painted fastener through and bend it at the back. Tousle the “petals” and you’re done!

As I told you, these little daisies were part of the decoration for the La.Meko Filmfestival. I didn’t take pictures of the whole decoration myself, but I now that there have been taken some. I hope I can get my hands on them and share them with you soon.

If you have any further questions on the tutorial, please let me know!

The Small Things: Balcony Flowers

Once more I’ve got some flower photos for you (but since my last flower post got so many likes, (at least by my blog’s standards) (thank you, by the way!) I thought it would be ok. And I definitely wanted to show you my balcony once it was planted, as I talked about it so many times before. Have a nice week!