American TV

Hey everyone! 

Do you watch American TV channels? I love them and for a longer time now I am trying to find some of the American channels like the CNN, NBC, HBO or The CW. I tried to find them on television but I think this isn’t working. :( Also I tried to find a live-stream from the CW for instance, but my searching failed. I just found a few others :S

From the American shows and series I like TVD (The Vampire Diaries) and Gossip Girl the most! What I also used to watch is Beverly Hills 90210 and Pretty Little Liars. These series are also pretty good. Have you heard from them? Also very popular are sitcoms. The most admired and loved, that EVERYONE knows, are How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theorie. I would recommend you to watch one in your free-time (of course in English) because my personal opinion is that they are very interesting and thrilling (especially TVD) and while watching you can also improve your English skills. So you can kill two birds with one stone, can’t you? :D

 



The Vampire Diaries is a series on the CW Network. It is a teen and supernatural drama, horror, fantasy, romance and also comedy-drama sometimes. The Vampire Diaries is based on the book series of the same name written by L. J. Smith. I haven’t read the books yet so can’t really say if they are readable, but I will and I let you know ;)
The Vampire Diaries is a story about two vampire brothers (as you can probably guess) who are trying to live ‘normal’ lives hiding their vampire bloodthirsty desire of human blood. They always have to move on before their non-aging is noticed. One day the two brothers, Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder), moved back to their hometown where they have been “created” – Mystic Falls, Virginia. Stefan, who's focused on his humanity, is noble and controls himself denying blood (at least human blood) to avoid killing people. Damon, to the contrary, the ‘evil’ brother, is gorgeous and irresistible BUT dangerous and untrustworthy. He stops at nothing not even when it’s about to kill a teenager.
Stefan falls for the beautiful Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), a girl with a tragic past and eerie resemblance to his lost love Katherine Pierce (also played by Dobrev), who is Elena's doppelgänger. She is a beautiful but reckless vampire the brothers knew and loved — in 1864. While Stefan is trying to win the heart of Elena, Damon is still in love with Katherine, who is locked in a tomb because of a curse from a witch, and he is determined trying to release her. The little sleepy town seems peaceful but it hides a lot of secrets, intrigues and gory murders…

 

I hope I made you curious and I haven’t told neighter too much nor too less :) So, if this is the case start watching and I promise it will become more and more exciting and thrilling that you will not be able to stop watching! ;)
xoxo 

Oreo Addiction!

Is there something better than to be allowed to write about food?

After an hour of searching through the web I finally found a bog which is worth to write about. Actually I was searching for some healthy food but the desserts on the various blogs attracted me so much that I couldn't resist writing about a cake recipe. Advantageously I found a blog named "Jo and Sue" which have loads of recipes for "Cookies and Bars", "Desserts" and "Ice Cream" but "Joe and Sue" also write about the "Healthier Choices", so in the end I had both things I was searching for! :)

I really like their blog and I found the perfect combination of cake I can bake! In addition to the fact that last Sunday (17.03) was St. Patrick's Day and on Saturday (23.03) is my birthday, I am absolutely obsessed with these black-white, round and tasty cookies - OREO COOKIES! The buttercream frosting of the cake has a lovely mint green color so I think this would be a great idea to "combine" my birthday with St. Patrick's Day. =)

The cake is named “GRASSHOPPER OREO CAKE“

It is actually the Vanderwolf'sFamily Secret Chocolate Cake recipe with a Grasshopper-esque twist to it with creme de menthe and Oreo cookies instead of peanut butter and peanut butter cups. In addition they used cooked buttercream frosting instead of the regular buttercream. They said that this took a while longer to make but, in the end, it was definitely worth it.

Ingredients

1 recipe Vanderwolf's Family Secret Chocolate Cake

Creme De Menthe Buttercream

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup flour

2 1/4 cup milk

1/2 cup whipping cream

2 cups butter, room temp, cut into Tbsp sized bits

3 Tbsp Creme De Menthe

2 tsp peppermint extract

green food coloring (optional)

1 box of mini Oreos, lightly crushed (save a few to decorate top)

Directions

Bake cake as per directions in 3 8" pans. Let cool before frosting.

Prepare buttercream - In a medium sized saucepan, whisk together sugar and flour. Whisk in milk and cream. Cook and stir over medium heat until mixture thickens, between 10 - 20 minutes.

Remove from heat and pour in bowl of stand mixer. Turn mixer on high and beat until mixture cools (Be patient, this takes 10 - 20 minutes as well).

Turn speed to low and add butter, 1 Tbsp at a time, mixing well between additions.

Turn speed back up to medium, add Creme De Menthe and peppermint extract and beat until light & fluffy. Add your green food coloring, if desired.

Assemble you cake - Place one layer of cake on serving platter. Top with a generous amount of buttercream frosting and 1/2 of the crushed Oreo cookies. Top with second layer of cake, another layer of buttercream, and remaining crushed oreos. Top with final layer of cake. Frost top and sides with remaining buttercream frosting. Decorate with the whole Oreos that you saved from the box before crushing the rest. Now you can amaze your family/guests with how fabulous your baking skills are.
Speaking for myself, I will definitely try this cake for my birthday!
If you want to see more pictures about the process of baking the cake just klick here! =)

Searching for the food blog I ran into some hilarious pics about food obssesed people like me :D

 

HIP HOP

Hey guys =)

Since I am very into dancing and I like various types of dances I want to tell you something about them. I was dancing for four years Ballett in elementary school and for 6 years Hip hop.
"Hip hop is a subculture that originated from an African American community during the 1970s in New York City, specifically in Morris Heights, Bronx, then later spreas its influence to Latin American communities. While the term is often used to refer to hip hop music, in its broader sense hip hop culture is characterized by the five elements of rapping, Djing, breaking, graffiti & knowledge of self." (For more information check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop)

I took part in lots of competitions like the Austrian and even the European championship with my dance crew from the danceschool. For such a competition we have to get started with the trainings at least half a year before the competition. Even though the trainings are sometimes very hard and exhausting, it's a lot of fun. I can't describe the incredible and unforgettable feeling I have when I am standing on the stage an start to dance. My knees are shaky and I am very excited, nervous and hear my heart beating, but when I hear the first beats of the music I forget everyone and everything around me. I feel the music and start to dance and at that moment I don't want to leave the stage.

This is one of our performance. The name of the group was 'No Limits' :D
xoxo

Hawaii

 

On my free trip to Hawaii I cannot imagine taking anyone but Steffi with me. Most definitely I would choose Steffi because she has been my best friend for 12 years. We met in elementary school and I took a shine to her from the very first moment. Actually we are like sisters, even soulmates – or as she would say "God made us best friends because he knew that our moms could not handle us as sisters"; that's why I can always count on her. One of Steffi's various characteristics I really appreciate is her loyalty. She is always there for me and stands beside me. Nevertheless she is sometimes in her own world and a little bit confused – whichexplains our continual laughing fits. Besides always having fun with her, she also likes traveling and meeting new people. On our language trip to Scotland we were roommates and we had a really great time, so therefore I think she would be the perfect companion for this trip. Furthermore, we have the same interests so we attend the same exhibitions, museums or go to see the same shopping centres and malls. For all these reasons I can not think of anyone else I would prefer to take with me on that Hawaii trip.

To my mind paragraphpunch.com is a quite good website to learn the base stepts how to write and structure a paragraph. In addition the pre-writing turned out very usefull to write nice sentences afterwards. However it is time-consuming and you have only one topic to choose otherwise you have to pay for using it.

Norman Rockwell

I have never heard of Norman Rockwell before but, because I am very into art, he is definitely one of my favourite painters now. Something I really like about his paintings is that they represent everyday problems and situations of our lifes, or 'The problem we all live with', which is the name of one of his best-known works, and their reflection of American culture.
Norman Percevel Rockwell, a 20th-century American painter and illustrator lived from 1894 to 1978. His popular cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios were published in a magazine called 'The Saturday Evening Post' for more than 40 years. The most famous works among others are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, Saying Grace, The Problem We All Live With and the Four Freedoms.

This Normal Rockwell painting, named "Santa Claus Reading Mail" (alternative titles are Santa at His Desk or Letters to Santa), appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post and was published on December 21, 1935. The original is an oil on canvas painting with the size 35 x 27 inches and it is housed in a privat collection. It was Rockwell's sixth picture of Santa featured on the cover of The Post and it remains a favourite of all Rockwell collectors, no matter what their age is.
When I saw this picture, I immediately fell in love with it. In fact, when invisioning Santa, most people see him the way Norman Rockwell painted him.
Well, since we all know that Santa Claus DOES exist ;) we all know that Santa is working very hard every year just to see a smile on the childrens faces and this picture shows what volume of letters he has to handle each year. Santa has several huge stacks of letters on his desk and he is meticulously recording every single child's Christmas gift wish. With his quill pen he is scratching his head, undoubtedly he is wondering how he will finsh on time because according to the publishing date, there are only four days left until Christmas. As if the letters were not enough there is also a bag of mail laying on the floor next to him. And in addition to that this mail is only the U.S. mail, I can imagine how many more bags from all the other countries are waiting to be read. I just hope for Santa that he has a lot of helpful elfs so he can handle all our letters this year! =)

Bonnie Scottland - Part 3 =)

While driving to our last stop from the round trip, St. Andrews, David told us at our special request about the hostility between the football teams “Glasgow Rangers” and “Celtic Glasgow”, which has both a historical and religious background (Rangers = protestant, Celtic = catholic). I especially was interested in his narrations about traditional Scottish weddings like they were celebrated during the “Victorian times” (the periode in which Queen Victoria was reigning) and they are today.
 

St. Andrews is an old and very beautiful seaside town, which is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle. Today, the town is known all over the world as the “home of golf” and of course the place, where Prince William studied in his early years. We walked around the town, took pictures and had some really nice hot chocolate with marshmallows and a delicious chocolate muffin in the famous Starbucks …yummy! (Starbucks is unfortunately not available in Graz - what a pity!)
 


The same day we finally arrived at the Meeting Point in Edinburgh (the capital of Scotland, where we would stay the next five days) to be fetched up by our host families. My best friend Steffi and I stayed together at a very nice family.
The next morning we took the bus to the city to participate on the Edinburgh walking tour. The first building we saw on this tour was the building, where Frédéric Chopin gave his final concert in the Hopetoun Rooms on 4^th October 1848 and on the other side of the building there was the Mary Erskine School from 1871 – 1966. And another building we saw was the ‘Bute House’.The man with the kilt, our leader, told us also everything about the Edinburgh castle, about ‘Bobby’ – the famous little dog who slept on the grave of his owner John Grey and last but not least the cathedral.

A very famous and special building, which I really liked, was the Edinburgh Castle. The Edinburgh Castle is special because it is positioned on the Castle Rock. We could also walk around at our own to see the crown for instance. First it was – no surprise - rainy and foggy so that our view from the castle was not the best, but after having a guided-tour and visiting the different exhibitions inside the castle, the sun was shining but it was still kinda windy (as you can probably see on my hair :P ) so we had a breath-taking view.

 

Bonnie Scotland - Part 2 =)

As I mentioned in my previous post I am going to tell you about a few more experiences I made on my roundtrip in Scotland.

 
We also visited the Wildlife Reserve “Spey Bay”, which was a very interesting part of our trip for me because I really love whales and dolphins. Spay Bay is one of the Whale and Dolphin Conversation Societies (WDCS) who are trying to protect especially the bottlenose dolphins, which are one of the best known and most loved of all dolphin species that live in Scotland’s Moray Firth. The Moray Firth dolphins are an amazing group of animals, and a much loved part of Scotland's natural heritage, but they are also incredibly vulnerable. So the campaign aims to ensure that these animals have a future.
First we listened to a presentation by a volunteer member of the WDCS. She told us that she is doing her job because of her love for the dolphins and you could see that she really fight for their wellbeing.
When we walked outside we were lucky that the dolphins just came around searching for food so we could see some jumping out of the water. The scenery itself was breathtaking so I couldn't stop taking photos of it and I was really happy because on some of the pictures I catched the dolphins jumping out of the water.

 
Next we visited the Findhorn Foundation, an education centre and ecovillage, where the habitats live in spiritual community. They have got their own sewage plant and also grow their own fruits and vegetables, which is possible because of its Mediterranean influenced climate. There are ecological houses and electricity-generating wind turbines. The people there love the nature and they are living a peaceful life in their little village. I honestly have to admit that it was a little bit scary because it seemed to us that they were a sort of sect trying to convince us that this is how everybody should live.
This is a very funny sign we found there :D

 
On our last day of the roundtrip  we went for a forest walk to the waterfalls at the Hermitage. The waterfalls were amazing and the fresh air was very relaxing for every one of us. Of course we took again a lot of nice pictures and had a lot of fun.
 

… to be continued. ;)
xoxo

Bonnie Scotland! =)

Hey guys! =)

In the next few posts I will write sort of a diary for you. One year ago I participated on a language trip with my ex-classmates and two teachers to Scotland for 10 days and I really enjoyed it. Therefore I want to show you a couple of sights we've seen and tell you about the experiences we've made there.

After a long drive to Munich (approximately six hours) we flew another two hours when we finally arrived at Edinburgh Airport. We got introduced to our bus driver David who would accompany our group the next three days during our roundtrip. We all “fell in love” with David because he was so nice and welcoming.
The weather was - as it was supposed to be – cloudy, foggy and rainy or how Scots would say "It's a bloody awful day" or "It's pissing it down!".
David took us to our first overnight stay - the so-called ‘Cultoquhey House’. The Cultoquhey House is built in 1800, now more than a hundred years old, and it lies in Central Perthshire looking out over the wide coloured strath to the Ochil Hills. It is a big house with beautiful old furnishings and nice rooms and it really does look like a castle. The house is run by Italians and the owner 'Graziano Parmezano' told us to be aware of the house-ghost named ‘Molly’, which was very funny.
The next day we departed from the Cultoquey House and drove past Loch Earn and Loch Dochart, which was a really nice drive-through to take pictures. Then we drove across the Rannoch Moor, which has a magical and breathtaking scenery. However, we stopped for 15 minutes in Glencoe. It is a “must” stop and also a very special place, for an enthusiastic photographer like me, to take photos. I appreciated it so much to have such a nice bus-driver (David), who also likes photography very much, who stopped at the most beautiful places just that we are able to take photos.

Next we drove to Fort William to have lunch at the visitor’s centre and then onwards to Glenfinnan. Glenfinnan is another special place where Bonnie Prince Charlie launched his claim to the Scottish throne. On our way to Glenfinnan our bus driver Dave told us the interesting story about Bonnie Prince Charlie. Next we stopped at the Loch Shield, the place, where Harry Potters was filmed. To be more precise the scenes with the famous Hogwarts Express. Then we drove of course on to the famous Loch Ness. We visited the Loch-Ness-Centre, where we learned interesting facts about ‘Nessi’ - the Monster.
 

 
We took pictures with the monster and drove to our final destination this day – the Inverness Youth Hostel.
PS: "Bonnie" is a scottish expression and it means pretty or beautiful, also the pictures are all taken by myself. ;)

... to be continued.
xoxo