project 365: 159-172

Thank you all for your good luck wishes for my interviews and everything. I really do appreciate it (and hope it helps in me getting a job, haha). I'm still living a pretty hectic life right now, but I'll try and return to this lil' blog of mine as soon as and as much as I can! Anyway, bear with me as this post is now longer as it's two weeks' worth of project 365 photos.

159 Writing letters.

160 I wrote down and sent this poem for my mum for her birthday. And I also received a card and chocolate in return for my namedays:-)

161 Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been keeping my make-up simple, and this was it for a few days.

162 Crosswords. I don't know whether these are difficult or I've just forgotten Finnish, haha!

163 Writing cards. Seems like I've been sending quite a bit of mail lately!

164 These have been some of my favourite things to see on my way to uni these past three years. So strange that I actually won't see them or anything else like this that often anymore.

165 Packing for London.

166 It was such a pretty day in London. I had my interview in the morning and had time to do and see so much afterwards. I do love London. And I really do love Regent's Park.

167 In addition to the interviews I ended up having a trial day as well, and ended up in Regent's Park in the evening again. I'm still hoping to get to do the rest of my trial days and get closer to getting an actual job, but you know you never know.

168 After my second interview I was supposed to meet with a friend who was taking forever, so I ended up spending some time at Trafalgar Square and the galleries. Which was really lovely. I know I was in London for only three days and I still have so many photos to show you:--)

169 My legs basically look like a 5-year-old's.

170 Finally got around to watching the new season of OITNB. V. good.

171 I've started and almost finished packing my things. I need to move in about a week and I still don't know where I'm going and what I'm doing. What a mess.

172 The perfect cleaning and housework music. Am I right or am I right?

hi guys

I'm off to London for a couple of days (I have a couple of job interviews again, so keep your fingers crossed!), and will therefore be taking some time off blogging. Might be just the couple of days that wouldn't even be noticeable, might be a week, might be more, who knows! But I hope you all have a wonderful week and I'll see you soon! :-)

P.S. These photos are actually from the last time I was in London (or the time before that, I don't even know, it seems like I'm frolicking around London so often these days, haha). I'm hoping it'll be just as pretty and warm, or even more so!

rockabilly spring

 Leather jacket - Auntie's old

Top&Shoes - Primark

Trousers - Second hand

I took these a wee while ago, which is apparent from the leather jacket that isn't really needed outside anymore. I've been wearing this top fairly often, and it's really been the best spring/early summer item. It's one of those things that can be quite warm and also quite cool, depending on the weather. I almost wish I had it in black and the bright yellow they had too! As for these trousers, they've truly earned their place as one of my favourites. Is tartan more of an autumn thing, though? Not that I really care about that, but I feel like I'll enjoy wearing these more if I stop wearing them for a while and reunite in the autumn. Just to make sure I never get tired of them! This whole outfit is kind of far from rockabilly, but the colour scheme and everything do remind me of the style nonetheless.

Catch you later!

project 365: 152-158

152 A somewhat gloomy start to June.

153 Finally watched this (in three days) and still cannot cope with all the feelings. I know that at least a few of you love Buffy, and therefore have probably seen Angel as well, so what did you think about the end and of it all? I know I'm only over a decade late with this, but this is really important, haha. Might read the comic books next..

154 Bringing hats back into my life on days when my hair's all over the place and I have no desire to sort it out.

155 I thought I looked like Pebbles Flintstone until I actually checked what she looks like.

156 Don't even mind that everything I own is in a wee mess anymore. It just reflects the fact that my actual life is a mess as well.

157 I actually left the house for once (haha), and went to my favourite place on campus after getting some things done at uni.

158 Job hunting and eating a lil' muffin.

Did you all have a good week, and do you have any fun plans for this week? Mine is more than likely going to be as exciting as a Sunday of job hunting and muffins, because apparently that is all I have going on in life right now!

natural history

 Jurassic Park is real, there were baby dinosaurs.

I mainly wanted to visit the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs. I mean I do really like taxidermy and all that too, but as they are so old they don't look their best anymore and I am all for the museum's policy of not killing more animals in order to get a better display. Dinosaurs are about 90% more interesting anyway. A young Laura would have been so so happy to see them, and present Laura was fairly happy as well:-) I used to want to be a paleontologist when I was wee for quite a long period of time, and dinosaurs were kind of a big deal. I might have told this story before at some point, but apparently I even run away from home once because I was an aspiring paleontologist. And in my 5-year-old's brain the best way to achieve a career in paleontology was to run away from home and walk from Finland to Canada where I supposed all the dinosaurs were at. That didn't really go to plan, and almost two decades later I now got to see some dinosaurs.

It was only afterwards that I realised I hadn't been to see all parts of the museum, so I'll have to visit again at some point. But, to be honest, I was more into the architecture anyway (once I'd seen the dinosaurs). The museum is such a stunning building. I love the structures and the muted colours and the little statues. I wouldn't have even known that it was built specifically to be the Natural History Museum if I hadn't overheard a wee boy tell his parents that it was so and you could tell it from the animal statues incorporated into the building. I was a bit annoyed that an 8-year-old knew more about it than me, haha. Although I don't feel the need to let everyone know that I know something anymore, I'm still a bit of a know-it-all inside my head.. But all in all, I did really enjoy the museum!

project 365: 145-151

145 One of my hobbies is eating an entire bag of these in one sitting and then dying because they're so hot. (Haha.)

146 Sometimes you're too hungry to take photos of your food, so here's the recipe used instead.

147 Eating leftover potato salad again. This's just one of my favourite things to eat, especially on Meat Free Mondays (even though last week I didn't make it on Monday). And now while writing this, on yet another Monday, I'm actually eating this spud salad again, and will probably have some left for tomorrow. How monotonous is my life.

148 My face of the day has basically been this simple lately; I do my eyebrows and add some lipstick. Saying that, I actually ended up putting on a full face later in the day when going to the pub with my house:-)

149 All my weekly photos seem to be food related.. I've been having porridge and strawberries for breakfast all week, and it's been very good.

150 A lil' self-portrait.

151 Sundays.

eliza acton's apple soup

 It's been such a long time since I last posted any recipes or things like that, so here's something of the kind but something different at the same time. Yes, you read right; apple soup. Yes, it's a savoury soup made of apples. It is as strange as it sounds, but it also tastes quite good! I had this with my mum quite a while ago, and although for me it's definitely something I'm not used to (le mother seemed to really like it!) I think I will be making this again. Before writing this I did a bit of research on le internet, and I found soups with apples in them, but used only together with other ingredients, like broccoli or carrot, to add some extra flavour. So if you fancy being brave and trying something new, this would be the perfect thing. The recipe is from one of my favourite cook books at my mum's place, and it suggests serving the soup with rice. I don't know if you're meant to have it separately or put it in the soup, so we had rice in a gravy boat, haha! And we also had Karelian rice pasties because we were in Finland and I love a good Karelian rice pasty. It's also suggested on a menu list for May, so now's pretty much the best time to try and eat this lil' soup.

 This is how you make it:

~340g (cooking) apples
2 pints beef/mutton/vegetable stock
½ teaspoon ground ginger
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons (long grain) rice

If you've actually made a proper stock, remove any fat from the surface. Wash the apples and chop them roughly, without removing peel or core. Bring the stock to the boil in a large pan, add the apples and cover the pan with a lid. Simmer the soup over low heat until the apples are tender. Pour the soup through a sieve, but try to get as much of the pulp as possible through as well. (I suppose, as the book is from the 70s, you could now actually just remove the core of the apple and then use a food processor, a blender or something like that at this point, I just wasn't that clever when I was making this, haha!) Stir in the ginger and season with salt and ground pepper. Re-heat the soup and remove any scum. (What a nasty-sounding word, but you know, all the foam &c. And again if you use modern kitchen appliances, this might not be necessary..) While the soup is cooking, boil the rice in plenty of salted water. Drain thoroughly and keep the rice warm. Spoon the soup into bowls, and serve the rice separately.

Hope you like it if you ever decide to give this a go!