The Hobbit 2 ~ The European Premiere Part I

This Monday I went to the European Premiere of The Hobbit ~ The Desolation of Smaug in Berlin and it was awesome!
I've been a huge fan of The Lord of The Rings ever since the first movie came out. I was 14 years old and immeadiately went to the library to breath in the books before any of the other movies came out. Actually the Eoropean Premiere of The last LotR movie The Return of the King also took place in Berlin and I was there as well. I was sixteen then and now exactly ten years later I felt as though I was that age again seeing all the actors and directors face to face and experiencing the spirit of Tolkiens world through Peter Jacksons masterpieces.

I was actually standing in the second row in front of the red carpet. And this was because I signed up the future husband and I for a bunch of Give-Aways related to this premiere and the future husband won one! It was one place in the "Facebook Fan Area" of the red carpet and he gladly gave it to me, because I'm probably the bigger fan, heh.
I don't know how I ended up in the second row though, because I was only there 2 hours before the whole thing started ( some people showed up 20 hours earlier), I guess I'm just a lucky biatch.
The two girls in front of me were dressed up as some ind of wood elf creatures, so if you watched the live stream of the premiere you probably got to see them a couple of times and me behind them.

While we were waiting (some longer than others) for the premiere to start stewards and stewardesses of Air New Zealand were handing out coffee and hot chocolate to the waiting fans. Smauging hot, for sure. So nice of them, but I didn't really want to give up my perfect spot in case I had to go to the toilet, duh.

The red carpet was lined with different kind of Banners going down all the way to the main street on Potsdamer Platz where the stars of the movie would enter the carpet.

The huge pile of gold with the head of Smaug the dragon peeking out was very impressive. I was really surprised that the Germans thought up a much better looking and more creative stage and background than at the World Premiere in LA. The lady in the middle of the picture above in black and purple was one of the stewardesses of Air New Zealand.

So many fans waiting out in the cold. And the whole time there was a misty drizzle rain going of making the red carpet glisten with water drops.

That dragon... just awesome!

Finally around 6pm there were the first cameracrews and tv hosts on the red carpet.

The first actors and stars were expected around 6:30pm. That didn't keep the people behind me from pressing forward hours earlier though. You kind of felt like a sardine in a can.

These were the hosts of the Berlin premiere. From time to time they interacted with the audience interviewing fans and even giving away tickets to see the movie that night.

And there's Martin Freeman! He went past us so quickly with everyone around me screaming his name, he gestured he would definitely be back later, because as the main star of the movie he had to head to the media first.

We were soon visited by James Nesbitt who plays the dwarf Bofur. His two daughters (behind him and to his right) also played the daughters of Bard the Bowman of Laketown.

He took his time to sign most of the people's pictures, but sadly he missed mine. Oh well.

Next up were Luke Evans, who plays Bard of laketown, and Richard Armitage.

Richard Armitage plays Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Mountain, a character that is often portrayed not very likeable as he always doubts and mistrusts...

... this guy! Bilbo Baggins played by the awesome Martin Freeman. He was being such a sweetheart. After signing my image I thanked him and he replied "Oh no, thank you so much!" And then he winked at me. Remember when I said I felt like I was sixteen again?

What a great guy, really. He took so much time for his fans taking pictures with them and replying to everyone. The girl behind me had drawn a picture of him to sign and he complimented her on that.

Next up were Aidan Turner, who plays the dwarf Kili...

... and Dean O'Gorman, who plays Fili, Kili's brother.

And here comes Gollum!

I mean Smeagol. I mean Andy Serkis. He did such a great job reviving the creature of Gollum in the first Hobbit movie and apparently he did quite a bit of directing this movie.

An there he is, the master himself, Peter Jackson. Look at how tiny he seems, just like a Hobbit. It was so great to meet the man who created a load of entertainment and art to guide and inspire so many. Thank you, man!

Can you spot another dragon in the middle of this picture above? Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Smaug the dragon and the Necromancer was so close and yet so far this whole time.

It was too bad he didn't come our direction to sign autographs. I would have really liked to thank him up close.

It is over it seems, all the stars are across the carpet, hanging out by the photographers and tv people. What now?
Well it seems as luck is again on our side, because:

I got a Golden Ticket!
Haha, it really felt lkike that. After all the stars were interviewed the hosts went down the lines of fans to hand out tickets to see the mvie that night again. and luck had it that right then I was in the firt row because the costumed lady in front of me had won such a ticket. It's a mystery to me why I got one, but it just so happens that the social media lady handed me a ticket. I think maybe it was because I was the only one not desperately begging to get one. (The guy next to me offered his girlfriend to make out with the host for him to get a ticket, fucking disgusting.)

Anyways. I got the ticket, ran around the Potsdamer Platz to get to the entrance of the red carpet, pranced down the red carpet. OmfG. So awesome! Friends of mine had been standing on the other side of the carpet the whole time, so I ran up to them to high five them. I prance up the stairs to the dragon. Almost fell over my own feet going up those stairs. Took a bunch of selfies in front of the dragon. You have to know that across that dragon were tons of photographers and media people, very intimidating to be in front of those. But I continued to take my selfies, haha. 

I then got closer to the dragon and saw that there were actual coins lying around the bottom of the painted goldpile. I grabbed a handful and pranced back to my friends to hand them the coins.

Then I skipped back to the dragon to take some more selfies, this time a little more calmed down. I was still so excited and really couldn't believe it still. Me on the red carpet, where only minutes before stars like Martin Freeman and Orlando Bloom walked.

 So I went into the cinema to take off my coat and relax a little before the movie starts when this guy walks in. My legs were goo again and I clutched my camera feeling like a round up rabbit mentally preparing myself to ask for a picture whe a security guard said: "You need to go downstairs now." And I'm like yeah, yeah. And he's like: "Now!"
Too bad, but oh well. maybe another time. Heh. Like this will ever happen again. But it was still fucking awesome! I'm still excited for me to have experienced this.

Tomorrow I'll write up all the good stuff that happened inside the cinema. And there will also be a Give-Away, so stay tuned!
Happy Hobbit Weekend!

Masking Table ~ Pimped for the Holidays

For our Thanksgiving Get Together I wanted to decorate our table as well, so I took the Christmas style masking tape I had lying around for a while and taped it all over our couch table!

The table was bought second hand and has a few scratches on it. With the masking tape I covered all of those scratches and that's how the different angles and shape happened, because I always wanted to cover more than one scratch with one line of tape.


I'm pretty satisfied with the result and all of our Thanksgiving guests loved it.


The red and green went very well with our orange and red napkins and our awesome handmade Turkey and the only christmasy tape was the reindeer one, so it wasn't too far from the theme of the night. I'm interested to know how well it'll clean after a while and how long it'll stick to the table. I wanted to keep it on until New Years at least. And after that I'll figure out something permanent to do with it.

Anyways, forgot to take before pictures as usual, but here's our Thanksgiving Leftovers:


And my Leftover Breakfast plate. Yums! It was all still great the next day as well. We had a corn chowder, sweet potatoe mash, a potatoe casserole, a pumpkin quiche and 4 different kind of duck dishes.

The day after was pretty chill. The only thing I accomplished to do were these crochet snowflakes. I don't know what to do with them yet, but I will let you know! Happy Holidays!

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

Happy Gobble Gobble Day!

Today is Thanksgiving! And since my future husband is from the USA we celebrate this holiday each year with a feast on the saturday after Thanksgiving (because in Germany we don't get the day off).
This year we're doing a pot luck with some friends and for window decorations I made this funny looking Turkey. The making was similar to the Haunted Castle I did for Halloween, but with a lot less cutting of the cardboard as thus a lot easier to do.

The future husband designed the outline for me again, because I am a terrible drawer and then I cut it out with a cardboard cutter.

Then I painted the body of the turkey with a brownish colour and the wings with red, orange and yellow. Since I painted the wings one after another the colours went into each other and made for a nice effect. I let the paint dry overnight before adding the beak and snood and eyes.

Tadaa, Happy Thanksgiving!

Do you celebrate any holiday that isn't customary in your country or community? I'd be interested to know!

What have I been doing? Chrocheting!

I have rediscovered crocheting as one of my favorite pastimes. I remember practicing it as a kid, but always ending up with a crooked shape. Now that I'm older and maybe a little bit more patient I've come to like it again and miraculously the shapes are looking fine!
In the picture above I was crocheting on the Berlin public transport, probably not something I will do more often, because people look at you funny and try to talk to you about what you're doing.

This is the finished product (finished while watching an old episode of Sherlock with the gals). I'll probably use it as a coaster, maybe for a plant.

Then I finally used this ball of zpagetti yarn, which can easily be made from old t-shirts or other stretchy fabrics like so. Crochting is a great hobby to do in front of the tv. As you can see I've been watching Downton Abbey during this project, spent a whole evening finishing it.

Yay, bathroom mat! Now our feet won't get cold when we're standing in front of the sink.

I've also made this headband out of a ball of yarn I once found on the side of the road in Munich. Poor person losing that, it looked expensive. But more on the headband later, as it is not quite done yet, I'd like to add something to the front of it. I still wanted to show off the Star Wars selfie in front of my grannys old mirror.

That's it for tonight. Have you been crocheting or knitting away the cold? You can leave me links to your crafts and I will check it out!

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

What have I been doing? Workshops!

Ever since I moved back to Berlin I've been to a lot of Dawanda Worshops and because they're so much fun and I'm always crafting and chatting away with the friend I go or meet there I never take any good photographs of the crafting process to create a full blogpost on each workshop, so I'll just put a bunch of them in this post.

The last workshop I went to was for making a bunch of little things for an advent calender, that's used to count down the days till Christmas with little gifts and candies for each day. There were several materials to work with, for example: faux leather, felt, kam snaps, scrapbook paper, yarn, thread, wire and erasers for carving stamps. In the top photo you can see the things one of my friends made, love the felt fox!

I've already made a bunch of stamps from erasers in this workshop, but you can never have enough stamps! I also made a bookmark as it turns out I was actually in need of one and the snowflakes i glued on are very fitting to the house motto of on one my favorite character from the book I'm reading; "Winter is Coming!"

Aren't these wire statement necklaces cool? I made one for me and one for the future husband, but shh, it's one of his Christmas presents, so if he really doesn't read my blog like he always says I should be safe.

On to the next workshop, which was about three weeks ago, where we were crafting with faux leather, felt and kam snaps. The suggested crafts were not very interesting to me (bowls made from felt and envelopes made from faux leather), so I searched the lands of pinterest for something cool to make and I stumbled upon this awesome Takeout Box. I used felt instead of sewing together a bunch of cloth, because of it's firm texture and because it is just so much easier.

These last pictures were take at the Zpagetti crocheting workshop. Zpagetti is yarn made of t-shirt cloth that you can crochet with a really big needle. It makes for some nice bowls and since then I also made a bathroom rug out of some yarn I had lying around for quite some time (remember this?), which I'm gonna show you in my next post.
Oh, I also made a headband in that workshop, check my public transport selfie, wheee: