Still home alone // My nails become girly again

Hello, it is I, Nara (again), arisen from nail-polish and food smell!

I'm still home alone. And doing nothing productive. At all. Can't believe holidays are over and school starts tomorrow. It's really bizarre. Attending a musical school is another universe, far away from "normal life", everything that happens there is twice as big and twice as dramatic. Don't know whether I'm ready to face that yet, but I don't really have a choice, do I?

And I bet, by tomorrow I'm gonna be head over heals with performing again, so doesn't really matter how I'm feeling right now, haha ;)

My nails and I... have a really passionate and loving relationship actually. I've wanted to have pretty long nails since I can remember (who doesn't?) and in my year in China, I learned how to shape and grow them and be pretty :D

After China, I had them longer, then short again, no nail-polish, again nail-polish... it changed a lot, and up until a week or so, I had them short and polished (not voluntarily, my nails had gotten really soft over the summer because I was dieting in Korea). Now I decided to grow them again, and it works pretty well until now!

So I used the colors Catrice Ultimate Nail Color - 190 Wrapped Around My Finger and Essence Effect Nail Polish - 10 Glitterbomb, using the sparkly-one only on two nails. I think it's nice to have accents instead of having glitter everywhere, makes you appreciate the glitter a little bit more ;)

What I started using since about two weeks is p2 Diamond Strenght Nail Hardener and it seems to work, my nails feel strong! 

And a must-have for me, without it my nails would look terrible, is Catrice Quick Dry & High Shine, it's a top-coat which magically makes your polish dry faster (seriously have no idea how it works) and thanks to his I am able to actually move and touch things after my self-treated manicure without ruining my whole nail-polish (I am a very clumsy person and tend to trip and fall)

As already mentioned yesterday, I'm trying to treat myself with better food, which means that I need to cook a lot more. Basically easy, big problem is: time. With school going on again and not getting home before 7/8, it's really hard to get up and cook something for the next day...

Today I tried a recipe and it is a kind of tofu-sandwich with spinach in between.

I tried a little bit, but I made it to take it with me for lunch tomorrow, and it tastes quite ok. The recipe says to serve it with ketchup, but that's not really the healthiest sauce, so I guess I have to figure out an alternative!

Whoops, this post turned out longer than I expected,

Good night, folks!

Home alone // I'm going to die alone with 8 cats

Hello, it is I, Nara, arisen from hollow rooms and wool, again!

Lou left for Berlin yesterday, leaving me all alone in the apartment until Tuesday... I had plans to do a lot in our home, but (as always) I don't get to anything! Instead I'm stuck in front of the computer, reading other blogs or trying to fix up a new layout for our blog...

Apart from being nerdy in front of the computer, I decided to get into detoxing again, since I have been shoving enormous amounts of food and sweets into me and that is just not cool.

I already tried one of those diet-drinks that was ok in the beginning, but kind of leaves me nausea at the end of the day. I guess I'll just have to be strict with myself and get into healthy cooking and leave it with one diet-drink a day, maybe I will feel better then?

Anyways, as already mentioned, I have been working on a pullover for quite a while now (I could have finished a decade ago, but I kind of forgot...) feeling like an old cat-lady as soon as I started working on it again. I tell you folks, that's how it's going to end. But at least my cats would love me. And I'd be happy and surrounded by soft wool. Sounds like a plan, huh? 

It got a bit short, but I'm pretty proud ;) Already found my next project, it's going to bee wool-hot pants! So excited :)

Sunshine picnic // Friends & knitting ftw

Hello, it is we, arisen from grass and piles of wool!

So today we started our day with a friend's birthday brunch in the park!

We baked a chocolate cake for her which unfortunately didn't turn out that well... like our bake-goods normally do. But it was good enough ;)

Generally we just ate and rolled around in the sun and boiled ourselves in sunlight! So nice.

In the evening we spent our free-time (that we could spend dating, but we obviously choose not to! ;)) with watching "friends" - best. Show. Ever. - and knitting!

Nara nearly got her pulliver finished, we're eager to see the end-product!!

Good night our dearest friends

Detox gone right // Who needs horizontal shelves anyways?

Hello, it is we, arisen from Nirvana and drilling dust... again.

Today, I have reached Nirvana.

I started my day with a improvised green-smoothie which tasted surprisingly tasty! Still have to work on it a little, but as soon as we have a nice recipe, we're obviously going to post it here ;)

Then, a friend of mine had a coupon for a spa-visit, called the "Hamam Palace".

To get there we had to take a journey to "Wilhemsburg" (unfortunately, not in New York) and is another part of Hamburg I hadn't discovered yet. 

It's in the south and there's a lot of industry, but since about two years, it's renewing itself, offering more and more affordable flats, so more students can move there (we actually considered moving there, too).

 

"Hamam" is a kind of Turkish sauna where you pour hot water over your body and lie on heated stones until every kind of tension completely falls off our body. You can get massages there, too, but I was set for now.

Afterwards we even got tea and a fruit-plate (I was so relaxed, I even drank tea... And I really, really don't like tea! And it was delicious!) and felt like we were floating outside of our bodies~ 

Definitely going to return!

Later, after preparing a birthday cake (Yes, detox went as fast as it came) we decided to work a little on Lou's room and smash his shelve on the wall...

It didn't really work though, somehow it's tilted and won't really stay on the wall. And we were too annoyed to further deal with the problem, so we decided to postpone it until tomorrow.. haha

Nothing really special today, we try to keep our lives interesting!

Food over food over food // Smelling like a bonfire is sexy

Hello, it is I, Nara, arisen from yet another food-coma and loads of smoke!

Since we hosted two guests at our place, i offered to stay at a friend's home for a night. And because my dear friend is a great hostess herself, I started my day with delicious apple-waffles!

Afterwards we continued our food-journey to our next friend who we hadn't seen in over a week ( that's really, really long for us ) and there we decided to open the barbecue-season.

For this we needed fire. My friend only had a hole in her garden ( which is one of the most efficient barbecue strategies as it turned out ) and someone had to face the challenge to make fire out of wood charcoal, wood, paper and a lighter.

I accepted the challenge - and succeeded! There was a lot of tearing and cursing because the smoke of course always turned into the direction where you stood, but in the end we had well lit charcoal, just waiting to cook our meals!

The food was really tasty, the atmosphere you have with friends makes everything taste even richer :)

The only thing that really bothers me though, I smell like my clothes were thrown into the fire, too. There is just no possible way to escape this one downside of barbecueing or chilling at a bonfire.

Maybe I should just walk around in a plastic bag. At least I wouldn't smell so bad then?

Sorry for yesterday // Sunshine and ice-cream in beautiful Hamburg

Hello, it is we, arisen from loads and loads of sunshine and some more ice-cream on our faces!

Again sorry for yesterday, Nara was sick and Lou had too much to do... We just couldn't find any time! But won't happen again - We promise.

So we are hosting two friends at our place - one old german friend and one japanese friend! Which meant for us to go a little sight-seeing today.

And since Nara got two coupons from her father for the Langnese Happiness Station by Hamburg's harbour, it was pretty clear that we would start our tour there!

The Hafencity is so modern - it's not even done yet. But the few buildings that are up and about are very futuristic and cool, a little sneak-peak into the future maybe? It's also really clean, it was a lot of fun to walk around!

So after our delicious ice-cream we decided to take a little trip on the fairy boats, since it's included in our public-transport tickets.

It was our first time, too, so it was really exciting! It was great to do something new in your own city, although you've lived there pretty much all your life.

We're really looking forward to our next adventure, maybe in a complete different country maybe? We'll see ;)

International Women's Day // Because 2.5l vanilla ice-cream doesn't seem enough

Hello, it is we, arisen from drilling dust with ice-cream smeared on our faces!

As we already mentioned our post yesterday, we both don't have curtains yet. And my window is the one facing the bus stop. So my father and I were always talking about a date to do that and kept rescheduling... Until I decided today to just woman-up and do it myself. I mean, come on, it's international women's day - there just is no better time!

As you may see - I was successful ( there was a lot of cursing and yelling during the process though... Apparently it's just something I need to do when it comes to doing stuff in the apartment... )

We don't know about y'alls weather conditions, but we've had a pretty delightful day! It was warm (up to 16 degrees) and since we have a car for the weekend, we decided to do one-week's shopping within one hour of free parking time ( needless to say we failed )... 

AND THEN (because we clearly aren't shoving enough food in us already) we saw this 2.5l vanilla ice-cream box winking at us from the freezer... It didn't take too long until we were convinced. 

It was the perfect weather to welcome the ice-cream season by having some on our little balcony. We hope you can enjoy the weather wherever you live, too and never forget - a spoon of sweetness a day, keeps the sorrow away ;)