... in color

My life in color is dedicated to random stuff and information or just me rambling on about life! So everything that I think does not fit into on of the other categories will be posted under the label "... in color".

Life’s a bit crazy around here! This last week was full of things to do. I had the feeling that I spent most of my time on public transport. From Monday on we had high fog here in Vienna and it hasn’t cleared yet – I hate hate hate it! I am so freaking tired all the time. I love living in the city but on days like these I would love to move somewhere sunny and warm. I envy all people in Australia and my family in New Zealand right now – they have summer there!

Tuesday is my long day at university – I only have two courses but on is in the morning and one in the evening so I have a long break in between which I normally spend with a good friend at her flat but this week I met a friend who is currently in Portugal and visited us this last week, afterwards I went to my friend’s flat, left it again to go to work for an hour (I am an English tutor), went back to the flat again, bought coffee on the way, picked up my friend and we went on public transport again (the 5^th time for me that day) and drove to university again. When I came home I was exhausted!

On Wednesday we had a national holiday here in Austria. I know that sounds super but friends of mine move that day and we helped them. We were about 15 people and we were so quick - I really have amazing friends - but my best friend and I stayed longer to help them rebuild a closet and a huge desk. The flat is beautiful. I am really looking forward to their home warming party.

Yesterday I met some people from university to write a paper, then went to work for an hour and afterwards I met my best friend for coffee. This was the perfect ending for that day.

I normally read a lot on public transport but not this week. I am not fully into reading mood right now. Maybe I am not reading the right books.   

Do you know that feeling? 

There are just some books that aren’t right for your current mood.

Hopefully the weekend will be quieter and I will find my motivation to read again. Until then I will leave you with the following quote by Paul Sweeney:

Source

... in books

I have to make a confession:

I am a HUGE fan of books!

I love to buy them, to read them, to have them!

I am certainly not the kind of girl who can lend books from the library because I need to posses a good book! I tried libraries and a failed! If a book was good and interesting I brought it back to the library and went to buy it so that I can put it on my shelf! I think in some way I tend to collect books.

And during my – from time to time – night long reading sessions I find some pretty good, nice, interesting or simply so true quotes, which I want to share with you.

The first quote is from Eleanor Brown’s book “The weird sister” which I am reading right now. My reading time is limited at the moment because university started again and I am somehow not so much in a reading mood as usually but I am taking my book everywhere with me and am hoping that next week will be better at least reading wise.

So, there is a story behind this first quote. I have two or three small groups of friends. The largest group consists of people I know from school and we meet often and regularly. I can really count on them but I am basically the only excessive reader in this little group. I have friends who read but I know them from university. But most of them love to read but tell me that during the semester the have so little time to read and they always ask me how I manage to read so much.

A good friend of mine cannot believe how anybody can read as much as I and I tend to shock him when telling him how many books some book bloggers read. Really funny!

Eleanor Brown - The weird sister

I think this quote explains pretty well how readers manage to read so much because for me reading is a hobby and I love to take time during the day to read. Some days ago my best friends tried to motivate me by telling me that I should study for two hours and then I should go and read – and I did study! Yeah! Reading is a reward for us bookaholics and we love it! Sometimes it is hard to explain the feelings I have towards books and why I read so much to others but I am what I am and what I am needs no excuses (okay, I stole this from a song, I know)!

... in recipes

Last week temperatures dropped below 10° Celsius here in Vienna. For me this meant two things – freezing when going outside and buying all the ingredients for an apple crumble.Warm apples in combination with vanilla ice or vanilla sauce are wintery heaven. Soooo good!

I’m sure that most of you know how to make apple crumble but for the few who don’t I will share my recipe with you.

 

Ingredients:

• Apples (I took four apples for three people – huge portions)
• Raisins or Cranberries
• Sugar (I used a combo of sugar and cinnamon)
• Butter
• Flour

How to:

Cut the apples into pieces (some recipes tell you to peel the apples but I didn’t – really depends on your own taste) and put them into a buttered casserole dish. I mixed some cranberries that a soaked with apple juice under the apples. You can also take raisins soaked in rum but we were out of those. 

For the crumble you mix some warm (room temperature) butter cubes with flour and sugar (I used a mixture of vanilla sugar and cinnamon) and knead it into crumbly dough. 

Sprinkle over the apples and cranberries and put it into the oven for about 30 minutes until the apples are warm and soft. 

 I served it with vanilla sauce but it tastes even better with vanilla ice cream!

... in pictures

It is autumn in Vienna!

In the morning it is horribly cold (around 1° Celsius), during the day we have wonderful fall days with cloudless blue sky – has any of you recognized that fall skies have a specific blue you never see during the rest of the year? – and in the evenings when everything is dark already you can see your breath form clouds in the air. 

I love this time of year. I am a huge fan of fall. For me it always resembles a new beginning. In fall I start planning, making goals, starting all over again. This year I even got a new haircut - really short in my terms.  For me it was always like that. Maybe it is something that stuck with me from school – the beginning of a new school year? It stayed with me anyways and as a student October is still the beginning of a new period.  And because I am a teacher-to-be I think it will always stay this way.

So, back to my original post – I love changing seasons. I love each season the same; at least when they are not extremely long or extreme in any other ways. During winter Vienna tends to be stuck under a cover of high fog with no sun for weeks. This is really depressing and I would really love it if this won’t happen this winter (did you hear me universe?!?). Right now leaves are changing colors, the warm winter coats and pullover are dug out of the closet, I can wear my beloved scarves again and write my blog posts with a pot of tea and a burning candle next to me (something I strongly connect with winter).

Are there some things or rituals you connect with fall and changing seasons? 

I would really love to hear about them. 

Oh, before I forget, there is something else which I love during the colder months of the year. But more about that some other time.

... in books

Hello again!

I just wrote my first entry today and then I started my daily blog round and look what I found:

It is Jamie’s birthday today. She is the author of the wonderful blog 
“The PerpetualPageturner”. Really have to take a look if you don’t know this blog – my daily must read!

Because it is her birthday today she started an international giveaway. Yeah! I always envied US citizens because they were able to participate in Jamie’s giveaways which are mostly US only. But today we all have a chance of winning. 

You just have to answer this question for her:  

If you could pick ONE author to crash your birthday party...who would you pick?

I think this is a wonderful question. Reading all the other comments was so nice because I loved reading about all the different authors people would pick. 

I picked Terry Pratchett because I really really love his Discworld series. I think it is one of the best series ever written – sorry to all the other authors but you are great too. I am just not sure if he really is a party crasher but anyways – I would certainly pick him.

I hope you will all visit Jamie’s blog (preferably regularly because her reviews are really good and her videos just hilarious) and maybe even participate in her giveaway.

So I will end this post with a warm Happy Birthday from Vienna to Jamie in the States!

Enjoy your day!

Welcome to my new blog!

I know that it seems like this blog is existing for a while when you look at the archive and the dates of the previous entries but “My Life …” is a new blog. 

For the last 1 ½ years I was writing two blogs at the same time. One was in English and was called “Mad about books” where I wrote mainly about books I read but basically about everything that was going on in my life. Some of these blog entries were imported into this blog. My second blog "365 Tage Fotoprojekt" existed since December, 31^st 2009 and was written in German. On this one I posted one of my photos per day. I always loved to take photos but I never had a real purpose for it. So I had a ton of holiday pictures but basically none of daily life, my dog, of beautiful flowers, etc. That was why I started blogging in the first place – I wanted a reason to take more photos and I also wanted to show everybody that I am able to take beautiful, funny, … photos. 

After two years now I will combine my two blogs into one – this one!

It was sometimes difficult to remember posting one picture per day, it was hard to find a text that went well with it and on the other hand I wrote about my everyday life on my book blog which was not my plan in the first place.

This blog now will combine everything I love. I will post pictures, book recommendations, cooking recipes, reviews or recommendation of good films or TV series, I will blog about music, going out with my friends, funny things I saw or heard (the tram in Vienna is perfect for overhearing strange and funny conversations) – pretty much everything!

I hope you will visit regularly and will enjoy my posts. I am really looking forward to all your comments. If you have a blog as well and want to exchange links, than feel free to write me a comment or an e-mail. I would love hearing from you.