crafty mum in changing places

Souvenir Foto School

I am taking part in a February photo challenge: 30 days of photos, one each day according to the letters of the alphabet. The name is: Souvenir Foto School by Mrs.B I found out about it via Kellies blog 74 Lime Lane a few days ago. 

I love photo challenges and I wanted to make a little "Around the home" album this winter to have a little mini album at hand with pictures from our new home. So I took the plunge and jumped right into it. 

I did play with some Apps on my phone to alter the picture. Here are the results:

The original with soft edging

with some light added

a tiny bit bookeh-ish

with some light leaks

with a layered texture

and with a frame.

This is o much fun and really keeps me looking for things for the alphabet and trying new techniques. And afterwards I will have enough photos for a pretty little HOME book! 29 days to go!

Why don't you join?  Sorry, already full it seems!

Have fun taking photos!

Yvonne 

Winter wonderland

It started yesterday afternoon:  Fluffy snowflakes falling upon the city. it was enough to make the children extremely happy and let their mothers wait on the schoolground when they came to pick them up...

But then the inevitable happened: happy snowfall combined with rush hour: 

The traffic went with 15 km/h and the Koreans seem to be reluctant when it comes to using winter tires. Traffic usually moves slow here in the city- for no apparent reason. Maybe because they change lines without indicating it, they don't look in the rear mirror or they are engaged in conversation on the phone. Just add bad weather conditions and you have chaos! We had to take a different road and drive back several kilometers because a street was blocked due to a taxi having crashed into a shop and a passer by and watcher of the scene just did not make it up the hill and stopped for good in the middle of the street. To be on the safe side, the police blocked the whole road in both directions!

So now you have a glimpse into daily life on the streets of Seoul.

At home it looked much more tranquil without the traffic.

So we snuggled up on the sofa, had some treats and watched two episodes of Gilmore Girls. The children just love it!

The next morning I had to get up very early because the children were going again to a ski resort with school. So departure time was at 7 something at school and my phone greeted me with these weather conditions: 

A sled would have been better but we had to take the car. The next underground is a few kilometers away. That is the bad thing when living in a scenic neighborhood...

Back home I treated myself to a nice breakfast. HOME ALONE! What a treat and the day had just begun!

I read some blogs and a few chapters in my books from my current reading list.

And a few hours later it looked like this: 

and this:

and this:

Good for the children they weren't here. I maybe would have mentioned how much I love to see the mountains... 

And how about lunch?

Again it paid having cooked in advance and in batches. I am mostly cooking huge amounts of certain things and then freeze them in family size portions and individual portions. So I always have something at hand in case we are running late one day for dinner or Markus comes home hungry like a wolf, or if I am home alone and don't want to cook. So I am not tempted to eat unhealthy things because the freezer always has something homemade. 

I had a mixed salad with parmesan shavings, yellow bell pepper, apple pieces, roasted, caramelized pine nuts and pecan nuts and balsamic glaze ( so much for my sweet tooth!) and baked vegetables. 

And my new serviettes are making me extremely happy. I just got them recently from here. (Thank you again Ilze!!! Now that you are leaving they will remind me of you!)

I picked up the children later that afternoon and took them for a treat to our local bakery. We had some cake and Jakob just sat there watching the magic that was done down in the kitchen. You can sit above the kitchen and see how they make tarts and bake bread. They were making chocolate cakes: creamy and layered. (Of course we had it before). Jakob wants to become a chef and have his own little restaurant like I told you before. And again I could see how fascinated he is with all the things cooking and baking related. 

I would also love to spend a day or two there to learn from them...

So this is life here in Seoul. Not so exotic as it may seem from afar. I will look out for some very exotic things soon, I promise!

Have a great day! I am off to bed where two little boys await me. Markus is in Germany so they take turns sleeping in our bed.

Yvonne

 

Vapiano

Rumor was spread that a Vapiano restaurant exists in Seoul. Research found out that theere are even four of them! Our famiy love this Italian restaurant and so do our friends here. So we went to the Gangnam branch, the ten of us (4 parents, 6 children).

 

It is huge. Much bigger than the one we are usually going to in Hamburg. But it was cozy anyhow because they had so many separate corners where you did not feel like being in a huge restaurant.

The system was the same as in Germany and I love this open kitchen style self-service concept. You can exactly tell how much chili you want or what to leave out in the mixed salad...

Pauline has chosen a seat where she could see the city lights and the ice rink on the ground floor.

Have I told you lately that I love this city?  You can live traditionally Korean but also find everything you have in mind around the corner due to its internationality. That is what I love about these huge cities: You have everything, you can have your own personal village and the anonymity of a big city. And this city feels sometimes like New York and sometimes like the countryside and sometimes like being in a Parisian cafe or shop.

So next time there will be ice skating first (another inner city ice rink!) and Italian food later!

 

Today I took Markus to the Incheon airport because he travels to Germany. When driving home over one of these numerous bridges over the Han river I could see the mountains again. It is lovely to drive home into the mountains and into the Green with the city at your feet. And I keep telling the children daily how beautiful I think it is. And they think it is like a sermon and remind me that I already stated how much I love to drive home in the sunlight with the mountains in view. But one schould appreciate the daily things that make one happy. And yes, I am so thankful for that every day on my way back home!

Enjoy the beauty of the everyday!

Yvonne 

Project Life: Week one to three

Some of you might remember that I started "A page a day" last year in January. I had the idea of daily scrapbooking and filling pages with photos and journaling (EVERY DAY!) in a chosen colour scheme. The outcome: A finished journal for January, a half finished one for February and 10 more boxes filled with colour coordinated precut pages and ephemera in lovely colours like you can see in this basket here. So of course I was disappointed. I had so much energy in January but a page a day was simply too much! So I am now trying the new challenge of Project Life. I don't have Becky Higgins' paper at hand but I am using all my nicely precut pages from last year plus some new paper. I would love to have the page protectors but unfortunately they ship not internationally. This is such a pity! So I am using the rest of my stash of page protectors in 12x12 and add some smaller ones in between, because they are more easily available here. So if anybody could help me getting them, I would be glad. (I could order and pay them via Amazon and have them sent to US-address and then somebody could ship them to me here and I would forward per Paypal the amount for the shipping .) Other than that I have no idea how to get them because I have already tested all sources I know and they simply won't ship to Korea or Germany...

So these are the first three weeks:

Week one:

The sun was shining through the window so I chose Yellow as a starter. Yellow always brings the sun right into a page!

As you can see the page is only divided by 5 what makes it very easy to use some of your favorite paper and have large photos printed out but it does not go well with journaling for me!

So I put a normal 8 to 10 page in between to hold all the small items and paper I collected over the week.

I like that it adds a bit of layering to the book. 

I really have a problem journaling by hand. I think I will add a bit of journaling the Cathy Zielske way with journaling in pretty fonts. But for now I wanted the pages to be ready and NOT go back to the computer to fumble around with font sizes and probably finding more inspiration that would glue me to the screen instead of getting my job done here in the craftroom (you know what I mean!).

Another problem of mine is: pictures of me. I don't like to have them taken and it is not easy for me to take one myself. I started a series of myself driving around in the car. Maybe I will insert some like this or take pictures of parts of me doing things. I will have to work on that, too!

Week two:

Sometimes the pictures themself set the colour for the page like the children here:

I like the iPhone-inserts with the weather forecast for the week. These are daily things one uses to forget. And I wonder how we will think about this feature on the phone in ten year's time...

Week three: 

Sometimes I want to insert a photo but the colours would totally crash the concept. I discovered via some project life veterans that they simply alter the photo to Black and White - how easy is that!

Well, with this shop visit it had to be all Pink, even though Pauline does not like the colour very much...

This really was a lot of fun. I am not happy with everything I did here but the sum of it will be so much more than the single page. I am so looking forward to the next weeks to come!

Have  a wonderful start into the week!

Yvonne

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eat your Greens

Dear readers!

The pescatarian adventure is coming along nicely and the family is taking the ride with me at home. They are still eating the whole stuff at school but don't eat meat at home any more. We started this in early november and it feels good!

Pauline jumped on the wagon and ordered her vegetarian school meal a few weeks ago. There are already a lot of people doing this at the German school so she is in good company. And with the healthy food here and the amount of soy in the Korean cuisine there really is no problem of missing anything!

As for "Move more, eat well", there is also progress. Markus and I are doing our exercises, we eat well, spend time outside in the wonderful winter sun and I am tracking my progress in a journal. There are even days when you can find me walking the dog at 7.30 in the morning WITHOUT MOANING!

Thangs again to Cathy to initiate this new workshop wich is a great way to combine healthy living with scrapbooking (who would have ever thought that?!)

So  Kimbap ( the Korean variaty of sushi rolls), Turkish sigara börek and Cheesecake (all homemade) and green tea count as a healthy teatime in our house.

And again and again I am thankful for the best kitchen helper ever: Jakob is joining me all the time preparing food. He wants to become a chef and have his own restaurant. Markus is constantly warning him what these working times will do to his family life but he is still convinced. 

And here a glimpse of a leftover lunch setup for me alone when everybody was at school or at work: Salade Nicoise, mushroom risoniotto, penne with spinach and green tea: Life can be so good - and yummy!

For the Lunar New Year we got our yearly gifts from the companies Markus works with. They sent us like 10 kg of meat in a freezer gift suitcase. I told him he'd better bring one of these fruit cakes they are selling for loads of money in the supermarkets now. And as if they had heard us, he came back the next day with one of them:

So we are eating our daily apple and I also did make a super delisious Tarte Tatin but unfortunately it was one before I could take a picture...

Have you eaten your Greens today?

Yvonne

 

Hanging around

Hello out there! 

We've been hanging around a bit over the weekend, had some friends over, went for a short hike into the mountains/hills in the neighborhood and tried some new recipes.

The reason for being a late starter this week is that I felt miserable the whole Monday. It started Sunday night and felt like a flu or something. So I rested on Monday to recover on Tuesday finding Pauline in her bathroom in the wee hours of the morning feeling terribly sick. So we spent the day on the sofa, helpng her going to the toilet to vomit and force liquids into her. The poor thing!

Worst thing: Tomorrow will be one of the three big ski outings from school and she cannot participate. I consoled her a bit and promised her to have a wonderful mummy and daughter day tomorrow. Just the two of us with books, a video and lots of cuddling. 

Today I treated us to Julie and Julia. She loved the film and I love that she now has the age to watch "grown-up-films" with me. 

We've been already watching "You've got mail" over the Christmas holidays together. That really is a wonderful thing, having a daughter! 

(Yes, of course we will watch "Back to the future I" with the boys in the near future. They should share our film history with us and we hope they won't find it that antique...)

As for the rest of the gang: alive and kicking and as you can clearly see: Jakob is his usual daily him, sartorialist style. I don't know where he gets the energy to dress up for school in the morning... And there is no debating. He won't let anybody alter his chosen outfit. I should make a mini-album this year for him! His birthday is approaching and it would be a sweet idea! 

I'll be back tomorrow in a hopefully better shape and will also get back to the comments from the last days! Thank you so much!

See you!

Yvonne

 

 

It looked like springtime...

Yesterday it really looked like springtime when I took the children to school. The sun was coming out and I ignored the temperature sign on my car showing minus 10 degrees and drove straight to the Han river to go for a spontaneous walk. I thought I could go for 30 minutes and then head over to Yeouido to check out Paul Patisserie, a gem I knew from my time back then in Istanbul. 

My walk took not 30 minutes but one hour. I am glad I did it. One words for 2012 is health and what is better than an early morning walk by the river in the sun? but of course, to minimize the health effect I went to Paul to have a croissant and a cappuccino. I have been  limiting myself to 2-3  cappuccinos a week for a while now. This was a special treat: sitting in the Patisserie, having some of my books at hand (Big big Thank you  to Markus ' parents for giving me a Kindle for Christmas!  - it is great to have my books available in a second!). 

I am currently reading "Living the savvy life" by Melissa Tosetti, "Pictures at an exhibition" by Sara Houghteling and "Wild Things: the Art of nurtutring Boys" by Stephen James. And yes, I am a parallel reader. I definitely need more than one book by my side!

And on my way home towards the mountains I have been listening to this in the car: 

 

 

 

Life is good! Has it been good to you lately?

Yvonne

 

Training for the Olympics

Living in Korea you cannot refrain from doing some sort of winter sports. I am not a huge fan of skiing . In fact I never tried and never wanted to. At first it was a matter of money for me and then I somehow disliked the whole thing that comes with it: I am neither a "we-are-all-together-in-one-tiny-hut-and-have-fun-type", nor I liked the reports of the Apres-ski-tales I was told during my time at University. Remember: I am more of a loner and a caouch potato and more into a tea time with friends or a walk than a ski outing. And my husband who practically learned walking on skis gave it up a few years ago due to the frenzy around it in the ski resorts. He keeps telling me it is not like it was in his youth. There obviously was more romanticism to it back then... So issue closed because we have been living in Mexico and the northern part of Germany for the last years. But here it is all about winter sports. it was like this and is even more due to the upcoming Olympics in Korea. 

As a child I loved ice skating. not the dancing pirouett-thing but just skating and skating for kilometers in one direction from one small village to the other in the northern part of Germany where the small rivers are frozen. That is just so wonderful. 

Here in Seoul there are two big ice rings in the middle of the city, in front of the City Hall, surrounded by the city lights and opposite a temple. That is stunning and we wanted to give it a try. We chose the evening with all its magic coming from the city lights around us.

 

So the children were on ice skates for the first time in their life and me for the first time since 28 years!!! it was a bit of a challenge but it finally worked out and we loved it. The glittering city lights, lot of young Korean couples or lovers in the rink and K-Pop yelling out loud from the speakers: so much fun!

The children were very courageous and they are learning so fast at this age. And even minus 12 degrees did not harm us.

Upon arrival at home we luckily had some pumkin soup prepared from my "soup archive" (more about that over the week end) and markus and I had the famour risoniotto I mentioned yesterday. What a treat! it is so worth trying. I had afaint idea of how it could taste but one cannot imagine the feast for the taste buds in your mouth when hitting upon these rice-shaped pasta in tangy creamy mushroom sauce..... You should give it a try!

Needless to say the children fell asleep as soon as their head hit the pillow!

I was also done but was still pondering on something I saw around lunchtime today: I went to Uniqlo to get some warm undergarments for winter for the children and me and hit upon the collaboration between Uniqulo and olra Kiely. It shouted SPRING and I wasn't in Spring mood but I think I should treat myself to one of these beauties:

 

I am torn between the orange range and the green range. Sigh....

Any hints?

Off to picking up the children from school. I will take Pauline today to a birthday party in a dog cafe ( a cafe where you can play with dogs). For people who would love to have a pet but cannot have one for some reason. This will be great for the girls. 

Over the week end I will post some links about my daily little helpers and tell you about my soup archive!

Have a great end of the week!

Yvonne

 

Baby, it's cold outside

Hello again! It is freezing cold outside. 

I am definitely not a winter person. But because of new standards for a healthier life we walked downhill through the woods to Samcheong-dong the other day. Pauline is also always a little grumpy when it comes to going for a walk. She loves Sports but not walking. But once she is in motion she loves it. On our way to the forest we've been greeted by a friendly little helper of the street worker in our area:

This really is the country of cute (and I did not even start showing you all the cute paper goods....).

The footpath  to the national park starts near our house and we can walk all the way down to Samcheong-dong through the forest. In the middle of the walk you have a wonderful view over Seoul. It looks amazing when the lights are on!

I am thankful and happy we chose to live here! We are surrounded by Green and have a big city at our feet. 

And for healthy living; do you remember I started the habit of trying a new recipe every week? I kept that but was less diligent when it came to the mail thing. There weren't that many letters posted every week. but you should only start one new habit at a time and wait a few weeks until it really turns into a habit, right? Babysteps!

The new recipe for last week was oven baked Ratatouille from the "River Cottage veg everyday" cookbook I got myself for Christmas. I am not such a fan of Ratatouille but my husband Markus loves it. For me it is a bit to sour if cooked the normel way. But I thought it would be a bit sweeter because the heat from the oven might caramelize it. And so it is. It is more creamy and sweeter and absolutely amazingly yummy! If somebody wants the recipe, please contact me! It is so worth it and super easy to prepare because it is roasting all by itself. You just need to cut the veggies and toss them!

And this week I'll try another one from the book: "Mushroom risoniotto". 

Doesn't it look yummy? I will try this out tomorrow after a few rounds on the ice skating rink with the children. The best thing about the recipes is that there is no fuss in making them. You don't need to prepare things for a long time or need to memorize an elaborated recipe with a lot of ingredients. Not that I don' like elaborated recipes but when time is short like sometimes in the evening it is perfect to have a new recipe at hand that is quickly prepared. 

I will tell you if it was as delicious as the last one.

What did you try out this year? Any new vegetarian or fish recipes?

Wishing you a lovely evening! I am off now to a tomato-mozzarella-pesto-salad-baguette prepared by Moritz. He is our baguette- and Panini-maker in the family. Jakob is the salad guy and tea-maker and Pauline just enjoys...

Yvonne

 

New beginnings

Happy New Year and off to new beginnings!!!

I have moved from moline

Today I visited the Yvestown blog again after a while where I haven't been reading blogs and found out she started afresh this year and deleted all her old blog entries. That is a pity in some ways and very courageous and positive thinking because why look back when there are wonderful new things ahead?

And then it dawned upon me: That was exactly what I need: To have a clean slate and start anew with another blog page. I wasn' so courageous as to delete my old blog entries but I moved and want to start fresh and new. 

The last year was great because we moved to lovely Seoul and had a wonderful time already. I was eager to move East and the city awaited us with open arms. There is so much beauty here and I hope I can show you some of it over the next few years.

And now for the excuses for not blogging for so long: I was preoccupied with some medical issues again. They found 14 cysts in my breasts and I maybe need a mammotony te have them handled. They are benign but so many and one is really big. I always had one that was coming and going with the pregnancies and extensive breast feeding. But no other pregnancy is scheduled so I have to have another plan now. On top of this I had a bone measurement.  I don't know why gynaecologists in Germany don't do that on a regular basis but maybe it is a money issue or they think it is not in their department!  And I found out I have Osteoporosis, too. So then - there were two ways to handle this: accepting that I maybe getting old and sick and cranky or take action. I decided on the latter. I took action immediately and gave up meat cold turkey (that sounds funny but I HAD to express it this way!). I wanted to do it for a long time but always was to weak and lazy. Now was the right time to kick out some of the calcium killers out of my body. It was so easy because we did not eat much of it anyhow. For the other calcium killers: I am not drinking Coca Cola (never) nor am I an extensive coffe drinker (1- to 2 Cappuccionos a week). But I love black tea. I drank it in litres like people from the North of Germany with a love for England do. I limited this to the weekend mornings and now savour every cup even more. I am lucky my new doctor is a nutritionalist , too, so she was happy I am taking care of me nutritionwise...

My husband loved that I cut meat from the  menue and finds it funny that I call myself a pescatarian (vegetarian plus fish) from now on because I did not give up on fish and shellfish.

The other action I took was to get going. Meaning: to lift my butt from the chair and sofa and be more active: I am doing small workouts every other day, leave the car behind and walk more often, got some small weights to build up more muscles to protect my bones and even got a fancy hula hoop Korean style with accupressure/massage bobbles inside. And guess what: I have so much more energy! (And if I practice enough I can compete with all the retired Korean men and women you meet in the park in the morning at 6 o'clock doing hula hoop in the free open-air gyms here in Seoul)

Of course I should have started this years ago but it is never too late and I think I'll feel better and healthier over time. And we are having so much fun: the whole family hula-hooping along here!

And of course I am not doing it all alone. I have Jonathan from No excuses workouts who is sending me supportive emails evry day and workout tips every second day to keep me on track. And can you believe it: it is for free! And I downloaded the Nike training App for my phone where you can have personally put together workouts with  the music from your ipod. I also have to admit that Cathy Zielske inspired me with her road to fitness as before with her way of scrapbooking. Thanks again Cathy! I even decided to jump on the wagon of her new workshop Move more , eat well 2012. it combines scrapbooking and a way to better health plus it is good for me to have some public accountability ;-)

Soooo, that is for a better start into 2012! I am happy I did not have to start in 2012 but already did baby steps in the last month of 2011. That made it a lot easier for me. When I left out the meat I was feeling better but I think that was only psychologically at first. When i gave up black tea I felt not so good. I had a headache for a couple of days. And me being a person who never suffers from headache thought: oh my goodness, I am a black tea addict and my body now shows me how much it relied on that daily intake! But it was better the next week and with so much more energy I will have more space in my head for doing the things I love: crafting and cooking and reading.

 

So this new blog will develop slowly. I will add some links to the sidebar from other lovely blog people and share some helpful sites to get you going in the chaos of everyday life. But for the readers who liked my personal insights into Seoul and Korea,

my love for decorating

and crafting

and family life

will also find this here. I am just adding to my usual repertoire this health issue thing because I think it is time!

Love seeing you back here!

Yvonne