Handmade Circus

Hello lil birdies! 

The last few days have been really nice. I was home over the weekend because both my siblings & my sister's husband were visiting, and even though I should've been studying, it felt good to wind down a little.  I'm really excited because I'm going to be an aunt soon!!! :D (Even though I don't like the ring of that word. Aunts are middle-aged, chubby and red-faced little ladies who pinch your cheeks and hand out candies. And that's not really me. I don't share my candy.) The lil' chub is due in spring. Aww, spring baby. ♥

On Sunday they left so I returned to Aachen as well - and went to the Handmade Circus with a friend. It was great, I didn't have a lot of money to spend and neither did she so we mostly just strolled through the aisles and looked at all the pretty stuff~

There were some artists that stood out to me, and if you're looking for something cute to buy for someone else or yourself, you should really check out their stuff!

Sick of Winter was by far my favourite that day. Their mission - to spread sunshine and love in a grey, cold, and rainy world. After all, we're sick of winter. I had a chat with their founder (a really rad guy who also studied here in Aachen - which, by the way, is infamous for its London-esque weather conditions), and the whole concept just spoke to me on a deep spiritual level. I swear. I mean, they drove there in an old VW Bus. How cool is that?! The first thing I'm going to spend money on when I'm not broke anymore is going to be one of their shirts, for sure.

Closely followed by Süße Dinge! Their name already says everything because it's seriously the sweetest stationery I've ever seen. And I'm a sucker for stationery and office supplies and writing tools, so I really had to hold myself back there.

Another favourite was birdtoldme. I loooove this idea of offering pre-designed origami sheets, they're just too cute! Definitely check them out!

Here are some more impressions and shops you should have a look at: nicenicenice, Ménage à deux, Knallbraun, Zenzi Design, Karamelo, madeinosnabrueck and nadjA.

In the end, I left with two super cute buttons and my friend with the sweetest strawberry necklace ever - cut out from what was an actual crate of strawberries. Afterwards we had lunch at the cutest café ever, all in all it was a lovely day. Definitely something I'll do more often if I get the chance. :)

Which one of these do you like best? Please do leave a comment, I'd love to hear about what you guys think. ♥

Lots of love,
Besa

I'm such a girl.

Hello and a happy new year!

I know, I know. I said I would actually write on here regularly this time and again I didn't... Okay, I won't say I didn't have the time because that would be a cheap excuse because well, I do have a lot of free time right now (that is, until studying for finals starts. Which is tomorrow. And should've been about two weeks ago. But I digress), I just... kind of... forgot. Oh well.

So I'm officially a college student now! Last time I wrote about baking muffins for the people I would meet up with on my first day of Freshman Orientation Week, and indeed they were a big hit because I've become best of friends with two amazing persons from that group, and yes, I attribute all of that to the muffins. ;) But that leads me right to the first thing I want to write about today! After not seeing each other for two weeks after the holidays, we decided we needed some comfy bonding time and what better way to do that than with sweets and music and a proper girls' night in? ♥ So we gathered together at another friend's place - five girls from a college city that has a female quota of only about 30 percent and much less in computer sciences, hard to believe, but I guess us girls tend to flock together when we're in the minority. Which is pretty cool, though. I'm not complaining.

The plan was to make hot chocolate and muffins. The chocolate turned out amazing.

I strongly recommend everyone to try and make their hot chocolate like this sometime. We used dark and milk chocolate, melted it in a pan and gradually added milk. It turned out really strong though (I think we used around 400g of chocolate and one litre milk), so you should take that into consideration. But look! It's SO pretty!

We topped it with whipped cream and chocolate because we're fancy. And it tasted like heaven.

The muffins, however... Well... See for yourselves.

It started off so good, but we filled the paper cups up way too much (and probably also used too much baking soda), so they blew up like crazy in the oven and we ended up with one huge square-ish muffin that we had to break apart first.

Oh well. (The second batch turned out much better, though!)

The rest of the evening was really nice! We did proper girl stuff - facial masks and waxing our legs and the whole deal, only thing missing was a mani-pedi! But also lots of singing and guitar playing and talking and laughing and taking pictures and having fun. Great times.

I love these girls a whole load and I'm happy I've found them, really. They make my days at college so much better, and if it weren't for them I probably would've given up many times already. So here's to us, girls!

That was sentimental.

So, it's the weekend and I'm finally home. I don't know why but this week I've really been missing home and my parents, and I'm happy I'm here! Though I do have to get studying soon. (I've already planned tomorrow for that.) I'm going to bed soon, but before that I'm having a little snack (I love mangoes sooo much! I just wish they weren't that expensive so I could eat them more often. But I really need to cut back a little. Living on your own sure is expensive!) and listening to some great music. Give this album a listen, it's great.



And with that I'm saying good night! Until next time!!

Besa