Picturesque Friday ~ 24. May 2013

First Berlin Edition
The best way to learn photography is to take pictures. That's why I'm joining Steffi on her blog ohhhmhhh.de for the "Question-Photo-Friday" (Frage-Foto-Freitag) and answer her questions with the following photographs:

Top-Team?

The future husband and Neptune. His favorite statue in the world and one of our favorite "just chill" spots in Berlin, right next to the TV tower.

Top-Choice?

Maybe not this apartment, but I love the kitchen island and the counter to the living room, so american! Too expensive & not bright enough due to the location on the first floor though.

Top-Outift?

BP says: Be glad we're not building nuclear power plants! Just a little oil spilled in the sea...

Top-Decoration?

Cool graffitti opposite to another apartment bulding where we're looking at a place.

Top-Film?

No time for movies these days. At home we started packing already and here's my stash of cloths, all gone now ..

Notebook Makeover

This is a small upcycling project I did last weekend in preparation for our trip to Berlin. We're going to move back to Berlin soon, so we took two weeks of vacation to start looking for new jobs and an apartment. To manage all of our appointments with future employers, landlords and old friends I chose an old notebook to be a planner.

What you need:
- an old notebook/planner
- yarn of choice
- cloth of choice
- a drill

For the cloth I chose one of Ken's old jeans on the "fix it" pile. I would have used something else, but my dad came by last week to pick up some of our stuff already to take up to Berlin and of course he took my whole stash of cloth.



I started out measuring the insides of the notebook and marking where I wanted to drill holes.



The drilled holes all have a distance of 1cm to the edge of the book and to another.



The I took the measures for my piece of jeans and cut it out.



Now for the tricky part. I took a big sowing needle and a long piece of thick thread/yarn, positioned the cloth and started to sow through both folds of cloth and the holes in the notebook. I just kept on going on the top right there until I ran out of holes on the top. I continued on the bottom and used the holes on the side twice to compensate and phew, it worked out perfectly!



From the other side:



And here's the inside. I just wrote the dates on top of the pages and then made a timeline for planning.



I think it looks pretty cool. Definitely not the usual design for a notebook and a great upcycling project times 2. You get an upcycled notebook and jeans.



Now wish me look for our plentiful appointments!

This post is part of Nina's Upcycling Tuesday and the Creadienstag.

Rhubarb-Pineapple Pie

It's time for another recipe. This time it's an exotic pie with rhubarb and pineapple filling.

Here's what you need:
(for the crust)
100g sugar
200g margarine or butter
300g flour
(for the filling)
1kg of the fruit (mix) of choice
500g gelling sugar or 4 tbs corn starch



Start off with the crust dough, mix all the ingredients to a firm dough and let it rest in the fridge for at least 2h. Then you can start on the filling by cleaning and cutting all the fruit and start to heat it up in a pot with the sugar (no water needed, the fruit will soon release a lot of juice).
While the fruit boils to evaporate most of the water you can spread the dough in a pie mold and put it in the oven for 20min at 200°C. Watch the boiling fruit so it doesn't burn, I hab mine on low for a while. The next step is optional, because I put the fruit in the blender, but if you cut it small enough and yopu want a little more texture in your pie you can leave them as is.



Once the crust is done and out of the oven for a bit you can add the filling and then let it cool for a while. I made the pie in the evening and let it cool overnight.



Yum, fresh pie on the window sill in the morning.



And these are the last two pieces. Made the pie Wednesday evening and finished it Sunday afternoon. Definitely going to make this again, maybe with a different fruit mix. Though the rhubard with pineapple was an excelllent choice!






Pie and ice cream, or in my case sorbet, best dessert on a lazy sunday afternoon.

Picturesque Friday ~ 10. May 2013

The best way to learn photography is to take pictures. That's why I'm joining Steffi on her blog ohhhmhhh.de for the "Question-Photo-Friday" (Frage-Foto-Freitag) and answer her question with the following photographs:

Good feeling?

The city of Munich provides a sport program in the park from May to September. It's always a treat to excercise in the sun with a fresh breeze! And butts!

Good idea?

Made a pie for the holiday yesterday. Rhubarb-Pineapple... that's German exotica.

Good Combination?

The future husband joined me for the sport in the park.

Good and simple?

Rain in May. Yesterday's sport in the park was very rainy, but we didn't quit! This big fellow also enjoyed the rain.

Simply good?

Mexican Food at Taco Libre, best Quesadillas in town, after watching the early showing of the new Star Trek. Amazing film + amazing food = holiday well spent.

Make Munich Report Part I: 3D Printing

The future husband and I went to Munich's first Maker fair "Make Munich" 2 weeks ago. Among other nerdy things 3D printing was the main focus. Fabbster even provided a bunch of 3D printers to try printing yourself. Of course the future husband came prepared and had downloaded a free Batman Cookie Cutter Object File from the MakerBot Thingiverse. We were able to claim a 3D printer for ourself and with a little help from the Fabbster Team we got the printer going.



So how does 3D printing work? According to Wikipedia it is "a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model, it is achieved using an additive process, where successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes."
The objects made at the fair were mostly plastic, so how it works is the machine pulls in plastic "ink", melts it and "prints" it on a surface one layer on top of another in the shape of the desired object. Not that complicated if you think about it. It just sound so futuristic!



The printer started making our cookie cutter by printing a base of plastic, which would be removed at the end. This was pretty important, because the plastic sticks to the surface and had to be scraped off.





The yellow thing in the middle moves around pretty quickly. The diagonal, vertical and horizontal bar allow it to move and shape the batman logo.



Like a pro! There were many admirers.



Almost finished. Sticking out of the middle you can see where the plastic gets drawn in to be melted and printed. Usually it would be drawn in automatically from the stack on the right, but it wasn't working right so the man had to fill it up for the entire print of about 40 minutes.



Close up. You can kind of tell that it is made of layers, but there were some printers and prints showcased where you couldn't even tell. Especially with the prints made of other materials like wood and metal (don't ask me how that's "melted" down and layered).



The cookie cutter was already in use to make some awesome Batman Cookies.

The big issue with 3D printing is copyright and piracy. There was a talk by Roman Keßler about whether 3D technology is opening the Padora's box. I was really looking forward to this talk, because I am dealing with the german copyright law in my job and am also personally interested how the copyright progresses and and how to deal with new technology. Sadly this was not a professional talk as I had hoped, but a "What if.." situation assembly. What if I print out a 3D object for private usage? Was the print file aqcuired legally? Can I sell this object?



Most question were left unanswered, because the technology is not quite far enough and the printer's not cheap enough to be available to the broad public. But it is going to be soon and I can't wait!

Picturesque Friday ~ 03. May 2013

The best way to learn photography is to take pictures. That's why I'm joining Steffi on her blog ohhhmhhh.de for the "Question-Photo-Friday" (Frage-Foto-Freitag) and answer her question with the following photographs:

Picture of the week?

At Theresienwiese. I dunno, I just like it.

What are you not going to do today?

Work on my dumpster find. It's not in the photo, but this is the other stuff some people dumped right next to our door.

What surprised you this week?

The tree in front of my office window bloomed over the weekend and the blooms are already fading now.

Didn't find time for?

Gathering stuff for my next fleamarket experience. I really need to clear out our space.

Who did you enjoy spending time with?

The future husband of course. We spend Mayday in the park, having a little picnic.