The New York Cab Bike from Gazelle - the perfect summer bike

My friends have the most stylish bikes ever! T's bright yellow city bike from Gazelle (it's called New York Cab - how can I not love a bike named New York Cab) screams: Summer. Sun. Fun. Shopping trips to the farmers market. Picnics at the park...

Images taken by my friend M.

Pure Green Magazine...and dreaming of a garden

I've never been particularly interested in gardening or owning a garden... but after almost 10 years of living in an apartment in the city I'm kind of longing for some outdoor space. Some green. A partio. Barbeques in the backyard. Homegrown strawberries and tomatoes...

Issue 5 about gardening and outdoor living of Pure Green Magazine didn't help to cure my longing for a garden. Quite the opposite. I spend way to much time browsing through real estate websites looking for cute little houses to rent...



If you haven't checked it out you should definitely flip through Pure Green Magazine on issuu.com. It's beautiful.

Below some images of our friends' garden that I took last week...

Banana-Vanilla Milk / Bananen-Vanille Milch

I had completely forgotten about Banana Milk until last week when I stumbled over this post on Carmen's blog retro meets vintage. It's been years since I made some for the last time... I remembered I had this lonely, ripe banana sitting on my kitchen counter so I grabbed the banana, 2 cups of cold milk, and some Kaba Vanille (some instant powder to make vanilla milk - yes, I know, totally not healthy, but it reminds me of my childhood days so I guess it counts as comfort food and comfort food is always good, right?). I put everything in the blender until smooth. Usually I'm not a huge smoothie fan but I love banana milk. No idea how I could forget about it?! It's DELICIOUS! And the perfect way to start into the weekend...


Ingredients (makes 2 servings):

500 ml (2 cups) whole milk (really cold!)
1 banana
2 tsp. Kaba Vanille (can be replaced with 1 tsp. sugar or honey plus a pinch of vanilla extract)

Put everything into blender and mix until smooth. Serve right away and enjoy!

Happy Friday!

Old Kitchen Buffet Cabinet and a LOT of work

I've been dreaming of an old kitchen buffet cabinet (Küchenbuffet in German) for some years now. BUT the thing is we have basically no space left in our apartment (and even less in the kitchen!) for new furniture...and even though I've been looking for a kitchen buffet on ebay every now and then I never bought one. But last week when the kitchen cabinet below was offered on the Freecycle mailing list for free and only a few minutes away from us I couldn't let the chance pass. We picked it up yesterday and today we started sanding and removing the paint...unfortunately removing the paint with the paint stripper we bought yesterday doesn't work that well. The green color comes off very easily but the white paint below is kind of resistant. So, well, maybe we just sand it and fill in some cracks and minor damages and paint over? Any other ideas? Still a LOT of work ahead...

Inspirational Homes: Bright and airy apartment in Oslo

I stumbled over the images of this beautiful bright and airy apartment in an old farmhourse from 1900 in Oslo on bo-bedre.no via emmas blogg. Love all the white mixed with some colorful splashes and how the owners mixed old and new furniture. And especially the kitchen and dining/living room area are great...

Images from bo-bedre.no, Photographer: Inger Marie Grini

Thanks for friends who bring over some apple cake...

The past days have been really slow. I have been really slow. I didn't know what to write about here. I didn't feel like reading other blogs. I didn't get work done like I wish I would have. Lots of emotional family stuff is going on and kept me feeling upset and stressed out. We spend a lot of time in hospital visiting a dear friend. The Flammkuchen I made yesterday evening turned out insipid. I feel completely uninspired and unmotivated. And all the pretty and inspiring things on the internet make me feel like a complete failure who doesn't get anything done when I'm not feeling well aynway... and so on... and so on... I wish I could just hop on a plane and escape the daily routine and worries for a while...

But enough whining and venting. I am going to cook myself some comfort food (pasta) now and have another slice of the apple cake our friends brought over last night. Thanks for friends who bring over cake (and liverwurst, haha) and listen!

And afterwards I'm going back to work, stop worrying and try to gain my inspiration back... what do you do when you are down and lost your inspiration? Do you write about it on your blog? I'm not sure how I feel about writing it down here...