Take a break – take a cookie.

Yesterday, I helped painting a wall in the flat in which one of my best friends just moved in. It’s incredible! Really beautiful. I love painting walls and I was really curious how the flat looked like, so I loved to help. We painted the wall, her boyfriend and another friend built up some shelves. For the hard workers, I brought Vanilla Chocolate Chip Cookies

And they were needed! We had to paint the wall three times before it wasn’t blotchy anymore. I was there from 4 pm to half past midnight. (Okay, in between we had pizza and watched a movie. And we had to drive to the hardware store because we ran out of masking tape.)

I’ve done Nothing!

Holidays! Holidays! Exactly two and a half hours ago, I walked out of the room where I had my exam and now I’m done for at least a whole month! Yaaay! I’m in such a good mood. The last exam wasn’t really hard, I know I’ve got one thing wrong, but that’s it. (By the way, it was film history and the topic was “Nothing”, in case you’re wondering about the title. 😉 )

After this last exam today, I needed something sweet. I didn’t bake anything yet (I just can’t decide! Give me a sign!), so I decided to try the bakery next to the university that always has lovely baked goods. So, to honor this day, I took something called Strawberry Quark Basket.

That’s why it’s called strawberry quark…

…and that’s why it’s called basket!
And it was good! Really good. I think this is going to be my after-exam-week-special from now on.

Today, I woke up and the first thing I saw where snow flakes dancing in front of my window. It was snowing – again! But at least, it wasn’t really cold today. Of course, the first thing I did after getting up, was looking for my camera. Hey, it was snow!

When I saw this bike outside, I totally had to think of Kjersti, who’s blog is this one. She makes awesome photos! And likes taking photos of bikes. Of course, my photo is not even a quarter as good, haha. (I hope linking you is okay, if you read that!)

Well, though snow is always a good sign for me, I was nervous before my exam. I had to make something quick for lunch before I went to university, so I decided to make something light and spicy to heat up my brain cells, haha – something that I love: Zucchini with chili sauce!

I’m a zucchini lover. And a chili lover. I love this chili sauce! (By the way, the zucchini is not burnt, I roasted it in balsamic vinegar. You should try that, it’s perfect. Put some thyme on top!)
There’s never a too hot for me – I don’t know why but hot food doesn’t affect me a lot, I still don’t even notice it when other people start coughing because of the heat. Must have got something to do with my taste buds. But it’s the same with my sense of touch, I often don’t realise something’s hot – I always have to take hot toasts out of the toaster for my brother with my “magical hands”, he says. Haha. Strange.

And then I went and did my exam. By the way, in my exam yesterday, I had to analyse a YouTube video. (Yes, cool. I know.) I took this one:
I love it! (It’s an example for “Urban Hacking”, if you’re interested.)

Hah. I feel relieved. I think I’ll just relax today. I can’t really party because most of the other ones still have exams tomorrow or next week. So it’s going to be me and Dexter today! But then, tomorrow, a really good friend is done too, and we’ll go out! And next week, most of the guys from my study group take their last exams. This is going to be fun.

(I’ll have to make a quick edit here: This is my 50th post! Jubilee! Yay!)

Studying and a cat, a cake and a never-ending chocolate Santa, honey and ice. Pick your favourite. Or read the whole one.

(Maybe, I should just change the title in “Too long title”.)

At the moment, when I look in the mirrow, I see someone tired staring back at me. I need holidays! Right now, my agenda says “studying, studying, exam, studying, exam”. But hey, soon, it’s going to be over and then, I’ll have holidays for a whole month! That’s right, a month!!

Right now, my bed often looks like that.

Yes, I’m studying in bed. Who doesn’t? And yes, the cat loves to sit on my papers.

She also loves to sleep on them.

And to stare into my laptop.

She’s like: What are you doing on the Internet? Don’t read blogs or look at facebook! (Yes, facebook is addicting.)

Baking is not on the agenda right now. But I’m already thinking about what I’ll make when I’m finally done with exams. I can’t decide! Right now, I’m thinking about muffins.
Mum took over the baking for me yesterday and made marble bundt cake. When I finally had time to have a piece (today, with the obligatory cup of coffee, to celebrate the completion of my second exam), they had already eaten almost the whole cake! My piece was thin.

Maybe one day I’ll tell her my secret ingredient to make the cake more moist. (No offence, Mum’s an awesome baker and I learned everything from her, but there’s this special thing. And I didn’t even get it from the internet.)

And yes, I know, in the photo, the piece of cake looks huge. I don’t know what’s up with my camera lately, I have to make really close shots to get it to focus on what I want. I hope it’s just the low battery and not the cam.

Well. As you can imagine, there just did not happen a lot in the past week.

I still didn’t finish that chocolate Santa.

Told you I need a lot of time to finish one.

You know what I love? I love rolls with low fat quark and honey.

Low fat quark is the perfect basis for honey, jam and Nutella. It’s sourly and it’s the perfect opposition to the really sweet topping. Gosh, I love that.

You know what I hate? I hate that icy weather. It’s not cold, it’s icy. There’s no snow outside, it’s ice. Every time I step out of the underground train I can’t breathe for a moment because it’s so cold. I love winter. You know I do. But it’s no fun if it’s so cold. Winter should be over after Christmas.
It try to do something against the cold by wrapping up as warm as I can.

I love that hat. I’m glad I have a soft spot for winter hats and scarves in all different colours. And of course my perfect winter jacket. But sometimes, I feel it’s enough. I want to put the jacket in the closet and go outside in just a sweater.

Since I have already spent way too much time with blogging, I’ll stop now and go study. I can decide between movie history and media studies. Media studies is about YouTube – yes, I have a lecture about YouTube. I know that’s cool. But I like movie history a lot more, it’s the lecture that tells me that that’s exactly what I want to study. I always looked forward to going to this one. I’m really sad, it’s over, actually. The prof was really cool, too. He’s only a visiting professor at my university, so I hope he’ll stay long, then I could do another one of his lectures someday.

Those are the two exams that are left. The other two that are already behind me (and will be because I passed, I hope) were about the obligatory lectures I had to take. They were hard. But because of them, I often met my study group, which are really nice people, which is good. We sometimes go out altogether and it would be nice to keep that going.

Two finished decades.

That’s a lot, I think. It’s my brother’s birthday today – he’s 20 now. Now he’s in his twenties! That means he’s approaching his thirties! Haha.

Besides a funny birthday party yesterday (or today – we got home by 5), there was not a lot up in the past days. I’m in exam stress and I’m nervous. When I’m nervous about something, there are times I’m really annoying myself and my whole family. Yeah. I’m not a good stress person. (I once learned in school – those were the days – about turning negative stress into positive stress. I’m not really able to do that before exams. In exams, stress and pressure is good for my performance, I think.)

So, I didn’t even bake a muffin. Nothing. No, not even the birthday cake for my brother. But he wouldn’t really care anyway because he’s suffering from misguided taste – he likes bought marble cake. Bah.

But I can show you what I gave him as a birthday present!
Wrapped up, it looked like this.

Unwrapped, it looked like that.

It’s the Hugo Boss Dark Blue perfume! I always told my brother that he needs one and he always told me then I should tell him which one. So I went looking. I was sure about the Hugo Boss, because everyone that I think smells good (yeah, I tell people when I think they smell good) tells me it’s a Hugo Boss one. And, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is in the Hugo Boss commercial! (Yes, that’s a reason! Look at this advertisment!) And Dark Blue smells really good, it totally fits my brother.

Well. Yesterday I beheaded my one and only Chocolate Santa.

I know, it’s quite late for beheading chocolate Santas, I’m always late at that. But I’m always so sorry for them! Also, I can’t eat a whole one at once, I always need a long time for a whole bar of chocolate. So when there are occasions on which you get chocolate Santas or chocolate Easter rabbits, I always tell everybody I only want one singular chocolate whatsoever, but with good chocolate. So I always get a Lindt one, it’s only one but with quality chocolate that I can nag on about a month and that’s perfect.

And that’s it. I’m sorry for the boring post. It’s exam time.
(But exam time means study group time! I never knew I could study in a group, but it’s totally useful to discuss the things we have to know. Also, it’s really fun. I like my study group. Total new for me, as I was never a group person – particularly not when it came to studying.)

What to do with leftover gingerbread.

We had visitors again last night. And for this occasion, we once have put some of the gingerbread shown in this post in the freezer. It was used in this Gingerbread Tiramisu that Mum made.

It looks really good here, and it also was tasty, but you shouldn’t try to cut it in slices – mess on the plate! But you had to mix it with your spoon anyway because it tastes better if you eat all of the components together. So, who cares how it looks if it tastes good? Our guests agreed with me. I just couldn’t make a photo, Mum held me from it 😉 But I can show you how we served it: With a Cocoa and Cinnamon Star.

And because I love this photo a lot, I’ll also show you Bounty, being a very curious cat in the kitchen.

I’m glad there’s not audio recording of me taking that picture, haha.

Well, now, sadly, I have to take down all the Christmas decoration because today, they’re going to be packed up again. We also get rid of the Christmas tree today. That’s always a little bit sad for me. I want it to be Christmas the whole year!
And also, I have to study today – I couldn’t do much the last two days because I wasn’t in Vienna. But who can party can also work, right? (Stupid phrase.)

2010 is starting with snow!

I woke up in the middle of the night, looked out of the window and I saw – Snow!

Do you see it in the background? – Yay!

I didn’t really count on the snow to be still there in the morning. But then I got up today – and I was surprised!

I’m glad I don’t have to drive somewhere today.

No, I’ll just have to make some small snow walk today, and then I can sit in my warm room and enjoy a good cup of earl grey.

It’s from Whittard of Chelsea, I brought it from Cambridge. But it’s only a small tea caddy full – I’ll miss it so much when it’s empty that I’ll have to go to England again. (Haha. Poor excuse.) – Visiting at least two foreign countries is on my list for 2010. (I don’t normally have New Year resolutions, but that’s a good one.) I hope one of them is the UK.

2009 recap… Now 2010 can start.

These are my favourite photos of the year 2009.

(Click on it to see it larger! By the way, I made this with Picasa – pretty nice programme, especially for photo collages like that. You don’t really have to do anything except choosing the photos.)

Every single one of these photos is important to me. Of course there are a lot more, especially ones with people on them. Every one of these photos has something on it I love or has to do with something I love or is just a shot I love.
The reason why there are a lot of food photos here is the following: I never knew how much I loved photographing before I started this blog. The photos in this collage are not in it because of the baked goods that are in it (although they were darn good, too), they are about my love to photograph these things and the joy I feel when photos come out this tasty-looking.  (The best example for that is the zucchini soup – it looks tasty! I mean, it’s already really hard to get a zucchini soup look tasty in real life, but it’s really good-looking on the photo, too!)
Well, some of them are about the things in it – see the Lucky Fish? It reminds me of the really nice New Year’s Eve party I had with my friends.  The sweet bun with jam reminds me of Mum who always bakes them with me together and who always eats them with a lot of butter and a looot of jam on top. The apple pie reminds me of my brother who almost ate the whole pie by himself. The other one reminds me of the best apple pie baker in the world who made this one with me. The blueberry cookies remind me of my best friend and sitting with her at the shore of Danube on one of the hottest days of summer.

Every single one of this photo is a good memory.

I hope 2010 has this many memories or even more. I have plans for 2010. They’re in my head, but they didn’t really emerge yet. But I know they’re there!
(I thought maybe I start with participating  in 10 in 10 – a project with participants all over the net who want to get healthier in ten weeks in 2010. You can choose yourself what’s “healthier” for you and what you want to achieve. Most of them want to lose weight or start eathing healthy – if I would really participate, I would do it to get “healthier” mentally.)