Happy Birthday lil' Sis'

Today is my little sisters birthday! I wish her a very happy day, a lovely time with our family and a great year ahead! She is starting her final year of school soon and I am so proud of her. I hope she is continuing to do so well in her classes and finishes next summer. I have missed some of her birthdays already due to work and me being abroad, but this year I am especially sad as I would love to celebrate with her in her first own apartment. 

So lil' sis', I hope you have a great day nonethertheless and I just wanted to let you know that I love you and miss you!!

A hug needs no special occasion

British blogger just gave me a huge fright. Apparently Mother's day is not a really international date, but happens on different days in each country. After a moment of research, I found out that I luckily hadn't forgotten about German Mother's day and can still prepare myself until may. 

But who says that I can't give my mom a huge shout out every time there is a mother's day somewhere on this planet?! Actually, she deserves a huge hug and praise every single day. So here it goes: To my lovely mother, who has raised me to be the woman I am today, who still takes care of me when I am in need and who is always there for me when I need someone to talk to (this list could go on forever!). Thank you mom, for being you!

What I love right now - No. 5/2013

We had another busy weekend with my mom's birthday and some other great events. 

I have been on the lookout for a scooter for a while. Of course a Vespa would be the ultimate goal, but we have this old-school scooter in Germany that is called "Schwalbe". I finally got myself one this weekend! Can't wait to cruise around town with Mr.B and take this beauty for rides. It does have some small beauty spots, but this lady is already 40 years old. Can't wait to pick it up next weekend!

New Year's Eve party

The new year has come, lots of resolutions have been made and I seem to break my first one already - blogging things on time or pre-post! Well, I couldn't pre-post the New Years Eve pictures, therefore one week late but no less beautiful I give you the pictures of my New Year's Eve party. 

Christmas Eve 2012 - The look

Every year we gather together with our families to celebrate Christmas. This year, we first stayed with my parents during Christmas Eve and later traveled to see Mr.B's family for Christmas day. Of course we spend a lot of the time eating, laughing, unwrapping presents and just being together. It was lovely and I decided to wear something festive, but comfortable for the occasion as I knew we would sit on the floor around the tree for quite some time and I needed something that would be stretchy and warm.

parents meeting the parents

For all those in longterm relationships, you probably know the three most difficult meet-ups in a young relationship - the girl meeting the parents of the guy, the guy meeting the parents of the girl and the hardest one: parents of both meeting each other. After more than a year of dating, Mr.B and I had decided that it was time to also manage this last step and we brought both our families together last weekend. I was quite nervous as this meeting also counted as our official moving-in party. The mister has joined me in my little apartment not too long ago and we wanted to show our "new" space to both our families as well. 

Impressions of a weekend

Before we traveled to Regensburg, I still managed to pick up my long awaited new camera lense. I had been dreaming about the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM for months and have been saving every cent for it. Now I was finally able to save enough money and it arrived right on time for our big weekend away. Soon after our arrival, I had to try it out and probably got on the nerves of everybody during the weekend as I played around with settings, light and had to photograph every little detail of the trip, food and drinks included. Therefore all had to wait for their first bite just a little longer :) Sorry for that once again, guys!

A night of fire and light

Last weekend, Mr.B and I visited his sister in the beautiful city of Regensburg. She showed us around town during the day and Saturday night, we went out for a belated birthday dinner. On our way we crossed the river Donau over the famous iron footbridge and had a great view over the old town!

Time to celebrate!

It's Mr.B's birthday today and even though he doesn't want to make a big deal about his big day, I want to wish him a Happy Birthday here on the little blog as well! Even though he is in the background, he does do a lot for A Heart and Soul Story as well as me, of course, and I want to thank him for that!

We started our day with a birthday breakfast (at 5.30am) with some cereals, flower cake muffins and presents. Can't wait to spend the rest of the day doing all his favorite things! 

Have a wonderful birthday, honey!

Celebrating the most important woman in my life

This weekend, we celebrated the birthday of my lovely mother and with this post I wanted to celebrate the most important woman in my life. She is an amazing person, has raised me and my small sister and still is a hardworking business woman. I am so proud of her, all the things I know today, I know because of her. She has always had faith in me and let me try out all the things that I wanted. She never faltered and supported me every day, even when she didn't fully understand what I was doing (my degree for example, she still doesn't fully grasp what I have studied, but supports me no matter what!). Thank you mom and Happy Birthday!

Easter

This weekend is easter - one of my favorite holidays. I love to be together with my loved ones, enjoying the spring weather and searching for little easter eggs. My favorite part of the entire holiday!

Winter Wonderland

Last weekend Mr.B. and I decided to visit his family in the mountains and we enjoyed some days of relaxing in front of the fire place, eating great food and wonderful walks in Winter Wonderland. The snow had us waiting long enough this year, but finally it seems to become a real winter. 

Month of Celebrations

This month has been crazy. A lot of my friends and family members have birthdays or I am invited to similar celebrations and I rarely have a moment to catch my breath. Still, it is a lot of fun to see all your loved ones fairly often, so I won't complain!

Last weekend my friend C. celebrated her 30th birthday and invited several of her close girlfriends for a luncheon at a wonderful restaurant in our town. 

Happy New Year 2012

I hope you all had a great celebration yesterday and started the year 2012 on a high note. I had a small party at my apartment and celebrated New Years' Eve with my closest friends. We enjoyed good food, some board games, watched the all time classic "Dinner for One" and watched the fireworks on my balcony. I even got my New Years Kiss :)

Holiday Getaway

This last week, I spent at the family home of Mr.B. He grew up in the mountains and we celebrated the holidays together at his home. My parents drove me up there as the wanted to make a short trip themselves and dropped me off right before the Christmas day celebrations started. We enjoyed an amazing lunch made by Mr.B's mom and sister and later exchanged gifts once again. 

Back from a week of celebrations

I am finally back from my little Christmas getaway and still am feeling relaxed and stuffed from all the good food. After working until 3pm at Christmas eve, I celebrated with my parents, sister and grandparents. We had a quiet afternoon and evening with lots of cookies, good food and nice talks. In Germany the children get their presents during that evening and my dad was supposed to play Santa later that night for family friends and their little 3 year old son. He already had the costume at home and we decided to let him bring our presents as well. Prior to receiving the gifts, each had to sing a song or recite a poem. It was lots of fun and a great way to celebrate together.

Celebration time

It's my little sister's B-Day and we celebrated it with family and friends! The morning started with me and Mr.B. traveling to the airport. My sister had been on vacation in Turkey until this morning and we picked her up to take some work off my mothers back. She has to prepare the party and we promised to stand up at 4am picking J. up. We spend the rest of the morning watching movies and preparing for the party.

Germany weather is a bit unreliable right now, but for J.'s B-Day, the sun came out and it was pretty nice. Still a bit chilly though. I went for a floral outfit that instantly brightened my mood!

What I wore

Coat, Top & Hair pin: H&M

Dress: Vero Moda

Cardigan & Necklace: Thrifted

Shoes: Zilli May; TK Maxx

Tights: Esda

Nail Polish: OPI “Ate Berries in the Canaries”

It's her B-Day

Today is my little sister J's birthday and I wanna send her big congrats with this post! We are almost 8 years apart, it wasn't always easy with the two of us, but I love her to death and she is the best! 

{photo source}

Happy Birthday, girl! Enjoy your day!

This is for you!

Picnic with a view

As I have been in Finland for my friends' wedding, I could not spend Mr. B's birthday with him. We still wanted to celebrate and went for a picnic this weekend. I had packed a special basket full of great food and we enjoyed our view across the entire city. It was quite hot though, with no shade at all and lots of bees and horse flies. As I am allergic to their bites, we decided to take the second part of the picnic back to our balcony. 

I wore my new blue and white polka dotted dress together with a cute white belt and felt super pretty in it. It always happens with me and polka dots. Do you have a color or pattern that instantly lets you feel like a million bugs!?

What I wore

Dress: Lindex, Helsinki

Belt: Thrifted; KleiderKreisel

Shades: C&A

Shoes: Deichmann

Necklace & Bag: Thrifted

I was traveling on Thursday, but still wanted to share my Awkward and Awesome moments of the week, so we will have a Sunday edition this time!

Awkward

• leaving Helsinki on a plane wearing Jeans and T-Shirt, assuming that it is chilly in Berlin - landing in 25 degrees - I needed to change quickly and pulled out the first skirt I could find - It was my "new" purple skirt.  It matched not only the color of my suitcase, but also my carry-on bag, laptop bag and wallet that I was carrying with me during the day. That mixed with a bright pink shirt really gave me my first, but unintentional color blocking experience. 
• going for my first swim in a month - felt so stiff. The worst: we had to swim in a slalom around slow grandpa's and at the same time avoid those super fast swimmers that seem to be retired professional athletes. 

Awesome

• meeting Emily of The other Emily when traveling through Berlin last week - such a nice blogger, really had an amazing time and got great ideas for the blog and my thesis - Thanks, girl!!
• celebrating the wedding of my friends H. and M. in Helsinki
• back at home and being greeted by several packages I have been waiting for for a while already
• Vacation - just relaxing and not thinking about studies and my thesis for once

Happy Sunday everyone!!

Weekend to remember

This weekend was something special. On Saturday, I attended the wedding of my dear friends H. and M. They were celebrating an international wedding, as one of them is from Nigeria and one from Finland. The wedding included things from both cultures and was built around the colors of both countries' flags: blue, green and white. 

After a beautiful wedding ceremony in both English and Finnish in one of Finlands' oldest churches, we went to the reception. H. looked stunning in her dress that was made by her mother (seriously gifted woman!) and M. wore a really fancy suit that made him look very handsome!

The location for the reception was a house in the typical Finnish style, with a nice porch, red wood and white windows. The place itself was decorated with a lot of antique finds of the owner and gave a very vintage feeling to the whole day. 

The mother of the bride (as mentioned, she is such a gifted and crafty person) did a lot of the decorations together with H. All was done with such care and with love for details. Every time I looked around, I could find more little hidden things.

I have been only to two weddings, but this has been such a beautiful day and I am very happy that I was able to share this wonderful moment with the happy couple. Mr. & Mrs. O, all the best for you and your future!!

And finally just two pictures of how my outfit looked!