High five for friday!

 1.  I took this picture with my phone to have a new picture in the background. I really liked how it turned out.

2. Look at this delicious meal my sister made:

3. It really looked like rain on thursday night and I got home dry :) there was some thunder going on overhead!

4. I took a nice walk in the forrest. It felt good until halfway, then I just felt weak. I've had a cold for seven weeks now and my body is working hard on that. But it was definitly good for my mood to get out. thanks Sister for suggesting :)

5. Christian Hiphop: Andy Mineo:
"You're my biggest opponent,
You know me, I know you, we know it,
Whenever I failed, you've always been there,
to simply remind me I've blown it.
You don't see where I'm going,
you don't see when I'm growing,
You only see in the moment,
you know my mistakes you never let go it [...]
Huh, if you know who I'm talking about, then you got me
My biggest enemy is me - and even I can't stop me"

The song "You can't stop me" beginning at 16:48 minutes. I can't help but love it because it's deep and laugh because it's fun. And SOOO up my alley!
Andy Mineo on Youtube


I'm linking up with Lauren:

Mixing patterns

Inspiraton: Lauren

I am not so very pleased with these pictures, because you can't really see the different patterns ;) You can see the stripes, but are you able to see the dots? I will blow up this (blurry) picture, just so you get an idea... It's the same dot as in this one.
I really like the combination of the grey/white/beige with the turquoise coloured necklace, which I got from a friend. The pullover I got from my mom, it's my favorite.

 

Please don't forget to take note of my chaos in the background. ;)

Good night, my friends!
 

Turning from KEEPER to GIVER

Dear friends.

I have always been a "keeper", I have kept stuff. I grow very fast and deeply attached to things. It became very obvious a couple of weeks ago, when my parents wanted us to sort the stuffed animals. My sister and I where doing that together. I had like a zillion animals and a hard time letting go. So in the end I kept about 10 for me and another 10 for giving away to friends who get babies (as if 10 people would get kids soon, but anyways). My sister kept 1! As in: ONE. Well she didn't have a zillion to "choose" from, I don't think it even was ten she had. She almost kept 2, but then she decided to let go of the other bear.
I am proud of you!

Even though I had a hard time letting go of my stuffed animals, I am letting go of my books and DVDs. That's quite phenomenal, because books where my best friends when growing up. But I do not need to keep every book.
I had about 80 DVDs, I kept about 10. The others and some books went to the open bookshelf in the skandinavian department in university (I bought them in Norway, the texts on the back are norwegian, and they are english with subtitles, not very common in germany, and no german subtitles). So here's a little before and after of the open bookshelf. The pictures are crazy blurry, I know!

I am turning from Keeper to Giver. It's a process, it's hard work, but I am getting there!

A little Saturday night fun...

I found this blogger who is blogging about hairstyles and beauty. It's the wonderful Abby Smith with her blog Twist Me Pretty. She has a really beautiful Nail Art with ombre nails. Her tutorial is to be found here:Ombre Nail Art. As I had a day off (I've had a bad cold for like 4 weeks now, so I rest a lot. As well as I decided that I do not have to do any university-stuff in the weekends).

So here is one picture on how it looked "on the way", before the ombre. And then the ombre nails. My colours aren't as vibrant as Abbys, but my fun colours (pink, red, orange and yellow) were a little thicker (and quite old as well), so I decided for the first try to go for my newer colours.

I hope you're having a GREAT weekend so far.

Transforming old tops... into NEW ones.

So, this project has been waiting for me for a long time. I've wanted to do it for ages, but never got the juices flowing. Just to show how long it's been:















Now, being off the medication for depression, energy and motivation have reentered my life. True, I am crazy close to tears all the time. Like yesterday, you know: WorldCup, Germany playing against the USA. I was at university during the game, but we had some laptops so we knew how it was going (1:0 for us in the end). It was nice, but did not touch me emotionally. On my way home there were cars honking and people screaming and making happy sounds. Then I cried. Not a lot, but my eyes were full of tears, one might even have rolled.That's how much I enjoy the recovery of national pride.

Now, back to my project: I have had some tops that were too short. I do not like for my belly to show ;) ... At the same time I've had some tops that were ugly under the arms. Dark spots. So I combined two of those into one new:

All of it is totally eyeballed, I will take you through all
of the steps I did. The fun thing is: It turned out great even though it's not perfect. Nobody takes notice of the plaid that's not precisely in the middle. You will, now that you know ;)





This is how I did it:
1.  I cut off the top section of the top with the ugly top:

2. I put on the shirt I wanted as new top section (you might want to turn it inside out, just because the markings will not show in the end, but nobody noticed the markings, so who cares), I took the lower section to the mirror and decided where I wanted both parts to come together and marked it with blue tailor's chalk (my mom's equipped me well).

3. Next step was actually measuring where the marking was (15,5 cm) from the armpit.

 4. After that I marked 15,5 cm on the other side of the top as well and lay the measuring tape from one side to the other and marked below the tape from both sides for 1cm seam allowance:

5. Now you cut it. I did not take a picture of this ;)

6. Put right side to right side (the upper part was the right way, the bottom part was turned inside out). Put the seams on top of each other first and pin them together. Then you go around pinning it all together.

7. Maybe one section is bigger as the other?  It was like that for me. So I made a plait (roughly in the middle, both front and back). I just tried which way it looked better and decided for this, having the excess fabric on top layed to both sides:

8. Take out your machine and vaccum it. Put it up and sew both sides together. You totally see that I never cut even, I just went with the flow. If you are impatient (like me) you take out the pins as you go and look at how nice it's coming together ;)

 

9. Done with sewing around. (Now I actually pulled it to the right side and took the pictures of the end product - impatience galore). But there's another important step: NOW I cut around it all to make it nice and even.

10. Sew around with a zigzag stitch, you don't want the fabric to dissolve in the washing and your seam get open in the process:

11. Now you can turn it and enjoy your product (I'll be honest, these are the pictures I took BEFORE the zigzagging):

Just now (10 pm yesterday) I took some pictures of me wearing this. I like it best on the hanger, but am getting used to wearing it as well ;)

That thingy in the neckline? That's another post coming soon.

Have a great weekend!

This is now (Saturday 28.06.) part of the Sewing Saturday Link-up at Simple Simon and Company. Check out their page, I love it!

Creating art

So I read this other blog (younghouselove), it's a couple that is DIYing a lot. They also go "House Crashing" and visit other peoples houses. In one of these House Crashing Posts they show pictures from an american lady living in the UK. And man hat she beautiful pictures on her walls. And she made them herself! They were so totally up my alley that I instantly decided that I would try that.

I am really into (polka) dots and really liked this apron. So I decided to put the both together.

The words are taken from a postcard hanging in a friends toilet.

Take three - make one:

Step 1:
stick the words with stickers: [Well, I forgot a "T" in the words! But my sister said to me: You usually say it like that Beau-iful, so she never commented ;) I guess I do say it like that, but that was not the plan... impatient girl ;) ]

 I really liked the look of it. I could've just kept it that way ;) But now I wanted to try this.

Step 2:
Take yellow, make short brushstrokes. Add a little red to the yellow, make more brushstrokes, repeat this process.

Step 3: Let dry. I am a little impatient. Especially with art.
Step 4: But I will wait till it's dry and then peel off the stickers. I am a little concerned if the stickers go off ;)

Step 5: Hang it where you want it. It's a little small, I think, it looks even smaller on the pictures than in reality!... I just wanna go and buy a real big canvas ;) But I think I will just go with another of the small ones to add to it ;)

Have a great week peeps.

Last days...

Dear friends,

These are the last of my anti-depressant-pills that I am going to take:

I wanted to stop last year while I had a boyfriend, I felt stable and able. And I was actually starting the process going down from 225mg to 75mg, doing just fine. Then my boyfriend left me (in September) and I needed to take more again, going up to 150mg. And my psychatrist advised me to not stop them at all until I was in a job, where the getting up struggles would cease and make things easier for me.
So why do I stop now? I have had these issues with my arm for ten years, and at the physiotherapists I got asked if I take any medication. I have taken medication on and off for abou 8-10 years. She told me to look at the instruction leaflet and look out for anything to do with muscles. My mom did that for me (if I read it, I get all the side effects listed ;) ) and found that it could lead to muscles not relaxing. Well, after so many years of the depression and the arms feeding off each other in a vicious circle, one doesn't really believe it. Like: my arm could be better if I hadn't taken medication for my depression, which didn't start because of the arm, but definitly held onto me because of it?? Like really? After 10 years?
That's when I went back to my psychatrist to stop taking these supervised by her. She couldn't find this side effect in her book (what?), but she said to believe the physiotherapist (thank you!), so she pulled up a 30 day plan for me. Now I am in the last 8 days. I'm down to 37,5mg, and this week only taking one every second day, monday was the first day without a pill, and it went smooth until the evening when I had some numbness in my lower lip and some dizziness going on (which I've already experienced whenever I forgot my pills). But I am sick, having caught a really bad cold and only laying around anyways. Now it is wednesday and my second day off. It's alright actually.

In spring this year I went to Norway and God drew me closer, after coming home I went to a new church. I now have this community that supports me in prayer and I feel that it makes such a difference.

My energy level and motivation should go down, but they are going UP!! I give a lot of this credit to God, but my prayer warrior friends and the church are a big part as well!