munich in february - part 2

My boyfriend lives in an area called Olympisches Dorf ("Olympic Village"), within an Olympic Park, which was constructed for the 1972 Summer Olympics. There is a hill there, which was errected from the ruins caused by bombing destuctions during World War II. Since it was very sunny that Sunday, we decided to take a walk around the park.


I've missed such blue sky so much ♥

munich in february - part 1

Like mentioned in my last post, I went to visit my boyfriend in Munich last weekend.
I managed to take a few shots of this beautiful, 2nd largest city in Germany, before my camera started acting up (it turned out that it has an LCD error and need to be taken in for repair, but that's another story).

On Saturday we went for a walk in the city, pretending to be a pair of tourists.

Odeonsplatz

Fünf Höfe

Liebfrauenkirche

Liebfrauenkirche

Marienplatz

Marienplatz

In my next post I'll show you Olympisches Dorf ("Olympic Village"), where my boyfriend lives.

bali restaurant

I'm back in Berlin!
I was visiting my boyfriend in Munich last weekend. There are a lot of pictures to show, but they still need some editing, so in the meantime I'll show you something else.

Two weeks ago when my boyfriend was in Berlin we went to an Indonesian restaurant called Bali. The owners are our friends' parents. They serve traditional, non-germanized Indonesian food, so the Indonesian people here love to come there.

The atmosphere is cozy, with lots of traditional decoration and, of course, traditional music. The food is super delicious not overpriced at all.

This was my appetizers: spring roll with salad - yes, spring rolls were originated in China, but like many other countries, Indonesia has also adopted them :)

What I had: Nasi Padang. Nasi means cooked rice (we have different words for rice on the field, uncooked and cooked rice) and Padang is the capital city of West Sumatra, a province in Indonesia. Padang is famous for its hot and spicy food, and this dish was rather hot, too. Yummm...I would really like to find out how the Germans would react to this dish!

What my boyfriend had: Nasi Campur Bali. Campur can be translated as mixed, so the dish is literally called 'Balinese mixed rice'. I took a little bite from everything on his plate, and this dish was also delicious ♥

If you come to Berlin and would like to try out Indonesian food, just drop me a line. I'd love to take you here!

elastic band bookmark tutorial

My fried JF turned 30 last Saturday.
This guy has such a unique taste I just can't keep up with - meaning, I adore his taste but I still have no idea what to get him as a present. Since it was his 30th birthday and I didn't want to experiment with presents, I decided to just ask him what he wanted (boring, I know). He, being a crime/thriller fan, told me to get him a particular murder mystery book. Okay, done.

But, I can't just give him a book, right?
So I was thankful when my brain got a sudden inspiration a few days before his birthday: a knife bookmark to match the murder mystery book!

It's very easy to make, but I was in the mood to make a tutorial anyway, so here goes nothing:

You'll need:
- flat elastic band
- cardboard
- thin felt sheets in white and black
- glue, scissors, pencil, black felt-tip pen

1. Tie the elastic band around the book cover like shown on the picture. Make it fit just right, don't pull too hard or too loose. (Oh, the book is not the murder mystery one :))

2. Cut off the ends close enough to the knot. Your elastic band should look like this now.

3. Next, use your drawing skill to draw your version of a convincing Rambo knife on the cardboard (I consulted Google Image for reference...)

4. Cut it out, then use it to trace another one on the cardboard. Cut this out, then you should have two identical knife-halves like shown.

5. Now glue the blade part only on to the white felt sheet. I used a glue stick (for paper), but you can try other types of glue as well. Cut along the blade, be careful at the zig-zag part...

6. Your knife-halves should look like this now.

7. Do exactly the same for the shaft part with black felt, and you should have these now.

8. It's time to assemble them together! Glue the knife-halves together layered like shown. Be careful so that the elastic band is not stretched or folded during the process. Press the knife-halves hard together, then wait until the glue dries.

9. Your knife should look like this now. You're almost done!

10. See the orange cardboard peeping between the two knife-halves? I would suggest you use a white cardboard so the knife blade would look pretty, but then you'd still see some white cardboard between the shaft parts, right? So grab the black felt-tip pen and colour the still peeping cardboard black!

Congratulations, you're done!

Sorry for the dark pictures, I was working in the middle of the night and my room is just not suitable for taking pictures at night. This is my first tutorial ever, so I hope it's easy to understand. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions :)

How about making different kinds of elastic band bookmark for different kinds of book theme?
The sky is your limit!

happy sewing

Does sewing make you happy?
Our teacher at the sewing course told us, "Sewing can get you frustrated, make you cry, drive you crazy, but it always makes you happy!"
I've been attending the course 5x now, and I can only agree to her. Concentrating on the stitch frees me from daily thoughts and the feeling of having achieved something afterwards really makes me happy.

These are what I made in the last couple of times:

First, something that may look like a pillow - in fact, it is as cushy as a pillow.

But actually it's a super-duper padded sleeve for my Macbook!

Double-layered and stuffed with 3 layers of thick padding...
I wish I had one of these during my school time - to sleep on during boring classes!

I even made a matching drawstring bag for the charger, just for fun :)

The only problem with the sewing course is that, when using not-for-sale or just-made-up-along-the-process-kind of patterns, I never have time to note everything down. The laptop sleeve is one of those made-up-along-the-process ones, so I have no idea whether I'm able to make another just like that...But my main problem is not having my own sewing machine anyway :D

The second item is a circle skirt for the wamer weather I'm badly longing for...

To my surprise, it was very easy to make, and even a beginner like me finished it in 2 hours!

Wheeeeee!

my favourite korean

There are a lot of Korean restaurants in Berlin.
One of my favourites is Arirang in Wedding.
The food is great, not too 'germanized' and the price is pretty cheap.
I went there with two friends last weekend.

I wish I knew the Korean name of this dish.
It's a marinated belly of pork grill plate, made for two persons.
There were three of us and we still had difficulty finishing it...

They have other variations of grill plate and also other dishes such as tangsuyuk and the mostly-known dolsot bibimbap (in Germany only known as 'bibimbap'). They always serve the dishes with a set of side dishes shown on the picture above. Which one you get with which dish is never clear to me, though...

My favourite is the sweet-salty potatoes. I'm desperately looking for the recipe but it's rather hard while not knowing the name. Can anyone help?

[edit]
I think I found a recipe for the potatoes side dish via Zofona - I'll need to try this out!

Glazed potatoes (Gamja Jorim)

Ingredients:
1 medium sized potato
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
60 ml water

Peel the potato and cut it into small pieces (preferably the same size). Stir-fry the potato pieces in the oil till they get a little brown. Add the water, soy sauce and corn syrup and cook everything on a high fire until the potato is done and glazed in the mixture of soy sauce and corn syrup. Turn the potatoes frequently otherwise the glaze will not fully cover all the potatoes and your side dish might get burned.

If necessary you can add some boiling water when the pan dries out before the potato is fully cooked.

2nd christmas

Last year I flew to my homeland for Christmas.
I left in the middle of December, so I didn't make to exchange presents with two of my friends.
Last week we met at my place for brunch and we did the present exchange then!

First, I got these cute handmade cloud, moustache and hedgehog stamps from Sa-Su. She is graphic designer and owner of small caps, a manufactory for fine prints in Berlin. Please check out her lovely and inspiring blog as well.

Next, this adorable Dachs Dessert badge from JF. We went to the university together and he knows about my weakness for cute (but not kitschy!) things ever since. I can't get enough of these badges :)

It felt really nice to open Christmas presents in January.
Maybe we should make it a tradition from now on?