Sometimes tiny simple things make you happy and sometimes tiny simplethings make you sort of sad.

Sometimes tiny simple things make you happy and sometimes tiny simple things make you sort of sad. Take Pinterest.com for instance, that is a really neat site. Super easy (except for the waiting list to join) and really useful. Type in what you're looking for, like Baby Gift for inspiration on things to give a newborn, and tada, you get all these pictures of things other people have found extremely fun without having to go through lists of google junk. Check it out if you don't know it, I didn't.

While I was happily searching away on Pinterest, going to more and more interesting blogs by normal people (such fun!), I came across A Law Student's Journey, about the Journey a Law student makes during her three years of study (obviously). She used to work at Starbucks and decided to give all readers an insight into the workings of those apparently evil minded employees of the coffee place of my choice, which is hilarious, as well as giving the recipe for Carmel Apple Spice (shouldn't that be Caramel by the way? Or is it the same thing.) I really like Christmas Holiday drinks and got really excited about the prospect of learning from the Starbucks masters.... but it's really disappointing!

Just looking at the picture you think Yum!



But then you see the recipe: Take apple juice, put in Cinnamon Dolce Syrup which you bought at Starbucks and heat in the microwave. After which you put on some whipped cream and take your bottle of caramel sauce and drizzle some over the top. Easy peazy so probably fabulous for all those who don't want to spend time in the kitchen, but really artificial for all others. And the sad part is mostly that it's really expensive at Starbucks and doesn't even really contain caramel or cider in the actual drink part of the drink!

So, having made this type of drink a few times myself, not completely from scratch but more so than the Starbucks variant, here is what I would do:

Take a liter (about 4 cups) of apple juice or apple cider (or cranberry juice, that's also really yummy for this), put in sauce pan together with a quarter lemon with 2 cloves pushed in (that's so you can easily take those out when done), a cinnamon stick and 3 juniper berries. You can add a little nutmeg too if you want, powder should do ok if you don't feel like grating. Bring that to a boil, on lowest heat leave to steep for about 20 minutes.

When done, take out all the spices and pour into cups. Then take your caramel sauce because face it, you do not want to be making your own. It's a hassle and can go very wrong. Pour some into the spiced apple juice/cider and stir, than add whipped cream and drizzle some more caramel over the top.

This is also super easy to make and will cost you less than getting a Cinnamon Dolce syrup bottle from your local Starbucks. Plus you get that wonderful smell of steeping apple juice/cider throughout your house, giving you a very homey feeling ;)

Making a raincoat...

Raincoats are boring.

And so I have decided to make my own. I've bought some oilcloth from Ikea and am now trying to figure out how to make the seams water tight. Pretty important for a raincoat. There is probably lots of info on making raincoats but I'm too lazy to google it so I'm just going to wing it. Awesome :)



I did read eHow.com which was a little helpful, but doesn't say anything about seams. Anyway, I made a sketch of what I want it to look like:



Now I'm going to find a pattern for a coat that matches my idea of what this coat should look like.

My plan is to post the project with pictures to show how I did it. And then it's hoping that the coat will actually be water tight because otherwise all those posts will be useless ;)

UPDATE: there's only one extra post about my successful making of this raincoat :)You can find it here.

Spare time

I read books, lots of books, even when I really don't have time to read books like when I was writing my master thesis and it had to be finished within a month, I still read books. And I don't mean literature.
Right now I'm reading two books at once. The book of awesome and a book about Adventures in the American suburbs. While I mostly find it annoying to read multiple books at a time, because it doesn't do any of them justice, this combination is rather interesting. The book of awesome tells about all those little things in life that make you really happy, like bubble wrap and rain on hot pavement. The Adventures in the suburbs focuses mainly on dramatizing rather off the point aspects of American culture, making them look absolutely awful, like not staying for a glass of wine when picking up your kid from a play date and play dates in general. While the first makes me appreciate life and laugh about little things that are absolutely true but don't often come up in your brain, like playing in old playgrounds, before everything was cushioned. The latter makes me irritated to even be reading a book like that and is cultivating a small internal hate for the writer while bringing a smile to my face because some things are just absurd. The difference here lies not so much with my own interpretation as with the two writers. While The Book of Awesome is written by an upbeat Canadian, as my chiropractor once put it: a decaffeinated American, that other book is written by one of those down casting Dutchmen. It shows exactly why those cultures are opposites and I love and hate both. (Mind you, I get to because I grew up in both.) I'd rather be upbeat and love to focus on those little things, but a good sarcastic joke can go a long way too!