Fashionistas

I am doing some serious dieting at the moment as I gained 9kg (!) over the last year. It was just time to do something about my ever growing belly considering that I have so many clothes stored in the attic simply because they don’t fit anymore! It could not go on like that and that’s why I decided to change my eating habits!

So far this worked out really well over the last 4 weeks with a few exceptions but in total I already lost 3kg over 4 weeks. There are still 6kg to go until I’ll reach my dream weight and this will probably take me another 8-10 weeks but if I manage to do it, I promised myself some rewards!

First of all, we are going to Kos, Greece for another relaxing spa holiday in June and I will wear my bikini proudly around the pool as well as my beautiful summer dresses to dinner! This amazing hotel definitely deserves some stylish treats by its guests. If you cannot remember, read this post about our trip last year.

But no matter what my weight will be in June, we are going. Thus, I needed a different reward that I’ll only get if I reach my dream weight. I figured that I will most likely don’t like my old clothes from the attic anymore and therefore it will be time for A MASSIVE shopping trip to buy many new outfits for my great new shape!!! *wishful thinking*

I have been a bit careless about my clothes lately and am still wearing the same things I have been wearing for what seems to be forever. At work, for example I started to walk around in jeans and flats and do not wear any sort of jewlery or make up or nail polish! This has to change! Seriously! I started wearing business attire again this week and I feel so much better and self-confident just because of my outfit.

Right now, I hate my wardrobe and whish I could just throw everything out and fill it with new stuff! Do you know that feeling? There is this moment every year in every girl’s life when things you loved to wear are just not good enough anymore. Therefore, I am already collecting ideas for new outfits that are a bit more special, stylish and elegant. I love a more classic, modern style with a slightly sporty touch. Do you know what I mean?

I am collecting all these ideas on my Pinterest board Fashionistas. Stop by there for more pictures about my favourite outfits. Here is a selection of styles I pinned so far:

Totally need one of these mint jeans this year! Already loved them last year!!!

I LOVE Bell Bottoms – always did, always do, always will!

This is just so sexy, cool and elegant at the same time! Perfect style for many occasions!!!

Perfect outfit for the summer! I adore these sort of sandals! Definitely want to get a pair this year!

Great and comfy outfit for a summer day!

Saving the best till the end – this is my most preferred work outfit!!! Doesn’t it look just comfy and elegant???

What sort of style do you like? Do you use Pinterest to collect your ideas? Please share links to your boards in the comments section below so that I can get inspired…

Have a great day out there all you Fashionistas!

Caravano

Today, we went to see the Erwin Hymer Museum in Bad Waldsee. The company Hymer is well known for its caravans in Germany as well as internationally. The museum was great fun to visit but what I would like to show you today is the great style of the restaurant of the museum.

The restaurant is called “Caravano” which is a brilliant name for a restaurant of a caravan museum, I think!

I love the modern and white style of the dining area. The chairs are to die for and I could totally imagine a dining area in our apartment with chairs like these. They are actually quite similar to the chair I bought for my workspace last year.

Unfortunately, we only had time for coffee (which was delicious) but the smell coming from the kitchen was amazing and mouth watering! The food coming to the other guest’s tables looked fantastic as well and it was quite sad, that we did not have more time to try it as well.

The decorations at Caravano are very minimal but all looks designed with love and attention to detail! How do you like the overall atmosphere of this restaurant? Do you prefer modern or old fashioned furniture style when eating out?

I hope you all have a great weekend!!!! I am looking forward to a great week ahead: A trip to the Hochgrat on Friday and a family get away to South Tirol during the Easter weekend! What about you?

Why “Happy” and “Birthday” do not go separate ways… yet…

Yesterday was my birthday and because of that, I prepared a little evening get together with friends and my boyfriend’s family. As it was the middle of the week, I did not want to do a huge party.

I love organizing little get togethers for small groups of people. Yesterday, I had around 13 guests. I tried to offer an assortment of different snacks and drinks for them. Due to my lack of time during the last few weeks, my boyfriend’s mum was so nice as to help me out a bit preparing some of the food. One thing she prepared which was extremely delicious were German “Seelen” – a very famous South-German pastry:

“Seele” means soul in English. Seelen are very similar to baguettes. You can find them with all sorts of flavours and toppings around southern Germany. Really yummy and if you ever come to the South of Germany you should try them!!! The self-made Seelen are obviously the best you can get but the bakery in our little village also bakes great ones!

Together with the Seelen, I made some fresh veggies that came together with a fresh and creamy herbs dip – a healthy sort of snack that works perfectly with bread and vegetables:

Apart from the Seelen, my boyfriend’s mum baked a birthday cake for me. I loved the cute little cake that was prepared with so much love! It tasted great and what would a birthday be without a birthday cake?

I actually received 1 ½ birthday cakes this year! Why 1 ½? That is due to a very funny and lovely idea from my dear friend Nadine who decided to send me a birthday cake. Obviously, sending a whole cake would not work out and it would probably have arrived in a million small pieces not looking like a birthday cake at all. That is why she sent me a baking mix and a recipe so that I can bake my own birthday cake! J I love the idea and I am sure it will be delicious once I manage to bake it – since it is a baking mix there is even almost a guarantee that I’ll manage to do this as baking usually is not one of my kitchen strengths…

I’ll inform you about the results of the second cake later on!

Surrounded by lovely people and great food, I had a great birthday – my last one before the scary big 3 will appear in my age!!! As I was told earlier, with the age of 30, happy and birthday go separate ways… I’ll let you know if this holds true a year from now!

Do you have any special birthday traditions when celebrating your, a friend’s or a family member’s birthday? Please share below!

I wish you all a great weekend! I will be off to London this weekend (more about my travels, you can find on my travel blog. Speak to you next week!

Greetings, Jana

Sorry Sorry Sorry

Hello everybody,

I am soooooo sorry for my long absence the last months!!! I have been extremely busy with work and did not have a free minute to relax or do anything else! It is getting better this week and as of next week, I will have much more time again to focus on all my interests and most importantly, on blogging!!!

As I was working full time during the day and freelancing in the evening, there was just no time left.

I am really really looking forward to the weeks to come when I will finally be able to read a good book again, focus more on my photography skills and go on with my Spanish studies. Also, I will have more time for my boyfriend (A MASSIVE thanks at this point to him for doing ALL the housework in the last few weeks and supporting me constantly even though I was stressed out and probably not the most enjoyable person to be with…)!!!

I hope you have all been well!!!

You will hear from me again as soon as I have my free time back!

All the best and thanks for stopping by again!!!

New Year’s Eve Traditions

Ladies and Gentlemen! It is the year 2013!!! I can’t believe how quickly 2012 passed!!! How was your New Year’s eve? We spent our night with lovely friends sitting together, eating some raclette and enjoying the fireworks at midnight – just a typical German New Year’s Eve.

But there are some more traditions many Germans, including me, follow each year and I would like to share with you my most favourite New Year’s Eve activities:

Dinner for One

This is probably THE most popular German thing to watch on TV every New Year’s eve. Almost every channel is showing it at least once that day. Even though, the whole thing is in English (no idea why as it is not really known in English speaking countries…), everybody can understand what is going on. It is just funny to watch but look for yourself:

Ein Herz und eine Seele – Silvesterpunsch

Another typical New Year’s Eve TV programme is this half hour episode of an old German TV show called “Ein Herz und eine Seele”. The main character of this show is Alfred who behaves like an old bastard treating his family badly while getting drunk on rum which is supposed to be the punch for New Year’s Eve with a special and secret recipe…My most favourite line of the episode is

Son: “What are the ingredients of the punch?”
Alfred: “Rum”
Son: “And what else?”
Alfred: “Well, nothing else! That is the secret…”

Lead Pouring

If you are not German, you probably have no idea what I am talking about but this great activity is usually done on New Year’s Eve to tell the fortune of the upcoming year. Above a candle flame, you melt little lead figures in a spoon and then you pour it into cold water. Afterwards, you try to guess what the figure, which arises in the water, looks like. A list of figures and fortunes then tells your fortune for next year. Unfortunately, this year, we did not have enough time to do lead pouring but we will certainly do it again in the future!

Gummy Bear Oracle

This is something not everybody does in Germany but I think it is another nice tradition to tell your fortune for next year. Especially as nobody ever finds a lead figure in the water that somehow resembles anything on the list of fortunes… with the Gummy Bear Oracle, everybody gets a decent fortune.

The whole idea is that you pull 5 gummy bears out of the bag. Depending on the combination of colours, a special book tells you your detailed fortune for the upcoming year. Here is what my combination looked like for 2013:

This combination was telling me that I am too critical with myself and others and that I should use all my power for different things instead in 2013. Well, lets go ahead and keep calm!

Fortune Cookies

I love Fortune Cookies!! I know, this is not typical German as you can get fortune cookies basically everywhere in the world but New Year’s Eve is the perfect occasion to have them!

New Year’s Eve Dinner

I also love setting the table for New Year’s Eve. Here is how it looked like yesterday night:

I bought little marzipan and chocolate pigs that are supposed to bring good luck. Everybody had some lucky charms on their plates.

 

Food was amazing yesterday! Of course, we had way too much food for just 6 people but sitting around the raclette grill, heating up food and eat while having a great love with friends is total fun and a great way to spend the night before midnight on New Year’s eve.

Many people in Germany actually have raclette or fondue for dinner on the 31st of December.

New Year’s Celebrations

At midnight, people typically gather outside with a glass of sparkling wine to welcome the new year. Also, we light fireworks ourselves which is allowed in Germany and every family does it. I am a bit scared of all this fireworks handled by amateurs and usually I stay away from it and just enjoy the beautiful pictures in the sky while only lighting sparklers myself.

 

Unfortunately, the pictures of the other fireworks did not come out as great as I hoped for so this is the only decent picture that I took of this year’s fireworks.

What New Year’s Eve traditions do you have in your country/family/group of friends? I am so curious so please tell me!

Now, it is time to enjoy the first free day of the new year before going back to work tomorrow! I wish you all the best for 2013 and hope that all your new year’s resolutions (if you have any and are not a non-believer like me) will come true!

My Perfect Christmas Dinner

How has everybody’s Christmas been? My Christmas at home has probably been the worst Christmas I’ve ever had. Having relatives screaming at each other and a grandfather who claims he wants to be dead or live in a state like the German Democratic Republic is not my ideal picture of a happy Christmas with my family…

Anyhow, I don’t want to annoy you with stupid stories about my family. Thank god, there was another Christmas celebration right before the actual Christmas with my boyfriend’s family. They came over on the Friday before Christmas as I had to leave on Saturday. I wanted it to be the perfect Christmas dinner and I am happy to say that I am really satisfied with the outcome!

For me, a perfect dinner needs to consist of different courses and definitely needs a theme. My theme for this year’s dinner was French Christmas. I did not manage to do a typical French dessert as I was too late for preparing Mousse au Chocolat but I found a perfect Christmassy winter dish that went well with the rest of the menu.

For the table, I created menus for all of my guests. That was easily designed with pages:

One could also handwrite the whole piece of paper if one’s handwriting is nice. Mine isn’t that nice so I decided to go with a sort of “handwriting” font.

In terms of table decoration I tried to stick to the colour scheme and design of our other Christmas decoration. See this old post if you cannot remember. I bought little felt stars and other shapes such as gloves and boots as well as little decorative stones and tiny ornaments:

I covered the whole table with fir springs of different sorts and placed the ornaments and decorative elements on top:

 

 

The Christmas dinner itself was lovely! Such a great time with the family and loads of laughter and fun! I truly enjoyed the calm and relaxed atmosphere as I normally don’t have this sort of peace during Christmas.

What did you do for Christmas? How did your table decoration and Christmas menu looked like? Please share as I need inspiration for next year’s Christmas.

Merry Christmas

And it is this time of the year again! Christmas is there and once again, I was not able to accomplish everything I wanted to beforehand. Of course, I had to do some last minute Christmas present shopping as I usually have the best ideas when it is too late…

What I also did last week was baking the last round of Christmas cookies. This time some really traditional butter cookies with Christmas decoration! I love rolling out the dough and cutting out star-, tree-, angel- and bell-shaped cookies…

Once the cutting is done and the cookies are in the oven, the best part begins: Waiting in front of the oven for them to be ready while enjoying the beautiful smell of freshly baked Christmas cookies! Yum!!!

I left some of them as they where – just pure cookies without any toppings but some others, I decorated nicely with Christmas style toppings such as sugar icing and little sugar Christmas trees, stars and pearls:

I love using these cookies for add-ons to my usual Christmas presents! Just something nice and self-made for everyone to enjoy. They just give every present a non-materialistic touch. I wish I had more time to make more presents on my own. I usually have great ideas but am lacking the time to execute them.

What about you? Are you baking Christmas cookies this time of the year? What sort of Christmas cookies do you like and are you making them yourself? Please share!

With this, I would like to say thanks to all of you for reading and supporting my blog! I wish you all a wonderful Christmas with all your loved ones!!! Merry Christmas everybody!!!

Life Changing Happenings…

You might remember this picture from the end of November:

That was when my wrist was injured because of too much work. When I went to see a doctor about it, we talked about my work-life-balance and figured out that I am sitting in the office for far too long each day without walking around enough.

Ever since, I could not stop thinking about this! Every day, I am sitting in an office, not seeing any sort of daylight as it is still dark when I arrive in the morning and already dark when I leave in the evening! Is that really what I want to do for the rest of my life? 

Last week, I was told off because I had a minus in my work-hours account of 8(!) minutes. And you know why this happened? Because I had another doctors appointment to check on my wrist… Overall, I am not that happy with my job right now. I love the actual job but I am not satisfied with how things are done in my company (I do not want to go into details here but there are some issues me and the business have such conflicting opinions on that it just doesn’t mach anymore – not an ideal situation for either of us…)

So what is it that I am doing day in day out? I am a social media marketing manager working for one company full time and for another part time. Actually, the pay check for my full time job is not that much higher compared to the freelance job but it involves much more time spent on the actual job in the office. Obviously, I am not going to an office for my freelance job as my office is wherever my laptop/smartphone/tablet internet connection is.

This made me think about starting my own business. Why not working from wherever I want (provided I have an internet connection)? What stops me from working as a freelancer full time – Nothing! Maybe the reason why I haven’t done it yet is that I am just afraid of failing.

But after putting some more thought into this, there is no reason to be afraid as I have been working in Social Media Marketing since summer 2009. That is more than 3 years of experience in various fields of business. I also use social media on a daily basis with my personal and blog accounts. 

You see where I am going with this! Exactly! I have made a decision! I want to be free! I want to work on my own – be my own boss! So far, I do not have a clue about the details but that is what I am going to figure out in the next few months and I invite you to join me on this journey! Maybe some of you are self employed and can provide some useful tips and tricks (Please feel free to share them in the comments section below)!

So, all entrepreneurs, microbusiness-owners and freelancers, your help is much appreciated and maybe, someday, this blog can help others start their own business as well!

More about this new project to come soon! Right now, I am way to excited about this life changing decision!!! 

And it is snowing again…

We already have 40cm of snow and it is still snowing and weather forecasts are forecasting even more snow over the next few days… UNBELIEVABLE!!!

For a girl who considers everything below 25°C as cold, constant temperatures below 0°C is quite cold as you can imagine. That is why I spend most of my time inside and hardly ever go outside. Well, obviously, I cannot avoid going outside completely but I do so whenever I can.

Here are some of my snow pictures, It took during one of my rare outings last week:

 

I have to admit, the snow does look nice and the usually grey landscape looks much nicer and more welcoming covered in snow but my problem is definitely the cold that comes with all this snow! Watching it from the inside is perfectly fine and going out for pictures once in a while as well but more than that is just too much for my body!

With all this cold, my skin feels so tense and dry that I can hardly stand this feeling! The only thing I am craving when I am outside is to be somewhere warm! But well, I knew that before I moved here and now I have to deal with it the best way possible! So thinking positively about it, I at least get beautiful pictures…

Is it snowy in your region as well? Did you take pictures? Please feel free to share your snowy posts in the comments below!

 

Instagram Recipe: Quiche Lorraine

I love all sorts of food from all over the world but la cuisine française is definitely one of my most favorites! Lucky enough, I participated in a language exchange with a french school during my high school time! Over there, in Toul, I got to know a lovely french family and I am so happy that we are still in contact!!! During one of my visits, my exchange partner taught me how to make a typical french dish: Quiche Lorraine.

As my boyfriend has never tried it before, I decided to make one today for dinner. It goes perfectly with a fresh salad and a nice vinaigrette. Here is how to make Quiche Lorraine in a few simple steps:

Ingredients:

• Puff pastry
• 3 eggs
• 300ml of cream
• 250g of bacon bits
• grated cheese (ideally french cheese)
• salt, pepper and french herbs

Directions:

1. Put the puff pastry in the baking tin and make some holes in the pastry with a fork so that it gets fluffy when baking later on
2. Mix the eggs and the cream and add salt, pepper and french herbs
3. Frie the bacon bits and place them onto the pastry
4. Fill up the rest with the egg/cream mix
5. Preheat the oven to 180°C
6. Bake the quiche for around 30 minutes (baking time depends on the oven so have a look at it several times and reduce or extend baking time if necessary) until it is golden brown

Bon Appétit