My life lately (and giveaway winner)

This is a very vague testimony of my few last days this week.

As they were full with lots of twists I just could capture a couple of little impressions.

Be sure you fasten your seat belt! 

♥Last week has been kind of a madness since many changes burst into my life. 

The plans that I had built around a new job position collapsed, but a new (and unexpected) project showed up. 

Tarot is always a lighthouse in those ocassions.

 Well, I don´t trust it like an infallible orable; however, it always help to meditate about all my options.

♥As a consequence of those crazy news, now I have to deal with a narrower schedule 

which basically means a series of racing all through the city to be on time both at job and university seminars.

 On a practical level this means less time for lunch, so I try to ensure I have vitamins enough in my diet.

♥My seminars have already started but I refuse to admit that summer is over, so I keep

 reading child books just for pleasure.  

The Wind in the Willows is one of my favourite children´s literature classics ever.

Someday I´ll make an entire post about it! 

 ♥Beside all this, this week I started my pre-Halloween annual research.

 What does it consist on? Good question!

Every year at the beginning of the month I put my comfy shoes on and wander around the city

 in the want of cute stuff that I can use as Halloween stuff. 

At the moment I have been sneaking a peek at candy stores.

                 ♥I also tried to improve my origami skills with no success (the beautiful butteflies above are 

my friend Elisa´s old creations), and made lots of smothies for an extra energy dose. The smoothie in the picture was made of frozen blueberries and raspberries (no chance to get them fresh here). 

 ♥ And finally: the very expected winner of the Giveaway event.

Corresponding with the original order of participants the lucky lady is (drumroll, please):

Aoife

Congratulations, dear!

And to the rest of you, Thank you so much for participating.

I am sure you´ll have more opportunities in the future.

Blue eyes say, Love me or I die; black eyes say, Love me or I kill thee

After a couple of weeks that I only can describe as killing, I am free again. 

Well, quite free as long as I had to go back to my classes and seminars, which started on Wednesday.

I hardly survived to my September exams and it could be said that I did it pretty unharmed considering the circumstances. 

Do you know that kind of annoying period when you seem touched by the faerie of bad luck? Oh, I am sure you are laughing, but don´t think I am joking. The faerie of bad luck is somewhere out there, and I won´t stop until I catch her (or until I can take a good picture of her to demonstrate her physical existence to the whole world, at least).

What happenned to me for speaking like a lunatic?

Get ready to smile (or cry, not even sure indeed):

• Little day-to-day tragedy #1: I made a mistake with one of my exams by thinking it was a different day. Inmediate consequence: yes, I missed it! However, the teacher was very comprehensive and let me make it three days later. But I had lots of linden tea in between. And when I say lots I really mean it. I think some linden tea maker is really rich right now.

• Little day-to-day tragedy #2:  To step aside from all the hard stress produced by the little day-to-day tragedy #1, The Gentle One and I accepted the invitation of our friends to spend last weekend at their place. They live in a pretty small place by the sea (literally, their house almost touches the sand of the beach), so I decided to get rid off my sun aversion and put my bathing suit in the case. Right, exactly as you think: on Sunday morning we had the coldest day this month.

•  Little day-to-day tragedy #3: In the top of all this I was clumsy enough to rip three pairs of tights. Besides I lose one entire pack of hairpins, spilled coffee on my favourite skirt and an entire bottle of eau de toilette on my bed (I have to admit that now it smells like heaven. Like having a too big piece of heaven at home).

 Shirt : Zara  / Skirt : H&M  / Tie : Random shop/ 
 Brooch : Handmade/  Tights : Calcedonia/  Boots : Gift from The Gentle One /
 Handbag : Gift form my sister (bought in Tokyo)

As you can imagine, at the end of the past week I was a pale-shaking-tiny-thing that only prayed for no more accidents. But ey, better halves are true heroes in that kind of occasions. They always know how to make fun of gloomy days and take you out for having some tasty white tea with mandarin and a funny photoshoot.

God blesses anonymous heroes! 

Oh, the winner of the give away will be announced very soon!

Be sure to enter the event. 

First Anniversary Give Away

I cannot truly believe it´s been a year since I started updating this blog.
I began thinking I would probably get easily bored of it, but through these twelve months I met really charming and interesting people out there and this place eventually became one more facet of my life.
I have to confess that, for me, posting here is kind of relaxing. A therapy against stress. And do you know what? Besides it is cheaper than a psychoanalyst!

Now seriously, I want to thank everyone in the blogosphere by giving a little offering.
The give away consists on a handmade flower ring, a couple of polka dots vynil hair pins, a handmade key pendant and a beautiful black lace handband (that can be also used as a chocker).

All you have to do for having the chance to get the prize is being a follower of this blog (if you are not a follower yet, you can become one) and leave a comment below. The comment must contain a suggestion about what kind of contents you do like here or would you appreciate me to add to my blog.

You can get an extra participation (I´ll put your name twice in the raffle) if you leave a link to this give away in your own blog. 

The contest is internationally opened!

Good luck, everyone!

Someone special

Happy Sunday everyone!

The most of the week I´ve been away, I am sad to say that my September exams are the ones to blame.

But in the middle of this boring and consuming study routine I visited Victorian Kitty´s place ( Check the place of this charming lady) and she proposed a blog event for September feating someone who is really special to us. And as I am such as predictable sweet person, I have chosen The Gentle One for this occasion.

This picture belongs to the only existing professional studio photoshoot of us together ♥

(Credits to: Jose Gutierrez Carou)

We have been together for almost eight years now and I am glad to say that if soulmates exist, well, we rocked it to find one to each other. I could spend the whole day telling you the most crazy stories about our relationship; how (for example) I deeply hated him in our first meeting. Being a big fan of Jane Austen our story had to begin like the first impressions between Elisabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. But ey, life is not always drama and we fixed it soon (just like Austen´s characters did). And besides, Regency fairy tales are even funnier if they are set in a gothic ball background.

So this ornery bookworm, tea addicted and cat fanatic met that second-hand-books-maniac and cheerful insomniac and, after some amusing plot twists that could have made laugh to any sitcoms friend, the moved in together and started a second season of a glorious imaginary tv series.

Now you have your own chance to join this beautiful event at Sophistique Noir.

Just follow the instructions and let the world know who is special to you.

Do thou snatch treasures from my lips, and I'll take kingdoms from thine.

 Birthday presents have an interesting connotation, because they reflect the way in which we are perveived by our loved ones. Additionally they symbolize all the affection, respect and consideration about the honoree. And of course gifts always will have that kind of magic aura capable of transporting us back to childhood and transforming a reasonable grown-up in a laughing toddler.

This year (because I am always such a good girl) I have received lots of stunning treasures, those includying a luxury beauty treatment that I could probably not afford myself at the moment (thankie mum), a sparkling tiara, earrings, broochs and bracelet (yes, I am as a magpie fascinated by shinning stuff) , and a dinky customized ex-libris showing my name and a bunch of Art Noveau flowers ( I need to sign all my beloved books with a decorative sign).
Everything is so lovely!

The Gentle One gave me a long-term wanted set of straightener and curling irons. So yes, as you guessed lots of funny (and disastrous, I am sure) hair experiments are coming.

I also was gifted with an exquisite Elisabethan corset, a dainty lace top and a gorgeous silk scarf but I thought those would be better portrayed in many future outfit posts. 

This way all fun is not wasted, is it?

She has a portrait somewhere, and it is getting old instead of her.

Hi, dears. 

I am here just to say that, at the moment, I am having the most wonderful of the days. I turned oficially twenty-nine half an hour ago and it feels great. The night is going to be full of beloved friends and a certain roaring twenties scent will be floating around.

 I hope this year brings me some extra wisdom!  

You never can have enough of that.

Have a wonderful weekend everybody.

Only the good ones die in summer

 The last few days have been pretty chaotic.

On Friday I decided to join my family at my parents´place as long as we had planned some pre-birthday celebrations together. This is a comparatively new tradition among my relatives as a consequence of the eventual distance between us (we don´t live in the same city anymore). Basically, we meet for having a delicious lunch or dinner together, chatting and enjoying of some extra time close.

 Next weekend I´ll be turning twenty-nine (no worries, you will read enough about the party through the following days), and in this occasion it meant a glorious lunch composed by lobster and Spanish wine, lots of mint mojitos and many beautiful gifts. What else do you need?

However, the fast rythm of these days is a little too much for me.

I am a shy and quiet person, so I felt really lucky when I could go back to my relaxing holiday routine.

Probably I sound like a peevish girl, but I do need disconnecting during the summer break.

Otherwise, I would probably get overloaded.

As soon as I could come back to my city I just left my stuff behind and went for a walk outside, this wonderful place is full of lonely gardens and parks where you can virtually disappear.

 All I need to feel good is a book and the company of The Gentle One.

I am sure many of you understand what I am talking about.




Now I can say my batteries are charged again, so I´ll be able to enjoy the company of my friends at the birthday roaring twenties event on Saturday.

I´ll be back with a good review soon!

Oh, I almost forgot!

Just in case you are wondering what am I wearing in this post (sorry, I never remember about it):

Dress: Stradivarius.

Shrug: New Look.

Stocking: Pamela Mann.

Shoes: Gift from a friend.

Necklance: My sister´s donation.

A Midsummer Night´s Dream

Greetings to you all, dears. 

I hope you are having the most wonderful of the summers. In my case, this period is being a very relaxing one after a good quantity of crazy months. At the beginning of the summer I began working in a new teaching assistant position, but now I got my vacational break and can really enjoy of some (well-deserved) spare time.

And what does free time mean to me? 

Oh, that´s a good question: First of all, means unlimited time for reading and writing; yes, just for the mere pleasure of doing it. I´ve told you too many times I am a bookworm and yes, I am even proud of it. So I am spending great and mad quantities of time with Lovecraft, Lumley, Prize etc. Of course, some of those reading will be handy in the future for my bibliography but right now I am just enjoying. 

I also found time enough to liberate some of my creative power beyond literature and study. I´ve been making some ornaments myself, such as necklances, brooches and ribbons. You can see a couple of examples above. The pendant was made using one of my spinal bone earrings, which were far too big and heavy for me. The ribbon is just a little piece of velvet, a cameo and one hair pin. Easy, isn´t it? I always enjoy by recycling old useless materials that I have at home.

I am spending some quality time with friends and The Gentle One.

In the last few weeks we went out for outdoors walk frequently. It´s nice to feel the fresh air on your skin, even if you are not a big fan of summer baking temperatures. I tend to develop a huge allergy because of the pollen but in the last times I just discovered many natural remedies against it, as the tea flowers in the picture. I have to thank my friend Morgan for that, she was the one to teach me how to use herbal remedies as a medicine instead of dozens of pills.

Oh, and of course we finally went to watch Prometheus together.

I have a couple of things to say about it: 

The visual level (photography and artistic conception) is great. Giger does its job masterfully. However, the film falls apart towards the second half. There are times of little or no credibility, and a total lack of connection and coherence. The first half is quite acceptable, with moments of genuine and classic science fiction, but the desenlace quite goes forced and "commercial" with moments taken from any action movie. As for the actors, the interpretation of "David" is wonderful and does not detract some of his predecessors in the original series. "Shaw" is admissible the most of the time, but falls frequently over-acting and compunction. Overall I give it a six and a half.

Anyway, darlings, I hope you do have a great summer break full of  special moments.

Life is just a bowl of cherries

Welcome back, dear readers. 

First of all I want to wish a happy Midsummer to everyone! I had the most wonderful one with friends and better half and a really memorable weekend after my recent academic nightmare.

I´ve been away from the blogosphere for one month now and, although I really missed it a lot, I did have no time for procrastination at all. As I had planned, semester exams consumed my entire life: I had books to read, essays to write and notes to memorize. Not funny indeed. My last test took place on Wednesday evening and since then I fell in a strange kind of clinic coma. I wanted needed some sleep. Finally I came back from the grave on Saturday, just in time for Midsummer celebrations. The Gentle One is a really empathic person and did his best to make me feel reborn. We met many friends of us in the afternoon, had dinner together and hanged around to drink lots of tasty cocktails by the midnight fires. So nice to let stress going away!

But exams were not my only source of concerns. I formalized my pre-registration for the literary research work next year. To understand the whole thing, I´ll explain the process quickly. Applicants are supposed to contact a tutor and to present informally a personal project for next semester, then they get a position for their project. I fulfilled every step and when the list with the positions was published. Somebody had replaced me on my project! Apparently, a classmate who was spending a year abroad did not learn about the burocratic process and just chose my project without making any consultation to the department head or the tutor who, by the way, knew nothing about this girl abroad. I had spent one month and a half preparing my project so you can imagine how dissapointed I was! I had to talk to the tutor again and she gently fixed it all but for three days I lived in hell. The girl apologized and evidently she did not do it on purpose but I was under a lot of stress and this did not help. My project is very important to me because it will let me to improve my academic file notably, which means that I´ll have the chance to get a teaching position grant the following year. Of course, I am in the project again and I´ll be spending my summer working in the bibliography. So everybody is happy now.

This week my holiday goes on at my parents´place, it will be good to get relaxed by the sea for a while.

Have you any fantastic plans for summer at the moment?

They say colours are more brilliant just before the storm.

We have enjoyed a long public holiday in the north of Spain this week, which means that The Gentle One and I have enjoyed some welcome extra time together from Wednesday evening. I had some schoolwork to do but on Thursday I decided that enough is enough and indulged myself with a joyful day outdoors.

My overseas sister and I share the habit of taking pictures of complete days as a funny way to keep in touch, so I thought this was a good opportunity to show a day in my life not only with her, but also with other bloggers out there. I hope you like my Friday, May 18 th.

The weather is not very reliable these days, so I don´t give too much credit to climatological predictions. It was said that rain would last the whole day but when I woke up in the morning sun started shining. The Gentle One and I decided don´t make haste and observe the weather evolution while having a little brunch (it was too late for a proper breakfast). Happily, the morning became really sunny at the end. As a result, I had a little shower, managed with make up and wild hair and finally, three kiwis, two homemade cinnamon and apple muffins, a dozen strawberries and a cup of tea later we left home. Just in case I was hungry again I kept an Italian bun on my bag (as you will have deduced, my biorythm is really fast).

We live pretty far from the city center and felt more like walking into the old town as we were in a bohemian mood. 

Althought at first it remained a little cloudy, eventually it got warmer. When we finally reached the city, the temperature was delightful and could admire flowers and plants in all their glory. The old town was busy as long as this particular party is really popular around. The lively atmosphere was an unexpected pleasure. In the last few weeks I have started feeling too isolated as a consequence of all the pressure and bad stress just before the semester exams. To break this kind of unhealthy routine is always very welcome.

After all this exercise something cool and sweet was compulsory, so we stopped for an ice-cream.

No need to tell about the ice cream´s benefits, right?

 Many stores place Spring stuff outdoors as a way of encouranging the Season. My city is really pretty with all the flowers in the balconies and people having tea in the charming coffee shops. If you like romantic and bohemian places such as Venice, Florence or Prague, then Compostela is a must seen. I´ll try to make a proper post about my city as soon as I have time enough! 

Unfortunately, the weather started getting a little annoying again about half-past six or so. This Spring is being really funny, indeed, and you can get wet easily if you don´t pay attention, so we decided looking for a nice refuge in a tea room. We found a truly good one is a narrow street while walking around. The owner bakes all the pies and cakes by herself and she serves a supreme vanilla tea in milk among other delights.

 We don´t have any chain coffee shops like Starbucks in here (which makes me glad, I am not a chain store person), and in general coffee is good everywhere but I have to say that this place was spectacular. I´ll go back soon, I am sure.

Even the ginger cookies were homemade.

While coming back home we made a stop in the library to rent some good films to watch later. There´s nothing like a movies session in a cold night. The chosen ones were Sunset Boulevard, The House of Mirth and Io, Don Iovanni.

I felt really exhausted and heavy because of all the treats during the afternoon, so I was in the capital need of having something light and healthy for supper. I must admit that my better half is a cooking angel, so he made a wonderful salad while I was playing with the cats.

 

The sweetheart in the picture is Wendy. I also tried to take a good one of Prim, but she is not that sociable.

After eating the super-tasty salad, we watched a movie and at the end of it I was falling asleep, so 

That´s All, Folks!

I really enjoyed making this post and I´d be happy to see more like that out there.

Have you ever thought about making a day in your life in pictures?

Tokyo syndrome

The last five weeks have been an aquatic nightmare. It´s been rainning tirelessly for almost forty days and today, suddenly, it simply stopped. I can hardly believe it, when I first opened the windows the sun light even blinded me for a second. But it´s so nice to feel the warm on your skin again! It sounds like Spring is finally here. One can see flowers in bloom all around although I won´t be able to enjoy the season properly because of my awful semester exams. A hard time is around the corner for me but I´ll speak about that another day.

Somehow, the calm weather made me cheer up and I decided to make something different from studying grammar today. I read a non-compulsory book out of my seminars reading schedule (naughty me) and decided to go out for a little walk. My sister sent me a gorgeous lolita dress from Japan a couple of weeks ago and I hadn´t had the opportunity to wear it. Today´s attempt was just a little outdoors excursion to get some groceries from the corner´s shop but I am going to the movies on Saturday with some friends and my little sister, so there will be a new ocassion. I don´t normally put this attention towards new clothes but I am sure my charming sister living overseas would probably kill me if I do not show her how the dress fits me ;)
I didn´t really expect I was so comfortable in lolita style but I think it´s a really good choice for my body shape, even showing far much legs than I normally like to.

Just in case you´re wondering why the pictures are so strange, I must say it was my first experience with the automatic shooter. I hope to improve my skills with this little new technique, I am sure it´s not a big deal but I have to get used to it. If you have any advice to give in relation to this I´ll be glad to hear it. I am not specially good with new gadgets.


I am not very sure about the whole outfit, but I think my high heel bordello shoes match the dress pretty well.  I am also considering to add my ribcage earrings from Restyle. What do you think?

So tell me, have you tried something different or new from your regular style recently?

Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too?

These days I have enjoyed an unexpected break from daily duties. My Friday classes were canceled, so International Worker´s Day holidays let me free until next Wednesday. Well, certainly I am not fully exempt from schoolwork at the moment (semester´s exams are around the corner again) but at least I have some extra time for writing essays. 

On Thursday evening I visited my parents´place. It was really nice because I could study harder with no better halves around to get me distracted all the time. Besides, I met many friends once my work was done: two of my long-term darlings came back from Japan after visiting my sister (http://petitsuisseinformativo.wordpress.com) and we had a great time talking about their adventures. Moreover, I was given many charming presents that deserve their own post.

Though there are no pictures from last Thursday meeting, I have many others from a little assembly with my secondary school friends a short time ago. There´s something nice about meeting old friends, right?

Another good thing about this weekend is that I almost nailed down the details about my academic research work next year. It sounds like I am finally working on North American horror fiction in the first half of the XX century (specifically the work of H.P. Lovecraft and its circle). I am really excited about this as long as it is going to be my first serious experience as a literary researcher at university.

 Of course, I also spent some quality time with my mother and my youngest sister. She is twelve years old now and I can say she is following the personal footprint of the family, which means she is becoming a little nerd. I am very proud of her! On Saturday she made me drive her into the local human evolution event and she had lots of fun learning about Neanderthalis and Homo Antecessor. She aldo made me promise to take her to the premiere of Dark Shadows in Spain. She is a sweetheart, isn´t she?

Finally we went for some shopping together, and it was full of funny suprises. We found a little treassure to combine with the customized shoes my friend Morgan gave me for my birthday (above).

In general, we had a great weekend.

So tell me, have you done recent findings of any type?