All The Live Long Day

Friday, 21 October 2011

I'm Guest Posting At Sparrows & Arrows Today (+ Giveaway)

The giveaway is now closed.

BOO!
Halloween is almost here!

Jessi from Sparrows & Arrows recently shared some of her best travel tips for everybody over here. Did you read her post?

In return, I promised to write something for Sparrows & Arrows' celebration of the scariest month of all. Head over to Sparrows & Arrows to check out my little Halloween project and cross stitch tutorial and all the other fun posts from this month.

Done that?

Okay!

Then now is the time to enter the giveaway!

I am giving away a kit for a Halloween cross stitch design like the one I made. The kit includes:

- 5 skeins of stranded cotton

- 1 embroidery hoop

- 1 embroidery needle

- 1 piece of cross stitch fabric

- 1 Halloween cross stitch chart

There are up to three ways to enter:

1) Leave a comment below, telling me your favourite Sparrows & Arrows Halloween post.

2) If you are a follower Sparrows & Arrows via Google Friend Connect, let me know in a separate comment for another entry. (If you are not: what's holding you back? It's such a cool blog!!!)

3) If you follow All The Live Long Day with Google Friend Connect, leave another comment for an added chance to win! (If you are not, why don't you start now and make my day?)

Please make sure that your comment links to your email address or that you leave the address within the comment, so that I can contact you in case of a win!

The giveaway will close at midnight (GMT) on Sunday, 30 October and I will draw a winner on Halloween! This means you will have tons of time to finish your first piece of decoration for next year's spook fest!

GOOD LUCK!

Thursday, 20 October 2011

Fine Tuning: Feist - The Park

I saw this lady in concert on Monday. At a turn-of-the-century theatre. With Chilly Gonzales as the warm-up act and Mountain Man as her backing band. Swoon.

{via}

Tomorrow I will tell you where and what I am guestposting elsewhere, hence the early music post. But Thursday is not too early to say: Have an exceptional weekend, people!

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

My Yogi And Me

Do you know Yogi Tea? Yogi Tea and I are very good friends. We often spend time with each other when the weather is chill and there is recorded TV to catch up on. Last weekend, for example, we watched three shows of Strictly, cuddled up on the sofa together.

In order to summon up Yogi, I boil a pot of water and then add a teaspoon of spice from a beautiful little package. It will make the whole house smell of coziness and comfort.

I then add some milk. Well, a lot of milk. I like milky tea. I reheat my potion quickly and then strain it into a teapot that I have rinsed out with hot water.

I place the pot over a tea light and pour myself a cuppa. I sweeten the tea with honey, stir, then wrap my hands around the warm vessel and inhale the fragrant steam. Off to the sofa me and Yogi go, to meet up with my other friend, blanket.

My favourite Yogi Tea flavours are the classic cinnamon spice loose tea and the Himalaya blend with ginger, but there are many other mixtures, either as loose teas or in bags. And I love the bags, too. They make tea time truly uplifting. The little labels at the end of the string come with inspirational quotes like "Your intuition is your best friend.", "By honouring your words, you are honoured." or "Be proud of who you are."

Of course there is no NEED to have a piece of cake with your Yogi, but it would be a shame if you had, say... some of your other half's birthday cake left over from the big day and it would go to waste otherwise...

P.S.: Sadly, nobody from Yogi Tea is giving me any freebies for writing this post. I'm just really, really fond of their teas and thought I would shout that from the rooftops!

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Rice Pudding With Whiskey & Vanilla Blackberry Compote

I live near an area of marshland. Whenever I go for a walk there, I notice the huge blackberry brambles and come each fall, I have been wanting to go and pick me some ripe blackberries. This fall, I finally managed to put my hankering for wild berries into action. Marco and I went the other week, and never have I seen or tasted blackberries as sweet and juicy. We managed to pick over a kilo in less than an hour, and I kept saying: "At the grocery store we would have had to pay at least £2.50... £5.00... £7.50... for this many berries". I felt very thrifty and ever so pleased with the husband and myself as our basket was filling up.
I froze most of our haul for a later day, but some of the berries were made into a compote pretty much as soon as we got home. I love rice pudding any time, but serving it with warming and aromatic stewed blackberries made the dish complete.
You can serve this either warm or cold, or with cold pudding and warm compote, or with warm pudding and cold compote. Yup. Any way you fancy.

RICE PUDDING WITH WHISKEY & VANILLA BLACKBERRY COMPOTE (serves 4)

Need To Have:

FOR THE RICE PUDDING

100g pudding rice
3 tbsp golden caster sugar
1 bay leaf
1 pint milk

FOR THE COMPOTE

500g blackberries
1 vanilla pod
3 tbsp whiskey
5 tbsp golden caster sugar (or more to taste)

Need To Do:

To make the rice pudding, put rice, sugar, bay leaf and milk into a saucepan with a heavy base.

Bring to the boil while stirring, and then turn the heat down very low and let the whole thing simmer for about 30 minutes. Make sure to stir the rice pudding now and then.

Once the rice is tender, remove the saucepan from the heat and discard the bay leaf. You can either serve the rice pudding straight away or cool and refrigerate it first.

To make the compote, cut the vanilla pod in half and scrape out all the seeds. Put the seeds, the pod and all the other ingredients into a saucepan.

Bring to the boil while stirring and simmer for two minutes (or longer, if you like your berries to be more broken up and the alcohol flavour to mellow).

Remove from heat and discard the vanilla pod (or wash and dry it for another time).

Spoon the compote over the rice pudding while still warm or cool as before.

We all no that there is no gain without pain, so here is a shot of my scratched arms to proof that I really went out into the wild to forage for food:

Even my legs did not escape the brambles unscathed, but you will just have to take my word for that!

Monday, 17 October 2011

Good Mail Day

Hi Folks.

I hope you had a good weekend. We had some lovely sunshine here in London and a not so lovely rodent rescue operation: Missy brought a little grey mouse home on Sunday. It was still alive and I saw no blood, so I tried to take mouse away from cat.

She was very possessive over it (the claws came out and cats can apparently hiss even when their face is stuffed with furry things), but I won in the end and the mouse scurried away, hopefully without any internal bleeding or psychological trauma. (I am pretty sure I would need counselling if a giant cat dangled me from her mouth, closing her teeth around my head...)

And on a completely different note: don't you just love to come home to exciting mail? Amongst the pile of bank statements and junk mail that I had to go through after coming home from vacation was a little envelope containing this cute hairband. Made and sent by crochet-and-craft-wizard JenMun(a)! I won it in a giveaway that she was hosting. Yay!

Thanks for my gorgeous new accessory!

Have a fantastic week everybody!

***

UPDATE:

Sad mouse news. When I let Mae in last night, she brought a dead mouse with her. :o( I am not sure if it was the same one from the afternoon and it was injured after all, or if Mae caught a new one. Darn cats! They are such trophy hunters!

Friday, 14 October 2011

Fine Tuning: CSS - Hits Me Like A Rock

I just love videos that make me want to dance!

The weekend is here! Have a lovely one!

P.S.: Happy Birthday, oh Greatest-Husband-Of-All! xxx

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Stitches To Live By

I made this for Miss Stitch Therapy.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Vancouver - May 2007

Sigh. While you are reading this, I am probably somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, travelling back to England from Vancouver. Why does time always pass so quickly during a vacation?! I hope you enjoyed the great guest posts from Reese, Jessi, Fiona, Sarah, Aimee and Julia! (I cannot say 'thank you' enough, Ladies!)

I have a ton of new pictures to share with you, but you know I like to take my time to sort through them... So in the meantime, here are some pictures from a previous stay:

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Things To Be Thankful For

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Marco and I did not even know that we would be in Vancouver for this holiday, so we were pleasantly surprised when our sister-in-law invited us for dinner with turkey and trimmings.

Thinking about Thanksgiving made me ponder on what I am thankful for at this moment in my life.

First of all, I am thankful for finding this wonderful photo on Guildwood Gardens, which blog owner Gisela kindly let me use to illustrate this post. The photo contains a lot of the things that I love: fall produce, apples, Canada, flowers and colourful leaves!

{via}

I am thankful for Reese, Jessi, Fiona, Sarah, Aimee and Julia, who kept you entertained while I was on vacation. It felt good to know these ladies were willing and able to help me out. It was nice to have a little blogging holiday. Which brings me to another big item for thankfulness: I am thankful I started a blog this year and for how many connections I have made by doing that. How amazing it was to be welcomed into this community with open arms. I am very happy to have met some lovely people through blogging, some of which feel like friends to me now.

I am thankful for being able to spent some time in Vancouver, visiting with our family over here and meeting my new little niece Georgia. I am thankful for my sisters-in-law, Vanessa & Toni and their cooking skills! I am thankful that my parents-in-law, Butch & Sylvia and Marco's brothers, Nino & Giulio, have warmly welcomed me into this family when I first met them all. And I am thankful that my family back home in Germany has done the same for Marco.

I am also very thankful that Marco and I are both healthy and have good jobs and a home, were our two cats are waiting for us to return from our absence. I am thankful that we are able to travel, and that I actually have found somebody to do my travelling with. I am thankful for my husband's love and understanding.

I am thankful for slowly starting to know and like myself better. I am thankful that I have realized that I want more happiness and contentment in my life and I am thankful for the people who are helping me achieve this. I know that somewhere along this road of self-discovery, I will meet the real me. Even though I am impatiently waiting for this day, I know that taking it slow is better for me.

All-in-all, there is a lot in my life that I can be thankful for. Friends, family, new experiences, good food, love, knowing of things and places that will make me happy when I consciously let myself enjoy them.

Sometimes all I need is this awareness, and then suddenly all my worries and insecurities seem slightly silly and a lot more manageable.

Sometimes all I need is a vacation and a dinner with family to realize how good I really have it.

Sometimes I need a day like Thanksgiving to remind me of what's real and important in my life.

I hope that I can make the notion of Thankgsgiving last a little longer than just the one day.

And I hope that there are things to be thankful for in all of your lives, too!

Monday, 10 October 2011

Guest Post - Julia from Blue-J Cottage

I cannot believe how generous everybody has been, offering their writing skills to me! I am happy to begin this week with yet another guest post, coming from Julia if Blue-J Cottage. Julia teaches dance and is also a really prolific quilter and seamstress. She got married this summer and made her own wedding dress!

Her level of sewing competence is something I am only dreaming of! Today, she is telling us about one of her favourite cities. Off you go!

***

Hi! My name is Julia and I blog over at Blue-J Cottage. I blog about mostly sewing and crafting things, and sometimes other interests in my life too. I hope you'll stop by sometime!
Annika and I have become blog friends through Pay It Forward. To be honest, I am not sure how we found each other....but I know that she joined my Pay it Forward and then posted her own and by commenting, I joined hers! Anyway, Annika asked for other bloggers to guest post on her blog while she was on vacation, I happily said I would love to! And since we are on the topic of vacation, what better topic to blog about?!
One of my favorite places to vacation is....CHICAGO!

It is such a fun town and has so many neat things to see and do. And it is close enough that it is only a short drive or a super fast air plane trip. Growing up, my family would go to Chicago just for a weekend getaway. That is when my love for Chicago started.
Especially when the American Girl Store opened! I was in HEAVEN!

And later when I was in high school, we went again to their Christkindl Market (German Christmas Market), that was a lot of fun too.

During my college years, I studied Dance Education and German Education. Because my majors were education based, I had to do student teaching. I chose to do my Student Teaching section in the Chicago Public School System. It was so much fun! Living and teaching and commuting everyday in Chicago.

{this is where I lived!}
If you ever have the chance, Chicago is a great city to visit. With many things to do that are free or very low in price. For example:

The Art Institue of Chicago has "Free Family Wednesdays! The Art Institute of Chicago is free to Illinois residents on the first and second Wednesdays of every month." Now, I am not an Illinois resident....BUT they never checked my ID when I went in. (This isn't fool proof...but I am pretty sure I have done this about 4 or 5 times).

Oh and Millennium Park! Has so many fun things to do and see. The big "Bean". The spitting walls. The walkway from the art institute. The amphitheater. It is a really awesome, interactive park. Definitely worth checking out!

The Navy Pier is a fun spot too. The ferris wheel has great views. The Chicago Children's Museum is there. And yummy, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

And the Magnificent Mile?! So many shops! So little time!
So for families (or even friends) there is a ton to do during the day. And that is just a hint of all the fun things Chicago has to offer!
If you love the night life, there are tons of things to do then too. Some of my favorite spots:

John Hancock Tower's Signature Room. Great views of the city! And fun atmosphere!

The Hangge Uppe. Plays current music upstairs and 80s, 90s and other oldies downstairs!

Chicago has so much to offer and is such a WONDERFUL town. If you haven't been there already....you should check it out!
Happy Travels!

Thanks for letting me guest post today! Come visit me at Blue-J Cottage!
See you soon!
***
Hey, this was a great post! Thanks very much for taking the time and sharing all your fave things to do in the Windy City, Julia! Definitely makes me want to put Chicago on my list of must-see places! And I think you would make a fantastic travel guide!