Linking Loving Learning - April

My camera has decided that it doesn't like me anymore. Well, that is the way I would explain it if my camera was a living thing. It isn't and I don't know what's going on with it! The problem is that it focuses and says that it is in focus and then it's totally the opposite! I was working on a nail polish of the week and a tutorial but the pictures from these projects are unusable! Therefor I am today just going to do another Linking Loving Learning post, my previous Linking Loving Learning post can be found here.


This Linking Loving Learning post will be about blogs that I like to read.


Barefoot Shepherdess - This blog is written by a Japanese woman, she does gorgeous needlepoint works and dyes her own yarn. Amazing, she isn't writing at the moment because of the earthquake in Japan.


Make It Do - A mother of three (or that is what I think from her blog) kids, she has quite a lot of recipes and cleaning tips, and since I rarely cook or clean it's lovely to read it and get tips for the future. 


The Ivy Cottage - Another DIY blog (well most of the blogs I'm reading these days are DIY), this one is more about furniture and interior design. The writer is a mother of two (I think, not 100% sure)


Tenth Avenue Soapworks - this woman makes soaps, really cool! She explains a bit about the soap making progress and it's quite interesting!


Well, as you can see I'm in a total making things mood but I can't make a thing! I want my sewing machine to be here, but that kinda wouldn't change a thing since I don't have any space to do anything. Since I can't do anything I'll just read about other people doing things and just stay super jealous! But in the future, when I'm grown up (we're all still waiting for that to happen) I'll have my own craft room and then this will be a DIY blog, with pictures that are in focus.


Lot's of love!

Helsinki

I went for a quick trip to Helsinki with my step-mother, I've been there couple of times before and I've always loved it. I wouldn't mind moving there, I do understand Swedish very well but I only know one word in Finnish.

We went there on the 13-15 of April and there was still snow on the ground and ice in the harbor.  It was quite cold compared to Geneva but the weather wasn't bad! So here are some pictures from the trip.

Kiitos :)

Etsy Finds

It's not a secret that I would love to have an Etsy shop. I just don't really have the courage to take the step into selling the stuff I make. But I tend to look trough the Etsy shops and I decided this time to share what I found and think is awesome! So kudos to all the people that made these things!

Corset - Marliesmade (Sold on 24.04.11)

Baby Doll Sling - SnuggyBaby

Lemon Curd Cupcake Candle - By Jennie  

Edit: CraftTasticParties REMOVED - RESELLER!   

Maybe I should start having a more of a theme in these types of posts but this is just something I found cool today. 

Have a lovely lazy Sunday :)

Book Review: Hanna's Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson

I haven’t been writing since I’ve been travelling. I’m actually writing this in the airplane and watching What Happens in Vegas with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.

I finished reading one more book, this is the 6th book that I read this year, maybe I’ll manage to read 52 books this year.

The book I read this time is called Hanna’s Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson. Sadly this book was absolutely awful. It’s seriously the worst book of all the books I’ve read this year! Horrendous! I had to strain myself to finish reading this book! It went from 3rd person to 1st person in the same sentence! All the names were the same and there wasn’t much of a thread in the story.

The basic story was quite good, the thing this book needed was a very very very good editor and being rewritten almost completely! I’ll try to explain what this book was all about but it’s hard since I really didn’t understand it all.

There are three main story characters. There is Anna, Johanna (Anna’s mother) and Hanna (Johanna’s mother). The story is the story of their life. It starts with Anna and her life where she wonders about the life story of her mother and grandmother. She starts writing down the stories of her female ancestors.
Here are some quotes from the book:

Page 48: Hanna walked home through the forest with a dizzy sense of being too much. She’d be mistress in her own house, a house as big and fine as at Lyckan.

- Hanna the grandmother, just got the news that she would marry a miller.

Page 93: Eighteen months after Little John was born, the next boy arrived and, as expected, was like the Eriksson family, large brown eyes, straight nose and dark brown hair. Maja-Lisa was proud as if the herself had given birth to him and decided that he was to be called Erik after her father.

- Maja-Lisa is Hanna’s mother, this quote is about Hanna’s third born son.

Page 180: Right from the beginning Anna had had an inkling that Rickard had little self-confidence. An autocratic mother? A weak father? But when she was young she hadn’t wanted to understand. Constantly understanding was a danger to yourself. Her mother’s life had taught her that. Johanna was one of those who always understood, so had had to endure a great deal.

- Anna talking about her husband Rickard and her mother Johanna.

Page 207: My life has been divided into two halves. The first half lasted for eight years of childhood, so was the same length as the remaining seventy. When I look back on the second half, I find four stages that changed me.

- Johanna talking about her life stages.

Page 245: That night I found it hard to sleep. I lay there, twisting and turning, trying to get the pictures of Arne to fit together. The young man who’d bravely stood up at the meeting and been mocked for agreeing with justice for women. The sailor who was so bold at sea. Politically clear-sighted, intelligent and knowledgeable. Foreman. And then this feeble creature sneaking away from his mother.

-Johanna talking about her husband Arne.

I really do not recommend reading this book. I do recommend Marianne Fredriksson to maybe rewrite this book and republish it! Because the basic story is good!

The book that I just started reading is called Soulless by Gail Carriger, it hasn’t started well so I hope it get’s better, I’m always very hopeful that the books do get better! I might need to start reevaluating the books that I pick to read!

What should I read after Soulless?

Banana Bread with coconut oil and honey

I've been craving a good banana bread for some time now and a miracle happened, we had overripe bananas. This isn't something that happens often since we usually just eat the bananas! So I started to search for a perfect recipe but didn't find exactly what I wanted. So my base is this recipe, but I added my touch.

Ingredients:

240 gr of banana
180 gr flour
2 eggs
2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons honey

Mash the bananas, I like letting some clumps be left so there is some extra super banana bites. Add the eggs. Melt the coconut oil and the honey slowly and add to the mixture. Mix all slowly together and add the flour and baking powder.

Add into a what you want to bake it in. I chose the thing we bake the usual bread in.

Heat oven 180 Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) and bake for 30 minutes (until fully baked - do the stick test)

The bread is quite fluffy which I love, try eating it lukewarm with a bit of salted butter on top. Best thing ever.

I sadly didn't manage to get any good pictures of the bread, but the next time I'll bake it I'll take some pictures and add them to this post and let you know!

Rice-Pancakes with cinnamon and coconut oil

There is this Icelandic dessert that's called Lummur, I used to love it when I was a kid and I haven't had it for years! Many, many years. It's usually made from day old rice pudding but the only time we have rice pudding here is for lunch on 24th of December. We do on the other hand have frequently rice. I tried to work out the recipe with our leftover rice and it worked like a magic.

Ingredients:

200 grams of boiled rice

2 dl milk

50 gr flour (or whole wheat flour)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

25 gr coconut oil

2 tablespoon sugar 2

1 egg

Put together the rice and milk in a pot and heat it up until it’s the consistency of a rice pudding, take it of the stove and add the coconut oil and melt it.

Add the flour and sugar and stir gently with a spoon and let it cool down.

When the rice mixture is at room temperature add egg, cinnamon and baking powder. At this point the dough should have the same consistency of a pancake batter.

The best pan to fry these things is a pancake pan, and the best way to fry these delicious bites of heaven is like pancakes. Not like European pancakes, like fat juicy american pancakes.

Each rice pancake is about 1 tablespoon of the dough, fry well on both side, this recipe makes about 15 of these pancakes.

It's best to eat them lukewarm with some powder sugar and jam.

Clinique Chubby Stick

I think it is quite obvious that I like make up. The make up I like the most is mascaras and lip color. I don't like lipsticks that much because I find them quite annoying and just don't look too good on my lips. For me lipsticks are just somehow too heavy and thick. What I do love are lip stainer and that type of lip colors. I move mountains to get to them.

I've been eying this Clinique Chubby Stick for some time now, well ever since it came out. But I wasn't 100% sure about it. It somehow felt more like lipstick than a colored lip balm that it was advertised to be. But on the other hand it just looked so handy and the colors were so nice. Therefor I went over and over again in the shop to look at it. I'm pretty sure the ladies in the shop thought I was crazy but I couldn't make up my mind.

Then one day when I wasn't even planning on going into that shop I burst in and finally bought it. I definitely haven't regretted it. I love it now. The color I bought was number 7 called Super Strawberry.

Picture of it on my hand:

And then pictures of my lips, first one my lips without any thing and the second one with Chubby Stick 7 Super Strawberry        

 As you can see it doesn't look (or feel) like a lipstick and it gives my lips a lovely hue, which is exactly what I want.

Tomorrows post will be a recipe of rice-pancakes that I just made :)

Nail Polish: OPI - Orge-the-Top Blue

This weeks nail polish is my favorite. It's from OPI Shrek Forever After Collection. This color is called "Ogre-the-Top Blue"

I love this color because it's blue. I love blue and I love OPI! It's a match made in heaven !

I've been looking around how it's the best to do the photos and so here will be another try.

You can actually see how messy my cuticles are and that I didn't put the nail polish on super well.  But for me it doesn't really matter since I just LOVE this nail polish. 

London (18.02.11-21.02.11)

I went to London for a weekend in February (yea I know late posting but the laptop problems delayed everything). It was my first time in England but hopefully not my last time!

I went shopping mad since I hadn't shopped for ages! Well I tried on loads of things but I didn't like a lot. I've got a problem with buying clothes. It's just so hard to find something that fits perfectly. I went to the stop I miss when I am in Geneva, Top Shop, but didn't buy anything there since I didn't find anything to my liking!

I tried on this gorgeous red dress that was made from this light cotton fabric.

It was perfect in the front but when I tried to zip it up it just was to small. The different colored socks bring me luck, yes I am superstitious.

 The Big Ben

The London Eye

As you can see it was lovely London weather, foggy and a bit rainy. The first day the weather was freaking COLD but as the weekend went on it got a little warmer.

I really liked this sign, no idea why! But I thought it was prettier then any of the other tube signs.

An empty tube hall station, it was so weird to walk these when no one was there. 

Last but not least a picture of a double decker bus.

I had an amazing time in London and hope that one day I'll be able to go there again. It was great to meet all the people I met and see a new city.

Nail Polish: OPI - Diva of Geneva

Since I got the new laptop and will now be able to write outside the house I'm going to start this new thing called Nail Polish of the Week. Why? Because I love having nail polish on my nails and this will give me a better excuse for buying a new one. The first one will be Diva of Geneva by OPI.

I got this one from my step mum for Christmas and well I love it! There are couple of reasons why I love it. 

1. The color, it's shimmery without being too much (since I don't really like glitter) 

2. This one and all my OPI polishes are just so easy to apply. I used to hate nail polishes because they wouldn't dry so I would end up with a mess! That has never been a problem with OPI!

I always use a nail strengthener under my polish to strengthen my nails and keep them from getting a funky color from the nail polish itself! That has happened to me with my green nail polish. My nails went yellow and the yellow had to grow away. It was pain! After that I ALWAYS put a base before the color!

 Here is the color outside in daylight. I know it isn't the best picture. I'm working on taking better pictures. 

Internet Explorer users!

For the first time since I started this blog I looked at it with Internet Explorer and realized that it looks all funky in that browser! I'm sorry for that!

I don't know how I can make it look better in Internet Explorer so the only thing I can do now is recommend Firefox or Chrome!

You can download them here:

Firefox
Chrome

Again I am sorry and I'll see how I can fix this issue.


p.s I GOT MY NEW LAPTOP WOOHOOO! :)