Monday, September 30, 2013

Music Monday #29

Today I wanted to share some a cappella covers that I think are really good.

The Melodores - Radioactive by Imagine Dragons



Acquire - Sail by Awolnation





Saturday, September 28, 2013

Cheese-curry cookies


I wanted to bake something, but we didn't have any eggs. I thought a while about what I could make and finally I settled on cheese-curry cookies. I love them and always eat way to many of them. They make for a great party snack.

Ingrediënts: (I got 1,5 baking sheet full of them)
100 gr flour
100 gr butter
Pinch of salt
2 tsp curry
100 gr rasped aged cheese
100 gr rasped Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees C. Sift the flour in a bowl and add a little bit of salt, the curry and the cheese. Mix until everything is evenly spread. Add the butter and knead it through the rest of the mixture. First it will become crumbly, but later it will get a more dough-like consistency. Make flat rounds with a diameter of 5 cm and bake them in the oven for about 10 - 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Friday, September 27, 2013

The Giver by Lois Lowry


Jonas' world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community. When Jonas turns twelve, he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now, it is time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back.

 The biggest part of the book is about establishing the society Jonas lives in. There are an incredible amount of rules and people even get punnished for simple things like leaving their homes at night or using an incorrect word. The idea of so little freedom sounds very oppresive, but Lowry does an incredible job of making the society actually sound like a nice place to live. The people seem pleasant and everything seems neatly organized. I loved reading about the society and finding out how it worked. The first half of the book or so, it seems like everything about Jonas' life is good, but later that changes. From the very beginning it is clear what kind of society it is, but somehow I too, like the adults in the book, ignored that fact.

The pace of the book is great and slowly the tension is rising, but the ending seems a bit rushed. The Giver has found a solution to the problem that no one experiences true feelings but it doesn't receive a very extensive explanation. The ending of the book was also very open and personally I found that a bit dissatisfying. Those were the only shortcomings I could find. I found it a very entertaining book with a lot of beautiful descriptions of things that Jonas experiences through memories.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

A new purpose


Months ago my mom gave me an old skirt of hers which she didn't wear anymore. It lay on my fabric pile for a very long time before I finally realized what I could make of it. My mom's skirt became a vest! I'm probably not going to wear it very often, but I just like to see what I can make of old clothes.

This was what the skirt looked like:

Have you ever made clothing out of an other piece of clothing?

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Inside out by Maria v. Snyder




I picked this book up at a local thrift store. I wasn't expecting much of it, but it got a pretty good rating on Goodreads, so i gave it a chance.

Keep Your Head Down.
Don't Get Noticed.
Or Else.


I'm Trella. I'm a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I've got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution.


Since this is a book review, it will contain some spoilers.
I liked it a lot better than I had expected. Although the story was a little predictable I was eager to read on. The characters were all pretty likeable and well balanced, which I found good for a change. The main character Trella is pretty smart, but not a know-it-all, which often seems to be the case with main characters. She is stubborn and bold which I like about her, but she doesn't have many friends or particular interests. Because Trella doesn't have many friends the book is more about action than the interaction between different people. Trella has one friend Cogan, but during the book he gets locked up so she doens't see him very often. She meets Riley, one of the Uppers, and that is one of the very few people she genuinely likes. Riley is sweet and also stubborn and I liked him as well, although he could have been fleshed out more. Hopefully the next book will make sure of that.

The other characters is the book were all pretty flat, but considering they didn't show up that much it was acceptable. What I found a little bit confusing was that Riley said that he had never seen a Scrub before, when he met Trella, eventhough later in the book the mentions what kind of clothing scrubs working on the upper two levels wear. He couldn't have known that if he had never seen a scrub before. The fact that Doctor Lamont turned out to be Kiana, Trella's mother, I found a little predictable. I do like the fact that Trella wasn't that eager to confront her mother with that, and Snyder did a good job not letting her tell it yet, because I'm a little curious to see how that is going to play out. I'll probably get to read that in the next book. This is not a book that I will read over and over again, but I am probably going to read the sequel.


Have you read Inside out? What did you think about it?

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Scones


I love scones! They are easy and quick to make and taste great with clotted cream and jam. It had been a while since I made them, but last sunday I was up for it. Thursday I made them again, because they are so tasty!

What you will need:
350 g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
100 g butter
1 egg
1,5 dl butter milk (or milk)

Preheat the oven at 190 degrees C. Put the flour in a bowl and the salt. Add the butter and mash it through the flour. The consistency will be crumbly. Whip up the egg. Keep one tablespoon of the egg aside and add the rest of it to the butter milk. Pour the mixture in the bowl with the flour and butter and knead the dough. When it has a smooth consistency make small rounds of it (about 1 cm high) and put them on the baking sheet. Spread the egg over the scones. Bake them for about 12-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

How do you eat your scones?

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Beautiful paper art



A while ago my mom took me to a great exibition of paper art. I'll share some of my favorite works.

Couzijn van Leeuwen
Caterina Crepax

Transparant God - Peter Callesen


Dylan Graham

Especially the dresses were incredible. They didn't look like they were made of paper at all. I think it is amazing what some people can do with paper.

For more information you can click on the images.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Music Monday #27

I watch a lot of auditions for shows like Britain's got talent, The voice of Holland and The X Factor on youtube and that is how I heard Lucy Spraggan for the first time. She auditioned for The X Factor with one of her own songs, wich was really good. She had to quit the show because she got sick, but I just found out that she has released some songs after that.

The song she auditioned with is probably still my favorite.

Lucy Spraggan - Last Night



Or maybe this is my favorite song of her...

Lucy Spraggan - Tea and toast



One of her newer songs:

Lucy Spraggan - Lighthouse


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Simple jam filled cake

A couple of days ago I wanted to bake something and decided on a cake.I didn't want to make anything to difficult or time consuming, so I kept it simple.

The cake itself turned out pretty good, but not very high. I'm still working on finding the best cake base recipe.

Ingrediënts:
250 gr self raising flower
200 gr sugar
250 gr butter
4 eggs

How I made it:
I put the flower in a bowl and added the sugar. I melted the butter a little so that it was easy to mash it through the other ingrediënts. Then I added the eggs and made sure that the batter had a smooth consistency. I put the batter in a baking tin and baked it for 30 minutes at 160 degrees C.

When it came out of the oven I let it cool down and sliced the cake open. I filled it with strawberry- rhubarb jam and I spread buttercream on top. I decorated it with casting sugar and sprinkels.

Eventhough the cake wasn't very high it tasted great!




Saturday, September 14, 2013

Finally some new clothes!

 After a couple of months of not making any clothes I finally made this top. It was a good project to start with after such a long time, because it was quick and easy. It only cost me two hours to make it. I have so many unfinished projects lying in my room, I should really try to finish them. I did finally finish a skirt that I started making almost a year ago. I only needed to sew about 2 cm. Sometimes I can be so lazy, haha! (By the way; don't mind the not so pretty shoes in the picture. Their my mom's and I 'borrow' them all the time).

Follow on Bloglovin

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Couch to 5k

Last weekend I bought my first pair of running shoes. I realised that it was a good idea to use a schedule for my running, and that is how I stumbled upon the Couch to 5k program. In nine weeks you should be able to run 5 kilometers without previous running experience. I decided for myself to go running monday, wednesday and friday. So far I'm doing good, but this is only week one!

Hopefully I'll be able to complete the program and then I plan to sign up for a competition!

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Plot in a jar


Lately my writing has occupied most of my thoughts. I constantly go from having a lot of inspiration to having none and back. When I don't have inspiration for the story I'm working on, I still want to write something else to get better. I've created this Plot in a jar so that I will have a start for a short story and go from there.

How to make a Plot in a jar

Take 3 jars (or more if you want more seperate ones) and paint 'Who', 'What' and 'When-Where-How' on the lids (or whatever you want). Cut a lot little pieces of paper and write characters, actions, places and moments or conditions on them. I will give a few examples:

Characters
A king with no land
A masked barber
A retired circusmember
A crawling todler
etc.

Actions
fel out of a tree
bought an unreliable timemachine
joined the circus
entered an other world
met a long-lost family member
befriended a vampire
got arrested

Places
in a cave
in a hospital in the jungle
under a giant christmas tree 
at a masquerade
in an underwater world

Moments
on christmas eve
right before marrying the wrong person
during a pottery course
when he/she heard a family member had died
on the opening night of his/her restaurant
after just having an accident

Conditions
like he/she had expected
because his/her mom said so
like he/she had had a vision about
because his/her loved one asked him/her to
because he/she was sure it was a dream

Put the pieces of paper in the right jars and your finished! Whenever you need a simple plot idea to start writing a story you can just randomly take a piece of paper out of each jar and start from there!

Follow on Bloglovin

Monday, September 9, 2013

Music Monday #26

Rock music was never my favorite (except for R.E.M.), but The Script made me change my opinion. I've listened enlessly to their cd and know quite a lot of lyrics from their songs. One my favortite songs is probably If you could see me now, it's such an emotional and beautiful song.

The Script - If you could see me now



The Script - Hall of Fame ft. will.i.am


Monday, September 2, 2013

First day of the year

It will help you to grow!Today almost all universities in the Netherlands started their academic year. I however, won't be participating because I have chosen to take a gap year. It feels awesome and scary at the same time, but the awesomeness probably prevailes. It feels great that I don't have to do anything this year. Ofcourse that doesn't mean that I am going to do nothing (I actually have a lot of plans), but I'm free to do only the things I want to do and I can choose when to do them. Usually I'm a big planner. I always have some sort of plan so it's very different to not know what the year will bring.
When I was 17 I had to do an internship for school. I really wanted to go abroad but I was also scared. I went anyway and it turned out amazing. It was my first time being in an other country on my own. I got sick, my phone died and I got stuck in an other city for about a day, but everything turned out just fine! I was proud of myself for not freaking out and finally doing something that I wouldn't have done before.

New things are sometimes scary, but when you have done it, you will feel so good about it!
This is the first day of my gap year and I've already done something new. A couple of days ago I went running for the first time with my friend Sophie. We ended up mainly walking and talking and we ran very little, but I realized that starting to run woudn't actually have to be that hard. So today I bought running pants and went for my first real run! Furthermore I signed up for a Coursera course called A brief history of Humankind

Music Monday #25

Anna Kendrick - Cups (Pitch Perfect's 'When I'm gone')