Howl's Moving Castle

I watched this anime a long while back and loved every second of it. It must have been Christmas or a bank holiday, I remember hubby was home but it wasn't a weekend. It has never been like me to watch animes, I don't know why, maybe they are not on tv much and I don't bother going to the shops hunting for them. But this particular one caught my eye the second it started. I was nailed in front of TV watching it for straight 3 hours or so. My hubby was in and out the room teasing me as I was watching it stunned and he was congratulating me for my patience to watch it till the end :)) well done me! (I had the same thing with Joy Luck Club, which is another masterpiece, but will come to that later)

Hope you can find the dvd somewhere, watch it and judge it yourselves. Don't know if it was a thing at that moment that made me love it so much, but I don't want to spoil the feeling it has left me with by watching again.

Sofi, the girl cursed by a witch and Hauru, the adorable magician
They are such a lovely couple :)

Sophie at the beginning, the curse hasn't turned her into a very old woman yet.

Sophie looking like a boy here. Love her haircut and her eyes :)

gorgeous Hauru :) He was blonde and heroic at first, turned to brunette and domestic at the end. What a transformation :)

And this is their moving castle:

My fave computer games: chuzzle and big kahuna reef

There is nothing more relaxing than playing Chuzzle when you have loads of stuff to do ( and stress building up afterwards because you have wasted some considerable time playing it )
My sis used to play this game and then she forwarded me the website. Ever since, I am a big fan of it (and similar games where you match three things - fluffy balls in this game -, they explode and new ones appear) and whenever I stress out, esp. as the deadlines get closer, I always play it before I do what I have to do! The website version is limited, you can only make it to Level 2 or 3. I bought the full game from Amazon, it cost me something like £5, worth every penny :)

Big Kahuna Reef is another game that is quite addictive. I used to play it when I first moved to Cambridge to pass time when home. The idea is the same, this time you match sea creatures instead of fluffy balls. When they explode, all remaning ones slide down and new creatures come in from the top. It is more challenging then Chuzzle as you have to explode certain boxes so you can free fish from those boxes. The setting is under-sea, while playing you can see fish swimming around, it's quite enjoyable. The original game comes with a wall paper and screen saver features as well, bonus!

:(

I miss everything about summer SO BADLY!!
I know I have to wait for at least 5-6 months to go somewhere warm and sunny. It's giving me stomachaches to think that. A looooong and dark winter is waiting ahead of us, the days are already shorter and darker and colder! The mornings are so dark and rainy you wouldn't want to get out of your bed! It feels like winter lasts for 7 months here, 6 to go and I'll see the sun shine again!! :(

These are the pics of happy me from this summer..

haha this one always makes me laugh!

my sister

my sister and her soon-to-be husband

busy bee

Hi blog,

I have abandoned you for a week! again!

From Monday on, I started writing my dissertation and I can tell you it's not going as easily as I thought it would do. I am only doing the first part which is the literature review and it is supposed to be the easiest part! I don't know how I will cope with the data analysis as I have more than 400 sentences to read over and over again and then come up with 9000 words more!! It sounds a bit like a never ending process right now - if I'm not being too pessimistic. This is the first time I'm writing a paper longer than 7000 words, that might be the reason why I'm being such a drama queen now!! :)

With the autumn season already here, my fave tv programmes are back! I'm not very proud of my choice of fave tv shows but sometimes you love the one you hate the most!! I was watching Big Brother 9 while everybody in the country loathed it! But guess what, I have written a paper on it and got a good mark. Every cloud had a silver lining yeah? :)

Ugly Betty, Gossip Girl and An Idiot Abroad have already started with their new seasons. I'm not sure if I'll do X factor again this year. The auditions were pretty fun though, with cousins punching each other in front of the audience and judges hahaha!!! :) but when it comes to the show, you lose the fun factor! :P

Watched the first episode of An Idiot today and tears came from my eyes laughing!! The guy is hilarious!!! (http://sky1.sky.com/an-idiot-abroad) There must be videos available on youtube and dailymotion as well.

I have to say good night now, I'm planning to get up very early to finish the first part of my dissertation tomorrow morning. Then I'm seeing friends in town, happy happy! Will upload the pics with them soon.

Work in progress :)

This is what my table looks like once I start with my felt stuffies. It takes ages to clean all the mess up when I'm done!
I've got two new members to my sea creatures family: a seahorse and a fish.
I'll upload the pics soon.
(you can actually see the seahorse in this pic)

Pickled red peppers

Trying to focus on writing my dissertation, I found myself in the kitchen cooking and making all sorts of food that I had never tried before :) It took my mind off the stress I was having but of course didn't help with the pages waiting to be written.

This recipe is from a Turkish website but I cannot remember the address!!
I will write the recipe as far as I remember.

The first thing you need is two fat red peppers to be grilled or roasted. I don't have a proper grill so I put them in the oven for about 45 minutes until very soft (Gas mark 6). Once they were watery and a little bit sticky, I took them out the oven, then peeled and unseeded them with a spoon.

Then I chopped them into squares, not very small ones. Added parsley, chopped garlic and put all in a jar. In another bowl,  I mixed red wine vinegar , lemon juice, sea salt flakes and strirred until the flakes disappeared. Poured this mixture into the jar, gave it a good stir and closed its lid very tightly.

Keep in it your fridge for a couple of days without releasing the lid. Be patient:)
It's such an easy recipe but tastes great when it's ready to eat. We had it with salmon, sun dried tomatoes, pickled aubergines+feta (handmade by me, recipe coming soon) and raki the other day.
Will definitely make it again soon.

The felt toilet sign I've made lately. I have seen it on a crafts website and copied. I find it soo funny :)
I haven't used it yet, but will definitely do as soon as I find a small magnet to keep the "stinks" side of the skirt up! Can't think of a better idea to stick it up. A magnet in the skirt and another under the head part  might do the trick - if I can find small enough magnets of course.

 

London called and so we went - 2

This is from another day in London.

Went to Notting Hill Carnival, didn't know much before I went, looked it up on wikipedia and it said: 

The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event which since 1964 has taken place on the streets of Notting Hill each August, over two days. It is led by members of the British African - Caribbean community.The carnival has attracted up to 2 million people in the past, making it the second largest street festival in the world after the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival held in that country.

Well I wasn't very sure about attracting two million people part until I got there! It was packed!!! We could hardly walk, let alone dance away with the parade. Luckily in the end we escaped the police barrier after a Jamaican group's bus with a DJ on board and followed them dancing to the end.

If you look at the picture carefully enough, you can see two tiny heads reflecting on the window :)

And these are some other shots from the carnival. Not very professional pics but will set the scene!

 

These two coming up are my fave Carnival characters!

 

Here is another carnival person hiding behind tinsels :) Mustn't be hard to guess who he is..

and now coming out, ladies and gentlemen, with his best friend is Oguz

Taaaa-daaaa..

London called and so we went - 1

I sometimes feel myself so lucky London's just an hour drive from our place! Compared to our lovely but rather small town centre with all the shops closing sharply at 17.30, one needs a place to escape to, especially at the weekends. So that's what we often do, get up in the morning, don't know what to do, then all of a sudden decide to go to London and come up with a plan on our way.

One of the places we've lately been to is Absolut Ice Bar. It's a small bar made of ice, tables, bar, walls, everything. Even the glass you drink your absolut cocktail is an ice cube. I heard there is another one in Istanbul but don't know where. They give you a thermal cape before you go in, so you don't freeze in -5C :) This is how I look in a cape freezing anyway:

We got our picture taken by a photographer there but I'm too lazy to scan it now!
And this is what Oguz looks like in a cape, holding onto his ice glass tightly: