a piece of motivation

I bake when I'm stressed. And when I'm bored. Oh and also when I need an excuse to procrastinate studying. So basically I bake a lot. Most of my friends are done with their exams already and I get several texts saying 'bbq tonight?' or 'wanna go to the lake?' because the weather has been perfect lately and it seems like all my friends are either on vacation or spend every day outside doing fun stuff.
Being stuck inside to study all day can get quite depressing so I decided to bake a cake today just because I was craving a piece of homemade cake.

So I baked a cake. All for myself. Haha, kidding. I'll share, of course. We have a family barbeque planned tomorrow evening and I'm sure my study group won't mind either if I bring a couple of pieces to the library tomorrow.

This cake was a first because I never managed to get the cake out of the ring cake mould I have. It's one of those wobbly silicone moulds and the cake usually breaks into pieces when I take the mould out of the oven. I love my silicone cupcake cups but for cakes I prefer steel pans. I don't know what went wrong this time (or rather what I did wrong the last 85 times I used the mould and ended up not having to cut the cake because it was in pieces already) but I don't mind having a cake that's still in one piece after cooling off :)

it's the little things...

... that make a cat's life great. Julia brought home a box for Lina to play(and sleep and throw up) in. Of course we had to change the title accordingly. She loves it. There's an 'entrance' on one side so she doesn't have to jump in (she's pretty lazy...) and it's just big enough for her.
She loves 'hiding' from the laser pointer mouse (without realizing that she's too big the box is too small to properly hide in there...) because a bright red box is a perfect hiding spot for a black cat, right?
She also discovered the art of midnight sledding in boxes on hardwood floors. The other day I even found the box upside down and she was hiding under it. Don't ask how she managed to turn it upside down...
Have I mentioned that I once bought a huge, fluffy and soft luxury kitty bed for her that she never even touched?

It's the small and inexpensive things in life that Lina loves most :)

ps: my last exam is on Monday!!!! Which means that sooooon I'll be back with 'proper' blog posts and I have a list with millions things to make and bake during summer vacation. Of course I'll share my projects here :)

a murder.

I have something very sad to share with you today. I witnessed a murder today. It happened right outside our bathroom window. The murderer tied his victim up and waited until it stopped moving before it sucked the life out of the victim.

I'm not too fond of flies but I felt sorry for this one. I also feel sorry for myself because this is the most exciting thing that has happened to me today. Being stuck inside buried under textbooks kind of lowers the standards of what I consider to be 'interesting'.

52 craft projects // end of term socks

Yet another pair of 'in class knitted socks'. I started these a while back (around February) but kind of forgot about them until I saw them in my wip project bin the other day. I finished them on the last day of classes. Three weeks of finals ahead and then I'm done with uni until October! yay! Unfortunately that also means no knitting for three weeks :(

The sock pattern is called 'hermione's everyday socks' and you can download it on ravelry - it's free!
I modified the pattern quite a lot so the original pattern is only on the calf. The yarn is sock yarn from my stash.
My lovely roomie Julia modeled the socks.

This is project #17 of 52 craft projects I'm attempting to complete in 2013.
You can see all the other projects I've complete so far here.

sunflower seed bread

I'm the kind of person who studies at home whenever possible, because my brain only seems to function if it has a constant supply of energy. As in there's no way I can study without food and a variety of drinks on my table which kind of makes it impossible to study in the library for more than a couple hours.
So I've come up with a rewards system to keep myself motivated to study because the prospect of spending the next 10 hours at home studying isn't very motivating to me...
So it's usually revise one chapter or one past exam (usually 1 1/2 to 2 hours) and then take a 15-30min break to re-watch another episode of parks and rec, talk to my roomie or bake something :)

Baking bread is great because it forces you to take breaks; e.g. this bread takes about 10mins to prepare the yeast dough, then let it rise for ~45mins, then add the other ingredients, let rise for another hour, preheat oven, wait 15mins for the oven to preheat and put bread in the oven, bake for 50mins, done.
So bread baking isn't only a great activity to help you structure your day of studying at home, but it also gives you the feeling of having done something productive and it saves you a trip to the supermarket.

For this bread, I made a simple yeast dough (with warm water, not milk) out of one pound of flour, added some roasted sunflower seeds and two tablespoons of olive oil et voilà, you get a super fluffy and tasty sunflower seed bread.

ps: I just realized that our kitchen looks kind of easter-y because the candle holder looks kind of like an egg and my fluffy bum bunny somehow ended on our kitchen table. whoops. I might have to pick some flowers to add a little summery feeling to our kitchen!

feels like sumer

It's starting to feel like summer over here - yay!!! Here are a couple of pictures I snapped in my parents' garden today; I just looove the colors nature has to offer. Seriously, if I had any yarn dying skills whatsoever I'd be inspired by nature and I'd try to recreate as many of these awesome color combinations as possible. In fact, I might try to dye some fingering yarn in the colors from the top picture once the term is over and I'm officially on summer break. I just have to hang in there for three more weeks...

Hope you're having a great summer so far :)