Dragon dwindles to snake

Year review part ZWEI

My books of the year ~

well, I've redicovered Amy Tan who is a really good storyteller and who reminded me of my passion and all the craze at the beginning of my studies ^.^

I've finished two parts of Lord of the Rings and I'm going to finish the third part soon ^.^

and the novel that moved me the most was 'The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry' by Rachel Joyce... It's a good read as well, but it makes you think about what you've done in your life in a very special way... I'm going to re-read it a thousand times...

My Maura of the year ~

well, the month of October was very Maura-abundant because she did a ton of interviews for breast cancer awareness, the rest of the year was pretty meagre... (after uploading all the stuff, I realized that it actually wasn't... the problem is that I'm insatiable... ) But my Mauralove is still dragon-size anyway, no worries about that ^0^  

Maurajoys of the year ~ 

Newsradio ~ I must admit, I just bought it a few months ago and  I'm going to make another post about it, because it's the best show I've ever seen!!

Maura's using red nail polish for once! 

Maura's handwriting... uhm... I'd say she doesn't write letters ^.^ 

Maura's pleasantly surprising sexiness in The Good Wife (gifs taken here)

Maura exploring all kinds of new and weird activities (arts?) at the six01 studio (the same pic is also pic of the year... yeah, I am that cheap ^^)

Then they released the WIGS miniseries 'Ruth & Erica' on youtube... It's an interesting kind of project where they show episodes that last like 10 minutes and they've got amazing staff and actors, it's totally worth checking out... well, I watched the Maura miniseries with my beloved one and we were moved to tears... Again, it's about people getting older and dealing with life... sigh... here's the first episode for you  ~

Well, after placing Mauramadness in the strategic middle area, now we come to the most important thing ~ 

My letter writing ~

I recovered from my writing depression around July and this is when I started to make lists again... So far  from July to now I've got 57 letters (tomorrow is another mail day, so who knows ^.^) and sent out 63... again, my outgoing is more than my incoming... I've made a bunch of new pals and I somehow managed to keep the old ones... I want to thank you, my friends, for believing in me and for all the waiting... As I said, I don't make resolutions, but I have a wish for next year ~ I hope that my letter writing life stays the same as it is now ^.^ 

I've also met four of my pals this year and had an amazing time and many beautiful moments with all of them ^0^ I've met my Romanian friend for my birthday, my Finnish friend for her birthday and my Danish gang on a trip to friends' wedding ^0^ I've already made plans for meeting more pals next year ^.^ It's great that Europe is so small ^.^ 

and now I'm going to wish you all the best for the year of the snake ^0^ Thank you for reading and chatting with me here ^.^ Many hugs!

Was the dragon nice?

Probably bad news ~ lately my wrist is cramping after me writing three pages, so I should probably reschedule my letter writing... Well, I wanted to do a review of this year anyway, so it's probably a good time to make a new post ^^

But first, completely unrelated but makes me feel good ~ an ancient Bangles video ^0^ They will always be my favourite girl band ever!! (They became popular straight away after they stopped shaking their heads like mad ^.^)

and now ~ on to the dragon ~ wheeeeee ^0^ in fact, this year has been rather sucky for many of us... me, I can't really complain, but it was definitely exhausting... It was quite a challenge to find my balance again, but I believe I did it and I expect the next year to be a lot calmer ^.^ I'm looking forward to being more active and creative in the new year... even if I don't make resolutions, I believe there are quite a few challenges ahead ^.^

My music of the year ~

Now that we started with that, I can continue right away ^.^ This year's big discoveries for me were

Ibrahim Maalouf... I believe no words are necessary here... 

 And now the funnest band in the world ~ Caravan of Thieves ^0^ I guess I'll pay them a visit on my Maura-stalking journey ^.^ 

I completely gave up on Russian music for a while, because the pop stuff usually JUST sucks and Russian rock is so depressing, but these days folk rock seems to be popular ~ and this is exactly what I need... Melnitsa mix Celtic with Slavic stuff, they've been around for a while and I just love it when experience meets creativity! I chose this weird video because I must admit, I'm not fond of Helavisa's live performances (yeah, go ahead and tar and feather me), but this version is just majestiQUE!

And I'm still listening to Gaiaaaaaa nonstop... Sandy, I'm so going to spoil your songs during the next karaoke outing!!

My activity of the year ~ drawing

Since I started to swap ATCs on swapbot, I got back into drawing and suddenly I felt the need to actually learn it. I've bought quite a lot of books and supplies lately and I've probably never drawn that much in my whole life as this year. It's fun, especially looking at things with those 'I'm going to draw you'-eyes. I've been catching myself staring at objects or at my own hands or at someone's face lately, considering the shadows, shapes and colours... It's so fascinating and I hope I can do more next year ^^ The stuff below is just to illustrate what I'm talking about... I know a lot of people around here are really good and I feel quite inspired ^.^ Swapbot is a crazy place but I've met some amazing artists over there too who encouraged me and sent some raaaaaad stuff in the mail ^0^

 little fennek fox... they're soooo cute! I've made a tryptich but this was the best card... 

tiger baby card I made for someone

 brain theme...

 sushi reversed ^0^

 kawaii card ~ since I'm so tired of Hello Kitty, I decided to make a Thai version 'Hello Maew' ^0^ but I forgot what it says on top... maybe just hello or something ^.^

 I just can't resist those little animals... 

 the drawing is mehh, but I thought the idea was interesting ^.^ of course, there is a special memory about my glasses, because I've got them to see Maura ^0^

 uhm... whatever... ^.^

 I guess the theme was unconventional beauty or something... I'm so fascinated with those women... 

 another tryptich swap... got no heart for this one... sniff... ok, it maybe took me 15 minutes to do those cards, but is this what matters? 

another cat ~ probably my favourite movie cat ever ^0^

Ninja Bart ^0^ it says 'eat my shyuuriken' ^0^  (the ninja thing he throws)

 muffin ^.^ yumm...

 that was a challenge where you had to make a collage first ^^ it was fun...

Ghibli summer swap ^0^

I guess, I'm going to make another post, otherwise everyone will fall asleep while scrolling down...

Letters and culinary adventures...

Gosh, I really wish I could skip Christmas like last year, just get away from all that stress and chaos!! I've been pretty busy with lessons and had to sacrifice some of my precious weekend time to the preparations... sigh... And in the evenings after work all I did was preparing Christmas cards and packages... BUT! I'm really proud of myself that I'll actually get everything out before Christmas, it's probably the first year EVER when I managed to do that... Maybe I'm more organized or maybe I'm in a better mood than usual, whatever it is, it feels good ^^ I won't show many of my outgoings, because some stuff is still on its way, but yeah, there is some mail I've sent and received in these past weeks and some delicious stuff I made and/or ate ^.^

 

no mail art mood at all... yawn... but I did my best with the content, as always ^.^ 

 

 the cream I cooked for the cake below, it looked interesting to me ^.^ 

 just the cake, freshly baked 

 voilà ~ chocolate chips fudge cake... looks mehh, but tasted wheeee ^0^ I didn't whip the other cream long enough though, so it was kinda fluid... but yummy...

 German children start with beer pretty early... hehe... NOOOO, it's just a lemonade commercial! I'm addicted to the lemonade made by the local breweries now, I haven't drunk beer in a loooooong time after discovering the lemonade ^^ 

I decorated an envelope with Glagolitic letters ~ it (probably) was the oldest Slavic alphabet developed by a scholar named Constantin (later Cyrill) in the 9th century and was the base for the first written Slavic idiom ~ Old Church Slavic... Later the students of Cyrill and Methodius (his brother) brought the scripts and the idiom to other Slavic areas and also developed the Cyrillic alphabet that is used until now for Russian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Serbian. blablabla... 

 A veritable culinary adventure ~ me & crazy friends went to Frankfurt just for a Chinese all-you-can-eat ^.^ And discovered this cute Taiwan tram!! I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to visit Taiwan again next year, but I don't even dare to think of it too much yet, because I'm afraid that it won't work out... sigh...

well, we had hotpot ~ we got this pot with normal and HOOOOOOOOOTLIKEHELL soup (the amount of chilly peppers is mindblowing, we couldn't get them out soon enough to avoid the explosion of our heads after the first spoonfull) on a gas stove

then we put all kinds of stuff into the soup and cooked it ~ we could choose from a huge buffet with meat, seafood, vegetables, tofu and other stuff

then you could just pick what you wanted and eat from your own bowl with sauces you liked or without ~ my favourite stuff: squid, tofu and enoki mushrooms ^0^ unfortunately that was the moment when I realized that the normal soup contained cilantro... I almost puked... so I had to stick to the HOTASHELL version... 

there was plenty of other stuff to eat, like cute little buns (baozi) ~  they taste better when I make them though ^.^ 

sweeeeeets ^0^ in the upper right corner is a fried piece of dough (youtiao) which I haven't tried before... Since I love all kinds of savoury dough, I loved youtiao too ^^ the rest is fried banana with a crust and different kind of sticky rice balls (mochi)

this was my own Christmas present for myself... I've been thinking of buying proper artist pencils (I only had watercolour pencils so far and well, it's just not the same thing) and now I finally did ^.^

 I must admit I have to figure them out yet, but so far I had fun using them, even if the result wasn't exactly what I expected, not to mention 'artistic' ^.^

presents from a friend who went to the Philippines for business ^0^ hard to tell what I like best ~ the wire binder is VERY handy and the lip balm feels terrific and tastes like mint candy... I need to remind myself not to eat it... 

see my Maura labels ^0^ they're awesome ^.^ the stamps are quite interesting too, they celebrate the 100 years anniversary of the Sorb peoples association in Germany ~ yep, there are native Slavic peoples in Germany! not everybody is aware of that ^.^

I drew something from a Bamu & Kero book ^^ They are so cute and I thought my pal might feel like having a cup of tea while reading my letter ^^ 

a good mail day ~ the present is unopened yet ^^ I'm so silly, I know.. Postcrossing card, Philippines card from my friend and a great letter of my youngest penpal ^.^ 

gosh, they have such beautiful stamps in Russia!! seriously, I'm so disappointed about German stamps most of the time... all they got for winter season is Maria and Jesus, terrific!! =.= 

mail/postal service-related stamps from the Philippines ^.^ 

turrón from Spain... yummm... 

well, I've been wondering what the hell makes macarons so popular (while being SO expensive) for YEARS and now I've tried that caramel-fleur-de-sel thingie and gosh, it was like heaven T0T totally recommended!!

I've baked toffifee-muffins with moulds from one pal and the recipe from another and felt in heaven again... I love my pals ^0^ 

more unopened Christmas mail (Denmark has beautiful winter stamps too =.=) and a letter from one of my favourite places on earth ^^

yeah, that package isn't opened yet neither ^^ then two more cards from Taiwan, yay ^0^

and finally, some of my outgoing Christmas cards ^.^

well, if you scrolled down this far ^.^ ~  I'm wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, even if I feel a bit grumpy about it all, but yeah, I sincerely hope that you have beautiful holidays and enjoy yourself ^.^ Go out and make some snow angels, if the climate allows it ^^ Have a nice holiday whatever you celebrate!  Do spend time with your beloved ones and eat something nice ^0^