Drops love!

Do you know Drops Design? When I first started to crochet, I stumbled upon that site and decided to crochet myself a handbag. It went horribly wrong, as I chose the wrong yarn and made some other mistakes, but I learned a lot through that experience.

Anyway, every now and then I click on their page to see if they've got anything new. I made my first ever garment from a Drops Design.

Today I clicked on the drops page because I wanted to look for a nice shawl or shoulder piece that I could make myself for my wedding dress. And I was really pleasantly surprised when I saw, that they've got new designs online. I already bookmarked some of them, as I really fell in love with them and really NEED to have these items! ;) Have a look:

crochet top
 
This top was the first to catch my eye. I've been looking for a nice pattern for a while now! Isn't it gorgeous? I see myself wearing this over a bikini on our honeymoon in Mallorca...It's sooo pretty!

jacket
 
Perfect jacket for colder summer evenings. Everything looks so pretty in white though I might make every item in a different color.

crochet top with fan pattern
 
Again - a top. But one can't have too many of those in the summer!

top with lace pattern
 
Imagine sun tanned skin and nice little jeans shorts.

shoulder piece 
 
This might be nice for my wedding. Though I'm not sure about the back side...

crochet skirt 
 
interesting. At first sight I thought "no way" but it might again be a piece which looks good on the beach!

lace jacket 
 
pretty, pretty, pretty. No need to say more.

So in order to make all of these I just have to finish my Mario blanket, finish the Baby blanket for my sister in law, finish the lalylala doll that I promised my sister in law, finish all of my wedding preparations and probably resign from my job to have nearly enough time. But hey, you have to be ambitious!

What do you think about these new Drops design? Have you made something of a Drops pattern yourself? How did you like it? Do you use the Drops yarn?

Taking Stock: January

Hello lovely readers, and a very warm welcome to all my new followers, I'm so delighted to have you here! 
I had a very busy week - again! Preparing your wedding is more work than I thought it would be. Nice work, of course, but still very time-consuming. So I didn't take any photos to show you this week. And on the weekend a family member passed away rather quickly and rather surprisingly, so I didn't really feel like blogging. But to give you a little overview on what's going on right now in my life, here's a little list for you, copied from here. Enjoy.

Making : my Mario blanket. Only 14 squares to make, then I can start joining them!
Cooking : nothing. We went out for dinner the whole weekend.
Drinking : lovely greek wine at a lovely greek restaurant.
Reading: still on the Harry Potter books. I've nearly finished The Goblet of Fire!
Wanting: for my man and me to decide on our wedding rings. We have such different taste in jewellery...but we'll get there!
Looking: at wedding rings. We really need to chose them soon!
Playing: with ideas on the baby blanket that I will make after the Mario blanket is finished. The yarn's already bought, it's really torturing me not to be able to work with it, but I really, really need to finish the first blanket first.
Deciding: on the songs that the talented girlfriend of my brother will sing at our wedding. I can't decide between two songs, so I'm trying to persuade her to sing both of them for us.
Wishing: that I had time to say goodbye to a beloved person who passed away on the weekend.
Enjoying: the fact that my man and I booked our honeymoon this weekend! We're going to a beautiful spa hotel at Mallorca!
Waiting: For this week to be over. Funerals suck.
Liking: the fact that my man joined me in going running. It's easier if you're not alone. We managed two runs last week and we will try to manage two runs this week!
Wondering: if the weather will be nice at our wedding. April isn't the best month to get married when it comes to sunny days...
Loving: my man. more and more each day!
Pondering: about building a house. We just need to save a little more money...
Watching: Gilmore Girls again.
Hoping: that my dress will arrive soon. I know, there are still three months until our wedding, but I'd feel much more relaxed if I'd know, that I'll have it in time!
Marvelling: over the fact that our friends are already starting to build their dream house. I want that too! :(
Needing: more leisure time. I didn't even have the chance to sleep in this weekend, let alone to read or crochet. This isn't right.
Smelling: leftover pizza. yumm.
Wearing: a very thick sweater. It's really cold here right now. Where's spring???
Following: some really inspiring sporty people on instagram. Keeps me motivated.
Noticing: that it's really crazy to spend months crocheting little squares to make them into one very lare blanket.
Knowing: that it'll be all worth it in the end.
Thinking: about the past.
Sorting: through my cosmetics. I really need and want to declutter.
Buying: nothing. well, wedding rings, but these are a once-in-a-lifetime-buy so it's okay.
Getting: a little nervous when thinking about getting married. It's becoming real now!
Bookmarking: tips on HII-Training. I really want to improve my running!
Disliking: the lack of sleep and freetime I'm having right now...
Feeling: really happy with my life right now. Everything is good.
Snacking: nuts and dried fruits. love it.
Wishing: that spring will come soon. I'm not made for the cold weather!
Helping: another person going through a difficult time.
Hearing: songs for our wedding. Oh, the possibilites...

summary sunday

Hello lovely readers. How are you? Did you have a lovely weekend? I sure did!

There was a lot going on this week at my work, so I wasn't really able to write a blog post. Instead I remembered every now and then to take photos of some things that made me happy this week and I'm going to write about those. Maybe a regular blog post will make me a better blogger. We'll see.

Anyway, here are some snippets of my life this week:

I finally took a photo of my new calender. It's a paperblanks and I use these diaries for quite a while now. When I showed it to my man he wanted one for himself. And of course I bought him one also:
They are so beautiful, aren't they?

mine

his

I went for the first run in this year. Of course it was horrible, as I haven't been running for over a month now. Lousy 2.5 km. This really has to change! So I'm really motivated to start my running habit again. At least two times a week, that's what I'm trying to do right now. And as I want to get fit for the summer, I did my first full body workout today. I looked some things up on the internet. I don't want to spend money on a fitness studio so I wanted to have some workouts that I am able to do at home. I mainly want to focus on my legs, my butt and my stomach. And boy, this well be a lot of hard work as I am really, really unfit! But I'm very motivated and I set myself my wedding date as a deadline to see some results. Surely it must be able to see some changes in my body in the next three months...

Bildunterschrift hinzufügen

I really had trouble finishing one set, let alone FOUR!!!

I also started to try to eat more healthy. In December I really let my nutrition slip. I ate a lot of fast food and of course I felt that I ate very badly. I was tired and grumpy and my skin wasn't looking very nice either. Last week I managed to cook every evening and take the leftovers with me to eat at work the next day. I'm really into keeping that up as I eat better and feel better that way. That's also one of my new year resolutions. The fact that it also saves some money is just a big, fat bonus.

yummy salad

Apropos wedding. We started to make our invitations. I know, these go out rather late, but as all of our twenty guests know exactly when we're getting married, this is just a formality. We're making the invitations ourselves and I really like the look of them. This is the front. I wrote everything on the inside myself. How do you like them?

invitation

Aside from some crafting supplies for our invitations I also bought some things for me and for my pen pal letters. Beautiful Washi Tape and some stationary and stickers, which aren't on the picture.

love love love washi tape!

We also bought some new plants for our appartment. I love them! Let's just hope they won't day, I don't have the best survival record when it comes to room plants. Even my cactus seem to have mould on it...

the little one in the front with the yellow blooms isn't supposed to look white and fluffy...

oh look, a hidden minion!

I had breakfast with my best friend on Saturday. We ate at my wedding venue and since she is my bridesmaid, of course all we talked about was my wedding. It was pretty nice to spend some time with her again, as we rarely see each other lately and mostly only talk on the phone. And she got me this mug because she saw it and she knew, that I would love it. And I do! This well be my coffee mug tomorrow morning and it will make Monday way nicer!!

gotta love them!

My man and I went to the holiday fair in Vienna today. We decided to go on a short honeymoon after our wedding and wanted to have some inspiration. My man's turning thirty next year and instead of a big party he wants to have a big holiday with me. So we had some inspiration there as well. It will probably be either North or South America. But there's still some time to decide. Of course we didn't come home with empty hands...these will make us aching with "Wanderlust" from now on...and this isn't even half of what we took home with us!

Spain? Malta? Portugal? Greece? If only we could decide on our honeymoon destination...

And last but not least: I made some progress with my Mario blanket! Here you have all the finished Granny Squares that are not attached to the blanket yet. I decided to finish all of the squares before adding them all up and crocheting them together. I now have only 30 squares left and I hope that I will manage to have them finished by the weekend so I can start joining.
I ordered yarn for the baby blanket for my niece/nephew who will be born in June and got the notification yesterday that the yarn is on its way. So I REALLY need to finish the Mario blanket as I really can't wait too long to start my new project when a big box of lovely yarn is just waiting for me to turn it into a really lovely blanket. I'll keep you posted!

a heap of squares in a crappy quality. I'm sorry, but there wasn't really much daylight around when I took the picture. You get the idea.

How was your week? What made you happy in the last few days?

do you have a minute?

And by that I don't mean, do you have a minute to spare to sit down and read my post, but do you actually have a minute of time that you could give to me? Because I need every minute that I can get right now...

As you probably know by now, my man and I are getting married this year. In April. On the 18th, to be exact. Since it's a rather small wedding (only civil service and about 20 guests, parents, grandparents and our siblings) we decided that we don't need to start organising until the play is over. Which is now. So we started and boy, is there a lot to do! My calendar is full with things I have to do, to buy, to make, to organise, to look up...it's crazy! So there isn't much time left to do some blogging and oh, how I miss it...

If you're already married and have some useful tips for me, please, please, please let me know! We try to get everything done in January. AND we're trying to have fun and not get too stressed about everything. I will keep you posted and updated as soon as there are any news. 
We've secured the date and we already have a rough schedule. I bought my dress two months ago and still wait for the delivery. On Friday we're meeting our photographer to talk about the details and on Saturday we will probably have a meeting with the organisers at our venue. 

Oh and in case you're interested, we're getting married here. It's a Spa and Lodge and it's got something to do with the start of our relationship. Beautiful, isn't it? Yeah, I think so too!


P.S.: I'm a little more active on instagram. You can find me under the name woolly_bookworm. Come by and say hello! :)

my year in books - 2014

Hello to my first end-of-the-year-review which is published at the beginning of the new year because I didn't have time earlier to sit at the computer and write this nice long post. 
The play is over. Today was my first day back at work and oh my, what a change. I'm totally out of my normal rhythm and it will probably take some days to find back into my old schedule. But it was all totally worth it! The play was sooo much fun again this year. I already miss all my wonderful acting peeps. It was a great success, we were sold out most of the shows and people really loved it. They laughed until they cried and we got told repeatedly, how great it was and how much they enjoyed watching us. And after all, that's exactly the reason why we're doing all of the work, isn't it?

Anyhow, I have this blog post in my head for a while now. I joined the year in books in October, so I didn't really have the chance to show you all of the books that I read in this year.

At some point during the year I set myself the goodreads reading challenge goal of finishing 40 books this year. And I'm really proud that I was not only able to achieve this goal but also to read MORE. 47 books in total, to be exact. Of course, the fact that I commute to work by train since August and have therefore a solid 1,5 hours to read everyday really helped.

And because I am a person who just LOVES lists and statistics I'll give you now all the useless and helpful information regarding to my reading! 
Quick add: I won't review books in this post, I'll be doing this in my monthly year in books posts and may write some reviews for all the books that I've read before October. But enough of the talking, here we go, in chronological (the order in which I read them) order, I present to you: 

MY BOOKS OF 2014:

1) T.C. Boyle - San Miguel
2) Daniel Kehlmann - F
3) Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (reread)
4) Jonas Jonasson - Die Analphabetin, die rechnen konnte (The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden)
5) Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down (reread)
6) Haruki Murakami - Naokos Lächeln
7) N.H. Kleinbaum - Der Club der toten Dichter (the dead poets society)
8) John Updike - Terrorist
9) Herman Melville - Moby Dick
10) Stephen King - Christine
11) James Kirkwood - P.S. Your Cat is Dead
12) Nick Flynn - Another Bullshit Night In Suck City (bought just because of the title. I loved it!)
13) Anna Gavalda - Zusammen ist man weniger allein (reread, Hunting and Gathering)
14) Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Of Love and other Demons
15) Stephen King - Four Past Midnight
16) John Grisham - The Firm
17) Verena Roßbacher - Schwätzen und Schlachten
18) E.L. James - 50 Shades of Grey (review here)
19) Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch (review here)
20) Cheryl Strayed - Wild (review here)
21) Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling
22) Romain Puertolas - Die unglaubliche Reise des Fakirs, der in einem Ikea-Schrank feststeckte 
23) Daniel Glattauer - Die Wunderübung
24) Marian Keyes - Sushi for Beginners
25) Lawrence Sanders - McNally's Puzzle
26) Sarah Kuttner - Wachtsumsschmerz
27) John Lutz - Single White Female
28) Anna Gavalda - Nur wer fällt lernt fliegen
29) Robert Ludlum - The Scorpion Illusion
30) Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm
31) Stephen King - Die Arena (Under the dome)
32) Heinrich Steinfest - Der Allesforscher
33) Stefan Slupetzky - Polivka hat einen Traum (review here)
34) Wolf Haas - Brennerova (review here)
35) Noah Gordon - The Medicus (review here)
36) Stephen King - Brennen muss Salem (Salem's lot, review here) 
37) Sebastian Fitzek - Der Augensammler (review here)
38) Vea Kaiser - Blasmusikpop, oder wie die Wissenschaft in die Berge kam (reread, review here)
39) Nick Hornby - Funny Girl (review here)
40) Chuck Klosterman - Downtown Owl (reread, review here)
41) Donal Ryan - The Thing About December (review here)
42) J.K. Rowling - The Casual Vacany (reread, review here)
43) Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex (reread, review here)
44) Theodora Bauer - Das Fell der Tante Meri
45) Lauren Graham - Someday, Someday Maybe
46) Boris Hillen - Agfa Leverkusen
47) Thomas Raab - Still, Chronik eines Mörders

I read nearly 19.000 pages in this year. Quite impressive, isn't it?

I really liked putting this list together, going over the books that I read. There are surprisingly many books which I've read for the first time. I thought that I had more "rereads" (I hope you understood, what I meant by that, basically, these are books which I've read at least once previously).

I've already finished my first book in 2015, you will read about it in my next "year in book post" which I'm already looking forward to! And this morning I started to reread the Harry Potter Series, which I bought on my holiday in London. 
January will be a no-spend-month, which means that I won't buy anything except food. I'm trying to do this every other month now, but that's the topic of another post. So I can't buy any new books this month and I therefore switched to my old ones. And believe me, I have enough of those!

My new reading goal for 2015 is at least 50 books. Like I said, I already finished the first one. It's part of my new years resolution, which also will be told in another post.

Anyway, I'm babbling. I just want to add that I love writing my year in book post, although I've done them slightly different. Rather than picking out a book that I WANT to read in that month, I always talked about the books which I've read in the previous months. So I'm actually always a month behind. That's because I'm never able to tell which book I'll read next. And I don't want to decided that in advance. I always surprise myself with my choices.

So, tell me, do you have any reading goals for this new year? Did you read some of the books in my list? If so - how did you like them? I'm really curious!

Happy Reading! :)

P.S.: If anybody knows if it's possible to add a goodreads-button (and Instagram for that matter) to my blog I would really appreciate your help. I'm somehow not able to get these to things in my sidebar! :(

Happy New Year!

Hello lovely peeps and welcome in the year 2015! This is just a quick post to let you know that I'm still alive. 
We had our first three shows of our theatre production and it was a great success! We're sold out for all four january shows. How great is that? It's always nice to see how all the hard work that we put in these shows finally paid off! I'm trying to take a picture of the stage for you, it's the most beautiful stage that we've ever had. But more infos on that when the next four shows are finished. 

My man and me had a really nice and calm new years eve. It's the first time in years for both of us that we stayed at home. We had running sushi, played Scrabble, watched the fireworks from our attic windows, calmed the dog who went crazy because of all the firework, danced a waltz to this song, which is a tradition in Austria, had a glass of champagne, talked for a while and then went to bed. It was really nice, just the two of us. We hadn't seen each other much lately, so we really enjoyed the company.

Today we had a nice breakfast, went for a biiiig walk in the snow with the dog and then made our first Quiche. My man gave me (among some other things) a Quiche cookbook for Christmas, as this is something I always wanted to try! We're going to eat it in the evening, but it's sitting right next to me on the kitchen counter and it smells delicious! In the oven are banana-nougat muffins. We had some veeery ripe bananas that both of us had forgotten about and as I hate to throw food away, I decided to turn them into muffins. 

So now I'm sitting here, typing this little post, waiting for my muffins to finish, then I'm going to make myself a huuuuge cup of coffee while eating the first one (or two?) and then I'll finally have time again to work on my Mario blanket while watching some episodes of Gilmore Girls and maybe enjoy a glass of Rosé Wine, because we didn't finish the bottle yesterday. I actually planned to finish it for Christmas, which I didn't, so I'm eager to finish it as soon as possible. I already have two more blankets in my head and my fingers are itching to get something new started.

The timer just beeped, the muffins are ready. I have to go!

I hope you all had such a lovely start into the new year as I had it. Oh and by the way - it's my three year anniversary with my man. What a great day!