Throwing out a new Life Line

From now on I will be blogging over at:

TinyLifeLines

Feel free to come visit any time and thanks for sticking with mixxedtape this last year, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve met a lot of gorgeous people yet I can’t help but feel that mixxedtape has outgrown its original purpose a bit, hence the change of blog.

I can’t wait to see you guys over at my ‘new place’ 😉

Love, M.

Refreshing

Chilled Green Tea with lime and lemon slices

Some cucumber salad to dip my carrots in
to help me deal with my hummus addiction

I hope the sun is shining wherever you are and that you’re enjoying it!

Love, M.

Guess what…

The godchild is no longer just a belly bump!

He is actually a real, although tiny, human being now with cute little toes, sharp little nails and a lot of fluffy dark hair.

He is a handsome little fellow who smells amazing and has the cutest name ever:

Floris!

I went to visit him last night and he’s a real champ, he spent half an hour in my arms half dozing, half griping things with his tiny hands.
He’s going to be real photogenic, you can already tell 😉

Photographs will definitely follow !

The Big Challenge

Hey you guys, I hope everyone is doing fine!

I’ve been having a lot of response from people on posts lately and I’ve notice I truly like interacting with you guys!
This also made me think of something, as much as I like being this goof ball that posts about food and recipes and tells you about her day, I would also love to do something ‘more’.
I want to challenge you! 

I’ve noticed a lot of girls (and guys for that matter) are insecure these days.
They worry about how they look, they worry about being popular, they worry about their public image… are they being to kind or do they seem haughty? do people like them for who they are or for what they seem to be?
We don’t know how to be happy with the person we are any more and constantly try to change that person into someone else… but who are we trying to change them in?

Been there, done that.. and to be honest: still not over that completely.

So what I’d like to be doing in this series is challenge you (and in the meantime challenge myself as well), cause sometimes all we need is a little kick in the butt to get things in the right perspective.

To be honest, I do not really know where I want to go with these series: there will be long posts, but there will also be just short announcements to give you little kick, let’s say every once in a week. We’ll see how it works out!

I won’t be looking for any active participation (i.e. sending in photographs or telling your own stories) cause we all know this blog is too small for that kind of stuff and it would be really awkward to have to stop these series cause I don’t get any response 😉 but it would be nice if you guys could let me know what you think about the topics and issues that will be posted, whether the tips are useful… feel free to add anything. If you have any ideas, feel free to contact mixxedtape@hotmail.be!

Love, M.

An Open Letter to Small Town Mentality

Did you truly believe it was a bright idea to tell a mum and her two daughters how her almost-ex-husband is an asshole?

Or didn’t you realize, as you were talking to this mum and her daughters,you were actually also talking to the daughters of this asshole you were referring to?
Do you think it is appropriate to tell a sixteen-year-old girl her father is an ass hole? Cause I don’t think it is appropriate to tell my little sister our dad is an ass hole, but maybe that’s just silly of me..
Do you think it is appropriate to start “explaining the truth” about the whole situation after that?
Do you think it as appropriate to talk about things like this as if you are the person that know everything there is to know about it… maybe that’s just vanity speaking but as it is about my mum and dad you are talking I’m pretty sure I’m a bit better informed than you are.

Do you have any idea how much this situation is also killing my dad, even though you are  blabbing all this bad stuff about him, calling him an asshole in front of his daughters?
Do you have any idea how much a want to tell you off about this?
I’ve already bitten my tongue 5 times in these last 2 minutes cause I don’t want to embarrass my mum or make her sad and most of all because I’m better than that. I’m better than this small town gossip. I’m a big girl, I don’t even really life here any more, if you want to talk about me that’s okay, I can handle that.
But don’t you dare talk about/to my mum and my little sister like that!

And last of all: do you honestly believe you are helping my mum by telling this? Cause in my opinion you can only be as brave and as strong as a person is willing to make you feel… how strong do you think she feels when you talk to her like she’s a lonely,sad and betrayed woman?
Do you have any idea how much effort I have put in to making her feel worthy again? To make her smile again? To make her eat again?
It’s taken me weeks to convince her to say ‘I’m fine’ when someone asks her how she feels (but only if she is feeling that way if she’s sad she should say so as well, but only to trustworthy people not to small-town-gossip-seekers).
If the only thing you expect her to say is ‘I feel like shit’ what else is there to say? If even her parents tell her off for telling them ‘I’m fine’, tell her they don’t believe her and she probably feels like shit, how on earthy can it be possible for her to feel a little bit happy, let alone admit she is.

I hope you enjoyed talking her down again, hope you enjoyed watching the pieces fall apart, we’ll be here trying to pick them up again… and again and again..
And you know, if you really cared about her and not just about the gossip and the sensation, you’d be here to pick them up too, instead of just making them fall.

You’re only as strong as a person is willing to make you feel…
I want my mum to feel like a lioness and I don’t want anyone to tell her that she can’t! 

*end of rant*

Love, M.

Update In Photographs

 

Today’s outfit (sweat pants, fluffy house shoes and a long, warm poncho) tells it all…my life has been pretty uninteresting lately I don’t really have exciting tales to tell, I haven’t even prepared food for a few days… just studying, studying and sleeping (and dealing with sinusitis, brilliant timing by the way! ;)).

I did snap some photographs every now and then so I’d thought I’d share these instead.

This is where it all happens…
It’s called ‘organised chaos’

Postponing at it’s finest:

Brain Fuel:

Green monster with extra banana, lamb’s lettuce, grapes and cinnamon. Topped with flax seeds, shredded almonds and rice krispies.

Comfort drinking:

My mum bought me the cutest little teapot!

Lady Bugs!

We keep coming across lady bugs in my mum’s new house,
Mona doesn’t mind though 😉

Love, M.

 

Insomnia

Mona has been so good since the move, she’s one brave little kitten.

Mona’s ‘ What’s that?! Did I hear something… What are you doing??? Don’t make me come over there!’ -face

The first few days she was really scared, she hid under the closets and meowed in a way that could break your heart. She choose my mum’s bedroom as her ‘safe place’ and she stayed in the bed hidden under the covers the first day.

But Mona is a tough gal, a bit arrogant too, and on the second day she already decided that if this place was going to be her new home she was going to rule it.

‘Okay I’m too lazy to come over there
so you’d better tell me what’s going on out there!’

Now she walks around like she owns the place, sleeps in every soft and warm corner she can find (preferably beds and radiators) and she is much sweeter and affectionate than we ever thought possible for such a headstrong cat.

She also traded her sleeping place in my mum’s bed for my bed, so now I have to share my bed with this little black ball of fur… well actually it rather seems like she’s willing to share her bed with me than vice versa, at least that’s what she thinks.

Hence the insomnia.
As much as I adore sleeping with a warm and fuzzy kitten, she always manages to fall asleep in the most inconvenient places: on my feet so they get numb, behind my back or on my belly so I can’t turn over to the other side and she always manages to not share the blankets!
It’s pretty obvious who’s in charge in our house 😉

But you simply can’t wake up to this in the morning and still be mad about your disturbed sleeping pattern… sleep is overrated anyway, cuddling with kittens on the other hand is not!

Love, M.

Smells like Home

If you bake this cake I promise you your house will smell amazing for days.
This is the cake my mum used to bake when we were kids, so for me the house smells like home whenever she makes it.

‘Apple Cinnamon Cake’

• 200 gr ( a bit less than a cup) of butter
• 200 gr (3/4 a cup) of sugar
• 300 gr (2 cups) of flour
• some vanilla extract or some amaretto
• 4 eggs
• 1 apple, peeled and cored
• a few dashes of cinnamon

Cream the butter, add the sugar and stir. Add the egg yolks to this mixture, when everything is combined add the flour, vanilla or amaretto and the cinnamon. Process the egg whites until they become a white foam then fold this under the rest of the mixture.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (360F).

Grease a cake tin, pour the dough in this tin and put it in the oven for 45 minutes.

Serve with a dollop of cream and vanilla ice cream.

And make sure to keep all the doors and windows closed to keep the smell indoors for as long as possible 😉

Love, M.

Best Wishes

I wish you all lots of Chocolate on Christmas day!

Mona’d like to say something as well:

How not to wrap your Christmas Gifts

I love buying presents!

I love finding out exactly what would suit a certain person, I love buying strange and personal stuff, I love adding notes to the things I hand out (which sometimes turn into full-blown novellas) and I always have to add some chocolate, that’s a rule.

Christmas Chocolate!!

I don’t believe in expensive gifts and gift bons, it’s fine if that’s what you like and if that’s what you do, but it’s just not me.
To me the presents for people I truly care about have to be creative and personal. They can be small, they can be ugly, they can not even be worth a penny… all of that doesn’t matter as long as they are meaningful they are great.

The only sad thing is that I really suck in wrapping presents. Not having any gift wrapping paper at hand this year only made things worse…

I did what I could with old magazines and posters but it is still not very pretty…
Have a guess which gift was professionally wrapped? 😉

More Christmas Chocolate

You know how there are people who claim they like giving presents more than they like actually getting them… well, I’m not one of those people!
I think both giving presents and receiving them are equally enjoyable.
That’s also why I decided to buy myself a little something as well while I was Christmas shopping.

Good luck gift wrapping, I hope you’ll do a better job than I did!
Love, M.