Monthly Random: August

Hello there, visitors of my neglected little blog!
It's really bugging me a lot that I don't get to write anything more often, but at the moment, my whole life is totally crazy and very, very exhausting. But it's time for another "Monthy Random" as August is coming to an end and while I have no big stories to tell I can at least throw in some random pictures taken in the last weeks.

I only wore make up 4 or 5 times this month :'D I feel really bored with my face because of that D:

That internship I started is taking its toll (having insomnia, rashes, cold sores... my body has a very funny way to deal with stress...). I'm working 10h or more every day, while my boyfriend is finishing the apartment renovation. We ordered some furniture and also our kitchen (it ended up being waaay more expensive than we had planned, but YOLO! ... I guess....), and by now all the walls are painted so we're really close to the finishing line! However, for every few steps forward we seem to go one step back again - this time, it was the carpenter who was supposed to craft and deliver our new doors, who told us he  won't be able to deliver everything till the middle of September....

Future bedroom :D The walls are all white, finally! ♥ I love white walls!
(Also: there's actually a decent floor underneath that cardboard cover. Just in case you thought it's cement or something)

Celebrated shark week with style! I got this lovely T-shirt from friends who went to the US during their holidays ♥ I love it so much! Too bad I currently can't find it because this place is a big mess and that 9m² bedroom is bursting with all my clothes and stuff.... ;__; I hope I find it again when we move out!

Went to see "Man of Steel" with my boyfriend and wore some "theme" make-up :D Do you remember my last "super hero inspired"  make up look that I wore to the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises last year? :D
WITH CHRISTIAN BALE, THE TRUE DARK KNIGHT!!!11 for now and ever! of course.

As you can see on the first picture of this entry, I had some fun with Directions hair dye! More photos to follow soon in a separate entry :3

 Spent several hours compiling a gigantic excel file in an attempt to figure out a schedule for the next semester. And of course, all the interesting subjects overlap -__-

At work I sometimes have long waiting times where have literally nothing useful to do. It feels feel awkward to just browse the internet while sitting in the office, even though I guess nobody minds... I used the time to make the schedule, but soon I really didn't have anything useful to do, so I started updating my Wish List with some Lolita items (that I won't be able to afford anytime soon anyway, but I can dream! XD).
On a related topic:  There's actually some pretty big news I haven't told you yet! I was chosen as a model for the fashion show at the Innocent World Tea Party!
I am really excited about it, as I have never been part of a fashion show. I feel extremely honored to be chosen, as I am not a Lolita for very long and also because I didn't really expect anything when I sent my application. I am curious what I will get to wear and how the show will be managed. I also have the coord I wanted to wear more or less completed, I am just not sure if my plans will interfere with the fashion show and if I will have to maybe adapt the styling or something. This is all really exiting and new for me, but I will do my best to not make them regret their choice :)

Talking about challenges. I haven't done ANY sports in the last two months. I feel really bad about it, but I am just too exhausted from work to even move an inch at night when I get home. But on the other hand, I also eat less because I just have no time - so at least I don't gain any weight right now. I swore to myself to take up a pilates routine again once we are settled at our new home!

I've been looking really boring lately, doing mostly boring stuff, so there aren't many pictures to show this time either. Anyhow, in case you wanna know what I'm up to you can always follow my twitter (where I currently rant most of the time :'D sorry!).  One of my favorite things to rant about right now is the public transport that I have to take each day to get to work and back home. It's funny and sad at the same time to rely on these means of transportations. Funny because of the inherent, unwritten rules people in trains and buses follow in order to make as little contact with strangers as possible:

If there is a seat next to a person, but also free double seats, you shall not take the seat next to the person. But if you sit next to a person because there was no other free space, and a free double seat opens up, you shall not go over to that seat without an awkwardly mumbled excuse, as it would be considered rude to the person you sat next to.
You shall not accept the fact that the bus driver is doing his job. You shall comment on his route when you feel like it, and talk audibly in third person about his rudeness for not letting the lady with the gigantic wheeled shopping bag leave that said bag standing in the aisle so that nobody can pass through.

If you leave a bag on the free seat next to you and other people have to keep standing because of that, nobody will ask you to remove it, but you shall burn in the sulfurous fires of hell anyway.
You shall never smile. Unless that lady who is talking on the phone so loudly that the whole bus can hear it suddenly realizes that everyone is following her conversation on her child's ballet course, and starts to talk in this weird, pretended whisper voice that is still perfectly audible for everyone.
Last but not least: If there is rail replacement bus service, it will always be so fucking slow that the express train that started half an hour later will pass you before you reach your destination. Also, if the rail repair work is said to last till 23. Aug, don't expect it to be finished before 1. Sep. When school starts again and the rails are not finished, mayhem shall be unleashed when school kids overrun the rail replacement buses!

Ah, the joys of public transport. That reminds me, I have to get to bed, getting up early to catch the train tomorrow morning.

I wish you a good night an hope you had a nice August! What did you do these last weeks, anything special?

18th Lolita Meet Up in Vienna & Helnwein Exhibition at Albertina

Hello everyone!

Last Saturday we had a Lolita meet up in Vienna - it was my first big meet up to attend and I was really excited! I planed my outfit ages before the actual date, and it was really difficult to find something nice to wear because of the heat. Currently, we're having a heat wave in Austria with up to 38°C, not a single cloud in the sky and no soothing wind or summer thunder storms. On Saturday the heat wave was more or less at its peak, and the idea of going to the city in full frills was not very appealing to me... but on the other hand, I had been looking forward to the meet up for a long time already, so I just tried... not to die, haha.

(If you're not interested in the outfit blabla skip to the group photo to read about the actual meet up & exhibition!)

Photographer: Andreas Zuckerhut

So, originally I wanted to wear an Old School Gothic Lolita look in black x white, but it was far too hot for me to wear sleeves or anything covering my neck or legs. So I wore my Baby JSK without a blouse and did a (rather sloppy....) updo with my hair. I really love this JSK because it works quite well even without a blouse. It shows quite a lot of skin of course, but the straps can even cover the shoulders if you pull them down a bit (too bad it won't last long if you move around a bit D:). I was thinking what kind of hair accessory I could wear, and couldn't decide on white or black at first. I have a small white and pink bow but nothing white only, expect for a rose, but I thought the bow would look much better with the big hair bun.

Photographer: Jou P. Ri /// Spring Raindrops ; editing by me

In retrospect I am not 100% happy with the outfit... The pear bracelets don't really stand out, neither does my necklace, so the white of the lace socks seems a bit misplaced and makes the outfit look a bit unbalanced overall :( Also, I gained some weight recently *bohoo* so I didn't feel very comfortable showing off my arms and legs. (I actually had a white bolero with me but it was far too hot to put it on) I remember when I thought about losing 3 or 4 kg until my brother's wedding back in May or so. Now it's merely a week till his wedding and I actually gained another kg since then. Bah, I'm really pissed at myself, but it's difficult to keep up a workout routine and healthy eating with all the stress and exhaustion from working on the renovation. But anyway. Let's get to the more interesting part, the meet up itself!

Photographer: Andreas Zuckerhut (I guess)

We met in front of St. Stephan's cathedral in the heart of Vienna. The cathedral was a nice background for our photos, and we had a lot of fun taking pictures. Thanks to all the busy photographers who took so many great photos despite the heat! You can check out more photos here and here!

Maybe you spotted our VIP guest on the group photo: Japanese Blogger LaCarmina made a visit to Vienna with her film crew. From what I understood, she is preparing a report on European alternative scenes, so she came to our meet up :)

After the photo session, we split up in two groups - some people went to a café and others went to Albertina to see the Helnwein exhibition - among others, I went for the museum. I didn't know anything about Helnwein before, except that somebody mentioned that he had worked with Rammstein and Marilyn Manson as a photographer before, which got me kinda hooked up. Some people said that probably not everyone will like his art as it is not suited for more "sensitive" people. Honestly, I was a bit scared his art would turn out to be something like Nitsch, which (as I once wrote about) I have a great dislike for. But it was oh so much better than that, and better than everything I could have imagined!

Helnwein is an artist who grew up in post-WWII Austria, in an era where people would keep silent about the atrocities of the war and pretend they didn't happen, while at the same time bragging about the most unnecessary and stupid little things. People would insist on a very strict social order, wouldn't allow kids to ask questions, and it sure wasn't easy growing up in a time like that. The fact that the horrors of the war were tolerated and not spoken about while the most blatant things could cause uproars of society influenced his art and early career.

His major motive are children. They are present in almost every single painting that was shown in the exhibition, but in contrast to many other artists before him he doesn't use them as a symbol of purity or innocence. Helnwein's children are victims, mutilated, bleeding, bandaged and tortured - and at the same time they are offenders, armed with weapons or symbolically wearing what looks like a military uniform.

Some of you might know the album cover and related art of Marilyn Manson's The Golden Age of Grotesque. Helnwein closely collaborated with Manson in this project. The exhibition showed the two rather famous photographs of Manson as a white and black "Mickey Mouse" like character. I would have loved to take them with me in poster format (Golden Age of Grotesque is actually my favorite album from Marilyn Manson) but unfortunately they didn't have them in the museum shop :(

What impressed me most about his pictures was his extremely photorealistic way of painting. There are some artists where you would stand a few meters in front of the work of art and think "Oh wow, it sure looks like a photo!". With Helnwein, sometimes, even if you stand only inches in front of the picture you can't tell if it's a painting or a photo, unless you look at it from a slightly different angle and start to see tiny brush strokes.

Some people, I guess, wonder what's the use of depicting something in a photorealistic way if you might as well just take a photo. But the point is that Helnwein projects his messages onto those children he draws. He draws them with expressions they wouldn't have in real life, their eyes reflect horrors they haven't probably really seen - because they are the horrors of the grown up artist. I am sorry to be such a philistine but to me, an artist has to show a certain skill with his art, a proficiency with the materials he uses, that goes above randomly splattering paint (or blood) on a wall, in order to impress me. With Helnwein's art I felt a very strong connection. I looked at those images and I felt something, I felt like I could understand what the artist meant when he worked on it - even if it might not be the truth and his true intentions. With Nitsch, who - from what I've understood - has similar motives in his work, such as the breaking of taboos and violence, I don't feel anything but disgust. Nitsch's message doesn't reach me. Helnwein on the other hand not only "reached out" for me but also "touched" me and left me deeply impressed.

After the exhibition we went to an Asian restaurant nearby where we waited for the others to catch up. I hadn't planned on joining the group in the restaurant because I wanted to be home not too late but since we got there much earlier I decided to have a little to eat before I headed home. The restaurant had an interesting "All you can Eat, but à la carte" menu, where you pay a fee of about 18€ but then you can order everything from a special menu that you want, as often as you want. It's a pretty cool idea, but unfortunately all you can eat never pays off for me because I couldn't possibly eat all the money's worth. So I went with avocado maki :)

Purple rice! How cool is that?!

I had a really great time at the meet up, I enjoyed chatting with new people and those I already new, I saw fantastic art and had a great dinner ♥  My first "big" Lolita meet up was a lot of fun and I'm already looking forward to the next occasion!

Closing this entry with a crappy cell phone photo of my make up. I was deeply impressed how well DUO lash adhesive worked. My lashes stayed where they were meant to despite the heat and some sweating. The same goes for Gothmetic foundation. I didn't even have to apply powder during the day. This is really one of my favorite foundations for hot weather, I mix it with my BB cream to get the right color and it's really long lasting that way!

Sidenote: wth, already over 300 followers via GFC and almost 100 via bvloglovin' ! You're making me blush! Seriously, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy your time here on my little blog ♥

Status Quo: Destruction contd. and a lot of dust.

Heya!

So, my laptop is still not working, and as a result I cannot really write regularly - I also have to admit that I don't have any time to read any blogs at the moment, write or answer comments, but just so you know what I'm occupied with anyway, here's another little update about our ongoing apartment renovation for you!

The last weeks have been full of very exhausting and boring work, and after the initial tearing down of most stuff, the detail work left to be done took an disproportionally larger amount of time - much more than we expected, actually...

Plans for our new kitchen :3

We went to a friend of ours who works for an intereur design company or something like that, and asked him to help us plan our new kitchen. It didn't take us long to figure out what we want, as we already had very specific ideas on what we like and don't like. The details aren't 100% clear yet though and the deal is not yet made, but ideally we will place an order next week and hopefully get it in mid September.

But before we can have our nice new kitchen - we had to get rid of the fugly old PVC floor in that room and replace it with tiles!

So, underneath the PVC floor, a layer of old glue and coconut fiber (don't ask me what the hell that's doing there) revealed itself to us. It took us several days to scrub that stuff off the floor and prepare it for the new tiles -_-

When you see it...

My stepdad was so kind as to help us with the tiles. I've never done that myself so it was good to have him do it for us. We helped out of course, and I think that if every necessary, in the future we could do it by ourselves too!

Sandcastles in the saaaaand *sing*
Other people spend the summer building sand castles in the sand at some beautiful beach... we... we just.... oh well.

Other than that, we spent our time scraping off wallpaper glue and sanding paint residues from the walls in all rooms. There are tons of dust everywhere, it's impossible to clean it all up because it's so fine, and we aren't even finished yet.... I'm seriously already freaking out at the thought of cleaning the whole place before we move in D:

THIS is actually pretty weird. This image of what I'd call a hand grabbing a doll (?) revealed itself underneath a wallpaper in my former bedroom. Just what the hell is it doing there and who put it there? When I still lived in that place in the 90s we already had wallpaper so... who carved that into the wall? D:

So the last weeks we've been doing nothing but sanding, sanding, sanding. We used sand paper and a belt sander, and in some places also water to wash off paint. In one room, it's near impossible to get the paint off the walls, so we borrowed a heating gun, which helps to make the paint brittle. Still it's very tiresome work that progresses super slowly...

Don't be deluded guys, there's absolutely nothing glamorous about renovating. But I do have to say that my 'hat' looks rather fancy, doesn't it.

Nevertheless, we decided to paint the first room, even though the others aren't ready for painting yet. We were just to exhausted from sanding all the time, and wanted to finally see some results (and also get a first impression on how well the paint will cover small edges in the walls so we know how smooth we have to get them). It's actually pretty cool to see some progress after all. I am really looking forward to seeing those rooms painted white which have the new black floor tiles ♥

So, as you can probably guess there's still a lot of work to do. Sanding, mostly, then evening out the walls and painting. The ceilings are especially difficult as both me and my boyfriend are not very tall so it's rather exhausting. I prefer working with a small brush in the corners and on the edges of the room, it's more fun, haha. I'm also planning to do a wall "tattoo" in the living room, we'll see if I can really do it as I imagine it...

Alright then, that's it for now.
Currently, we're doing a lot of accounting and research work to figure out how much we can spend on our kitchen and furniture and where to get cheap kitchen equipment etc. We already decided on the new doors which should be delivered in about two weeks, and until then, all the painting and floors should be finished of course. So there's still a lot to do!

I was wondering, if everything's done and I move in, would you like me to do a short youtube video or something to walk you around our apartment? :) I thought it would be fun, and you could hear me talking a bit (English or German?). Let me know what you think about this idea!

Silly bonus pic - we found this at a local building center, and if it weren't kinda goofy we... who am I kidding, of course I was all like "WE NEED THIS!11" I mean, come on, it's holographic!!! XD

Monthly Random: July

Wow! I can't believe the month's already over!

Wasn't it just yesterday that I went to my graduation ceremony? Didn't we just move out from our apartment in Vienna a few days ago? Where the hell has all the time gone?!

Time for another monthly random, this time there's quite a bunch of pictures in queue, since I didn't really have time to write any blogpost... but more interesting stuff is coming up, I promise ;D

At the beginning of the month, my laptop broke :(

Bought a Harvest Moon game after a looong time again (the last one I had was for GameCube :) )

Made a red currant cake with red currant from our own garden! 

Had some delicious food with my family to celebrate my graduation, omnomnom 

Produced several m³ of dust, dirt and garbage

Did some cat cuddling

Bought floor tiles for our apartment ♥ 

Did some more cat cuddling...

...aaaand some more cat cuddling X3

Found out that they sell Hummus in Austrian super markets *__* I last ate that stuff in 2007 when I was in the US XD 

Went to do house- and cat-sitting at friends' place and accidentally the cat.

Highfive!  XD

Watched tons of movies... Cloud Atlas (oh god I loved it), Legend of the Guardians, Total Recall (the remake), 2001: A Space Odyssey,  The Hunger Games...

And also went to see Pacific Rim on premiere day and wore a green look complete with DIY knitted hat and matching extensions, hehe

Went window shopping for kitchen equipment! This oven was my absolute favorite because its door opens sideways... but I found one that's even better than that...

Discovered a fucking amazing graffiti in Vienna.

Had to give in to OCD in a Forever 21 store

This is the other cat we're cat-sitting at the moment ♥

Started to play Fallput 3 (on my boyfriends computer of course...)

And most importantly: I signed the contract for the apartment, to officially make me the owner.

So, as I mentioned before my laptop is out of order and I sent it to the company to have it repaired... turns out the warranty is not valid anymore because of a stupid little dent in the casing! I was pretty mad when I read it in a letter they sent, at least the repair won't be too expensive but still, it's not like I didn't handle the laptop with care or the dent has anything to do with the screen error. I think it happened at some point while I was in Finland, I always carried my laptop in a backpack to work with me, and one day at the bus stop I put the backpack down because my back hurt so much. I think I put it down on a sharp rock or something like that, but I didn't drop it nor did I reckon the casing would give in so easily :(

Anyway - the laptop will hopefully be back soon and fully functional again.

There's more news, actually! On 12th August I'll start an internship at the University of Vienna and will work there till the end of September. This basically means two things - first, I finally got a job completely on my own, relying only on my skills and not on contacts! Secondly, we have to finish most work with the renovation until then, or my boyfriend would have to do everything that's still left mostly alone. Luckily, it seems like we will be able to finish most of the hard work, and the minor tasks could be done on week ends too. I just hope nothing more will go wrong and we will finish soon!
Oh, and thirdly it unfortunately also means that I won't really be able to enjoy my holidays very much anymore :( But on the other hand, it's probably good to have an internship again with fixed working hours, so I can get back on track for autumn. I've been off the hook since June, since my exam, and having 4 months of holidays would have been way too long anyway.

Also, I might be able to get a job starting in October. I don't know the details yet and most likely I also won't get paid but it will help me a lot with my career and studies - as long as I finally get the formal acceptance of the University of Vienna, which can still take up to 9 weeks from now on... Even then it could happen that they reject me - though it's unlikely as I already got informally affirmed that I can study there. Still, there's a lot of confusion to be expected from all that...
So much for "sweet student life", it's not like I'm not gonna be busy in the upcoming months :'D

Alright guys, I hope your July was okay and you are doing fine!
See you ♥

Monthly Random: June

Since my last "random" post seemed to be of interest to you, I think I'm gonna make a habit out of this :) Also, it's a perfect occasion to post all those pictures that accumulate yet aren't really enough to write an own blog entry about. June's almost over, so here's my picture-heavy "Monthly Random" for June!

Went "flood watching" at the Donauinsel...

Tried to style and cut a wig for the first time... maybe I'll write a separate entry about this ordeal XD

Went to the open campus day of a nearby university... can you see why I'd just LOVE to study there? :'D

Summer make up? Naaah.

Organized a little Lolita meet-up and wore Sweet Lolita!

Went to our inofficial graduation party. Wore a summer dress for once and it kept raining all day .... <_<

Cherished my first strawberry harvest this year! I got the little plant 5 years ago and it has grown so much ♥

Among them was the tiniest strawberry I had ever seen XD

Started to move my clothes to my parents' place (by now, we've almost finished moving everything...)

Registered at MyStyleHit :) Add me as a friend if you're there too!

Got these from a girl on Dunkelsüß - I have a very specific coord in mind for the Innocent World Tea Party already and they're gonna be a part of it!

 Got the formal invitation for my brother's wedding ♥

And of course we spent the hottest week of the year so far moving our sparse but bulky furniture to my boyfriend's dad's house. I was so dead after that.

Last week end, my parents had a big garden party and I baked something for the guests.

Oh my, I look like zombie!

At the end of the garden party, I felt really bad. I've been somewhat sick all week, which was really annoying during the moving, but at the end of that day I was completely dead, began to lose my voice and got a fever. And on Sunday morning I had lost my voice and developed a cough. Luckily I had been to the doctor on Friday already and she had given me antibiotics to take if it didn't get any better, so I started to take them on Sunday. As for now, I'm stuck at my parents' place where I've been since the party, sleeping in the guest room and spending the day sleeping, watching TV and playing Pokémon. I feel really bad that I can't help my boyfriend with moving, we still have our bed, his computer and desk at the flat in Vienna, but at least I hope my uncle will be able to help him transport the stuff this week and we will be done soon. It really sucks being sick in summer, but at least the weather is not that hot anymore this week!

Another thing that happened this month, which I don't have any pics of, is that I started to take up Pilates exercises once again. I started with Cassey Ho's Blogilates program on 1st June, and kept up very well for the first two weeks. After the festival, we had super hot weather and I had to slow down, especially the cardio exercises were just impossible for me at 35°C inside our room... and then I became sick so these last days I didn't do anything :( I feel really bad, but on the other hand - just from those two weeks of training I already made so much progress! I really love her videos and her training calendars, so next month, I'll definitely pick up the training again.

Next month will be my graduation ceremony! I'm pretty excited already :D What are you looking forward to about the upcoming month? ^^