Musical Monday

Hi everyone :)

And welcome to another episode of 'Musical Monday' today streaming from London :D

Haha.

Okay I am done with being weird now, shall we get to it?

Today's songs are inspired by my dear friend that is spending New Years here in London with me.

We start of with a song that will revive our love for The Fray, just in case you have lost touch a bit like I have.

I might have already recommended this song once but it is amazing enough to recommend it every week :)

And one last one from Rod Stewart:

Enjoy :)

x

J.

Christmas

Hi everyone :)

Since Christmas is over and I am sure that we are all a bit sad about it and don't quite want it to be over yet, why not look back on some of the best bits?

Or in this case some pictures and me telling you how Christmas at my home works and has worked for years :)

Since I can remember Christmas at my house has always started with going to church. No we didn't go right in the morning but at 5 pm, until then 24. December was like any other day.

Well maybe it involved a bit more present wrapping then normal days but other then that.... :)

After church we had dinner at my nan's and had sausages and potato salad, it's our traditional Christmas dinner since in my family we have our big Christmas feast on Boxing Day. 

After dinner it is time to unwrap presents. YEAH!!!

Mostly we hand out one present after another so everyone who is not currently unwrapping can see what the other people get. 

It's always my mum, dad, sister, nan and me who celebrate together as she lives nearby.

And this was this years Christmas tree with some of the presents. I swear every year we say we will make it less but it never seems to work :D

I hope all of you had a lovely Christmas and a great time with your family and friends or who ever you celebrated with :)

x

J.

Traveling

Hi everyone :)

Christmas is over :( But I have moved on to even more exciting things. I have gone for another adventure and am currently sitting in my hotel room in London.

Yes the plan is to spend New Years here in London. Maybe this will become a new tradition, I sure would love to make it one.

I love London but I especially love it this time of the year. Everyone is still a bit tranquil from the Christmas festivities and because they have probably eaten to much over those days :D

It makes the crowd a lot less stressful to deal with. Because although I love spending time in London because it is a great city I am not the biggest fan of overly full streets where everyone is just trying to go their own way. It can get a bit overwhelming at times. 

This is actually also the reason there hasn't been any post the last 2 days :)

I had to figure out this whole internet situation here but as it turns out we have free wifi here at our hotel. Yeah!!! 

And the 27.12 was basically spend traveling about :)

See you guys tonight. I am off on another day of exploring :)

x

J. 

Musical Monday

Hi everyone :)

Get your ears ready for some new music :) I ran out of inspiration this week and got a bit of help from M. So you could say that the music I am recommending actually is what she listens to. Doesn't mean I don't love it though.

Might just have to go and buy some of those albums.

Lets start with King Charles:

and another one because I actually enjoy these songs quite a bit:

And lets bring Owl City back. I used to love their music but I have kind of lost track of their stuff so I dug around a bit and found a song with M.'s help:

Enjoy this weeks music :) And can we just take a moment and get super excited for tomorrow? It's Christmas :)

x

J.

Creative Sunday

Hi everyone :)

So I am a very excessive Instagram user and always am on the lookout for new accounts to follow. Somewhere along that hunt for new people to follow I stumbled upon a guy called Murad Osmann. He takes pictures of his girlfriend while they travel all around the world. Now you might think: That sounds kinda boring. But in all reality these pictures are brilliant.

And it's not just any kind of photo that he takes, no it is always the back of girlfriend with her hand reaching behind to grab his as if she was leading him somewhere. 

His Instagram account is really amazing and his idea for the pictures is brilliant I think. It is something new and gives them a story.

They all follow the same concept, however they never get boring!

For more pictures go check out his Instagram account: muradosmann, it is really worth it. There are so many more of these and I haven't even put the best ones on here! 

x

J.

Christmas Market

Hi everyone :)

I will confess to being an idiot! I was at a friends place on Thursday and took my MacBook with me, as well as my charger because we were looking at some of the pictures I took while in New Zealand. And that is where the idiotic part comes in: I left my charger at her place. Yes I am just plain stupid but also my life seems to like plotting against me since my friend was going to go visit her Nan over the weekend and would be back today. So I wasn't able to go round her place Thursday because I was busy which lead to having no way of using my MacBook after it ran out of battery. 
And since all my blogging material is on this damn thing I had no way of blogging for the last couple of days. My whole plan for Christmas blogs is a bit of schedule now but I will try to get as many of the already made posts up alongside the other ones. I hope it works out :)

I will start with the post that was supposed to go up on Thursday :)

During the time leading up to Christmas we all try to get into the Christmas spirit. And there are so many different ways to do it: listening to Christmas carols, eating Christmas biscuits, wearing Christmas jumpers and going to the Christmas market.

The last thing on this list is the one thing that does it the most for me. I don't know what it is about those markets but they are probably my most favourite thing about Christmas. 

Our Christmas market is in the city center of Augsburg and is arranged beautifully. It really gets you into the Christmas spirit with all the Christmassy lights and fir tree branches that are used as decorations.

Most of the stuff that is sold is handmade, which makes it even more interesting. I always find it amazing to see what people can do with their hands. I mean I can barely draw a stick figure whereas other people draw a freakin' duck in under a minute.  I actually got to watch the woman who makes these cutting boards while she was drawing a train on one of them and I can honestly say I wish I was as talented as she was. 

These are little wooden fruits that smell of different things. Some did smell really weird though :D

I love going to the Christmas market so much because I feel really calm there for some reason. Just walking through the lines of stalls and just looking at pretty things. I love it. I especially like when the people selling their things take the time to explain to you how they make certain items. It is quite fascinating to hear how compassionate they are about what they do, even if it is just a hobby that they like to make a bit of money off during the Christmas time.

These tea flowers are so cool. I send my host parents some for Christmas last year. I find them very intriguing. You just plop this little ball down into some hot water and wait for a couple of minutes and then you get a pretty amazing tea flower. It's something that excites me and it's really cool. Don't judge! :D

Another stall I stumbled upon was from this man who made candle holders or pendants from different kinds of metal with glass beads and other sparkly things.

And who could forget about all the food stalls and sweet things you can buy?

Or the roasted nuts?

And more chocolaty things :)

The people who worked at the stalls that made crèpes or sold sauerkraut with potato dumplings sadly wouldn't let me take pictures of their stalls. I am not entirely sure why, since I can't exactly steal their recipe from taking a picture but at least you will somehow be able to walk away from this post without craving all the different kinds of food I am presenting here :D

Christmas markets are pure heaven for me and I couldn't go without them. 

I hope you have one close to you and have spend as much time there as you can :)

x

J.

Christmas Shopping

Hi everyone :)

I have been doing some Christmas shopping (finally) and just wanted to show you what I have gotten so far and where I got it from. Maybe I can help some of you out with last minute presents. I still don't have all of mine. I am a bit of a mess like that. Don't get me wrong I love giving presents and I do believe I am quite good at it I just find it really difficult to come up with something for a lot of people all at the same time. 

Which leads to me being a bit stressed out over buying presents right before Christmas.

I still have 1 present to buy but at least I know what I want to get that person so it is now just a matter of actually finding it :D

This is what I have so far:

Both necklaces are from fab.com. Their website is amazing they literally have everything you can think of buying someone as a present, also their price range is quite wide. So you can choose how much money you want to spend on gifts.

These are actually not a Christmas present but for my nan's birthday which is on Friday. My cousins and I have decided to get her something together from the Christmas market in Munich and these stars are just what we had in mind.  

All these little things are from various different Christmas markets so if there is one close to you definitely go and check it out. You might find gifts that you didn't even know you needed. I always love going to markets as you find the most incredible things and if you have no inspiration for a present you will sure find some there.

And the last thing I got was the new Robbie album for my godmother because she thinks he is very fit :D Kind of obsessed with the man really but so am I but for different reasons :P

x

J.

Sorry for the delay but my computer decided to be a bitch today and wouldn't let me upload the pictures...

Musical Monday

Hi everyone :)

Are your ears ready for some new music?

Because I found the best thing ever this week. Do any of you watch the Graham Norton show? It's a British late night show on BBC 1. It is fabulous and if you have never seen it you can watch it online on the BBC website, I really recommend it, it's a brilliant show.

On the 22. November they hat Robbie on the show and this is what he contributed to the show:

Absolut genius  and so is the next one. As you all might know by now I am kind of big on cover versions of songs, and Pentatonix are just kind of really amazing at that. I like the original Lorde version but this one .... well listen for yourself :)

Enjoy :)

x

J.

Creative Sunday

Hi everyone :)

YouTube is a platform for creative people so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they came up with something like this to celebrate the year 2013.

However I thoroughly enjoyed this video and haven't seen one this good for a while :)

I hope you can appreciate it as much as I did and maybe play spot the YouTuber :D

Have a good start into the week.

x

J.

What even is perfect?

Hi everyone :)

I think we all know the feeling of getting up in the morning, looking in the mirror and thinking: Omg do I look horrible today. And then trying to literally do everything to save our face and maybe even our outfit if we feel gross in what we have picked because it just is one of those days.

But who even says that we are not perfect enough? Why do we look in the mirror and suddenly decide we are not good enough?

For who, should be the question. Who has put this stupid image in our head that we have to look flawless all the time.

It is such a stupid thought if you dwell on it. We just sell ourselves short if we do it.

And why is being skinny and looking like a freakin' model considered perfect and ever other figure is not thin enough. Why? Everybody is perfect just the way they are, at least that is what I believe. We shouldn't go round  changing that and we especially shouldn't tell people they aren't perfect the way they are. Who gave society the right to do so? To be so judgmental when it comes to our looks? It's a nasty habit that we should get rid of really fast.

I hate people who pick their friends based on looks. Just because someone looks appealing to you doesn't mean their character is as well. I find that I don't get along with people who are stunningly beautiful and know it. I think it is not a nice attitude to be so focused on looks, I would much rather pick people because of their beautiful character instead or their beautiful face.

And I am sure I am not the only one who says that people get more attractive the better you like their personality. I do actually mean that yes!

To get to the point: I don't think a person is less beautiful or perfect just because they weigh a bit more then others, have a crooked nose or are missing a leg. Albeit our ideal of beauty might tell us otherwise.

So if you are like me and gain three pound if you just look at chocolate you should just not give a rat's ass what others think about it the next day. If that chocolate makes you happy: Have it! I have tell myself everyday: As long as I am happy with myself all the critics can kindly fuck off because at the end of the day only my happiness matters.

That obviously doesn't meant that you can just go around being selfish but when it comes to what you look like and what you feel comfortable with I say fuck everybody else.

Or as Tyler Oakley would say: You do you and let me do me!

And it just so happens that I have found the perfect video to emphasize my point! I highly recommend you take the time and watch it because it is what inspired me to do this post.

So next time you look in the mirror just be happy with the person that looks back at you because that person is perfect the way they are!

x

J.

Food Friday - Mr. Onions

Hi everyone :)

Are you as excited as I am that food Friday is finally back?

Lets do this :)

A couple of weeks back me and a friend went to a restaurant/cocktail bar after our dancing lesson to grab a bite to eat.

They serve a bit of everything, different varieties of salads, burgers, pizza and some pasta dishes.

Its simple food but nonetheless really good.

Mr. Onions interior is very simple with comfy chairs and good lighting.

I decided to have cocktails with my dinner as it was happy hour (6pm-9pm) which meant that some cocktails cost a s much as a glass of coke. I obviously had a non alcoholic one :)

I had some minty thing called fresh mint which had limes, brown sugar, fresh mint leaves, orange juice, passionfruit juice, peppermint sirup in it. I asked for a bit of grenadine sirup as well and that cocktail was the most delicious thing. I haven't had a cocktail this good in a long time!

My friend just had a beer so that is not really worth showing because I think we all know what beer looks like.

For dinner I settled on a chicken salad that came with some garlic bread and my friend had a baguette with some things on it. I don't really remember what it was but I have been told it was really good :P

Both of these things were delicious but the garlic bread has to have been the best I have ever had. It was pure heaven and I would quite happily eat a whole plate just full of that!

So if you fell like having a nice meal after your lecture then Mr. Onions is definitely the place to go. The prices are very reasonable and it is like a 3 minute walk from University.

Also go check out their website: Mr. Onions.

x

J.

Throwback Thursday - Christmas Tree

Hi everyone :)

How has your week been? Cold? Yeah same :)

But I actually do love it. Christmas when it is warm outside just isn't the same!

And what would Christmas be without a Christmas tree? 

Did you have a decorating tradition when you were younger or anything of that sort?

Well in my family we kind of did and we always had real Christmas trees as well. My mum and dad would usually struggle with putting the tree up to an extend where they would nearly give up and have us celebrate without a tree. I don't know what it was about our Christmas trees but they never seemed to go up without a fight :D We had them falling over or being so wonky we had to start all over again.

When the tree fight was finally over my mum, my sister and I would usually get on with decorating it. That was until on year my dad decided that he wanted to have tinsel on the tree, because it reminded him of his childhood. My mum was absolutely against it because she hates that stuff but as per usual my dad got his way in the end.

That's kind of our tradition, the little bicker about how to mount the tree and how to decorate it. In the end it didn't really matter because it was Christmas and you don't fight on Christmas eve but it still seemed to happen every year.

It was rather fun to be quite honest, because by the time the tree was up and decorated everybody loved it :)

Last year me and my dad put the tree up and decorated it as well. And lets just say that we might not have had to argue much but boy was that tree wonky :D

I think we redid it for about 5 times and by the time we got to decorating and were starting to hang the candles it just fell over and we had to start over :D

It was brilliant really and sooooo much fun :) Although we did have to cut of the top of the tree because it was to big for our living room :D And we couldn't fit the start that usually goes on the top on it without cutting it down a bit....

Well we all survived and the end result looked like this:

You can clearly see how wonky it is. That is before it fell over by the way :D

It's at least upright now. We added a lot more tinsel just so you know :)

x

J.

Musical Monday - Christmas

Hi everyone :)

I have some christmas-y songs for you today that I like very much, they are mostly not the originals because I like these versions better.

I am no Mariah Carey fan, never have been and probably never will. I can't exactly tell you why but I just find her voice really annoying. Sorry in advance if any Mariah fans are reading this, she seems like a great person but her music just isn't for me.

Who I am a great fan of is Michael Bublé though, I swear that guys voice was made for singing Christmas songs. So here is a Mariah Carey song sung by Michael Bublé :

Also who could forget about let it snow? I love that song so much because it is one of those songs that sound a bit older and reminds me a bit of Disney movies and therefore childhood.

Does that even make sense? I don't know :D

And some more Michael Bublé please, this time with 'Have yourself a Merry little Christmas':

And my all time favourite: White Christmas

What is your favourite Christmas song? I'd love to know :)

x

J.

The Dilemma that is Men

Hi everyone :)

Men.. yeah confusing thing that!

You either have no one or you have to many at least that is what I have come to realise. 

And men are weird when it comes to things like that, that's what I've noticed.

So a couple of weeks ago I kind of might have complained that I had no man in my life not even for just some sexual favors. Okay just to be clear here: I am not that superficial but lets be honest for just a second here and admit that we all like to get a bit more attention from the opposite sex from time to time. 

And I don't only mean sex with that. Just a hug from someone who really seems to be enjoying your company can be enough to last you for weeks. 

I am a very physical person and do love to cuddle or hug for that matter. Over the last couple of weeks I kind of lost my source of weekly cuddles and started to miss it. That added to the fact that I didn't really have any 'action' for months was starting to make me feel lonely. Which I normally don't mind but it is getting colder outside and somehow that always turns me into a needy mess. Don't ask me why that is just a fact!

So I complained about it to M. and my mum, who thinks I am overdue for a boyfriend anyway. By now I am starting to regret I ever said anything because things have kind of gotten out of hand. Or at least a bit confusing and I have had more then one awkward moment as a result of it. 

Basically what happened is this: One minute you have no one and then there suddenly is a collection of people that seem to be interested. 

It all started of fairly harmless with me getting to know one of my flat mates friends and we really got along well. We met at the party we had at our place and had a great time. By the time we were about to wrap the party up he wanted to sleep at our place. Now a lot of other people were as well and P. kind of started joking that he would just rent out my bed and I said something along the lines of me not wanting to share my bed with anyone. That did not include the cute guy I had gotten along so well with though. Sadly he didn't get the memo and went home. 

I didn't think much of it since I figured if he really wanted to get to know me he would eventually come around. 

I had a bit of a butterfly feeling the next day which was amazing. I don't know, I just love that and it hasn't happened since my ex boyfriend in New Zealand. 

There wasn't much at that moment I could do about the situation so I just enjoyed the feeling and hoped I would see him again eventually. And that is exactly where things started to get a bit weird.

Because on that exact same weekend I got a message from a guy I have know for about a year but hadn't heard from in a while. We had been flirting a lot before we kind of just stopped talking and we got along very well. 

At first we just talked a bit about what we had missed but it soon was like we had never stopped messaging each other and things became flirty again.

So I invited him over during the week with clear intentions on both parts. Turns out that P. (my flat mate for those of you who didn't know) had invited the guy from the flat party over the same night. We shall call him Peter and the guy that I had been flirting with Thomas (these are not actually their names just in case... :P).

So I found out that P. hat invited Peter over the same evening/night I had made plans with Thomas. I kind of hoped I wouldn't have to deal with both of them at the same time but Peter got to ours first and we got talking again. During that conversation we figured out the misunderstanding from the weeks before and it became clear that he would have loved to stay and that I didn't actually want him to leave.

Yeah not the best of things to say on my part but I fully blame it on the stupid butterflies.

Then Thomas arrived and things became weird really fast. I kind of ignored Peter for the most part but thinking back at it he did the same. Well all the while he was looking daggers at Thomas which didn't go unnoticed. 

That really made the whole thing extremely uncomfortable for me as Thomas saw it and asked me what Peter was about. 

....

It was not the most pleasant conversation I have had in my life, let me tell you! But seriously why do men have to be so territorial when they don't even have a right to be?

I mean he must have been really obvious about it although I didn't notice. But I guess the daggers weren't meant for me so....

And with all of that going on my friends have not been very helpful!

All the advice I got form my dear friend M. was: Try all of them and pick the yummiest. Really? Not helping at all and besides we are not talking about chocolate here :D

So that was a letdown :P But my godmother wasn't much of a help either she technically just told me to sit back and wait it out. 

But that is literally what I have been doing now and it is not getting me anywhere! 

Because if you just wait for things to happen then you are not really engaged in the whole thing and it progresses a lot slower. 

So I am still not any wiser and confused as ever as to what I should do or if I should even bother to do anything.

I just know this much: They are both absolutely my type and really nice. And just so you know they are both attractive as hell as well.

And my life just seems to hate me right now because whenever something happens they are always both there. 

I ran out of ideas and as much as I normally enjoy male attention right now it is just really exhausting. 

Decisions to make....

Anyone any tips? I am open for suggestions and please tell me that I am not the only one things like this happen to?

I mean it always seems to be like this: You either have no one or suddenly there is people wanting something from you everywhere.

Sometimes I think I should just stick with girls it seems a lot easier but then again I don't get along with girls. They are probably even more confusing to me :D

Help please? :)

I hope I could at least entertain you with the jokes my life is playing on me right now. I really think there is a person called life that has the biggest laugh about things like this. 

x

J.

Throwback Thursday - Cousins

Hello everyone :)

How are we? Are we good? No colds yet? I sure hope we all stay healthy a bit longer, no need for getting sick right now.

Growing up my grandma made sure that me and my cousins saw each other often. She was and still is the one that keeps the family together always asking when we are gonna see each other next. This has lead to us being really close and sharing a lot with each other. I would even go as far and say that my cousin L., who is no stranger to this blog, is my best friend.

This basically means that we have grown up together and there have been a lot of pictures taken of us  until we were old enough to take them ourselves.  

me, my sister JS. and my cousin L.

Yeah I am a bit embarrassed to be sharing this one but hey.... :D It is like my sister said we need the old ones as well so everyone can see how much we have changed, for the better I might add :) At least I like to think so. 

Growing up with a younger sister and L. being my age and our older cousin S. was great. We shared our stories about boys and how weird we thought our family was at times. And we had a lot of slightly strange photo shoots as we liked to call them :)

L., me and my sister JS.

I love all of them a lot, maybe not as much when the get really annoying, but that isn't happening as much since we have all started our own lives, in new cities with new friends. 

We still try and see each other as often as we can. Me an L. obviously see each other a lot more then we see S. and JS. because we live closer to each other but we try.

In January we had a whole weekend together where they all came to stay with me here in Augsburg and it was so much fun. Although we did end up taking about 4 hours to pack all their stuff together because there were clothes everywhere and it took quite some time to figure out what belonged to whom. Up till now I am missing a top that has disappeared after that weekend :D

JS. and S. and L.

This was taken on our last weekend together before this year which we spend at S.'s in Würzburg. We did have fun as you can see. What they were actually trying to achieve was looking like Audrey Hepburn in the poster on the wall. Yeah we can all see how well that turned out :P

JS. and S. and L.

That looks more like it :)

This one is just on here to proof that I am not the only one that is a bit crazy in this family :D They are wearing legwarmers on their head just in case you didn't notice!

I am a really big family person and I guess so are all of my lovely ladies because we do really love one another. No you might think that everyone loves their family but let me just say that we have other cousins that we don't get along with that well or just don't spend as much time with. 

We 4 kind of belong together and really are a force to be reckoned with :) Just ask my flat mates they needed a view days off after my cousins and my sister had spend the weekend.

That is probably how my flat mates felt came Sunday morning :D

Family has to stick together and with these 3 idiots that isn't hard to do at all :)

x

J.